If Books Could Kill - Josh Hawley's ＂Manhood＂ [TEASER]

00:00:00.000 yeah what do we what do we have peter i guess i could say i could say uh what do you know about

00:00:04.840 manhood maybe that's a longer answer um what do you know about your own peter and others and that

00:00:10.000 of others or can say what do you know about josh hawley oh yeah i was gonna challenge you to

00:00:14.020 describe him without using the phrase evil twink i my i still remember that video of him jogging

00:00:22.500 away on january 6th his little leg he's he's got like a runner's stride just falling ass away from

00:00:28.640 the rioters to then turn around and be like you know what's missing i know masculinity whatever 0.99

00:00:35.100 you guys are pussies too many pussies out here we need more real men like me yeah i'm afraid 0.99

00:00:40.160 all right i think i i think i have one okay peter michael what do you know about manhood 1.00

00:00:46.040 by josh hawley all i know is that when i want to learn about masculinity i go to an 0.95

00:00:51.440 defeat man best known for being a coward. I mean, I guess for our listeners, like for some of our

00:01:09.680 listeners who don't know who Josh Hawley is, do you want to describe who this man is?

00:01:12.740 He's a senator from Missouri. He's one of those young Republican senators, sort of in the

00:01:20.080 vein of Ted Cruz, like a debate kid, right? Who's sort of bombastic, likes to just do

00:01:27.860 culture war bullshit for attention. You know, grandstands about like trans people and shit like 1.00

00:01:34.160 that. Very, very fundamentally slimy. Yeah. The word I kept thinking of was worm. 1.00

00:01:39.700 Worm-like in soul and appearance. But speaking of grandstanding, Peter, I wanted to start with

00:01:45.900 sort of how Hawley became like the manhood Republican and sort of, I think, really launched

00:01:51.340 this narrative that Reeves repeats a lot in his book, too, that, you know, Republicans are the

00:01:56.800 ones who are taking care of men. Republicans care about men and liberals are all effeminate and

00:02:01.520 don't care and just look down upon men. Half right. Yeah. And the way that Josh Hawley has

00:02:06.720 done this is he started with a speech in 2021 where he basically laid out the case for we need

00:02:13.200 to bring back manhood, manhood is under attack, blah, blah, blah. And then he follows it up with

00:02:16.780 the book. But I want to start with a couple of excerpts from the speech, because this is really

00:02:21.680 like the first most Americans heard about like him branding himself as like the protector of

00:02:26.840 American masculinity. So I'm sending you a clip. But what I want you to notice, what I want to call

00:02:34.840 out tonight is that the deconstruction of america begins with and depends on the deconstruction

00:02:43.240 of american men look how shiny he is the left wanted to find traditional masculinity as toxic

00:02:49.960 they want to define the traditional masculine virtues things like courage and independence

00:02:55.220 and assertiveness as a danger to society yeah we hate those this is an effort that the left

00:03:00.440 has been at for years now and they have had alarming success we've destroyed men american

00:03:04.860 men are working less they're getting married in fewer numbers they're fathering fewer children

00:03:10.100 love it they're suffering more anxiety and depression sweater polos they're engaging in

00:03:15.460 more substance abuse okay many men in this country are in crisis and their ranks are swelling

00:03:23.080 and that's not just a crisis for men that's a crisis for the american republic

00:03:30.180 we're gonna watch another clip okay intermediate thoughts intermission thoughts peter yeah no i

00:03:35.840 mean one of the things that i hate the most is courage yep um i don't like seeing it i don't 0.99

00:03:41.760 like hearing about it when men are like i'll shovel the driveway we're like fuck you yeah 0.99

00:03:45.360 that's the patriarchy right there when my cat jumps on the counter even though i always yell 0.99

00:03:49.480 at her toxic masculinity okay clip two let me just start by pressing home this point to you

00:03:56.120 that the left's attack on America leads directly to an attack on men. For years now, Democrats and

00:04:03.240 other leftists have insisted that America is systemically oppressive and unjust. They've said

00:04:08.300 it so much and so often to them, it's a truism. They say it so much they think it's true. Joe

00:04:13.020 Biden has, as president, repeatedly decried America's systemic racism. His administration

00:04:19.580 has loudly called for a new gender equity agenda to right the structural injustices of our

00:04:26.040 society his nominees have advocated critical race theory and training in equity for federal

00:04:32.740 workers this past week the administration celebrated the introduction of an x gender

00:04:38.820 marker on american passports did you see this unbelievable x meaning neither male nor female

00:04:43.860 just so you're keeping up pick one pick all of this points all of this points to how important

00:04:49.300 the deconstructionist agenda is for team biden and for the american left the left i mean you

00:04:54.980 think about it. Inflation may be rampant. Store shelves are bare. It costs $100 to fill up a

00:05:00.500 minivan in America, but the administration will not be deterred from focusing on the important

00:05:05.440 issues. They are laser-focused on exposing just how bad America is. Other prominent liberals have

00:05:12.120 taken this the next step and identified America's many alleged woes with men in particular.

00:05:18.900 Take Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. 0.63

00:05:21.280 Boo. 1.00

00:05:21.860 Boo.

00:05:22.160 I knew they'd be booing. 0.56

00:05:23.140 White supremacy and patriarchy are linked in a lot of ways, she says, meaning that America's systemic racism is a systemic problem with men. 0.94

00:05:34.940 You're racist if you have courage.

00:05:36.200 Author John Stoltenberg writes that talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer.

00:05:42.560 Professor Susanna Walters of Northeastern University says it seems logical to hate men unless they pledge to vote for feminist women only and don't run for office. 0.99

00:05:55.060 I love like I found some fucking professor somewhere who ran their mouth a little bit. 0.99

00:06:00.840 Who said something I disagree with, basically. 0.99

00:06:02.320 Also, it's been decades since it cost $100 to fill up a minivan with what I imagine is groceries.

00:06:10.080 What are you talking about?

00:06:11.160 He means filling it with eggs.

00:06:12.560 He's talking about filling it with eggs.

00:06:13.500 I think they just sort of like pull together these things that make it seem as if there's

00:06:19.660 a really coherent point.

00:06:21.520 But like, what is gender markers on passports have to do with your point exactly?

00:06:27.460 Like, how is the average man being undermined in their like ability to express themselves?

00:06:34.360 This is also what really frustrates me is like people like Richard Reeves, who I think

00:06:37.600 are trying to have a good faith conversation about this, kind of talk around the fact that

00:06:42.700 the vast majority of people who bring this up constantly are having a bad faith conversation

00:06:46.520 about this, right? He brings up all these ways in which like men are struggling, you know,

00:06:49.700 marriage rates are falling, you know, men don't earn as much money as they used to.

