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0:31
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
0:50
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:52
All right, guys.
0:53
I've got breaking news for you and the breaking news is this.
0:56
The world has ended.
0:58
The world is absolutely ended, guys.
0:59
I know the world has ended so many times in 2020 already.
1:02
Too many times to count actually.
1:04
But it is really ended now, right?
1:07
But not because of the pandemic.
1:08
No, no, no, not because of an election.
1:11
Not because of that either.
1:12
Not because of systemic racism.
1:14
It has ended because of a tweet.
1:17
And now you might be thinking a tweet.
1:19
Okay, so this has got to be a tweet from President Trump because, you know,
1:22
that's when the world really starts to end and melt is when President Trump tweets something.
1:27
And it wasn't even that.
1:28
It was a response to a tweet from of all things Vogue magazine.
1:33
I feel like it is so dumb that I'm having to talk about this, but it has exploded.
1:37
And everyone's weighing in on it.
1:39
So obviously being that this is a men's podcast made for dudes.
1:43
This is something I got to talk about.
1:44
So on November the 13th last week, Vogue magazine sent out a tweet,
1:49
pumping their December cover story featuring Harry Styles.
1:52
So for some of you guys, you don't know who Harry Styles is.
1:55
So Harry Styles came to prominence.
1:57
He was on some, I think it was whatever Simon Cowell's latest thing.
2:01
I think it was X Factor or something like that over in the UK.
2:03
He came on there as a 16 year old saying, you know, it was like, oh, you're all right.
2:06
But then they brought him back with like four other young guys.
2:10
And they created a boy band called One Direction.
2:13
There's like one One Direction song that that even even recognizable to me.
2:17
It's just very typical poppy boy band type stuff.
2:20
But Harry Styles was always kind of like the main guy.
2:23
And the one the girls always liked the most.
2:24
And he was the one that could actually sing a little bit and all that.
2:27
So he went off and did his own thing.
2:28
He's got some solo albums out.
2:30
His latest album, I've actually listened to a few songs off of that.
2:33
They're not bad at all.
2:34
They're kind of catchy.
2:35
He's been in Dunkirk.
2:36
So some of you might recognize him from his acting work in Dunkirk.
2:40
But that's basically who Harry Styles is.
2:41
But in this tweet where they're introducing their December cover story,
2:46
there were two pictures that were a part of the tweet.
2:49
And the pictures show Harry Styles wearing Lacey women's clothing.
2:54
Okay.
2:55
One picture has him in a full length.
2:57
It's a full link picture actually of him wearing a long flowy frilly dress.
3:00
And the other ones kind of like this open, chested, frilly thing.
3:03
I don't really know exactly what it's supposed to do.
3:05
But the caption of the tweet from Vogue magazine said this.
3:08
There's so much joy to be had in playing with clothes.
3:11
I've never thought too much about what it means.
3:13
It just becomes this extended part of creating something.
3:16
Okay.
3:17
So that is a quote from Harry Styles from the cover story.
3:19
So there you go.
3:20
The thing is, is that it's kind of an innocuous thing.
3:25
It's kind of an easy thing to scroll past, especially if you're like me
3:27
and you follow the people that I do or the things that I do,
3:30
it may not even register.
3:31
It may not even come across your feed.
3:33
The algorithms are not going to feed that to you.
3:36
Unless they're trying to feed you outrage.
3:37
But then enter Candace Owens.
3:40
Okay.
3:40
So for those of you who don't know, Candace Owens is,
3:42
she is a political commentator, a conservative political commentator.
3:46
If this matters to you, she's obviously a she
3:48
and she is a black woman as well.
3:49
I think she was just hired by the Daily Wire.
3:51
So I think she was previously with the Blaze or,
3:53
or she was kind of doing her own thing.
3:54
I'm not exactly sure.
3:55
But she is actually the author of a recent book that's a bestseller
3:59
called Hot How Black American, or sorry, what's it called?
4:03
Let's just read it straight from the page here.
4:05
How Black America can make it second escape from the Democrat plantation.
4:10
There you go.
4:10
Got it all out at once.
4:12
And so the reason why you may have heard her name before
4:13
is she's one of the founders of the Brexit movement.
4:16
So those are people that are trying to convince black people
4:19
that they don't have to vote Democrat.
4:21
Okay.
4:21
So she's kind of a firebrand.
4:22
She has been interviewed on the Joe Rogan experience before.
4:25
A lot of great stuff was said on that show,
4:28
but all anyone can focus about was their little interaction
4:30
about global warming.
4:31
But anyway, you can check that out on your own.
4:33
But the very next day, after the original Vogue article,
4:36
or the Vogue tweet was put out, she quote tweeted the article
4:39
and then she wrote this.
4:41
There is no society that can survive without strong men.
4:45
The East knows this.
4:47
In the West, the steady feminization of our men
4:50
at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children
4:53
is not a coincidence.
4:54
It's an outright attack.
4:55
Bring back manly men.
4:58
Now, I saw this tweet the day that it was tweeted.
5:03
And I was like, yeah, totally agree with that.
5:05
Boom, gave it a favor.
5:06
And then I moved on.
