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LinkedIn is great at connecting you
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from your professional community,
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into why Dave's is still talking on mute.
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LinkedIn can help bring your career to the next level.
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Visit LinkedIn.com to learn more.
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(upbeat music)
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This is Undaunted Life on Man's podcast.
0:43
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:44
Let's get into it.
0:45
All right, guys, I tell you all the time,
0:46
if you find good stuff out there,
0:48
whether it's an article or a YouTube video
0:50
or a book or really anything,
0:51
just shoot me a message.
0:52
Let me know about it.
0:53
So whether you're following us on Instagram,
0:55
just @UndauntedLife or you send me an email,
0:58
info@UndauntedLife.
1:00
I just love getting stuff from you guys
1:02
because I'm constantly putting myself
1:03
in the posture of trying to figure out
1:06
what it is exactly that you guys like.
1:08
What is it that you wanna hear?
1:09
What are the things that you wanna have some opinions on
1:11
that are perhaps different than yours
1:13
or more informed than the opinion that you have right now?
1:15
And so I'm constantly thinking through that
1:18
and you guys can just help me get there even faster
1:20
if you just shoot me stuff.
1:21
So that's exactly what a guy on Instagram named Blackhawk.
1:24
It looks like two underscores, 91.
1:26
So Blackhawk underscored 91.
1:29
He sent me a message a few weeks ago with this article.
1:32
And this was an article that I hadn't seen
1:33
and there probably wasn't gonna be another context
1:35
where I was gonna run across this.
1:37
So shout out to him.
1:38
I really do appreciate that, him sharing this with me.
1:40
And it's an article from Men's Health Magazine
1:42
or Men's Health.com.
1:43
And it's called The Man Economy is Cynical and Exploitative
1:47
and it's going to save us all.
1:49
Yes, let me repeat that.
1:50
The Man Economy, new word, is Cynical and Exploitative
1:54
and it's going to save us all.
1:56
So this was an article from September 3rd of this year.
1:59
So it's really only what a few weeks
2:01
before you guys are hearing this episode
2:02
or something like that.
2:03
And it's a really long article.
2:05
It's a very in depth article.
2:07
And so there was enough here
2:09
that I thought would be interesting
2:10
to bring it to you guys, right?
2:12
So I thought that there would be enough here
2:13
to discuss enough different ways
2:15
that we could look at the different content.
2:16
And so what I wanna go ahead and do
2:18
is I'm gonna go and just read it to you right now.
2:20
Again, this is September 3rd article saying,
2:22
or called The Man Economy is Cynical
2:24
and Exploitative and it's going to save us all.
2:26
And kind of the subhead is,
2:27
can a new cottage industry that praise upon our deepest
2:30
and securities actually be a force for good?
2:33
So this is what I'm gonna do,
2:34
just kind of give you the setup.
2:35
I'm gonna go ahead and read through the entire article
2:37
and I'm not gonna give you any commentary, okay?
2:40
I have several quotes and several different sections
2:42
of the article that I will pull out
2:44
that will give us a little bit of a better idea
2:46
of what we should maybe be thinking
2:48
in a certain kinds of areas.
2:50
But I just wanna go ahead and read it all the way through
2:51
right now so you have it.
2:52
So here we go, there are a lot of commercials
2:55
and celebrities and quote unquote celebrities
2:58
and bookings and hashtags and approximately 73rd,
3:01
73 podcasts and at least one Bagel Bites campaign
3:04
telling us to be better fathers, husbands, friends
3:06
and colleagues.
3:07
Their business is self-improvement.
3:09
The individual and collective betterment
3:11
of the male species and they're selling wokeness
3:13
and intentionality, self-awareness and feminism.
3:17
And we seem to be buying it.
3:18
We must be.
3:19
An entire economy has sprung up to serve
3:22
and exploit the desire of men to be better people,
3:25
better dads and brothers and spouses and coworkers.
3:29
This is on some basic level a welcome thing.
3:32
This magazine has been in the business of betterment
3:34
for years, but now we have a lot of company.
3:37
The scope of this man economy,
3:39
it's so important we had to capitalize it, is staggering.
3:41
And it's easy to be cynical about the whole thing
3:43
when you see it, when you see say Russell Wilson
3:46
launching a clothing brand that's available
3:48
on Amazon fashion called Good Man
3:50
and filming a commercial where he sits around
3:52
with a bunch of dudes talking about being good men.
3:55
But can an enterprise that prays upon men's deepest
3:57
insecurities actually help move the needle
4:00
towards a more equitable society?
4:02
Can men simply consume their way to becoming better people?
4:05
Can the man economy actually be a force of good?
4:08
For a few months this summer,
4:09
I explored the brighter lights and darker shadows
4:11
of the man economy.
4:12
And it turns out these commercials and celebrities
4:14
and quote unquote celebrities at all
4:16
aren't just helping steer us towards a better version
4:19
of ourselves in the cash grab.
4:20
They're asking the right questions,
4:22
sparking the right conversations
4:23
and starting the right fights
4:25
and they just might save us all from ourselves.
4:28
And real quick, that was the intro.
4:29
I'm gonna go and give you the author's names
4:31
or I can give him credit.
4:32
It is Spencer Dukoff.
4:34
So that's D-U-K-O-F-F.
4:35
So I think that's Dukoff.
4:36
So all right, let's get back into it here.
4:38
It used to be so simple to be a man.
4:40
Thousands of years of tradition and legacy
4:42
and entrenched patriarchy had clearly outlined
4:45
the expected roles and characteristics of true men.
4:47
Rugged, heterosexual, self-reliant providers
4:50
who put food on the table and never asked for help.
4:53
Vulnerability was weak and feminine.
4:55
Men were dominant and women were submissive.
4:57
Heroes were military generals, cowboys and secret agents.
5:00
John Wayne and James Bond made it all look so easy.
5:04
Manhood today, both as perception and practice,
5:06
is decidedly more complex.
5:09
With the #MeToo movement, women seized upon
5:11
an unprecedented opportunity to hold male abusers
5:14
and harassers accountable, which in turn helped
5:16
to further normalize conversations about consent
5:20
and assault, aggression, and power.
5:22
At the same time, the blurring of the traditional
5:24
gender norms in concert with hard won progress
5:26
for the LGBTQ+ community have radically transformed
5:30
sexual politics.
5:31
All these changes have prompted confusion
5:33
for many men about their roles at work,
5:34
at home, and in society at large.
5:37
The upside of social progress is freedom
5:38
from the previous constraints of what we thought
5:40
a man had to be.
5:42
But with that freedom comes uncertainty.
5:44
We don't know what to do now.
5:46
We don't know who to be.
5:48
Which is where the man economy comes in.
5:49
With podcasts fast becoming the go-to destination
5:52
for big ideas and seriously long discussions
5:54
about what it means to be a man.
5:56
There's Dax Shepherds and David Harbors
5:58
going deep on their respective battles with alcoholism
6:01
in an episode of Armchair Expert.
6:03
Mark Pagan bringing his wit on the topic of male financial
6:06
and securities on other men need help.
6:08
I'm an ish male revealing the struggles Asian guys face
6:11
on Tinder on man up and build the value or delve out,
6:16
delve out there you go, build delve out pontificating
6:18
on how to develop a quote new masculine identity
6:21
in Christ unquote for heroic conversations
6:24
on surprising manhood.