00:06:52.840 Real things, fine, like complicated societal phenomena that we can discuss. And then he

00:06:57.060 immediately goes to these just like podunk examples of like a gender studies professor. 1.00

00:07:02.860 This is based on a Washington Post op-ed where she's like, yeah, women are mad at men because

00:07:06.500 like men do most of like the raping in society yeah i don't think it's a particularly good op-ed

00:07:11.340 to be totally honest and i don't totally agree with it but it's just sort of like yeah it's it's 0.96

00:07:15.300 an op-ed by a woman saying like when when people say men are trash this is like what they're 0.98

00:07:18.960 expressing it's one lady who said something that you think is stupid yeah i mean it's just not it's 0.99

00:07:24.380 not indicative of some broad agenda or anything like that and there's also the other example that 0.98

00:07:28.740 he cites here is there's this author who says talking about healthy masculinity is like talking

00:07:33.560 about healthy cancer. It's just a random ass blog post by this random ass guy. And then the 0.98

00:07:39.280 really bad one is he cites AOC saying white supremacy and patriarchy are linked in a lot of

00:07:44.540 ways as like an example of how the left has gone too far. This is an interview with AOC talking

00:07:49.960 about how she was afraid of getting raped on January 6th because she's a survivor of sexual

00:07:54.660 assault. Right. And so she's like, yeah, the fact is these people are fucking psychos. And when 0.74

00:07:58.600 people are psychos they also act out in like violently gendered ways as well so like wow yeah 0.96

00:08:04.960 you really got her on this one you just can't talk about sociology around republicans they

00:08:09.160 it makes them upset like the the quote from her is almost irrelevant to what he's talking about

00:08:16.060 really he's just looking for those buzzwords white supremacy toxic masculinity right like

00:08:21.240 he he just wants to upset the audience which is at like the national conservative conference and

00:08:27.240 he's also kind of doing what she's talking about right he's talking about how men are under threat

00:08:30.940 and he also throws in like critical race theory right right right in there which has nothing to

00:08:34.660 do with anything it's like oh yeah how dare she say that people who protect the interests of men

00:08:38.420 also protect the interests of whites yeah literally what he's doing i also i wish that

00:08:43.260 it podcasting is a bad format for holly speak because i know it really is important to just

00:08:48.880 take a glance at him we can't get the moisture i know you're not getting the glistening just

00:08:52.580 the shininess of this man. He's a real slime boy. So that was 2021. In 2023, he comes out with

00:08:59.140 Manhood, The Masculine Virtues America Needs, which gets a lot of discourse. We are going to

00:09:05.620 talk about the book in some detail. I said on the podcast that it was a rich text. I regret saying

00:09:09.840 that. It's got a lot of filler. It's not like dense with meaning. We're going to talk about

00:09:14.820 a couple of the highlights, but the vast majority of this book honestly is just really boring. It's

00:09:19.100 a lot of like bible verses and him just like telling bible stories a lot this is what happens 0.95

00:09:24.060 when you want to sell a bullshit book but like you don't really have more than a long essay's worth

00:09:29.260 right so i am going to send you the thesis of the book all is not well with men in america 0.96

00:09:36.820 and that spells trouble for the american republic it has been a perennial question of political

00:09:41.260 philosophy since the first republics reformed whether a free nation could survive without

00:09:45.160 soundness of character and its people the old-fashioned word for that is virtue meaning

00:09:49.720 not just moral uprightness but the personal fortitude and vision such uprightness produces

00:09:54.000 strength in other words Machiavelli called it virtue it's not well written it's sort of over

00:10:01.460 written and underwritten at the same time I like how he's like it's virtue Machiavelli called it

00:10:06.440 virtue in italian practically practically everywhere one looks in america now male virtue

00:10:15.600 is crumbling except he's doing the italian virtue yeah male virtue and consequences for the country

00:10:21.060 are grave crime is on the rise overwhelmingly committed by men disinterest in work is becoming 0.70

00:10:26.780 commonplace and in perhaps the starkest example of male weakness fatherlessness abounds doing like

00:10:33.200 a crime on the rise thing in 2021 when crime's been rising for exactly one year is pretty ballsy.

00:10:41.660 Crime on the rise, disinterest in work, commonplace, fatherlessness abounds. One of those already

00:10:47.900 solved. So we're actually doing fantastic. I also, the main reason I'm including this

00:10:52.900 is just to point out the fact that he's essentially making the same case as Richard

00:10:56.580 Reeves. The case that Richard Reeves makes in his book has basically been workshopped by men's

00:11:02.000 rights activists. And they always kind of cherry pick the same like three or four categories of

00:11:07.240 things. As we've said, many of these things are real issues and should be like addressed and

00:11:11.340 investigated, et cetera. But it's like, you really have to look for these specific ways in which men

00:11:17.740 are falling behind women in America. And it's always the same like four things. Right. So he

00:11:22.200 then goes through, I mean, I'm not going to do it, but he goes through like boys are falling behind

00:11:25.420 in school. And then he follows up with a bit more analysis, which I'm sending to you.

00:11:31.880 Much has been said in recent years of the divisions in American society,

00:11:35.360 the dangers to our democracy and our growing polarization. Surely it is no coincidence that

00:11:39.760 these ills have proliferated while American men have struggled. As the anthropologist David

00:11:44.020 Gilmore once wrote, manhood is the social barrier that societies must erect against entropy,

00:11:49.240 human enemies, the forces of nature, time, and all the human weaknesses that threaten social life.

00:11:55.000 david gilmore really running his mouth there well he does he's making a factual error here that's

00:11:59.920 actually the lead singer of pink floyd i don't know why he said it's an anthropologist but what

00:12:03.640 he's basically saying is according to this anthropologist manhood is our last bastion

00:12:08.580 against chaos right we need men to protect us yeah from like these creeping social forces that

00:12:13.720 want to tear us apart all of which by the way are other men yeah men keep crime at bay and also are

00:12:19.180 the primary also are the people doing the criming he has to say that it's a barrier against human

00:12:23.960 enemies because if he just said enemies, you'd probably be thinking men.

00:12:28.320 So he mentions this David Gilmour guy and he has this quote, which really sounds like a

00:12:32.760 defense of manhood, right? Like we need men, right? I was like, okay, who's this David Gilmour

00:12:36.040 guy? Where's this quote from? This is from a book called Manhood in the Making, which I bought and

00:12:41.780 started reading. I was like, oh, I should read like the introduction to this. Like what is this

00:12:45.120 anthropologist saying about manhood? It's basically a survey of like the way that manhood is socially

00:12:50.320 constructed around the world. And it's fascinating. And I sat there and read the book all day. We're

00:12:56.920 going to talk about this for like 45 minutes, Peter. I don't care if you're interested or not.

00:12:59.940 You can just sit silently. I'm going. This stuff is so fucking interesting to me.

00:13:04.520 So basically what he finds is that it's remarkably common and consistent that societies have this 0.95

00:13:11.900 like very socially constructed and socially enforced notion of manhood and especially

00:13:17.340 rituals associated with becoming a man. So this thing of like, you know, Jewish people have like

00:13:22.380 bar mitzvahs, this sort of like a symbolic way of showing like you're no longer a boy,

00:13:26.740 you're becoming a man. This is like remarkably consistent.

00:13:29.360 I'm a little upset that you just said that to me, like I might not know what a bar mitzvah is.

00:13:34.120 Well, am I talking to you or am I talking to listeners? I don't know.

00:13:38.760 Are you talking to me or our incredibly anti-Semitic listeners?