5:08
Right.
5:08
I just kind of moved on.
5:09
It's like, okay, there are a lot of things to be outraged
5:11
about.
5:11
Yes, it was ridiculous that Harry Styles was walking around
5:14
and dressed for a Vogue shoot, all the different things.
5:16
But I've got other things to worry about.
5:18
I got a six month old I got to take care of.
5:19
And her tweet was kind of a slow burn.
5:21
It took a couple of days, but then it exploded.
5:24
And then I think whenever I opened up my laptop
5:26
on Monday morning, she was trending on Twitter,
5:28
which anytime Candace Owens turns on Twitter,
5:30
it's because she's made somebody mad.
5:31
But I just couldn't fathom that it was actually because of this.
5:34
So her quote tweet of the original tweet got,
5:37
and I think it's around 100,000 likes at this point.
5:40
But not everyone liked it, as you can probably imagine.
5:43
There was immediate backlash, the actress Olivia Wilde,
5:46
who is, I'm not exactly sure who she is,
5:48
but you know, she's supposedly well known.
5:50
She's blue check mark on Twitter.
5:52
She has the most liked response.
5:54
And her response with your pathetic,
5:56
like that was literally all that she wrote.
5:58
And it got over 100,000 likes on its own.
6:00
But the thing about it was that,
6:03
Candace Owens didn't really back down from this.
6:04
If you know anything about Candace Owens,
6:06
or if you've been watching for her for any length of time,
6:08
she doesn't really back away from controversy.
6:10
She kind of like weighs into it.
6:12
And so she doubled down on Monday,
6:13
following all the attention,
6:15
seeing that she was finally or not finally,
6:17
but seeing that she was trending and all the things.
6:19
And then she tweeted this,
6:20
"Since I'm trending, I'd like to clarify what I meant
6:23
when I said bring back mainly men.
6:25
I meant bring back mainly men.
6:28
Terms like toxic masculinity were created by toxic females.
6:32
Real women don't fake feminism.
6:34
Sorry, I'm not sorry."
6:35
So obviously she doubled down on it.
6:37
I think some other big conservative commentators
6:40
came in and commented on the thing.
6:42
But we're going to break this down on today's episode,
6:44
because there are some important things
6:45
that are coming out of this, okay?
6:47
And sometimes you can read too much into something.
6:49
Sometimes things are innocent,
6:50
and sometimes they are nefarious.
6:51
So we're going to get into that a little bit here today.
6:53
But before we really get there,
6:55
let's actually get into what the actual cover story from Vogue, okay?
6:59
So the thing is,
7:00
is we need to kind of look at what this is actually going for.
7:03
Because before we get too much in the commentary on this,
7:06
I just have to be honest about what this is.
7:08
This was meant to be provocative.
7:10
Because duh, Vogue got exactly what they wanted out of this deal.
7:16
They got eyeballs.
7:17
They got attention.
7:19
They got exactly what they wanted.
7:21
I mean, just think about it, guys.
7:22
When was the last time any of you listening to this right now
7:26
read a Vogue article?
7:27
Like when's the last time you picked up Vogue
7:30
while you're sitting in line at Walmart
7:31
and you just thumb through it real quick, right?
7:34
I mean, have any of you paid attention to anything that Vogue
7:37
has ever tweeted?
7:38
They probably tweeted tens of thousands of times.
7:40
I don't recall ever responding or even thinking about a Vogue tweet, okay?
7:45
So they got exactly what they wanted out of this deal, okay?
7:48
But the thing about it is,
7:50
everyone kind of gets what they want.
7:52
Everyone gets what they want.
7:53
Progressives get to show people how progressive and artistic they are
7:57
by sharing and liking this.
7:59
And by being outraged at gender stereotypes
8:02
and then conservative people like me get, you know,
8:05
that are generally concerned with the feminization of society.
8:07
We get to be outraged and, you know, everybody gets a little bit.
8:10
Everybody gets their win.
8:11
But the thing is, I actually read the cover story, okay?
8:15
Because I didn't want to just look at the pictures
8:17
because I thought, you know, maybe there was something else.
8:18
Maybe there was something else I was being communicated.
8:20
And I read it.
8:21
I read it, you know, all the way through.
8:22
Most of it was dramatically overwritten.
8:26
You know, it was, you know, very artistic.
8:27
It was kind of swill at a lot of points.
8:29
Like, again, it just, it was very flowery poetic language.
8:32
And that's just not something I'm really into.
8:35
And all throughout the cover story, for the link that I'll provide for you later,
8:39
so you can look at it for yourself.
8:40
He's not just wearing women's clothes in some of those.
8:42
In a lot of the pictures, he's wearing men's clothes.
8:45
But the thing about it is, is he looks ridiculous,
8:47
even in the men's clothes that he's wearing.
8:48
He looks absolutely ridiculous.
8:50
Again, this is one of those high fashion things where it's like,
8:53
no one really understands it.
8:54
Even the people that put the stuff together,
8:57
they just got a bunch of fabric and they threw it on a wall
8:59
and they started making things combined.
9:01
And then they got, you know, a famous good looking guy
9:03
to throw the clothes on to make a statement or something like that.