6:25
Collectively these podcasts have racked up millions
6:27
of streams.
6:28
All of this talk of course happens
6:30
between advertisements for mattresses
6:32
and web domains and meal plans.
6:34
Towering amid all the woke bro podcasts is Joe Rogan.
6:38
There have been more than 1300 episodes
6:40
of the Joe Rogan experience since 2009
6:42
and in bold 2017 and 2018,
6:45
it was Apple Podcast's second most downloaded show
6:48
all while racking up more than 6 million subscribers
6:50
on its YouTube channel.
6:51
The show's success with its mostly male audience
6:54
is predicated on Rogan's willingness to engage
6:56
with mostly male guests who span the ideological spectrum
6:59
from controversy courting right wingers
7:01
like Ben Shapiro, Andy No and Alex Jones
7:04
to more progressive types like Charlemagne the God,
7:06
Judd Apatow and Bertie Sanders,
7:08
plumbing their perspectives for some kind
7:10
of hodgepodge roadmap navigating masculinity.
7:13
Rogan and his podcasting cohort and our,
7:16
or our our most immediate contact with the man economy.
7:19
Beyond the reach of our iPhones though,
7:21
there are real life experts and quote unquote experts
7:23
on masculinity and gender who start off
7:26
by writing some blog posts before filming a TED talk,
7:29
landing a book deal and then charging companies
7:31
and colleges to hear their spiel.
7:33
No matter your budget, you can find a man
7:34
who will deliver a keynote or facilitate breakout sessions
7:37
or join a panel or read from his book,
7:39
provided you've also got the scratch
7:41
to cover meals and lodging.
7:43
Some of these speakers like Tim Musso and Jeff Pereira
7:47
charge only a few thousand dollars for their services,
7:49
but bigger names like George Peterson
7:51
have booking agents who reportedly won't consider
7:53
an offer that's under a hundred thousand dollars.
7:56
What are some of these events like?
7:58
They're probably a lot like Lecture Hall L63
8:01
at John Jay College in New York
8:03
where I sat in the back right corner this summer
8:05
and was beckoned to stand up by a goateed man
8:08
at the front of the room.
8:09
Quote, repeat after me, we promote healthy manhood.
8:12
Unquote, the man bellowed,
8:13
a huge grin stretching across his face.
8:15
I was at the multicultural masculinities,
8:18
a free workshop co-hosted by a call to men,
8:21
an organization whose mission is to help improve
8:23
the next generation of manhood.
8:25
Like the mankind project and every man and meetup groups,
8:29
a call to men is just one of the many events,
8:32
men's groups and wellness retreats
8:33
with a similar mission to help us reckon
8:35
with our masculinity, often for a registration fee.
8:38
The crowd of 200 around me was a mix
8:40
of older academic types, young professionals
8:42
and college students who had all signed up
8:44
to sit in seminars with names like redefining masculinity,
8:47
a new lexicon.
8:49
A majority of the attendees were people of color
8:51
and although the audience was mostly men,
8:53
there were plenty of women in the lecture hall.
8:55
Most of these women was, one of these women was Katie
8:58
who works for the domestic violence shelter on Long Island.
9:00
When I asked Katie what brought her out to this event,
9:02
she told me, it's about finding the right language
9:05
because masculinity is such a sensitive subject
9:07
for so many people.
9:08
We rose out of our seats while a different man
9:10
got his iPhone ready to capture our collective catchphrase
9:13
for social media, quote, "We promote healthy manhood,"
9:16
unquote.
9:17
The day's agenda was focused on mitigating
9:19
the negative consequences that unhealthy practices
9:22
and perceptions of manhood have wrought upon society.
9:25
The big topics, sexual violence, homophobia, misogyny
9:28
and the people who had signed up for the seminar
9:30
seemed genuinely eager to have these difficult conversations.
9:33
It was greatly encouraging to see so many people willing
9:36
to address toxic masculinity as a public health crisis,
9:39
ready to cut through the BS
9:41
to get to the very heart of the matter.
9:43
As Joseph Maldonado, a CUN white professor told the crowd,
9:46
quote, "We don't call men out, we call men in," unquote.
9:51
I met the goateed man who had asked all of us
9:53
out of our seats in the hallway after he wrapped up his keynote.
9:56
His name is Ted Bunch, a call to men's chief development
9:59
officer and the most public-facing member
10:01
of the organization aside from the CEO, Tony Porter,
10:04
whose Ted talk outlines more progressive masculinity
10:07
and has been viewed more than 2.9 million times since it
10:09
was posted in 2010.
10:12
Dressed in a tailored blue suit, Chris White buttoned down
10:15
and old school blue vans, Bunch gave me a firm handshake
10:18
and welcomed me to an event as he walked
10:20
to a smaller classroom down the hall.
10:22
In the classroom, he queued up a PowerPoint presentation
10:24
as I took my seat amid 25 other men and women.
10:27
Rather than lecturing the room on the failures of masculinity,
10:30
Bunch kicked the session off with a casual Q&A,
10:32
letting the attendees give their unfiltered impressions
10:34
about manhood.
10:36
The dialogue is an entryway to the, quote, "man box,"
10:39
a call to men's most popular teaching tool,
10:41
which break down what Bunch refers to as the collective
10:43
socialization of men.
10:45
Men are taught, often by other men, but also by women,
10:48
to embrace certain behaviors and characteristics,
10:51
like physical toughness and stoicism,
10:53
and avoid others like vulnerability.
10:55
In the man box, women are objects in less valuable than men,
10:58
and that power dynamic helps to explain
11:00
why violence against women is so commonplace.
11:03
Much of the work of a call to men is prevention oriented,
11:06
but Bunch wants men to feel more responsible
11:08
for not just checking their own masculinity,
11:11
but for the other men they encounter in their everyday life.
11:13
It can't solely be the work a feminist to reform men,
11:16
according to Bunch, quote, "The bridge of prevention
11:19
"to intervention is men," unquote Bunch said.
11:23
The witness, I witness what seemed like real breakthroughs
11:25
during our session.
11:26
One woman tearfully shared how her late father
11:29
had trouble expressing his emotions out of a need
11:31
to maintain a strong exterior as a man.
11:34
A younger man talked about how the worst insult
11:36
a bully can hurl at you in Brooklyn,
11:38
and the Brooklyn neighborhood was to say that you were gay.
11:40
When we, as a society, talk about toxic masculinity,
11:43
we tend to talk about men in static, broad terms,
11:46
laying out stakes and consequences better suited
11:48
for cancel culture than genuine growth.
11:51
What Bunch puts forward is a more hopeful vision.
11:54
We can begin to dismantle these toxic attitudes
11:56
not by marching or tweeting or buying products
11:59
that signal virtue, but by opening up
12:01
and having a conversation with one another.
12:03
A call to men aims to teach us that men aren't born
12:06
imbued with morality or a personality or a destiny.
12:09
We are blank canvases engaged in some metaphysical lottery
12:12
and the people we become, who we choose to become,
12:15
are shaped by many more forces than we often imagine.
12:18
Who your parents are, how much money you have,
12:20
the country you live in, the neighborhood where you reside,
12:23
the language that you speak, the color of your skin,
12:25
the genitalia between your legs.
12:27
All of these influence who you will one day grow up to be.