00:13:42.560 so he profiles an east african tribe where boys get circumcised at age like 13 14 and part of the

00:13:50.120 ritual is you can't change your facial expression so you're considered less of a man if you sort of

00:13:54.580 react to pain by the way i use that same analysis with babies who get circumcised he notes that like

00:14:00.580 even in kind of non-violent societies like societies that don't do a lot of warring

00:14:04.940 with other groups you still find these like pretty brutal rituals associated with becoming a man so in

00:14:10.740 the Kalahari Bushmen, they make you like track an antelope, which involves like running. And like,

00:14:15.900 you know, it takes days to do this. And like, it's a real feat of endurance. He has a really

00:14:19.940 interesting section on the practices in Victorian England. They would send off their boys to these 1.00

00:14:25.720 boarding schools. And the fact that the boarding schools were cruel, were kind of part of the

00:14:29.700 point. It's partly the parents being like, oh, he has to become a man. Like he has to, he has to

00:14:34.220 face adversity to become a man. And oftentimes these masculinity norms involve a lot of risk

00:14:39.700 taking. So he profiles the South Pacific islands called the Truck Islands, where you're supposed

00:14:45.040 to do these like deep sea fishing expeditions, where people die constantly. It's like really

00:14:50.200 dangerous. But if you don't want to do them, or if you refuse to do them, everybody basically

00:14:54.420 just says you're a pussy. That's what they say about podcasting too. And has it stopped us? 0.99

00:14:59.120 I mean, he profiles probably like 25 or 30 different societies. He goes kind of like region

00:15:02.820 by region. And what he finds is that in almost every society, manhood understandings are marked

00:15:09.120 by this need for constant renewal. He says, although this stressed or embattled quality

00:15:15.560 varies in intensity, true manhood frequently shows an inner insecurity that needs dramatic

00:15:20.600 proof. Its vindication is doubtful, resting on rigid codes of decisive action in many spheres

00:15:25.800 of life as husband, father, lover, provider, warrior, a restricted status. There are always

00:15:31.000 men who fail the test. These are the negative examples held up scornfully to inspire conformity

00:15:35.660 to the glorious ideal so this thing of like american manhood that's like kind of constantly

00:15:40.300 being redefined and it's like a little fake and it feels kind of ad hoc and it feels like they're

00:15:44.480 making it up on the fly that's actually like very common that like every society is just like i know

00:15:50.400 it when i see it he profiles this guy in southern spain which is like very traditional very catholic 0.99

00:15:55.180 where basically everyone thinks this guy is like a huge pussy because like he loves his wife and 1.00

00:16:00.760 like he stays with his wife and like helps her cook yeah it's gay it's gay to love your wife 1.00

00:16:05.140 There's no question.

00:16:05.820 He also says like manhood myths and manhood social constructions are oftentimes totally

00:16:09.460 contradictory.

00:16:10.380 So it's like people expect this guy to be the strong, silent type.

00:16:13.660 But the fact that he's introverted is a knock against his masculinity, right?

00:16:17.920 And it's seen as a huge threat to his masculinity that he helps his wife cook. 1.00

00:16:22.780 Specifically, it's like, oh my God, you're helping in the kitchen, you fucking loser. 0.99

00:16:25.740 But also if he cooks professionally, that's like not considered a threat to masculinity 1.00

00:16:30.320 because like, oh, you're doing it as a professional. 1.00

00:16:31.980 Yeah, because then you're doing it for pussy. 1.00

00:16:33.920 then chicks like that you're get you're you're cooking food for women for women who come into 1.00

00:16:42.580 your restaurant right not just to enjoy a meal with your family which is pathetic he also profiles 0.99

00:16:47.720 two societies that are exceptions to this is that this is quite common these manhood understandings 0.55

00:16:52.960 but they're not universal so he profiles this tahitian community where there just aren't any

00:16:58.120 divisions between men and women and the people seem kind of like confused like when he brings

00:17:02.240 up like oh what about manhood they're like what so here's him describing uh tahiti anthropologist

00:17:07.460 visits nb island and has no idea what's going on both perform most of the same tasks and there are

00:17:14.080 no jobs or skills reserved for either sex by cultural dictate the men routinely do the cooking

00:17:20.160 women do almost everything that men do outside the house in addition there is no stress on

00:17:25.300 proving manhood no pressure on men to appear in any significant way different from women or

00:17:30.580 children men have no fear of acting in ways westerners would consider effeminate during

00:17:35.700 dances for instance adult men will dance together in close bodily contact rubbing against each other

00:17:41.900 without any anxiety sorry i know i was reading ahead i know it's like a real thing and most men 0.61

00:17:48.920 visit the village homosexual frequently and without shame they visit the village homosexual okay i

00:17:53.900 feel like we're skimming right over the village homosexual here he then goes into it okay okay

00:18:00.780 it's so interesting he has a whole section it's called the mahu and it's a guy who's like i think 0.52

00:18:05.560 to our understandings it would be somewhat like in between sort of gay and trans there's also like a

00:18:10.340 gender in between component to this as well but like there's literally a village homosexual and

00:18:16.320 it's very common for men to just be like oh hey my wife is away i'm kind of horny do you mind if i 0.95

00:18:21.500 like fuck you and he's like oh yeah okay this is not considered a threat to their masculinity 0.98

00:18:25.880 very interestingly peter in a lot of other societies there's this weird thing where like 1.00

00:18:31.600 it's not a threat to your masculinity to be gay to do stuff with dudes as long as you're topping 0.96

00:18:36.600 but if you're bottoming it's gay yeah like i love how fucking arbitrary this is but in for the mahu 0.99

00:18:42.700 in this tahitian society they're mostly bottoming the straight guys they're like do you mind fucking 0.99

00:18:47.640 me real quick it sounds to me like the village homosexual rules over this place like royalty 0.99

00:18:52.840 this is lit yeah i want i want to hear a lot more about the village homosexual

00:19:01.260 there's also he also profiles a society in papua new guinea where part of the manhood ritual is 0.98

00:19:07.660 fellating a grown man and swallowing his semen because that's like the seed of manhood inside 1.00

00:19:13.680 of you what yeah what's more manly than a cock yes uh and so you in order to absorb its essence 1.00

00:19:23.300 you must suck it well what was so fascinating to me about this book is like to any i think like 1.00

00:19:28.040 american straight male like there's nothing gayer less masculine than like blowing another man and 1.00

00:19:35.520 swallowing right but that's completely socially constructed in this society they're like no it's 1.00

00:19:39.660 not to swallow it's gay not to blow it not to suck dick dude it's gay to fuck chicks bro yeah 1.00

00:19:46.480 chicks are girls and therefore not masculine exactly spending your time around men it makes 1.00

00:19:53.240 perfect sense i just like i i think this stuff is so fascinating just how fucking fake it is 0.92

00:19:57.380 everywhere and also the fact that this society is like yeah why why wouldn't men be doing the 0.63

00:20:01.940 cooking you can even see this like on the right where like they are so disdainful of women and

00:20:10.040 femininity that like even pursuing women is like embarrassing to some degree right and in fact like

00:20:18.440 they have personalities that start to revolve around hating women and therefore not getting