9:05
But again, the cover story was ridiculous.
9:09
The pictures were ridiculous.
9:11
And to a certain degree, some of the commentary about it that's come out
9:14
is ridiculous.
9:15
But there were three quotes, actually,
9:17
that I wanted to kind of bring to your attention
9:18
to kind of tell you and give you better ideas
9:20
to what's trying to be communicated here.
9:23
Because Vogue is not doing this by accident.
9:25
Obviously, they wanted to get publicity
9:27
by having Harry Styles dress up and address.
9:29
If they got me to dress up and address,
9:30
nobody would really care, but it's Harry Styles.
9:32
It's a big deal.
9:32
He's a big, you know, famous dude, right?
9:34
But there are three different quotes,
9:35
and I'll read them in the order that they showed up in the article.
9:38
So here's the first quote here.
9:39
It's a short one.
9:40
"As a kid, I definitely liked fancy dress,"
9:43
Styles said.
9:44
"There were school plays,
9:45
the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse.
9:48
I was really young and I wore tights for that," he recalls.
9:51
"I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights,
9:54
and that was maybe where it all kicked off."
9:57
Okay, so you can maybe see how this is going.
9:59
That's the first quote here,
10:00
but let's get into the second one.
10:01
It's a little bit longer.
10:01
Now, Harry Styles declares that
10:04
you can never be overdressed.
10:06
There's no such thing.
10:07
The people that I looked up to in music,
10:09
Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John,
10:13
they're such showmen.
10:15
As a kid, it was completely mind-blowing.
10:17
Now, I'll put on something that feels really flamboyant
10:20
and I don't feel crazy wearing it.
10:21
I think if you get something that you feel amazing in,
10:25
it's like a superhero outfit.
10:27
Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with.
10:30
What's really exciting is that all these lines are just kind of crumbling away.
10:34
When you take away, there's clothes for men and there's clothes for women.
10:37
Once you remove any barriers,
10:39
obviously you open up the arena in which you can play.
10:42
I'll go to shop sometimes and I just find myself
10:44
looking at the women's clothes thinking they're amazing.
10:46
It's like anything.
10:48
Anytime you're putting barriers up in your own life,
10:50
you're just limiting yourself.
10:52
There's so much joy to be had in playing with clothes.
10:54
I've never really thought too much about what it means.
10:57
It just becomes an extended part of creating something.
11:00
Then we've got one that's a little bit later.
11:02
This is the final quote I'll bring to you.
11:03
He's really in touch with his feminine side
11:06
because it's something natural.
11:07
Notes, Michelle, and that's the stylus of the shoot.
11:10
And he's such a big inspiration to a younger generation
11:13
about how you can be in a totally free playground
11:17
when you feel comfortable.
11:18
I think that he's a revolutionary.
11:22
So first I'll kind of give you some of my general commentary
11:24
and then we'll kind of get into some of the things
11:25
that have been said here.
11:26
The general commentary is that Harry Styles
11:30
doesn't really care one bit about anybody's commentary
11:32
about what he wore.
11:34
He doesn't care that Candace Owen said something about it.
11:36
He doesn't care that Ben Shapiro said something about it.
11:38
He doesn't care that I said something about it.
11:39
He doesn't care.
11:40
This guy is worth a ridiculous amount of money.
11:43
He's a sex symbol.
11:45
He's an artist.
11:46
He gets to do what he wants for a living.
11:47
He's still in his 20s.
11:49
Like this guy doesn't really care.
11:50
He's not really concerned about the outrage.
11:52
So I'm not really concerned about potentially offending him
11:56
and neither should you be.
11:57
I want to look at this and how this applies to us
11:59
and also to the young men in our life.
12:01
And the next thing is Vogue is known for being provocative.
12:04
This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
12:07
Certainly shouldn't be a surprise to you.
12:08
So those are just the general things.
12:10
Harry Styles doesn't care
12:11
and Vogue is known for being provocative.
12:12
No one should be surprised by that.
12:13
But there are several reasons why this article,
12:17
this cover story, Candace Owens's commentary,
12:19
the reaction from people that liked it and didn't like it.
12:22
There's a lot of reasons why this is important.
12:23
The first reason I wanted to go over
12:26
is that artists push boundaries, okay?
12:28
But they also move public opinion.
12:31
All right.
12:32
So if we go back to episode 103 of this podcast,
12:35
I talked about GQ's new masculinity issue, okay?
12:39
So that was featuring Pharrell and they kind of did the same thing.
12:41
Take a famous, you know, musical artists and dress them up,
12:44
you know, cross dress them, right?
12:44
You know, there's pictures of David Bowie doing that
12:46
and Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain and all that.
12:49
But at the same time, this is something that's been going on for a while
12:53
because no one, if you've ever watched like Fashion Week
12:57
or watched any of the red carpet shows
12:59
or any of the New York Met Gala or whatever those things are
13:03
and you see what these people wear.
13:05
No one wears that like in public, like real public,
13:08
not normal people, right?
13:10
That's not normal things that you would see on the street,
13:12
you know, walking down the road in your rural city
13:14
or your suburban city or your urban city.