12:30
And from the time you leave the emotional regulation stage
12:33
of infancy behind and start to develop motor skills
12:36
and a conscience, there will be competing,
12:38
they will be competing for your attention,
12:40
presenting you with examples to help mold you
12:42
into a person and thoughts and feelings and convictions,
12:45
and identity, what makes you you.
12:48
The advertising industry wants to be a part
12:49
of that conversation, too.
12:51
In the pilot episode of Mad Men,
12:52
the show's cocksure ad executive Don Draper
12:55
explains to a female acquaintance's views about romance.
12:58
Quote, "What you call love was invented by guys like me
13:01
"to sell nylons," unquote.
13:03
Masculinity may not be selling nylons yet,
13:06
but it's certainly selling a lot of books
13:07
and deodorant and chunky soups.
13:09
Earlier this year, Gillette produced a two minute
13:12
Super Bowl ad that had almost nothing to do with shaving.
13:15
Instead, the commercial tackle toxic masculinity writ large.
13:18
Bullying sexual harassment in the tired notion
13:21
that boys will be boys.
13:22
The commercial was an instant viral phenomenon,
13:25
receiving praise from celebrities on the left
13:27
like Chrissy Teigen and Ava Duvernay,
13:29
and being mocked by right-leaning pundits like Pierce Morgan,
13:32
who wrote that the ad pushed men to be a, quote,
13:34
"tard with the same monstrous bush," unquote.
13:38
Boycott Gillette quickly became a trending topic on Twitter,
13:41
which almost seems like it was part of Gillette's plan.
13:44
2019 is the 30th year of the iconic line,
13:46
the best a man can get.
13:48
We debuted at the Super Bowl in 1989,
13:50
Panjuk Balal, the director of Gillette and Venus,
13:53
North America says.
13:54
As we looked at the line,
13:55
we wanted to think of the right way to bring it to life.
13:58
We were already starting to show men
13:59
in more modern contemporary light.
14:01
We wanted to redefine what the best a man can get meant,
14:05
not just the best razor.
14:06
We wanted to focus on what kind of man
14:08
does Gillette intend to emulate and follow.
14:11
That translated to the best a man can be,
14:13
not just the best a man can get.
14:15
What Balal is articulating is an inversion
14:17
of the old Nylon's model laid out by Draper.
14:20
Companies used to sell products
14:22
to indirectly reinforce values.
14:24
Now they're directly emulating those values
14:26
in order to sell products.
14:27
Axe is another company that changed
14:29
how it depicts masculinity and advertisements.
14:31
In the mid-2000s, Axe was known for campaigns
14:33
like The Axe Effect,
14:35
which showed swarms of women charging toward
14:36
and surrounding men who had just used body spray.
14:39
According to Mark Ludwig, Axe's brand director,
14:41
starting in 2016, the company's marketing began
14:44
to dramatically pivot away from the well-worn trope
14:47
of the guys get the girl.
14:48
As new teen guys come in,
14:50
you have the opportunity to re-establish yourself
14:52
as a brand with them.
14:53
So 12 year old guys today,
14:55
they don't know these previous ads, Ludwig says.
14:58
We used who we are, attraction and confidence,
15:01
but the expression of that,
15:03
what it means to be a man changes with the times.
15:05
In other words, changing definitions of masculinity
15:08
extend to young men's personal preferences
15:10
for how socially conscious their spray deodorant
15:12
brand should aspire to be.
15:14
What advertising agencies realize
15:16
is that younger consumers don't see a reason
15:18
why they should support a brand
15:19
if it doesn't speak to their values,
15:20
said Mark Tungape, author of a branded male marketing to men.
15:24
As these younger generations,
15:26
who are more socially and politically active
15:27
since the election of Donald Trump,
15:29
begin to wield greater purchasing power
15:31
and make sense that more companies will incorporate
15:33
explicit social messaging into their brands.
15:36
However, noble the intentions of companies
15:37
and man economy entrepreneurs
15:39
who hitch their marketing strategies
15:41
to social justice issues may be.
15:43
It's impossible to separate the supposed altruism
15:46
from the capitalism.
15:47
Gillette dove into the toxic masculinity debate
15:49
to sell razors.
15:50
Pampers enlisted John Legend to talk about the need
15:52
for more changing tables and men's public bathrooms
15:55
so it could sell diapers.
15:57
Even the curvy wife guy, Robbie Tripp,
15:59
acknowledges that body positivity is a lucrative commodity.
16:02
Within a month of Tripp's posting a photo on Instagram,
16:05
praising his wife's thick thighs, big booty
16:07
and cute little side role,
16:08
the couple had earned 100,000 from brand deals.
16:11
A cynic might say that the man economy
16:13
may actually hold men back from seriously addressing the issues
16:16
it leverages to sell products.
16:18
After all, it's much easier to buy the Woke shaving cream brand
16:21
and believe you've done your woke man deed of the day
16:23
than it is to actively advocate for closing
16:26
the gender pay gap or participate in a boycott.
16:28
But while man's path to modern enlightenment
16:31
can't end with a shaving cream advertisement
16:33
or a particularly engaging podcast,
16:35
perhaps it can begin with one.
16:37
Rather than selling the illusion of progress,
16:39
the man economy has the opportunity
16:41
to offer him in a fresh start, boy, do we need one.
16:44
Okay, so I know for some of you
16:46
that was a little bit painful, one because every now and then
16:48
I do mess up whenever I read out loud,
16:50
but hey, you know, it is what it is.
16:51
But the other side of things is yuck.
16:54
There was a lot, not to like there with that particular blog.
16:58
I was expecting a whole lot more,
17:00
but now I wanna kinda pull out some different pieces of that
17:02
and I'll kinda read the quotes and kinda go into there.
17:05
But I just wanted you to kinda get a sense
17:06
of the entire tone, 'cause at first I was just gonna kinda
17:09
come in and out and I don't think you would have really got
17:11
a sense of what the overall themes were from this article.
17:14
But I wanna go ahead and go back to
17:16
the last sentence of the introduction and this was that.
17:18
They're asking the right questions,
17:20
sparking the right conversations
17:22
and starting the right fights.
17:23
And they might just save us all from ourselves.
17:26
And so when I first read that I was like, okay, all right.
17:29
So I didn't really know anything about men's health
17:32
and kinda their editorial page or kinda where they go.
17:34
I just realized that, you know,
17:35
men's health was probably just helping us out
17:37
with different workouts and supplements that we should do
17:40
or places we should go on vacation and that kind of thing.
17:42
So I was hopeful, you know, when I first read that I was like,
17:44
okay, you know, I can get behind that.
17:46
So we'll just kinda see what it looks like.
17:48
And then you got into the rest of this article.
17:51
And so I'll go ahead and pull out some pieces here.
17:52
So here's another quote.
17:54
And by the way, these quotes are in order of the way
17:56
that they appeared in the article.
17:57
So if you are following along with the article,
17:59
just kinda keep skipping down a little bit.
18:01
So here's another quote.
18:02
"It used to be so simple to be a man.
18:04
Thousands of years of tradition and legacy
18:06
and entrenched patriarchy had clearly outlined
18:09
the expected roles and characteristics of true men.
18:12
Rugged heterosexual self-reliant providers
18:14
who put food on the table and never asked for help."
18:17
So this is the first sentence of the body of the article.
18:21
And what this first sentence really gives up
18:23
from the very beginning is a very, very obvious liberal bias
18:27
because you could see this obviously throughout,
18:29
but this could kinda be a signal
18:31
as to what was going to come.