00:20:25.320 laid right which is like the thing that traditionally you would have thought is seen

00:20:29.640 as masculine right being able to uh impress women or whatever and andrew tate stuff like 1.00

00:20:35.260 fellas is it gay to have sex for more than like six minutes is like one of andrew tate's fucking 0.99

00:20:39.940 things right like you're just making up a masculinity no but when you're when you're 0.99

00:20:44.740 when you have a huge incel following you can just make all of your failures gay right so you're just 0.55

00:20:52.660 like like you're trying to not bust after six minutes yeah you can't do it and so you're like 0.79

00:20:58.220 actually it's gay it's gay to go longer than six minutes yeah it's gay when the woman comes yeah

00:21:04.360 actually gilmore also profiles another very egalitarian society called the semi in central 0.66

00:21:11.280 malaysia and what he notes about these exceptions is that both societies where the genders are super

00:21:17.740 equal are characterized by a lot of abundance the both of these places have a ton of arable land

00:21:23.360 there's in in central malaysia they do hunting but they're hunting like small

00:21:27.280 kind of like capybaras or like quokkas or something, like not a dangerous animal. And

00:21:31.800 there's just like a shitload of them around. There's just like a lot of food and enough time

00:21:36.040 in the day to rest. And so his theory on this, the fact that these masculinity myths and masculinity

00:21:41.000 norms are fairly common, right? Not universal, but fairly common around the world. His theory

00:21:45.340 on this is that evolutionarily life is hard. And because men are more physically strong and taller

00:21:51.880 than women societies over time have come up with these manhood norms basically to get men to get 0.99

00:21:58.420 off of their asses and like take care of the collective yeah somebody has to hunt the mammoth 1.00

00:22:03.140 and nobody wants to hunt the mammoth because hunting the mammoth sucks shit and so society 1.00

00:22:07.360 is not really deliberately but over time have developed these manhood norms to say like oh 1.00

00:22:12.020 you're a fucking pussy if you don't hunt the mammoth you gotta hunt the mammoth to prove 0.99

00:22:15.680 yourself to other men and that was the way that societies got through times of scarcity and the 1.00

00:22:20.660 fact that you know for most of human history like there just wasn't abundant resources right you

00:22:24.380 need you need some social pressure for people to do stuff right because it's important that people

00:22:30.580 do stuff you need social pressure for women to cook not necessarily but because someone has to

00:22:36.520 cook yeah exactly yeah and also he says what you find in these manhood norms across the world is

00:22:41.840 that women the norms of femininity are oftentimes about caretaking for individuals right you have to 0.99

00:22:48.100 take care of your kids, you take care of your husband. Whereas manhood norms are oftentimes 1.00

00:22:51.600 about taking care of the community. And so a lot of these manhood norms, they are actually

00:22:55.800 nurturing norms, but they're nurturing of the collective rather than the individual.

00:23:00.580 I just want to have you read a little bit of his conclusion.

00:23:04.460 When I started researching this book, I was prepared to rediscover the old saw that

00:23:08.140 conventional femininity is nurturing and passive and that masculinity is self-serving,

00:23:12.820 egotistical, and uncaring. But I did not find this. One of my findings here is that manhood

00:23:17.420 ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity even to the point of sacrifice

00:23:22.140 again and again we find that real men are those who give more than they take they serve others

00:23:26.920 men nurture their society by shedding their blood their sweat and their semen by bringing home food

00:23:32.140 for both child and mother by producing children and by dying if necessary in faraway places to

00:23:37.320 provide a safe haven for their people this too is nurturing this actually goes to show how

00:23:42.460 completely out of step modern american toxic masculinity is because it started to become like

00:23:48.260 a pure how belligerent in public can you be how how uncaring about others can you be publicly

00:23:56.060 what what holly is doing is focus exclusively on the individual right he's not really focusing on

00:24:01.640 like yeah you can nurture your wife and kids you can treat other people well you can ignore the 0.88

00:24:06.100 fact that there's an x fucking marker on a passport if you're not x don't fill out x then 0.98

00:24:10.860 who cares, right? There are positive examples of masculinity. Like the idea that no one could 0.98

00:24:16.420 admit that masculinity is good. That's just fucking fake. Everyone, everyone is fully happy 0.99

00:24:20.840 to admit and explore the ways in which like masculine values can actually be nurturing and

00:24:26.160 positive for society. It's only people like Holly who are enforcing and basically inventing this

00:24:31.740 norm where you just have to be a fucking dick all the time. But one thing that often happens in 0.99

00:24:34.960 these discourses is that a lot of people are reacting to the fact that like people already 0.95

00:24:39.560 do appreciate this sort of thing yeah no shit the strong silent type is like an archetype for a

00:24:44.080 reason like this is this is wildly valorized in our society the archetype of the guy with like 0.78

00:24:49.300 high executive function right who like makes decisions and and goes after it or whatever

00:24:54.460 that sort of like stems from the hunting the mammoth thing right like you're taking some

00:24:59.640 risks to get shit done yeah yeah so you have these archetypes that are consistently praised

00:25:05.780 throughout our society and then you have a bunch of people being like should we be praising that 0.99

00:25:09.900 or like are there elements of this that shouldn't be praised and immediately you get some fucking 0.96

00:25:14.960 slime bowl like holly being like oh you can't even say that masculinity is good anymore i also love 0.90

00:25:20.360 the fact that josh holly is is citing remember he brought up david gilmore to say like manhood is

00:25:26.180 our last bastion against chaos and he's citing this anthropologist he's like oh this kind of

00:25:30.560 seems fake and totally arbitrary i want to see holly's chapter on the village homosexual 0.82

00:25:36.220 the feminists say you can't swallow cum anymore so that was kind of the introduction we're then

00:25:42.460 we then get to chapter two a man's mission can't believe we're we're only we're only at the 1.00

00:25:47.600 introduction of our we've already talked about the village homosexual and sucking dick to prove 0.99

00:25:52.220 your masculinity well we're kind of going to speed through the book because the book gets very boring 0.99

00:25:55.920 after the first like two chapters this is where he lays out kind of the philosophy and the guiding

00:26:00.000 principle of the book. He basically says like, you know, men are valueless. They're flailing.

00:26:04.640 They have this kind of overall general aimlessness. Richard Reeves said this too, this general sense

00:26:08.760 of ennui that men are having trouble putting their finger on. What he says is there's no real

00:26:15.260 guiding principle of society. There's no guiding philosophy, right? We're kind of adrift in this

00:26:20.580 like morally relativistic void. There's no village homosexual. You're going to severely regret 0.99

00:26:26.380 teaching me the term village homosexual i'm like all right i'll let peter spin his wheels on this

00:26:31.120 for a couple more minutes we're gonna be like doing a business book in in a year and a half

00:26:37.480 and i'm gonna be i'm gonna be zoning out while you talk about like shareholder returns trying

00:26:42.360 to think of a village homosexual joke holly is very explicit that men should be referring to

00:26:50.660 the Bible for their definition of masculinity. So the, in chapter two, the like opening anecdote

00:26:56.180 of chapter two is literally just like the creation story. He's like the first day God

00:27:01.300 created the heavens and earth. Like he literally just like goes through the Bible, like at length

00:27:05.900 in this book. Jesus Christ. I know. It's so, no, no pun intended, but like, my God,

00:27:12.480 that it is truly so dull. Although are we about to do a, um, an episode within an episode?