13:16
No one ever sees people that are wearing stuff like that.
13:19
But bell bottoms were a ridiculous thing until they weren't, right?
13:25
Baggy shirts were a ridiculous thing until they weren't, right?
13:30
Facial tattoos were a ridiculous thing until they,
13:33
well, those are probably still ridiculous,
13:34
but you kind of get the point that I'm making here.
13:36
But a lot of things in terms of worldview changes,
13:39
they're being smuggled in with artists.
13:41
That's why you see a lot of, you know,
13:43
conservative political commentators.
13:44
They kind of dismiss when, you know,
13:46
leftist celebrities and actors and actresses
13:50
kind of get behind a political candidate.
13:52
It's like, oh, that doesn't matter.
13:53
What do these people know?
13:54
But most people aren't that nuanced.
13:56
They see Robert De Niro telling them who to vote for.
13:58
They see Jennifer Aniston telling them who to vote for.
14:00
They see LeBron James telling them who to vote for.
14:03
That's all they need.
14:04
Some people are legitimately morons.
14:06
They don't care about the actual issues.
14:10
They don't care about a nuanced opinion on the issues.
14:12
They care about what their favorite actor or actress
14:14
or ballplayer thinks about it, right?
14:17
Artists are the same way,
14:18
whether musical artists, singers or painters or whatever.
14:22
A lot of times there's going to be things that are communicated
14:24
that you just don't understand.
14:25
Like, again, no one's going to be wearing the things
14:27
that he wore in the Vogue cover shoot.
14:30
Like no one's actually going to be wearing those things,
14:32
but it's what's being commented on
14:34
and what is being propagated message-wise,
14:37
the thing that's underlying that.
14:38
Okay. So that's one thing that's important to consider.
14:40
The next thing that's important for us to consider
14:43
is that progressives, right?
14:44
So take that to me, whatever you mean,
14:45
but the way I mean it are people that consider themselves
14:47
to be politically progressive,
14:48
socially progressive, so progressives, right?
14:50
They try to normalize crazy stuff,
14:53
and then they get mad at conservatives for noticing.
14:57
Okay. So I'm certainly not the first person
14:59
to point something like this out,
15:00
but you have a lot of people that try to make these statements, right?
15:03
So Vogue was not just trying to neutrally put out
15:06
these pictures of this incredibly famous male wearing dresses.
15:12
They didn't think it was neutral.
15:14
That's why they led with the two pictures
15:16
from this of him wearing women's clothing.
15:19
The overwhelming majority of the pictures in the cover story
15:21
are him wearing ridiculous looking men's clothing,
15:24
and there's some where he's kind of wearing
15:26
kilt looking things,
15:27
and then there's ones where he's just straight up
15:29
wearing like frilly women's dresses, right?
15:32
But they obviously didn't think it was normal
15:34
because they would have led with other pictures,
15:36
and then this outrage would have never occurred.
15:39
But the thing that is so interesting about people that are on that side of things
15:42
is when you notice and say,
15:44
"I don't really like that."
15:45
It's like, "Well, why are you even paying attention?
15:48
Why is it so important to you to crush everyone else's dreams
15:51
and creativity and art?"
15:52
Well, you know, "Arches in the eye of the beholder."
15:54
It's like, "Whoa, whoa.
15:56
I just said that dude, look, dumb wearing a dress,
15:59
and I don't think he should be wearing it, right?"
16:01
It's just an interesting phenomenon
16:03
that these people that try so hard to get everyone's attention,
16:07
they get so mad when they get our attention.
16:10
I find that incredibly, incredibly funny.
16:13
The next thing that's important for us to talk about,
16:15
this is a little bit of a mouthful,
16:16
but whenever I jotted it down, it's like,
16:18
"Okay, this makes sense.
16:19
I might have to say it twice."
16:20
But only in a society that was forged by strong men,
16:24
can you get weak men complaining that some people think
16:29
that men wearing dresses is wrong?
16:31
Let me say it again.
16:32
Only in a society that was forged by strong men,
16:35
can you get weak men complaining that some people think
16:39
men wearing dresses is wrong?
16:40
Because again, Harry Styles is an English guy,
16:44
and I think this photo shoot actually took place in England,
16:47
but he doesn't get to even do such a thing
16:51
without the sacrifices and strength of strong men.
16:55
Like, again, I feel like so many throughpoints
16:59
and so many points go back to World War II,
17:01
when a bunch of American men and English men,
17:05
they stood up against tyranny and defied the odds
17:08
and defied evil and defeated Hitler
17:11
and the rest of the German army, the Nazi army, right?
17:14
So they literally, I know people kind of say this tongue in cheek,
17:18
they could be speaking German in England right now.
17:21
They could be speaking German all over the United Kingdom,
17:23
all over Europe, frankly,
17:25
if not for the sacrifice of strong men.
17:27
And now we're being lectured to, if not through art,
17:32
but by actual words, by these individuals,
17:35
and they're trying to tell us what manhood actually is.
17:37
They're trying to tell us what strength is.
17:41
They're trying to redefine what masculinity and femininity is.