18:32
Because anytime you see the word patriarchy used
18:34
and it's not in a snarky, sarcastic manner,
18:37
you can pretty much know
18:38
that this is gonna be more of a left-leaning type of thing.
18:40
Because again, it's thousands of years of tradition
18:42
and legacy and entrenched patriarchy.
18:45
Like, oh my gosh, it's this magical patriarchy again.
18:48
It's this unspoken, faceless force in the universe
18:52
called the patriarchy that is keeping everybody down somehow.
18:56
And underlining the ways that they should be.
18:58
But here's the deal is the characteristics
19:00
they put out there, almost like tongue and cheek,
19:02
like we know these things are bad.
19:04
You know how men are expected to be rugged,
19:06
heterosexual, self-reliant providers
19:08
who put food on the table and never ask for help?
19:11
Well, there's actually a lot of good in there, right?
19:14
If you're a rugged guy, we can assume
19:15
that you're a resilient guy.
19:17
I mean, we are called to be heterosexuals, right?
19:20
I mean, that kinda goes back to our biblical mandate.
19:24
I mean, self-reliant providers,
19:26
you can look all through scripture
19:27
and find examples of basically it being a good thing
19:30
that a man were to work.
19:32
So again, it's not just self-reliant,
19:34
it's self-reliant providers.
19:35
These are people that are using the gifts that God gave them,
19:38
acknowledging the gifts that God gave them
19:40
in order to provide for their families, okay?
19:42
So that first sentence kind of soured me
19:44
'cause the last sentence of the intro
19:46
and the first sentence of the body, I was like,
19:47
ah, come on, you almost had me.
19:50
But, you know, we'll get back into another one.
19:51
So as you go a little bit later in the article,
19:54
and this is on the heels of the comments
19:55
about #MeToo, the LGBTQ+ and sexual politics
20:00
and things like that, we get this quote here.
20:01
Quote, the upside of social progress
20:03
is freedom from the previous constraints
20:05
of what we thought a man had to be.
20:07
But with that freedom comes uncertainty.
20:10
We don't know what to do now.
20:13
We don't know who to be, okay?
20:16
This is very important.
20:17
I get the sense that this is a little bit
20:19
of a throwaway comment by the author.
20:21
But again, I think the focus was supposed to be
20:23
on #MeToo and LGBTQ+, TTYL, LOL, all that kind of stuff
20:28
and kind of all of that.
20:29
But the line here, it's very important.
20:32
It's almost really, really sad as well.
20:34
And it's this one here at the end.
20:35
But with that freedom comes uncertainty.
20:37
We don't know what to do now.
20:39
We don't know who to be.
20:41
Which again, and I'll talk about this more
20:43
as I kind of wrap up my thoughts,
20:45
this is what happens when a secularist
20:47
who probably thinks that we're, you know,
20:49
highly evolved monkeys that wear pants, right?
20:52
That someone like that doesn't really know where to look.
20:57
There's no paradigm with which they are to live by
21:00
because we are just the fittest of the apes, right?
21:03
We survived.
21:04
The genes of our ancestors have been passed down to us
21:07
and now we're here.
21:08
But again, he talks about having freedom,
21:11
having the freedom of doing all these types of things
21:13
but it comes with this uncertainty.
21:15
We don't know what to do now.
21:17
Well, I wonder why.
21:19
Whenever society and in pockets of politics
21:23
tear down society from the inside,
21:25
it's kind of interesting that no one really knows
21:28
where to stand or what to do.
21:29
You know, it's like Ron Burgundy,
21:30
like I don't know what to do with my hands.
21:32
That's what so many people are doing.
21:34
And so when you tear down all the vestiges
21:37
of masculinity or manhood
21:39
and you also get rid of the Judeo-Christian ethic
21:41
and framework, of course you would be confused.
21:44
Of course you wouldn't know who to be.
21:46
It's pretty explanatory, right, like right there.
21:49
So we'll skip down a little bit further
21:51
and it goes into this quote here, quote,
21:52
"Rogan and his podcasting cohort
21:54
"are our most immediate contact to the man economy."
21:57
Unquote.
21:58
And so I actually don't know a single person
22:00
that listens to this podcast
22:02
that doesn't also listen to the Joe Rogan experience, right?
22:05
I talk about the Joe Rogan experience
22:06
and stuff from his podcast quite a bit here on this show.
22:09
Obviously last year, the best podcast episode
22:12
I listened to all last year was his episode
22:14
with John Donahur.
22:15
And so he's a guy that is,
22:19
everyone's one degree of separation from Joe Rogan, right?
22:21
Because you either like the UFC,
22:23
so you like Joe Rogan or you like comedy,
22:25
so you like Joe Rogan or you like podcasting,
22:26
so you like Joe Rogan.
22:28
Or you like all three or two out of three
22:29
or something like that.
22:30
But that's a really interesting thing for us
22:32
because the cool thing about Joe Rogan,
22:33
and again, I've expressed my concerns about Joe Rogan
22:36
to a lot of people.
22:37
He's kind of a chameleon, like when he has someone
22:39
that's a little bit more right leaning on his podcast,
22:41
he becomes more right leaning.
22:43
And then when he has someone that's more liberal
22:44
on his podcast, he tends to be more liberal.
22:46
So he kind of just acquiesces to whatever he's at.
22:49
And he has his moments where he'll kind of go against the grain,
22:51
but he kind of just does acquiesce
22:53
to what's going on around him.
22:55
But he's kind of the center point of this entire article,
22:57
even though he's kind of just mentioned in passing.
23:00
Because you have to think about who we wouldn't have
23:03
in the quote unquote man economy
23:04
if it weren't for Joe Rogan.
23:06
Because believe it or not,
23:08
Jordan Peterson wasn't that popular
23:10
until he was on the Joe Rogan podcast.
23:12
Again, he was a big time guy,
23:14
but Joe Rogan basically said,
23:17
before his first podcast episode
23:19
that this is my favorite podcast I've ever done
23:21
in my entire life.
23:22
And he was like 950 podcasts in
23:25
when he had Joe Jordan Peterson on.
23:27
So he basically created Jordan Peterson.
23:29
Also, he kind of created Jocko Willink, right?
23:33
So the Jocko podcast wouldn't be there
23:34
because he was a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast
23:37
and Joe Rogan told him, he's like, dude, you need to do this.
23:39
Like you need to actually do a podcast.
23:41
He's like, oh, you mean it?
23:42
So we wouldn't have the Jocko podcast either.
23:44
And think about the number of guys
23:45
that you wouldn't know about in your life
23:47
in any type of setting, whether it's fitness or, you know,
23:50
fighting or any of those types of things, academics,
23:53
if you didn't have Joe Rogan.
23:54
And so obviously he is really a big deal in this space.
23:59
Now, I feel like the author kind of brought up Joe Rogan
24:02
almost like, oh, you know, his mostly male audience
24:05
and his mostly male guests or whatever.
24:07
Like you're trying to, you know, prove something there.
24:10
Well, that's just so happens to be the majority of people
24:12
that are on his podcast are men.
24:15
And it just so happens to be that the majority of people
24:16
that listen are men.
24:18
Someone call that marketing, right?
24:20
I don't think he specifically markets
24:22
to a particular type of person,
24:23
but it's kind of the same thing.
24:25
Like if you're, if you should be shopping
24:28
in the big and tall place,
24:29
you're not gonna go to the baby gap, right?