00:27:18.340 michael peter have you ever heard about the bible i was gonna be like oh for this i also read the

00:27:24.340 bible six days are you kidding me i was gonna have a excerpt for you to read but it's so boring his

00:27:30.160 whole thing is basically like and this is very common in in evangelical christianity basically

00:27:35.800 that god created the heavens and the earth seven days etc but his work is unfinished and so it is

00:27:41.260 the work of man specifically men not mankind men to complete his work right men are called upon

00:27:48.000 to continue creating the universe. We should be creating the world that we want to see.

00:27:52.100 And women are little ribs. And then, so he does, I mean, this takes like 20 fucking pages. Fine, 0.99

00:27:56.800 whatever. He goes through all of the early Bible stuff. This is the purpose of man.

00:27:59.960 Then he says, the modern left has a different creation myth. He says, modern liberalism comes

00:28:07.820 to these conclusions by way of an alternative origin story, a rival account to Genesis about

00:28:13.020 the beginning of all things. And so then he goes through the philosophy of a Greek philosopher

00:28:19.240 called Epicurus. Epicurus. Do not email us. And this is basically the theory, like we've all

00:28:26.580 heard this. It's basically like the world is made up of atoms and like we're all just a bunch of

00:28:30.360 little particles floating in space and like gods don't really care what's going on with us. And

00:28:35.120 because there's no real meaning to life, what you should do is just like seek pleasure, try to have

00:28:39.020 a nice time, try to be happy, spend time with your friends, enjoy your life. Like that's basically

00:28:43.760 the philosophy, right? Which Hawley finds completely disgusting. It's like the idea

00:28:49.440 that you would be trying to like enjoy yourself throughout your life. He's like, look at these

00:28:52.940 fucking losers. No, life is about discipline. And specifically biblical morality, right? The idea 1.00

00:28:58.880 that there would be any kind of morality or philosophy outside of the Bible is not only

00:29:03.080 foreign to him, but totally offensive. I mean, this is like Berkey and conservatism, right?

00:29:07.900 The idea that, like, once you abandon God, it's all eventually nihilism.

00:29:15.660 Like, no matter what you try to do, no matter what ideology you try to spin, without God, it will degrade into something nihilistic, right?

00:29:25.520 This is like, this is conservatism 101.

00:29:28.060 So here is Holly talking about how we're all epicurins.

00:29:32.980 I'm only going, I find this so boring, but the reason I'm going through this is because of the rest of the book.

00:29:37.020 He doesn't really say left or anything.

00:29:39.420 He says Epicureans.

00:29:40.920 Oh, hell yeah.

00:29:41.300 Sometimes he'll say like the Epicurean left, but oftentimes he'll just say like today's

00:29:44.560 Epicureans.

00:29:45.660 But like what he means by that is just like liberals, essentially.

00:29:48.100 Got it.

00:29:48.320 So here is him summarizing why it's bad.

00:29:52.580 Epicurus's ideas have exerted enormous influence on the modern mind.

00:29:56.660 Today's popular culture instructs us to prioritize self-fulfillment over duty, pleasure over

00:30:01.280 sacrifice.

00:30:01.740 It tells you to find your truth and choose your own values.

00:30:04.980 like epicurus today's thought leaders reject religious faith in favor of atheism and materialism

00:30:11.600 modern liberals say there are no permanent truths only constructs constructs and now

00:30:17.320 they want to deconstruct masculinity on the basis that the demands of manhood prevent

00:30:21.720 individuals from doing what epicurus said was the only thing worth doing achieving personal

00:30:26.740 happiness i actually one thing i do appreciate about these types of analyses is that at least

00:30:31.860 we can sort of like set the boundaries of discussion because there is like some element

00:30:36.820 of truth in what he's saying that like if you are on the right your goal politically your like

00:30:44.600 broader political ideological project is not actually human happiness in the micro or macro

00:30:53.640 right it's like serving some broader purpose that you have basically defined as like obeying the

00:31:00.720 will of god but doesn't actually translate to the improvement of human life on earth in any

00:31:05.800 meaningful way this is usually the point in conversations with people where i just give up

00:31:09.660 i'm like well you think without christianity there's no such thing as morality and you think

00:31:13.800 de facto any morality that doesn't refer to the bible is just bunk yeah and so like i can't get

00:31:18.780 anywhere with you this is why i stopped doing i stopped doing like online atheist debates like

00:31:23.980 15 or 20 years ago and part of it was because nothing was ever better than just like yeah i

00:31:29.920 Sorry, I don't, I just think that this doesn't make much sense to me.

00:31:33.520 I don't know what to do with Josh Hawley being like, without God, everything falls apart.

00:31:38.560 No, yeah, I struggle too, because every time I read stuff like this, he's like,

00:31:41.740 you have to have the Bible to be moral.

00:31:43.380 I'm like, no, you don't.

00:31:44.540 Yeah.

00:31:45.140 Like, I don't know that I have a more articulate argument than that.

00:31:47.700 I'm just like, nah.

00:31:48.580 It's very annoying to be like, your framework doesn't count because it doesn't come from God.

00:31:53.460 Right.

00:31:53.660 And mine does because it does come from God.

00:31:55.940 Except I don't actually know that it does.

00:31:58.400 I'm just saying it's like, okay, well, then it's the same thing, isn't it?

00:32:02.880 We're all just sort of doing our best here.

00:32:05.520 We then get to the pattern for the rest of this book.

00:32:08.540 Every future chapter, he opens with an anecdote, usually from his own life.

00:32:13.860 Most of them are like very kind of normal anecdotes, just like growing up, doing stuff.

00:32:18.740 Like they're not all that interesting.

00:32:20.400 And then he'll immediately switch to like the left says you can't do this.

00:32:24.420 so in chapter four he talks about in college a friend of mine invited me to join the rowing team

00:32:30.840 and then I enjoyed rowing fine he then is in London in the early 2000s he's teaching at a

00:32:37.220 school he doesn't say the name he's very coy about his entire biography throughout the book

00:32:40.540 which is very funny but he's like I was teaching in England and I was teaching at a boys school

00:32:44.420 and somebody invited me to be the coach of the rowing team and then he tells this like completely

00:32:49.460 conventional story about like how the rowing team was bad. And then like, I identified some leaders

00:32:54.940 on the team and I helped those boys believe in themselves as leaders. And then we were better

00:32:58.540 at rowing. And then he transitions into the rest of the chapter by being like, liberals hate it

00:33:05.060 when you coach things. Here's his transition to the rest of the chapter. Mention men, leadership

00:33:10.840 and power in the same breath these days, and you are liable to be swiftly denounced as a misogynist

00:33:16.000 or worse worse the epicurean left sees little to praise and male leaders on the contrary liberal

00:33:22.680 voices portray masculine power as a disease in need of curing to see as a particularly virulent

00:33:28.400 social toxin no one cares if you coach a rowing team like no way nothing in this story is remotely

00:33:36.080 offensive to me or would be offensive to anyone who's on the left like yeah i i joined the rowing

00:33:41.200 team but we got better after we trained more or whatever this is again what you find over and

00:33:45.780 we're in this like men's right stuff throughout this entire like manosphere world people will 0.91

00:33:50.060 describe the most anodyne shit and be like leftists don't want you to do this any implication 0.92

00:33:55.640 that sports teams can only succeed with like masculine energy at the top yeah go watch a 0.99

00:34:04.420 seven-year-old's gymnastics practice right now so he then walks through again it's tedious like the

00:34:11.740 ivory tower academics. He does some like history stuff. And then he gets to the more contemporary

00:34:18.960 understandings of masculinity. So here's this. The revolutionaries eventually decided the problem

00:34:25.600 wasn't just the system that produced masculinity. The problem was men. The American Psychological

00:34:31.320 Association rehearsed precisely this view in 2019, opining that traditional masculinity

00:34:36.520 marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression is, on the whole, harmful.