17:44
But the thing that's so interesting
17:47
is they never try to make it to where the women can be more masculine.
17:51
That's not really something that's mainstream.
17:53
It's always the other way. Isn't that interesting?
17:54
The society is pushing us leftward,
17:58
and it's pushing us to where we're feminizing men.
18:02
That's why I thought the point that was being made by Candace Owens
18:05
was absolutely spot on.
18:07
I'm going to get more into that here in just a second.
18:09
And we'll really get into it because she mentioned Marxism,
18:12
and that's kind of the next thing that I want to talk about is Karl Marx.
18:16
If he was alive today, which I'm glad he isn't,
18:18
he would be ecstatic about the Vogue cover story, ecstatic about it.
18:22
He would love it.
18:22
And he would also love the pushback that people like Candace Owens
18:26
and me are doing, right?
18:28
He would love the pushback.
18:30
Because again, Karl Marx was somebody that wants to disintegrate society, right?
18:35
He thinks that society, especially western society,
18:37
capitalism, that those things are evil and that the system needs to be torn out
18:43
from the roots, okay?
18:44
It's not something that is salvageable.
18:46
You can't adjust it.
18:48
You need to destroy it.
18:49
Again, I read the Communist Manifesto this summer,
18:52
and if you haven't read that, it's free anywhere, right?
18:55
Actually, I think it'd be really funny.
18:56
I actually think you should pay money to read the Communist Manifesto
18:59
because that just goes right against most of what Karl Marx believed
19:03
and in terms of like a free market and being able to purchase things.
19:05
But I read it.
19:07
And again, there are some things inside of it that actually seemingly makes sense
19:10
until you read everything and get the full context.
19:12
And we have Marxist ideology that is being taught to our young children in school.
19:18
And if they miss it, you know, in K through 12,
19:22
they're going to get it in college.
19:23
They're going to run into one, if not several dozens of Marxist professors
19:28
that are going to be giving them this ideology, giving them this worldview,
19:32
this utopian worldview where the proletariat is being, you know,
19:37
stomped out by the bourgeoisie.
19:38
And the only way to rip this out is to rip it out systemically.
19:42
So this is where we get postmodernism.
19:45
This is where we get communism.
19:47
This is where we get, you know, first, second-wave feminism.
19:49
This is where we get all these isms that are really doing a,
19:52
have an incredibly deleterious effect on our society as it comes right now.
19:56
So Karl Marx, he's just super excited.
19:58
He's just spinning around in circles in his grave.
20:00
The next important thing to point out about this is the point is not that
20:05
masculinity is under attack.
20:07
Because that's what some people think the point is.
20:08
That's not actually the point.
20:09
It's actually that we are getting so used to masculinity being under attack.
20:14
Like I remember the first few times people, you know, accused me or accused any of my friends
20:21
of the things that we did as toxic masculinity and it being like, oh, what?
20:26
What do you mean?
20:26
Like, let's fight about it.
20:28
Let's figure this out.
20:29
But it's just kind of old hat now.
20:31
Like everything is toxic masculinity, right?
20:34
Anything that you don't like is toxic masculinity.
20:38
It's a patriarchy, right?
20:39
I just honestly don't think that this controversy has anything really
20:43
to do with what we culturally consider as masculine or feminine.
20:47
I think it has to do with manliness in general.
20:50
Because one of the interesting things that people posted in response to Candace Owens
20:54
is they posted her, you know, they responded to her tweet with
20:57
her in pictures where she was wearing a suit, like a business suit.
21:01
And they're like, oh, yeah, well, you're wearing a men's suit, even though it's clearly a woman's
21:05
suit.
21:06
But they're like, oh, look at this.
21:08
And then they also posted pictures of other music stars that have, you know, cross dress before.
21:12
But then other people were posting like, well, remember back in the day, whenever
21:16
Scots were killed, even when they were at war, and you remember way back in the day when, you know,
21:20
in 16th century England, all the men wore frilly dresses and things like that.
21:24
But, but that's not the point.
21:26
Because in all those different circumstances that I just described, you know, old-timey
21:31
Scotland or England or France or any of those types of situations, there were always differences
21:35
between what the men and women wore.
21:37
And it was easily definable that the men wore stuff that kind of looked like this and the
21:42
women wore stuff that kind of looked like that.
21:43
There was no confusion as to what each gender would wear, okay?
21:47
And then you got these people that are like, well, in certain cultures, even in modern
21:51
day, you got these people that, you know, are supposed to be feminine, but they're actually
21:56
masculine and it's actually different than what people are showing in America.
21:59
But no, that's not the point.
22:01
The point isn't cultural norms about masculinity or femininity.
22:05
Because at a certain point, masculinity and femininity is biological.
22:11
It's just biology at one point.
22:13
You know, yes, there are men that are more masculine than other men.
22:17
There are women that are more feminine than other men or other women.
22:20
But that's not really the point.
22:21
The thing that's under attack is masculinity in general.
22:25
And I think this relates to the last point, which is if you are planning to tear down the system
22:31
to where the government is in control of everything, you can't have a whole lot of strong men around.
22:39
You need a bunch of pussies.