24:30
I mean, it's just not for you.
24:31
That doesn't make it bad.
24:33
So there are a lot of podcasts on, you know,
24:36
the interwebs and all those different areas
24:37
where you get your podcasts
24:39
that are mainly female audiences.
24:41
And so should we go right at them and be like, oh my gosh,
24:43
like the majority of people that are on this podcast
24:45
are women, what's wrong with you?
24:47
It's absolutely absurd.
24:48
Okay.
24:49
But then we get into the part of the article
24:50
where he's talking about a call to men workshop.
24:53
So I haven't done a whole lot of research in a call to men.
24:55
So I'm gonna kind of reserve judgment.
24:57
I'm just gonna go on what it basically says here
24:59
in the workshop, but or in the article about the workshop.
25:01
So here was the quote.
25:03
The big topics, sexual violence, homophobia, misogyny,
25:07
and the people who signed up for the seminar
25:09
seem genuinely eager to have these difficult conversations.
25:12
It was greatly encouraging to see so many people
25:14
willing to address toxic masculinity
25:16
as a public health crisis,
25:18
ready to cut through the BS
25:19
and get to the very heart of the matter.
25:21
Okay.
25:22
So I'm gonna flow in a couple of things right here.
25:25
I'm good with people talking about sexual violence
25:28
and misogyny as being toxic.
25:30
I mean, that's completely okay with me
25:34
because if you are sexually violent or misogynistic,
25:37
you're sinful, right?
25:39
You're sinning in those particular areas.
25:41
So I'm completely okay with calling that toxic masculinity.
25:45
The one I'm not okay with is when it talks about homophobia.
25:48
And this is why it's not that I think
25:50
that you as a good Christian man should be little
25:52
or bully homosexual men or men that identify as homosexual
25:56
or men that have the same sex attraction.
25:58
Obviously, if you know me and I've been listening to me
26:00
for any length of time, I don't believe that.
26:02
But most people think that if you think that homophobia
26:06
or sorry, that if you think homosexuality
26:09
or having a homosexual lifestyle is a moral
26:11
that you are homophobic.
26:13
So the definition of homophobia has expanded
26:16
so much farther out than it was ever intended to.
26:19
And so that's where, and I think it's very disingenuous.
26:21
So when you talk about toxic masculinity
26:23
and you talk about homophobia,
26:25
you're basically talking about people
26:26
using the F word for gay people.
26:28
That's essentially what you're saying, right?
26:30
Talking down to somebody because they're acting queer
26:33
or because they're acting more feminine
26:36
or something like that.
26:37
It's just kind of one of those deals.
26:38
So I don't really buy into that
26:40
because the definition of homophobia is too broad.
26:42
But the other thing from that is the concept
26:45
that toxic masculinity is a public health issue, okay?
26:49
Typically, when you think of something
26:50
like a public health issue,
26:51
you think of like mad cow disease
26:54
or some sort of a plague or Ebola or something like that.
26:57
But toxic masculinity has a public health issue.
27:01
Now, obviously, if somebody is sexually assaulted,
27:03
that affects their health directly.
27:05
They're physical health, their mental health,
27:07
their emotional health, maybe their spiritual health.
27:10
That's obviously something that happens.
27:12
However, the thing that is very interesting
27:15
is this article is just one of the latest
27:17
in a slew of articles that talk about toxic masculinity
27:21
but don't define it.
27:22
They're using it as if toxic masculinity
27:25
is a colloquial term that we all just completely understand,
27:28
right?
27:29
Which is just a little bit silly to me.
27:31
So this is just another one of those articles
27:33
that uses examples of what they would see
27:36
as toxic masculinity.
27:38
But what they're doing is they're talking about
27:40
a guy being rugged in the same breath
27:42
as someone that's being sexually violent.
27:45
You'll have people that think both of those things
27:46
are toxically, you know,
27:48
they're masculinity in a toxic fashion
27:50
or something like that.
27:51
But then I want to go into the part of the article
27:53
where he's talking about the breakout session.
27:55
So this is Ted Bunch.
27:56
Again, I don't know really much about Ted Bunch,
27:58
but apparently he was talking about the man box.
28:00
And so let's go back into the article here.
28:01
So quote, much of the work of a call to men
28:04
is prevention oriented,
28:05
but Bunch wants men to feel more responsible
28:08
for not just checking their own masculinity,
28:10
but for the other men they encounter in their everyday life.
28:13
It can't solely be the work of feminists
28:16
to reform men according to Bunch.
28:18
The bridge of prevention to intervention is men.
28:22
This is one of the dumbest little stretches
28:27
of the English language I think I've ever heard.
28:29
So let's kind of like dig into a couple of different things here.
28:32
So I'm okay with prevention oriented stuff.
28:34
That's obviously why I advocate that, you know,
28:36
boys go through rights of passage to become a man
28:39
and that adult men kind of go through community
28:42
to where they can stop themselves
28:43
before they make a bad decision.
28:45
That'll affect their family or their lives
28:46
or whatever the situation might be.
28:47
Because I'm big, I'm big on the prevention
28:49
or oriented stuff.
28:50
But it's this quote here where he's basically said,
28:52
"Men need to feel more responsible
28:55
"not just for checking their own masculinity,
28:57
"but the other men's masculinity as well."
29:00
But again, there's not a whole lot of nuance given
29:03
to what does it mean to check your masculinity?
29:06
Because what that sounds like is the same nonsense
29:09
as check your privilege, you know, check your white privilege,
29:12
check your male privilege, check your American privilege,
29:15
whatever the thing is.
29:16
But it's kind of one of those things
29:17
that it's just setting you up to look at people
29:21
as what they are, not who they are.
29:24
So that is a white cisgendered man, or that is a black trans woman,
29:29
or that is a Mexican homosexual, something or other.
29:33
Like it's just kind of one of those things,
29:34
it's just like you're looking at people
29:36
through categories as opposed to the lens
29:38
through individualism, 'cause that's what they are,
29:40
they are individual.
29:41
You're describing categories that will help you put them
29:43
into a category, but it doesn't help you understand them.
29:46
So when he says we need to check our masculinity
29:49
and check the masculinity of people around us,
29:51
what exactly is he saying?
29:53
Because if he's saying something along the lines,
29:55
if I see one of my buddies about to sexually assault someone,
29:58
should I stop them?
29:59
Yes, I'm all for that.
30:01
So check yourself, if you feel like you're about
30:04
to sexually assault somebody, and you can remove yourself
30:06
from your monkey brain for five seconds
30:09
and stop yourself from doing that, should you do that?
30:11
Yes, but I don't think that's what he's saying.
30:13
Because again, throughout all of this,
30:15
I don't know if just, you know, Spencer Dukoff
30:17
or the guy who wrote this, if he just sucks at writing,
30:19
but he doesn't give us any ideas as to, okay,
30:21
what does Ted Bunch say masculinity is?
30:24
What is non-toxic masculinity?
30:27
And here's the other thing that Bunch said
30:28
that I thought was pretty ridiculous is
30:29
it can't solely be the work of feminists to reform men.
30:33
Okay, so I thought feminism was about female empowerment.
30:39
I thought first, second, and third-way feminism
30:42
was all about empowerment.
30:44
But apparently, according to this, it's reforming men.
30:47
How interesting.