00:34:42.280 Masculinity is harmful.

00:34:43.680 The organization offered that, quote, conforming to traditional masculinity ideology, unquote,

00:34:49.100 ideology, since manhood is supposedly nothing more than a social construct,

00:34:53.100 can, quote, negatively influence mental health and physical health. 0.89

00:34:56.920 So the American Psychological Association says that men are harmful and toxic and bad. 0.76

00:35:01.900 You can't even be a man anymore. 0.98

00:35:03.380 Right.

00:35:03.780 The second quote seems basically right, that a traditional masculinity ideology can negatively impact mental and physical health.

00:35:11.280 Sure.

00:35:11.920 The first one I have to feel like is out of context.

00:35:14.900 So I do want to dig into this APA guidelines controversy.

00:35:20.480 I don't know if you noticed this going on at the time.

00:35:21.860 I remember like vaguely seeing it pop up in 2019.

00:35:24.780 I have so much masculine energy that I don't read what the American Psychological Association has to say about masculinity.

00:35:31.380 So in 2019, the American Psychological Association puts out these guidelines for psychology.

00:35:36.160 It's a professional body.

00:35:37.080 So they put out this 40-page PDF document about how should psychologists deal with masculinity.

00:35:42.100 This is on the heels of a previous document they put out about women and girls for researchers, for clinicians.

00:35:48.340 How should we be thinking about and talking about and dealing with women and girls in our practice? 0.99

00:35:52.500 So this is one for boys and men. 0.99

00:35:54.280 And partly because of these quotes that go around, the American right completely loses its fucking mind for weeks. 0.98

00:36:00.000 So in the National Review, David French writes an article called Grown Men Are The Solution, Not The Problem. 0.98

00:36:07.620 Jordan Peterson says, make no mistake about it, this document constitutes an all-out assault on masculinity as such, or to put it even more bluntly, on men.

00:36:17.860 I also found an article in Quillette, which had responses from 12 scientists, all of whom were like, I can't believe how bad this is.

00:36:25.220 One of them has the headline, who will mount up and ride to the sound of the guns? 0.96

00:36:30.300 In another society, that's the village homosexual right there. 1.00

00:36:34.120 I love this. 1.00

00:36:38.440 I'm so sorry, but it's not going to stop.

00:36:41.080 Dude, one of the Patreon comments on the last bonus episode was, I like it when Peter gets a little bit homophobic.

00:36:49.620 I'm sorry, but folks, you cannot encourage me like that.

00:36:52.380 You have to be chastising me.

00:36:55.480 There needs to be a barrier.

00:36:57.620 Keep in the line, man.

00:37:00.000 So this says,

00:37:01.880 Perhaps the next APA manifesto will seek to abolish religion, athletics, heterosexual marriage, and eating meat.

00:37:09.840 How will this affect our armed forces, police, and fire departments,

00:37:13.140 and all the other dangerous but important jobs that must be done?

00:37:16.200 Who will volunteer to mount up and ride to the sound of the guns

00:37:19.360 to protect our nation and its founding principles

00:37:21.700 when masculinity has been smothered in our society.

00:37:24.860 I love the image of a bunch of firemen

00:37:27.720 trying to break through a door,

00:37:29.480 but like really limp-wristedly tossing the ax.

00:37:33.600 It's because of the guidelines.

00:37:35.180 Because they read the APA guidelines.

00:37:38.080 There's also another commentator

00:37:39.520 refers to the APA guidelines extensively.

00:37:42.720 I'm going to send you an excerpt

00:37:45.020 and you have to guess who this is.

00:37:46.760 The mission of the American Psychological Association is to, quote, benefit society and improve lives.

00:37:52.520 But the association failed against this benchmark with its 2018 guidelines on working with boys and men.

00:37:57.440 The summary of the guidelines states that traditional masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression, is on the whole harmful.

00:38:05.160 The association quickly came under attack from conservative critics who said the guidelines amounted to conversion therapy, similar to similar to that once offered to lesbian women and gay men. 0.80

00:38:17.620 Keep conversion therapy out of your mouth. 1.00

00:38:19.840 Fuck off. 1.00

00:38:21.160 All right. 1.00

00:38:21.740 OK, you're asking me who wrote this.

00:38:24.520 I see two paths in my mind.

00:38:26.240 I see The Atlantic and I see The New York Times.

00:38:28.380 You're correct in spirit.

00:38:29.640 This is from Richard Reeves's book. 1.00

00:38:31.860 Fuck, dude. 0.98

00:38:32.680 I skipped it in the main feed episode, but Richard Reeves talks about this numerous times 0.99

00:38:37.580 in his book.

00:38:38.600 And he's basically, he's more mad at the APA guidelines here than conservatives comparing

00:38:43.080 this document to conversion therapy.

00:38:45.760 Right. 1.00

00:38:46.020 He says that like he's just reporting the fucking news. 1.00

00:38:49.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

00:38:50.060 Some conservatives compared it to conversion therapy, a thing that no longer happens anymore,

00:38:54.220 which is why I'm writing a book where I complain about the left.

00:38:57.640 And also people doing this, like, we're not going to have firefighters anymore, this

00:39:00.820 catastrophizing.

00:39:01.560 Come on, man.

00:39:02.480 Right. 0.99

00:39:02.680 All from people who did not read the fucking guidelines, which we're about to get to. 0.99

00:39:05.840 But like that does not come under scrutiny or scorn from him. 0.97

00:39:08.700 Yeah, I don't I don't want to harp on this again, but this is so emblematic of how these centrists and reactionary centrists think about this and the ways in which they are spending their time.

00:39:22.720 Him complaining about APA guidelines and saying, you know, conservatives compare this to conversion therapy once offered to lesbian women and gay men.

00:39:34.020 I know.

00:39:34.280 Right?

00:39:34.620 Conversion therapy still exists.

00:39:35.980 By the way, really good chance it's about to be legalized nationwide by the Supreme Court next year.

00:39:42.640 So the fact that he treats these very real threats from the right as if they are a problem of the past and is instead focused on these bizarre, abstract, quote unquote, threats from the left.

00:39:57.540 Just it's perfect.