22:41
You need a bunch of pushovers.
22:42
You need a bunch of feminized men.
22:45
You need a bunch of men that have been convinced that their aggression and their competitiveness
22:49
and their testosterone is a bad thing, a bad thing.
22:52
You need school teachers that get these little boys that have all this energy to just sit quietly
23:00
in rows as they talk at them for eight hours a day.
23:03
And they get one little reprieve when they go to lunch and when they go out to recess.
23:07
That's what you need.
23:09
You need these robotic dad bod fat dudes covered in Cheeto dust with no
23:15
aspects of their personality.
23:19
That would lead you to believe that they have any fight in them whatsoever.
23:22
They have no ability to defend themselves or the people around.
23:27
That's what you need.
23:28
You need a bunch of beta males.
23:30
And now you actually have men that will look at this vogue article or things similar to it
23:37
and think, oh, well, you know, maybe this isn't that big of a deal.
23:40
Maybe a man can wear dresses and wear makeup and maybe it's not that big of a deal.
23:44
When at the end of the day, he is suiciding his own masculinity.
23:50
This isn't about cultural norms.
23:52
It's just not.
23:53
It goes way, way deeper than that.
23:55
And here's the reality.
23:57
When we're talking about this, guys, this overall cultural decrease in masculinity.
24:01
The most important thing for us to maybe remember or think about in all of this
24:06
is that the decrease in masculinity will hurt women and children more than it'll actually hurt men.
24:12
Because as we've seen, if you've read any history book that had violence in it,
24:18
that when there's no society undergirding men in general,
24:22
that the biological underpinnings and foundations for men, that competitiveness,
24:29
that testosterone, the violence, all of those things, when it goes unchecked by society or unchecked
24:34
by some sort of Judeo-Christian worldview or something like that, things go really, really poorly
24:38
for a lot of people, but especially for people that are weak.
24:42
And yes, I'm talking about in general women and in general children, people that are physically
24:49
weaker and less dominant than most males.
24:51
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
24:52
But it even goes deeper than just the basic, okay, can a man beat up a woman and beat up a child?
24:58
It goes deeper than that.
24:59
Let's talk about fatherlessness.
25:01
You know, this is an epidemic of all cultures, of all races, right?
25:05
I mean, if we look at like kind of pre-1960s America, I think there were 3% of white children
25:11
who grew up in a house without dad.
25:14
Now it's like 30%.
25:15
You know, now we have blacks, up to 70% of black children are living in a house without dad,
25:21
50% of Hispanic children.
25:23
This is across cultures, guys.
25:24
We see this fatherlessness everywhere because one of the things that we see
25:31
is that when a man is being a man, he's responsible.
25:34
And when he's responsible, he takes care of his kids, regardless of if he likes the mom or not,
25:38
regardless of if they've got the suburban white picket fence existence that we're supposed to
25:44
all be shooting for, the men are going to take care of their own.
25:47
They're going to do what it takes to take care of the household, even if they're not there,
25:52
even if they've chosen to not be a part of that life.
25:56
They're going to be there to do something, to increase the bounty for their children.
26:01
So when you see this tremendous decrease in masculinity, that has a lot of impacts on society.
26:08
And, you know, we've talked about this before and that's not what this podcast is about,
26:12
but in the United States, there's been an incentivization for a lot of these men to not be there.
26:17
They're incentivizing women to be single mothers.
26:20
To where, you know, dad's not dad, but US government is daddy.
26:26
So with these people that are rooting for the destruction of toxic masculinity,
26:32
when you destroy toxic masculinity, because there certainly is that you're also destroying
26:35
masculinity in general. And we need that. Again, hard times make strong men, strong men,
26:41
make good times, good times, make weak men, weak men, make hard times.
26:45
That's where we're at right now. We're towards the end of that spectrum.
26:48
We've got a lot of weak men that are about to create some really hard times for us.
26:52
And a lot of you dudes out there, you're not fully prepared.
26:56
You're not prepared for what that has has in store for you. You're just not.
26:59
Another couple of points here, the demasculinization of men doesn't start when they're adults. It starts
27:07
when they're children. So I've already talked about this in terms of schooling. You know,
27:11
let's just keep the kids, especially the boys is kind of tamp them down. You know, let's,
27:15
you know, school, most K through 12 school, most public education is built for girls and boys that
27:20
behave. It's not built for highly rambunctious boys. They don't learn well. That's why a lot of
27:25
boys fall behind early and girls excel early. There's a lot to discuss around that, but we'll
27:30
discuss those at a later date because, you know, frankly, as my son gets closer to school age,
27:34
there's going to be a lot of fights I might have with a lot of administrators that are probably
27:38
going to go nowhere. But, you know, those are fights that I can have a little bit later.
27:41
But the other thing that we have to think about is guys, you may not be on Twitter.