30:50
So I know there's not a whole lot of great things to say
30:53
about the, kind of the men's movement
30:55
and the people like I did an episode called The Red Pill,
30:58
however many episodes ago, so you can go check that out
31:00
and get some of my more in-depth responses to that.
31:03
But it's like, feminism has been billed as this thing.
31:05
Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not trying to tear down
31:07
the patriarchy necessarily.
31:09
We're not trying to tear down society.
31:10
We're not trying to tear down men.
31:12
We don't hate men.
31:14
We're just wanting to empower ourselves, okay?
31:16
So you can kind of get them bored with that.
31:18
But this kind of gives it away.
31:19
This bunch guy that apparently does men's stuff
31:23
says that it can't solely be the work of feminists
31:25
to reform men as if it's an understood.
31:29
Like, it's understood that feminists are here
31:30
to reform men.
31:31
I just thought that was gross.
31:34
I just thought that was ridiculous.
31:35
It's like, okay, either there's so much context missing
31:38
from this or it's just nonsense.
31:40
So it might be a little bit of both as well.
31:42
But then as you continue, there's another quote
31:43
just below that section and says, quote,
31:45
"When we as a society talk about toxic masculinity,
31:48
"we tend to talk about men in static, broad terms,
31:51
"laying out stakes and consequences better suited
31:54
"for cancel culture than genuine growth.
31:56
"What Bunch puts forward is a more hopeful vision.
31:59
"We can begin to dismantle these toxic attitudes
32:01
"not by marching or tweeting or buying products
32:04
"that signal virtue, but by opening up
32:06
"and having a conversation with one another, okay?
32:09
"So this is a lot better, that this is way better, right?
32:13
"Because he kind of talks about cancel culture
32:15
"in a negative sense, because it is negative.
32:17
"Oh my gosh, you said something 20 years ago
32:19
"that I just now discovered and I don't like it.
32:21
"So I'm gonna ruin every single thing
32:23
"and every single person around you.
32:24
"Okay, that's cancel culture.
32:25
"Like you can't say anything, oh, now this person
32:27
"can't get a job in Hollywood.
32:28
"No one will interview them on their podcast.
32:30
"Bye, blah, blah, all that nonsense."
32:31
But I'm with him here about the more hopeful vision
32:35
that we can just have more conversations, okay?
32:38
But again, he talks about dismantling
32:39
these toxic attitudes, but we're not defining them.
32:43
Because again, I'm with you.
32:45
If there's a negative force out there in the ether,
32:47
as long as we can name it, we can fight it.
32:50
But if we can't name it, then we can't fight it.
32:54
And so if we don't have a generalized definition
32:57
of what it means to be masculine
33:00
and have that masculinity be toxic, it's hard to fight it.
33:04
It's kind of like when people say,
33:05
"Well, we wanna fight racism, okay?
33:08
"Do you mean individual cases of racism?"
33:10
No, I wanna fight, you know, the criminal justice system
33:13
because the criminal justice system is racist.
33:16
Okay, so when you say it's racist,
33:18
do you mean that there have been times when people
33:21
that look like you and maybe don't look like me
33:24
have been maligned inside of this system
33:27
and that you think that there was some sort
33:28
of a racial undertone to it?
33:30
No, no, no, it's just racist for whatever reason.
33:34
So again, the point I'm making is not to go off
33:36
on a tangent about race in America,
33:37
which eventually I guess I'll have to get into that as well.
33:40
But it's mainly talking about individualized ideas
33:43
and can we all come together as to what those things mean?
33:46
Because as a society, we don't have to debate
33:48
what gravity does, right?
33:50
We don't have to debate that, we know what it is,
33:52
we know what it does.
33:53
But with something like toxic masculinity,
33:55
if we can't define it and agree upon it,
33:57
then we can't really address it.
34:00
Because again, you can't use examples of a thing
34:03
in order to define it, right?
34:05
I mean, that's like English 101 type stuff.
34:07
You can't give the word of the thing you're trying
34:10
to define in the definition.
34:12
So I think that's a lot better,
34:14
kind of where that paragraph went,
34:16
but it was still not that great.
34:18
So we'll go a little bit further down
34:19
and we get to this quote, quote,
34:21
"I called him in aims to teach us that men aren't born
34:24
imbued with morality or a personality or a destiny.
34:28
We are blank canvases engaged in some metaphysical lottery."
34:32
Unquote.
34:33
So massive, dangerous issues here, right?
34:37
I mean, this, uh, men aren't born imbued with morality.
34:42
Just that line right there,
34:44
obviously you can tell that I called them in,
34:47
does not have any type of a Judeo-Christian framework
34:50
undergirding the things that they're saying and doing.
34:52
They literally think that we are a blank slate, right?
34:55
Now, I agree with them that we're a blank slate
34:57
and that we can be influenced, right?
34:59
We can be influenced by our country of origin,
35:01
by our family of origin, by how we were raised,
35:03
by if there's money,
35:04
all the things that were listed in the article.
35:06
But this idea that we are born without morality is silly
35:11
because again, every worldview has to answer these questions
35:15
and I got this from Ravi Zacharias on a state all the time,
35:17
origin meaning morality and destiny.
35:20
Where did I come from?
35:21
Why am I here?
35:23
What is good and bad and where are we going?
35:25
Origin meaning morality and destiny.
35:28
This basically claims that we as men,
35:31
we're just kind of floating in this,
35:33
what do they call a metaphysical lottery, right?
35:36
So you might be tall, you might be sure,
35:37
you might be smart, you might be dumb,
35:39
whatever the situation might be, it's just a lottery.
35:41
Some of us hit the lottery, some of us don't.
35:43
Some of us are the have, some of us are the have nots.
35:45
And so I think it's very interesting here
35:47
that people that don't have any type
35:49
of a Judeo-Christian ethic working through
35:51
what they're doing trying to prescribe things.
35:54
But we'll get more into that here just a little bit.
35:56
But now getting into the section about advertising,
35:59
which is about halfway through this article,
36:01
we get to this quote here, quote,
36:02
"The commercial was an instant viral phenomenon."
36:05
This is obviously talking about the Gillette,
36:07
the commercial that came out for the Super Bowl.
36:08
Receiving praise from celebrities on the left
36:10
like Chrissy Teigen and Ava Duvernay
36:13
while being mocked by right-leaning pundits
36:15
like Pierce Morgan who wrote that the ad pushed men
36:17
to be tarred with the same monstrous brush.
36:20
Boycott Gillette quickly became a trending topic
36:22
on Twitter, which also seems like it was part of Gillette's plan.
36:27
Oh, the problems with this little section here.
36:29
So one little quick thing.
36:31
Pierce Morgan is not on the right.
36:34
He's actually far from right-leaning.
36:36
I mean, this is a guy that has been
36:38
on some right-leaning things.
36:39
I mean, I even think just a few weeks ago
36:41
he was on the the Ben Shapiro Sunday conversation
36:44
and it was fantastic.
36:46
But this guy is far from being right-leaning.
36:48
But let's get into the big reason why this is a really
36:50
stupid thing to bring up.
36:51
Because, okay, this is just really funny.
36:55
So the part where it says it seems like it was part
36:58
of Gillette's plan from the beginning.
36:59
What I thought immediately since this, you know,
37:02
was just released a few weeks ago,
37:03
is they were gonna talk about what happened to Gillette
37:06
and the parent company Procter & Gamble, okay?