00:39:58.700 It's pitch perfect.

00:39:59.520 And also I want to zoom in on this quote.

00:40:02.240 Traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression is on the whole harmful.

00:40:07.980 So Josh Hawley mentions this quote and Richard Reeves mentioned this quote too.

00:40:11.500 Richard Reeves says, the summary of the guidelines states, and then he gives this quote, right?

00:40:16.560 This is not in the guidelines.

00:40:17.840 Uh-oh.

00:40:18.200 This quote is from an article in the APA magazine.

00:40:22.700 Like a lot of these professional bodies have like trade, like, you know, monthly magazines or whatever that they put out, where the author interviews a guy named Ronald Levant, who was head of the APA in 2005 when they started this process.

00:40:34.220 This is the culmination of like a decade-long process to come up with these guidelines for men and boys.

00:40:38.420 And so in this interview, this isn't even a quote from Levant, this is a paraphrase.

00:40:43.620 So here's the full quote.

00:40:44.560 Once psychologists began studying the experiences of women through a gender lens, it became

00:40:49.600 increasingly clear that the study of men needed the same gender-aware approach, says Levant.

00:40:54.200 The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity, marked by

00:40:58.320 stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression, is on the whole harmful.

00:41:03.120 Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.

00:41:06.380 For example, a 2011 study found that men with the strongest beliefs about masculinity were

00:41:11.680 only half as likely as men with more moderate masculine beliefs to get preventative health

00:41:15.580 care.

00:41:16.220 And in 2007, researchers found that the more men conform to masculine norms, the more likely

00:41:20.660 they were to consider as normal risky health behaviors, such as heavy drinking, using tobacco

00:41:25.940 and avoiding vegetables, and to engage in these risky behaviors themselves.

00:41:30.380 So the idea that this is harmful is basically entirely about men's self-care.

00:41:35.440 or lack thereof yes what the hollies of the world want you to believe is that like what we need is

00:41:41.160 like the assertiveness and risk-taking of men our willingness to put ourselves in danger and things

00:41:46.760 like that and he's like you're saying that's harmful you know society will wither without it

00:41:52.480 right and then you read what they're actually saying and it's like guys should be eating more

00:41:55.980 vegetables well yeah they shouldn't be smoking too much it's like yeah that that actually sounds

00:42:00.540 totally correct it sounds to me yeah like this quote is taken out of context three pinocchios

00:42:06.200 yeah i also i don't love the way that the sentence is written i think yeah what the sentence is

00:42:10.060 actually talking about is like it's not necessarily traditional masculinity she's saying marked by

00:42:14.020 stoicism competitiveness dominance and aggression so basically like the negative aspects of

00:42:18.480 masculinity are associated with like worse health behaviors which is completely accurate and also it

00:42:22.960 provides evidence in the following like it keeps going there's tons of evidence for this that men

00:42:27.020 with more traditional views on masculinity are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviors.

00:42:32.160 They're more likely to kill themselves. They're more likely to own guns. And so it's sort of like,

00:42:35.640 what are you really mad at here? It's like a sentence that could have been written better,

00:42:39.900 but the actual phenomenon here, do you have counter evidence to this? Are you proposing

00:42:44.520 that, oh, people with traditional masculinity do better? No.

00:42:47.220 Dude, these people are in like the quote farming business. You know what I mean? Like

00:42:51.280 the the idea of engaging with the broader literature is absurd to them like so far

00:42:58.200 outside their scope that it's pointless to even think about it like because again like the

00:43:03.600 conclusions here are so completely inoffensive and also i i think the actual apa guidelines are

00:43:12.260 extremely instructive here so i went to the guidelines i read the entire guidelines

00:43:15.700 this is from the executive summary boys and men are diverse with respect to their race

00:43:20.920 ethnicity, culture, migration status, age, socioeconomic status, ability status,

00:43:25.460 sexual orientation, gender identity, and religious affiliation. Each of these social

00:43:29.940 identities contributes uniquely and in intersecting ways to shape how men experience and perform their

00:43:34.000 masculinities, which in turn contribute to relational, psychological, and behavioral health

00:43:37.880 outcomes in both positive and negative ways. Although boys and men as a group tend to hold

00:43:42.660 privilege and power based on gender, they also demonstrate disproportionate rates of receiving

00:43:47.140 harsh discipline, academic challenges, mental health issues, physical health problems, public

00:43:51.540 health concerns, and a wide variety of other quality of life issues. Additionally, many men

00:43:56.600 do not seek help when they need it, and many report distinctive barriers to receiving gender

00:44:00.940 sensitive psychological treatment. And then it then goes through statistics, which we're going

00:44:04.900 to skip because Richard Reeves kind of covered it, but it basically goes through like boys are

00:44:08.280 falling behind in school, men are falling out of the labor force, overdoses, suicides, etc.

00:44:12.200 And then it gets to this.

00:44:42.200 abuse shelters. Broader societal factors such as the stigma of seeking psychological help

00:44:46.900 also negatively impact men's help seeking behaviors and the subsequent delivery of

00:44:51.300 psychological services. So this is precisely what both Josh Hawley and Richard Reeves say that they

00:44:57.540 want, right? This is institutional academia acknowledging all of the challenges that men

00:45:03.700 and boys are facing and acknowledging that there may in fact be discrimination against men in some

00:45:07.640 of these services. Right. And it's a real problem and we need to address it, right? But instead of

00:45:11.780 actually taking any of the fucking purpose or the content or anything of these guidelines, 0.99

00:45:16.060 they take one sentence and they're like, they hate you because you're a man. 0.97

00:45:20.300 And the thing is that like, if you want to talk about gender stereotypes, you don't get

00:45:25.000 to have it one way.

00:45:26.200 Yeah.

00:45:26.400 It doesn't get to be like this one thing where like, we're talking about stereotyping

00:45:30.560 and we're only going to talk about the ways that it harms men, right?

00:45:34.080 We're not going to talk about the ways that it benefits them.

00:45:36.320 Like you're allowed to have this holistic conversation and the fact that they get hung

00:45:40.320 up on some of the negative stereotyping around men and masculinity prevents them from actually

00:45:47.000 engaging in some of the negative things where we could have a productive dialogue about

00:45:52.080 how to improve the daily lives of men.

00:45:54.600 I also think this pattern is so important for understanding.

00:45:57.380 We now have this like wave of media coverage of like the crisis of men and boys and how

00:46:00.800 like it always includes this thing of like the left is always scolding men, right?

00:46:04.620 The left is condescending to men.