27:45
Okay. You may not have clicked on the link in red through this article, but your teenage son might
27:50
have. Maybe he's a fan of Harry Styles, maybe the girl he likes likes Harry Styles. And he saw
27:56
Harry Styles was trending and he kind of clicked on the story. And that's the message that he's
28:01
getting from society is that this is what a man does. A man isn't bound by silly things like gender
28:08
stereotypes. A man's not going to avoid an entire section of the store because it says
28:14
women across the top. You know, a real artist is not going to sully themselves by only wearing the
28:23
clothes that are deemed by society as masculine. So the thing I would ask you guys that have sons
28:31
or have boys in your life that you have influence over is who's communicating to them. What men
28:36
should do? Because a lot of boys are just going to watch. I was just telling somebody on the phone
28:41
today that, you know, my dad never told me to give a good handshake. You know, my dad never
28:46
told me, Hey, hold the door for a lady. I just saw him do it over and over and over again. So I just
28:54
got it. It's like, Oh, that's what men do. Like, I remember this story, like, I remember the story
28:59
until the day that I die, our family's eating at Golden Corral, right, which is for those of you
29:04
that are, you know, well adjusted people or don't live in this country, it is a buffet that has
29:09
everything on it. And they ring a bell when the the hot buns come out of the oven. And then you see
29:14
just droves of fat people waddling over there to get these buttery hot buns. Okay, so it's that
29:19
place, but I love it at the same time. So we're sitting there as kids. I'm probably eight years old,
29:24
maybe nine years old, and we're sitting there eating dinner. And there's like two or three steps to
29:28
kind of go from, you know, the buffet area up to the main area where all the seating is, right?
29:32
And this woman trips or her knee gives out or something. And she just wha splats on the ground,
29:38
right? And you know, her food goes everywhere. And guys, I just got to tell you, my dad was out
29:44
of his chair before her mashed potatoes hit the ground. And he was running over there and he was
29:49
helping her up and he was getting her cleaned up and he was helping the bus boy get everything
29:52
taken care of. He just, boom, didn't even think about it. Just responded. And so for me, I learned
29:58
a lot about what a man is to be not because my dad conversated with me just because of the things
30:03
that he showed me. But I say that and I use that example to say this that some of the things that
30:08
the boys and men in your life need to learn, they need to learn from your mouth. They need to learn
30:12
from you actually telling them and conversating with them. I think it was, if I remember correctly,
30:18
it was Stephen Mansfield. I think he was on this. I think it was him that said this in his interview
30:22
that we did on a podcast earlier on this summer, where he was talking about the things that he
30:26
learned from his dad. He learned by watching. He didn't learn a whole lot by, you know, listening
30:29
and conversating. But some of you guys need to have some conversations. Maybe this is a teaching
30:34
moment for you. Get only offensive here. Sit down your little eight year old son and say,
30:39
Hey, do you know what Harry Styles is? Or do you know who this band is or whatever? Hey, I just want
30:42
to show you, you know, this, this shoot that he did. I'll show you one of the stuff that he's,
30:47
that he's wearing. You know, what do you think about this? And just kind of see what he says,
30:50
because you might get an insight into what's being taught to him at the public school that he goes
30:54
to or something like that. But it kind of gives you fodder for a good conversation about what a man
30:58
is and what a man isn't. Because some people are looking at this like, what's the big deal? That's
31:03
an artist wearing a dress. But that's not what Vogue is trying to communicate. That's not what
31:08
GQ is trying to communicate with for all. The communication is clear. Masculinity is bad
31:14
in all forms. And so the only way for us to have masculinity now is if we redefine it
31:20
and expand it to where basically it's not masculinity and femininity separate. It's them together.
31:27
Okay. And the last thing that I want to kind of go over here is like, we just need to be clear.
31:32
Okay. The demasculimization of men is very much so a Western phenomenon. It's a Western trend,
31:42
but it is not a worldwide trend. So if we even go back to the response that Candice Owens had,
31:49
she says, you know, here, let me just go back and actually read it so that I don't misquote it,
31:53
because I thought I thought that it was absolutely excellent. She said this, there is no society
31:57
that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the West, the steady feminization
32:03
of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It's
32:07
an outright attack bring back manly men. So the thing that's so interesting is in the Western world,
32:13
which again has been forged by the sacrifices of lots and lots of very masculine, traditionally
32:18
masculine men is now being attacked from the inside by its own people. Okay. Because for most of
32:27
us in the West, we don't have an enemy that we're fighting right now. You know, a lot's been made
32:31
post election with, you know, the unity calls by Joe Biden and all that. And a lot of people are
32:35
like, man, can we go back to, you know, September 12th of 2001, when everybody was an American,
32:41
you know, black, white, Republican, Democrat, gay, straight, like, we were all just Americans,
32:46
and you know, we had this common in an enemy, right? You know, al-Qaeda or Taliban or, you know,
32:51
just fundamentalist Islam, like we had something that we were fighting against, but we're just not
32:56
there anymore. We're so disjointed from our military and the fights going on overseas and we
33:01
barely have an opinion on a lot of those issues. But where we're at now is as a Western society,
33:06
is there's a decay, there's a moral decay, there's a foundational decay for some of the things that,
33:13
you know, we were founded on, but this is not a trend everywhere. They're not demasculating the
33:21
men in China. They're not demasculating the men in India. They're really not demasculating the men
33:28
anywhere other than the West. And the thing about it is if you look at the writings of people like
33:36
Karl Marx, this is exactly what they want to do. But you might also say, well, isn't, you know,
33:42
China, a communist country and isn't Karl Marx an influencer of communism? Didn't he write the book
33:46
on it? Why aren't they doing that? Because the Chinese government is actually communist in that
33:52
they don't actually want to be the ones to tear down the system. They want to run this system.