37:11
After this ad went out and yes and went viral
37:14
in kind of a negative sense,
37:16
Gillette lost $8 billion after the ad aired.
37:22
Eight billion with a beat, dollars after this ad.
37:27
And, you know, some people at Gillette were like,
37:30
oh, well, you know, there's kind of this trend
37:32
towards beards now.
37:33
So people aren't really shaving as much.
37:35
And, you know, people are using these online services
37:37
like Dollar Shave Club and all that.
37:38
And to be honest, I'm sure there's some part of that.
37:41
But you don't lose $8 billion in market share
37:46
or in profits in seven or eight months
37:50
because people are growing beards all of a sudden.
37:52
And so this article talks about this Gillette ad
37:56
as if it was some sort of paragon of virtue.
37:59
It's like, we knew that they lost $8 billion
38:02
before you wrote this stuff.
38:04
But before this ever came out, you knew that happened.
38:06
But they didn't mention it here.
38:08
Could it be for a reason?
38:10
I'm sure I'm just looking at nothing, right?
38:11
Okay, let's get into another quote here just right after that.
38:14
What advertising agencies realize is that younger consumers
38:17
don't see a reason why they should support a brand
38:19
that doesn't speak to their values says Mark Tungay.
38:22
So if we go back to episode 95 of this podcast
38:25
on changing American values,
38:27
this should be a little bit worrisome to us as Christian men
38:30
because if we're losing the Judeo-Christian ethic
38:33
in the West writ large and specifically here in America
38:36
and we're losing the influence of the church and of scripture,
38:39
then we have to look at these changing values
38:41
as being a little bit of a problem for us moving forward.
38:46
And the big problem that I see is if we're not
38:49
undergirding what we value in any particular way,
38:52
we're just going to float.
38:54
So we're going to like this value
38:55
and we're not going to like that value.
38:56
And we're going to go through one life experience
38:58
and then we're going to change our paradigms
38:59
and we're just kind of floating around.
39:01
We don't have these pillars of morality
39:04
that we can go to and anchor ourselves to.
39:06
So that's a little bit worrisome.
39:08
So we go a little bit farther down.
39:09
We have this quote, quote,
39:11
a cynic might say that the man economy
39:12
may actually hold men back
39:14
from seriously addressing the issues it leverages
39:16
to sell products.
39:17
After all, it's much easier to buy the Woke shaving cream brand
39:20
and believe you've done your woke man deed of the day
39:23
than it is to actively advocate
39:24
for closing the gender pay gap or participate in a boycott.
39:28
So one quick thing, the gender pay gap is a hoax, okay?
39:32
I think that's been summarily dismissed at this point.
39:36
The pay gap, if there is a gap,
39:38
which I think it was a time magazine article
39:41
saying that in the top 50 places in the United States
39:44
by population that women who went to school
39:48
and got the same degrees and worked the same amount of hours
39:50
and made the same lifestyle choices
39:52
were actually making more than their male counterparts.
39:55
The thing about the gender pay gap
39:56
is this is more about choices.
39:58
Women typically choose to not work as much.
40:02
They don't work as many hours.
40:03
They don't work on the weekends.
40:04
They don't work at jobs that are highly dangerous,
40:07
that you get hazard pay or higher pay
40:09
because they are dangerous.
40:10
Men typically don't take off several years to raise children.
40:13
That is a choice by women typically to have these children.
40:16
So the gender pay gap,
40:18
even being mentioned in this article
40:19
in the way that it was, is ridiculous.
40:21
But on the first part, sorry, I just pumped the microphone.
40:23
We're back, all right.
40:24
So the first part where it was basically a cynic might say
40:26
that the man economy may actually hold men back
40:28
from seriously addressing the issues
40:30
it leverages to sell products.
40:32
After all, it's much easier to buy a woke shaving cream brand
40:35
and believe you've done your woke man deed of the day
40:37
than it is to do the other things like that.
40:38
So I thought that was pretty interesting
40:40
to talk about the man economy and say that hey,
40:43
we know that these people are just selling products, right?
40:45
We know that they're just out there to sell things.
40:47
They don't actually care about these things,
40:50
but they think you do,
40:51
and so they're gonna attach themselves to it.
40:52
So part of the reason why the United States military has,
40:55
you know, a set up with the NFL
40:57
where they basically, you know, pay them so that they can come
40:59
and do the flag thing before the game
41:01
is because it appeals to that audience.
41:02
And vice versa, it's kind of one of those things.
41:04
It's just marketing 101, like we all agree with that
41:07
and believe that that's an effective thing for us to do.
41:10
But the thing that's ridiculous to me to a certain degree
41:14
is this assumption that because there's some sort
41:16
of a capitalistic bend here that it can't help people.
41:19
And so that's one thing about this article
41:21
is it just kind of goes back and forth
41:22
and we'll get more into that here in just a second,
41:24
but I wanna go ahead and read the last sentence here
41:26
and flow on that a little bit.
41:27
So here's the last couple of sentences here
41:29
on this particular article.
41:31
So quote, "The wild man's path to modern enlightenment
41:34
"can't end with a shaving cream advertisement
41:36
"or a particularly engaging podcast.
41:38
"Perhaps it can begin with them.
41:40
"Rather than selling the illusion of progress,
41:42
"the man economy has the opportunity
41:44
"to offer men a fresh start.
41:45
"Boy, do we need one."
41:47
Okay, so again, I thought that was a good ending.
41:49
I think it had a good beginning and a good ending
41:51
and a bunch of nonsense in between.
41:53
But I agree with this that an advertisement or a podcast
41:57
could be somebody's motivation to be a better man.
42:01
I absolutely believe that.
42:03
And guys, your evidence of that.
42:04
I get messages from you.
42:06
Sime recently, I got several good messages,
42:09
but fairly consistently, I'll get messages from you guys
42:11
saying, "Hey, I started doing this."
42:13
Or I stopped doing that.
42:14
Or I listened to this episode of your podcast
42:16
and then I went and did that.
42:17
Or, you know, remember that one where you were talking
42:18
about taking your dad to a racetrack?
42:20
I hadn't talked to my dad in a while,
42:21
so I called him that day
42:22
and he couldn't have been more excited to talk to me.
42:23
Just stuff like that.
42:24
So I've heard that as well.
42:26
And so I think that that's a good thing.
42:27
Again, it kind of, in this last line,
42:29
kind of tries to create this wedge between things
42:31
that have a capitalistic bend
42:33
and things that don't have a capitalistic bend,
42:35
but it just kind of is what it is.
42:37
But at this point, I want to kind of get into
42:39
my overall thoughts on the article.
42:41
And so you've obviously heard me read the article.
42:43
You heard me go into some specific quotes,
42:45
but now I just want to kind of give you my overall thoughts.
42:46
So the first thing,
42:47
and this is what you can see all the way throughout,
42:50
and it's dripping with liberal bias.
42:52
There's so much liberal bias here.
42:54
The Spencer Dukop does not really hide the fact
42:57
that he's a leftist.
42:58
And so I think that that,
43:00
I think it's Sully's this a little bit
43:02
because if this had been written in a overtly conservative way,
43:05
I think I would have certainly enjoyed it more.
43:07
But again, if we're addressing the main issue,
43:09
we shouldn't make it leftist or righty.
43:12
We shouldn't really do that.
43:13
So another thing is that,
43:15
and I mentioned this several times,
43:16
is that this article discusses toxic masculinity
43:19
using examples, but no definitions.