00:46:05.980 You saw that in Richard Reeves' book where he's like, Jordan Peterson, finally somebody

00:46:09.740 showing empathy to men, right? Finally, someone crying like a bitch whenever people are mean to 0.99

00:46:14.620 men. Sorry, sorry for doing gender norms there. You're allowed, you get one per episode. I feel 0.99

00:46:23.020 like people are sitting in a tick box like, all right, all right, Peter. Yeah, that was definitely

00:46:27.540 my one per episode. But I think the social construction of like liberals are condescending 0.88

00:46:37.140 to men. Liberals excoriate men. Liberals are scolding men. It's so important to understand 0.88

00:46:41.500 what is actually going on here, right? You have a document that is extremely empathic. The entire

00:46:46.020 document is like, hey, here's how better to understand your male clients, your male research

00:46:51.220 participants. They're doing what you want them to do. They're acknowledging all of the problems you

00:46:55.440 want them to acknowledge. And instead of any congratulations, any acknowledgement, they're

00:46:59.540 like, hey, some of the wording of this document could be better. But ultimately, this is institutions

00:47:04.680 of, I guess, broadly of the American left, or at least academia, acknowledging the problems, 0.99

00:47:10.040 they're just scolding and fucking losing their minds about one sentence in the fucking trade 0.97

00:47:14.900 publication was like slightly not perfectly written. Like this is why it is impossible to 0.99

00:47:21.180 have a fucking conversation about this. It's not because the left is shutting it down. It's because 0.99

00:47:25.080 the right melts down at the slightest acknowledgement of like the basic structure of

00:47:30.620 this problem. You cannot talk about male suicide, the ways in which men are falling behind without

00:47:35.920 talking about norms of masculinity. Which I think is hard to separate from the idea that the right

00:47:39.840 is actually shutting this conversation down because Hawley himself is someone who right

00:47:44.080 now is like actively working to deny the sort of funding that would actually address these

00:47:49.920 problems, right? So like when the source of male problems is just the left being mean about the 0.95

00:47:56.500 boys right that's something that a republican politician can just point to and not have to

00:48:00.880 actually do anything right yeah yeah yeah this is like how fascist ideology works where you don't

00:48:06.540 actually really have material solutions you just have the ability to identify enemies and he's

00:48:11.740 going to always be pointing at the left and saying they are doing this to you no matter what the thing 0.99

00:48:16.160 is and any attempt to actually engage in a good faith conversation with them is a waste of fucking 0.93

00:48:22.360 time because they are not trying to actually get to the end goal of solving these problems. 0.94

00:48:28.780 They are just trying to identify the enemy, right?

00:48:32.680 That's the end goal to them is to be mad at the left and to create the political will

00:48:39.240 to reduce the left's power.

00:48:41.460 So that was chapter four.

00:48:43.920 We're then going into chapter five.

00:48:45.580 The rest of the chapters are listed in like the roles that men should play.

00:48:49.900 So chapter five is called husband.

00:48:51.320 And I know we've already done this, and this is probably tedious, but he starts with this

00:48:55.620 like really long anecdote about like his grandparents.

00:48:58.480 And like, I don't know, it's a perfectly cute anecdote.

00:49:00.780 He's like, we went over, like they used to live in an A-frame house in the wilderness

00:49:04.900 and like we'd go over there and you could smell the brewing coffee because like they're

00:49:08.060 always brewing coffee.

00:49:09.220 And then he transitioned.

00:49:12.580 So here's his little transition paragraph, Peter, after his opening anecdote.

00:49:17.400 And he's talking about, he's talking about how like happy their marriage was and how

00:49:20.560 like they built this beautiful family.

00:49:22.040 There was a time when this message was widely affirmed by our culture.

00:49:25.260 Marriage was viewed as foundational to a good life.

00:49:28.220 Men were expected to be husbands and were proud to be.

00:49:30.980 Today, our Epicurean age teaches a different set of lessons against commitment, against

00:49:35.220 sacrifice, against the idea that one can truly become oneself only by giving oneself to another.

00:49:40.500 Leftists don't want you to get married.

00:49:41.980 Leftists don't want you to brew coffee and live in an A-frame house in the wilderness.

00:49:46.280 they hate you for being married it's so funny that they that all these people circle around

00:49:53.400 the same like the left has made marriage less appealing in like this abstract social way that

00:50:00.920 no one can quite pinpoint but then like the idea that like no one can buy a house is just like

00:50:06.060 not part of the equation the hilarious part of this is that we sort of like dance around the

00:50:12.120 fact that like a lot of these social norms basically just sucked like yeah yeah getting 0.98

00:50:17.820 married at 22 is dumb as hell and i will absolutely absolutely go down fighting on that point this is 0.97

00:50:26.080 his like dating marriage everything is like going to shit because of the left chapter like this is 0.99

00:50:32.260 the argument of this entire chapter this is also not the first time but one of the many times in 0.66

00:50:37.740 this book he shows like a huge amount of contempt for men one thing that's funny is the left is 0.97

00:50:42.080 always being chided for being like oh condescending to men but like josh holly is so fucking condescending

00:50:46.600 in this book so here is him talking about how men are dropping out of the labor force what are these 0.95

00:50:52.600 young men doing with their time screens leisure porn porn by far the biggest differences between

00:50:57.820 the daily schedules of men not in the labor force and those who are is the time spent in what

00:51:02.060 researchers label socializing relaxing and leisure well yeah well i mean yeah what else is there

00:51:07.580 they're not working because you're not working it's leisure yeah am i am i missing something here 0.97

00:51:13.020 people who aren't working aren't working sitting around in other words um excuse me i'm fucking 0.77

00:51:21.040 so good at ld ring it would shock you can basically take any civilization to the end game 0.65

00:51:27.960 on immortal but go ahead on average men not working spend almost eight hours a day on leisure

00:51:33.760 nearly twice the time as men who have a job.

00:51:36.340 Yeah, dude.

00:51:37.980 Yeah, they're not working.

00:51:40.200 Now he says, and leisure does not mean

00:51:42.060 visiting museums or listening to books on tape.

00:51:44.820 Okay, now he's narrowing the definition of leisure

00:51:47.040 a little bit in ways that, frankly,

00:51:48.360 I don't understand.

00:51:49.600 The vast majority of men's leisure time

00:51:52.080 is screen time, including video games and pornography.

00:51:55.460 American screen time, obviously,

00:51:56.600 has like exploded in the last 20 years,

00:51:58.160 although that's for everybody,

00:51:59.160 whether you're working or not.

00:52:00.420 And it's like a component of that is video games,

00:52:03.220 than i suppose pornography but like yeah we don't have like granular data on like our men viewing 0.99

00:52:08.860 pornography eight hours a day yeah i quit my job to jack off more just touching my leathery genitalia 0.99

00:52:14.720 just chafed from hours working nine to five was getting in the way of my ability to jack it and 0.99

00:52:20.980 just like cranking imagine i'm mad like i'm sure that somewhere out there is like the guy that he

00:52:26.660 wants you to envision who was like getting caught watching porn at work and then gets fired and he's

00:52:31.580 like you know what this is good i mean i like work a lot less than porn so this makes sense for me

00:52:36.240 but like i don't even understand this argument men who are who don't have jobs have more leisure time

00:52:43.480 is is less a uh is less a fact about leisure time than it is like a necessary just like the

00:52:51.080 definition of a term a necessary extension of not working i don't like there's no other way to put

00:52:56.720 it and then he's sort of like people are just wasting their time on screens more which like

00:53:00.560 A hundred percent, but it's not really related to what you're talking about.

00:53:03.620 This, I mean, he then goes into, he spends an insane amount of time on porn.

If Books Could Kill - March 31, 2025

Josh Hawley's ＂Manhood＂ [TEASER]

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