33:55
And they can't run the system with a bunch of, they can't fight a war against the strength
34:03
of Western countries. If it ever comes to that, which a bunch of weeny guys running around,
34:08
they can't do that. And so the thing for us to be looking at is, again, to a certain degree,
34:14
we need to be worried about the United States. We need to be worried about the community that
34:17
we live in, the state that we live in. But we also have to be worried about the world to a degree,
34:22
not worried about it in the sense of, you know, it's going to keep us up at night because guys,
34:26
we know the score, God wins, you know, there's going to be new heavens and new earth, like we're
34:30
going to be a part of that. You know, so there's not really a whole lot to worry about, but
34:34
societally, as we raise our children as we develop as men ourselves, we have to be looking at these
34:39
trends. And we're not getting the same things in the same areas across across the world, we're just
34:45
not. So it's something to really think about. And so to kind of put a bow on this for everybody,
34:50
this is a bigger deal than ever than it would seem at first blush, no pun intended. This, this is
34:56
a bigger thing. So to most people, it's not going to be a big deal. Right, even people that agree
35:01
with me in general are be like, is this really the thing that was this really we're talking about
35:04
for 30 minutes? And the reason is is yes. And it's, I'm all the more sensitive to it now because I
35:10
have my son. And I'm just thinking about like, again, the idea 10 years ago, that a kindergarten
35:16
teacher might be asking your kid what gender they feel like that day seemed crazy. Like that,
35:22
that was closer to science fiction than it was to actual fact, to actual real life. But we're living
35:27
in that world now where gender confusion is the norm, where some dummy that barely made it through
35:35
to get their teaching degree or whatever certificate they needed to teach your kid how to do basic
35:41
arithmetic. They're also going to be giving them worldview lessons. And there's a lot of school
35:46
districts where the sexual education and the other educational stuff, they're not even going to give
35:50
the parents the opportunity to opt out. They're just going to teach it and assume that you're not
35:55
going to create a fuss. So guys, there are some hills that are that I'm willing to die on. And I'm,
36:01
I feel like I'm preparing myself and my soul for four and a half years from now, when my son
36:05
enters into whatever school system we're going to end up, you know, letting them go to. And I'm
36:09
ready for these cultural fights, because they mean something. Because I will do everything in my
36:15
power to make sure that James Kyle Thompson is a manly masculine man, that he's a well-balanced,
36:23
well-developed, tender warrior. And the only way that we can do that is to be on the front lines,
36:29
is to understand the trends, because the trends that we're seeing, they point to the enemy that
36:34
we're fighting. And the enemy that we're fighting is only getting stronger and only getting louder,
36:39
and only getting more common and more accepted in modern society. You're going to maybe have to be
36:45
the dad that stands up at a PTA meeting at some point and says, Oh, hey, by the way, we shouldn't
36:49
be letting our kids read books like this. Hey, our teachers shouldn't be doing curriculum on
36:54
transgenderism, because they're not explaining it in the way that explains what it is, which is a
36:59
mental disorder that someone has gender dysphoria. Like, I don't think these are things that we should
37:03
be implanting in the brains of a nine year old. So guys, we got to be ready for that fight,
37:09
and I'm going to do everything I can to prepare my family and also to prepare you for the same
37:14
fight. All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
37:18
As you know, by now we are men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
37:22
Specifically, we do that by helping provide content like this podcast and helps you forward
37:26
spiritual, mental and physical toughness. So for today, I have the original tweet from Candice Owen.
37:30
So you can check that out there. I've got the Vogue article. I would absolutely encourage
37:34
you to click on that read through it to see if I'm absolutely off my rocker. And then I was just
37:38
reminded of this great video by Ali best Stucky called make men masculine again. It was a video
37:43
that she recorded for Prager, you I think back in 2019. This girl is is amazing. Her, she has
37:49
spot on in this little five minute video. It's definitely a good listen for you and a good watch
37:53
for your kids as well. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. I really
37:57
do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcast, iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts
38:01
or Stitcher and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media. Guys, if we deserve
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a five star review, please leave us five stars in a few sentences letting us know why you like
38:09
the content. Also, I'm booking speaking engagements for the entirety of 2021 at this point. So if
38:14
you want me to come speak on your podcast at your men's event at your team, just hit me up info at
38:19
undaunted.life. That's I N F O at undaunted.life. The website is www dot undaunted.life. You can
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follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life or Facebook.com backslash undaunted life.
38:29
Check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search undaunted life under plans.
38:33
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire
38:37
music library for our content. The entire auto track on this podcast is our song defender,
38:41
which is off their latest record entitled guardians. The links are in the description.
38:45
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience. Keep forging spiritual,
38:52
mental and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
39:07
Need a defender. Open your eyes. Be more peace.