43:21
Okay, so with anybody for the love of God,
43:23
if you can get me an actual definition
43:25
of toxic masculinity,
43:27
you can get me a list of things underneath that definition
43:30
that we can combat or at least try and define
43:33
whether or not they are actually toxic.
43:34
That would be highly helpful.
43:35
This article is just another article that doesn't do that.
43:38
Another thing is that this article says several times,
43:41
and it kind of does it slightly.
43:42
It slyly demonizes capitalism because of course they do,
43:45
because again, if this guy's on the left,
43:47
maybe he's a Bernie bro or something like that
43:49
to where he's basically looking at these things
43:50
and looking at money is like, oh, money's bad.
43:52
Again, this is called the man economy, right?
43:55
And so it's like, oh, we got people that are making money
43:57
off of trying to make men better men.
43:59
Well, for how long has self-help been a thing?
44:02
Like, do you get mad at self-help gurus?
44:04
Do you get mad at Tony Robbins
44:05
'cause he's helping business owners
44:07
and people do certain things?
44:08
Are you mad at Dave Ramsey for helping people
44:10
with their money?
44:10
Like, who freaking cares?
44:12
Like, we trade our time and our talent for money.
44:14
That's what all of us do.
44:16
We have time, we have talent or training in some way,
44:20
and we trade that for people's cash.
44:23
That's what business is.
44:24
It's not a big deal.
44:25
It's not a bad deal either.
44:26
So that was a little bit silly.
44:27
Another thing I wanted to get into is
44:30
you don't get articles like this, written by this guy,
44:34
coming out of environments where true masculinity exists.
44:37
So you don't end up with a worldview,
44:40
like the Spencer Dukoff guy,
44:42
if you come from an environment
44:44
where you've seen a lot,
44:45
a positive examples of masculinity.
44:48
If you grew up in a home
44:49
where the women were upheld and protected
44:53
and provided for, if you were constantly around men
44:56
that were acting out,
44:58
manhood in the best way is possible.
45:00
If you saw the important men in your life,
45:02
brothers, uncles, grandpa, dad, those types of folks,
45:06
if they were cultivating spiritual, mental,
45:08
and physical resilience on a daily basis,
45:10
you don't get this kind of worldview.
45:12
I mean, the whole time I'm reading this,
45:14
I'm like, this guy's jaded.
45:16
Like, this guy's obviously jaded.
45:18
He probably didn't have a strong dad
45:20
or he had a really strong dad in the house
45:22
and he kind of bugged that.
45:23
Maybe he's a little bit of feminine himself.
45:25
But again, you just have to think,
45:27
what kind of a background do you have
45:29
when you have somebody writing an article like this?
45:32
It's interesting to look at.
45:34
Another thing I was thinking about
45:35
while I was looking at this article
45:36
is it's really funny watching secularists
45:38
try and define problems and then try to solve them.
45:41
It's so funny.
45:42
Like, yeah, it's different points here.
45:45
It's kind of, again, we go back to a call to men.
45:48
They're trying to define the problem.
45:49
They're trying to help us with the problem,
45:50
but then there's nothing to attach themselves to.
45:54
So you can repel off the, you know,
45:56
off the top of the cliff,
45:57
but if you're not attached to something,
45:59
it's gonna be a very, very unfun ride down for you.
46:02
So when you see a secular orist
46:04
or an evolutionary biologist or someone like that,
46:08
trying to define problems,
46:09
it's like, well, but we're just stardust, remember?
46:11
Yeah, I mean, that's like Jeff Durban's big thing.
46:13
It's like, we're just stardust bumping into other stardust.
46:15
Why is this a problem?
46:17
Like, why exactly are we talking about this?
46:19
Like, no one can actually give them an answer.
46:21
And if they try to use some sort of a mnemonic device,
46:24
not an mnemonic device,
46:25
but if we're trying to use some sort of a device
46:28
to help us understand where we're going
46:29
with these certain things,
46:30
they're having to use things that are coming
46:32
from their Judeo-Christian world
46:33
with which they were raised in, right?
46:35
Because most of these people come from the West,
46:37
they've had the positives of growing up
46:39
with a Judeo-Christian framework and ethic around them.
46:42
But now they're trying to buck that
46:43
and create their own thing, right?
46:45
Kind of this new wavy type of deal.
46:47
The other thing about this article
46:48
is it can't figure out if it likes the man economy or not,
46:51
right?
46:52
And so I'm kind of giving some personalization
46:54
to this article as if it's its own person.
46:56
But Spencer Dukoff,
46:56
he can't really figure out if he likes the man economy
46:58
or not.
46:59
And when you get to the end, it's more of like,
47:00
well, this might be a good thing.
47:02
This might be a bad thing.
47:03
It's like, you think you could maybe take a stand?
47:05
Tell us that this is a good thing
47:06
or tell us that this is a bad thing
47:08
as opposed to just implying that it could be good
47:10
in certain areas.
47:11
But overall, it's probably pretty bad.
47:13
That was a little bit sloppy to me
47:14
for this guy to act that way.
47:15
But I guess my overall thought here is
47:19
get your workout and supplement advice for men's health,
47:21
but don't go to men's health for manhood advice.
47:24
I mean, if this is the type of writing
47:26
that you're gonna get, guys,
47:27
I don't see this as being helpful.
47:29
I don't see this for you being a very thoughtful,
47:32
thinking Christian.
47:33
I don't really feel like going to things like this
47:35
are gonna help you do anything other than to practice
47:38
how to dismantle arguments that are stupid, okay?
47:41
So again, I do appreciate that this article sent over to me
47:44
'cause I think that there was a lot of ample opportunities
47:46
to help you guys understand things
47:48
from a different perspective.
47:49
But yeah, I don't know that I would continue going there
47:51
if you're wanting to advance yourself
47:53
in any particular way.
47:54
All right, guys, before we get out of here,
47:55
we're gonna do a quick resilience boost.
47:57
As you know, by now, we are men's ministry
47:58
and our mission is cultivating manly resilience.
48:00
Specifically, we do that by providing content
48:02
that for just spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
48:04
So today, the only thing I got for you
48:06
is just a copy of this article.
48:07
It's a longer article, it has some other hyperlinks
48:09
that take you other places.
48:10
So read it, if you disagree with my assessment of it,
48:12
go ahead and let me know.
48:14
Guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
48:15
We really do appreciate it.
48:16
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48:18
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48:20
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48:21
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48:22
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48:24
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48:26
So please take a quick second,
48:27
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48:29
and a few sentences letting us know why you like the content.
48:31
I'm currently booking speaking engagements
48:33
for the remainder of 2019 and the entirety of 2020.
48:36
So if you want me to come speak on your podcast,
48:38
speak to your team, your men's event,
48:39
your conference, just let me know.
48:40
Info at Undonta.life, again, the email.
48:43
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48:44
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48:47
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48:48
and Twitter, @undontalife, or Facebook.com/undontalife.
48:52
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48:54
Just search Undonta life under plans.
48:56
And as always, we wanna thank the band, August Burns Red,
48:58
for allowing us to use their entire music library
49:00
for our content.
49:01
The intro outro track on this podcast
49:03
is our song King of Sorrow,
49:04
which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem.
49:07
The links are in the description.
49:09
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
49:11
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
49:14
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
49:18
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
49:20
(upbeat rock music)