Latest / Honey Badger Radio / James L. Nuzzo, PHD on UN Women and what's behind the curtain | Fireside Chat 263

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James L. Nuzzo, PHD on UN Women and what's behind the curtain | Fireside Chat 263 · Honey Badger Radio

0:01
Speaker 1: All right, hello everybody, and welcome to Honey Badger Radio.
0:05
Speaker 1: My name is Brian and this is the Fireside Chat
0:08
Speaker 1: and today I am joined by James L. Neuso. I
0:12
Speaker 1: hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. PhD On. You're basically an
0:17
Speaker 1: academic researcher. You you have a great blog on substack.
0:22
Speaker 1: I've been kind of binge listening to your uh, you know,
0:26
Speaker 1: your readings and and looking at your articles. So welcome
0:30
Speaker 1: to the show.
0:30
Speaker 2: James, Thanks for having me appreciate it.
0:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, should I should I call you doctor.
0:36
Speaker 2: James or it does not matter man, whatever you want.
0:39
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, I'm just not sure what the you know.
0:41
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm a little informal in my approach.
0:44
Speaker 2: So but yeah, it's all good.
0:47
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, good. So, yeah, you have a really interesting
0:51
Speaker 1: substack which I linked to people in the description so
0:54
Speaker 1: they can go check it out, where you have like
0:57
Speaker 1: a bit of a you know, mixture between a blog
1:00
Speaker 1: or like some written essays and podcasts and several interviews
1:05
Speaker 1: and discussions and you have your you've also written a
1:09
Speaker 1: lot of papers as well. So first of all, it's
1:13
Speaker 1: a bit of an interesting, like say, mix of topics.
1:17
Speaker 1: You don't you talk about men, but you also specifically
1:20
Speaker 1: talk about men's health and sort of like this, you know,
1:24
Speaker 1: like the physical health conversation, as well as romantic realism
1:29
Speaker 1: in movies. So can you tell us a little bit
1:32
Speaker 1: about like what your blog or what your substack is about.
1:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, so mainly so my background is in exercise physiology,
1:41
Speaker 3: your exercise science, so I do cover stuff within that space.
1:46
Speaker 3: But what's happened over the years is I've become more
1:49
Speaker 3: and more interested in men's health and sex and gender issues,
1:52
Speaker 3: in part because a lot of that social political discussion
1:57
Speaker 3: came into the health and medical sciences, and so I
2:02
Speaker 3: started to push back against some of that stuff. So
2:05
Speaker 3: my blog is an opportunity to publish things that would
2:09
Speaker 3: be difficult for me to get into academic journals because
2:13
Speaker 3: they don't fit the academic narrative. So I end up
2:16
Speaker 3: covering exercise science, but I also cover a lot of
2:20
Speaker 3: kind of gender bias issues against men, So the sort
2:24
Speaker 3: of thing you wouldn't hear in an academic journal.
2:26
Speaker 2: The movie stuff. I haven't quite got onto that yet.
2:29
Speaker 3: I've posted a little bit about that, but I will
2:31
Speaker 3: tie that in more and more as time goes on.
2:35
Speaker 3: So a lot of the graphs that I create, it's
2:38
Speaker 3: a very evidence based blog, and so you'll see I've
2:42
Speaker 3: got lots of graphs ranging from health outcomes in men
2:46
Speaker 3: and women to I focus a lot on funding, so
2:50
Speaker 3: funding differences for men's and women's health, and then you know,
2:54
Speaker 3: what's the budget for the Office of Research on Women's
2:57
Speaker 3: Health in the United States. Things like that, stuff that
3:00
Speaker 3: people have never put out there for discussion.
3:04
Speaker 2: I try to put that out there.
3:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what's your okay? So were you doing exercise
3:09
Speaker 1: science and like, how does that tie into your interest
3:13
Speaker 1: in men's issues. Was there like a connection, Like I'm
3:16
Speaker 1: wondering how you got on this particular thread.
3:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's a little bit of a story, but
3:22
Speaker 3: there's a very specific pathway. So what happened was after
3:25
Speaker 3: I finished my PhD in physiology or exercise physiology, a
3:30
Speaker 3: consensus statement was published in a major exercise science journal
3:34
Speaker 3: about creating equity and physical activity. And we now are
3:39
Speaker 3: all very familiar with the Big DEI movement, but this
3:41
Speaker 3: was at the start of it, around two thousand and
3:44
Speaker 3: sixteens before really really accelerated in academia, and that came
3:49
Speaker 3: into the exercise science space, and so basically the idea
3:53
Speaker 3: there was moving forward physical activity initiatives should focus on
3:57
Speaker 3: girls and women. It was part of what it was
3:59
Speaker 3: saying when it came to that, you know, sex comparison,
4:03
Speaker 3: and I'd just said, hang on a minute. And there
4:06
Speaker 3: were many arguments I made against why that was very
4:09
Speaker 3: problematic and inappropriate. And then I realized that there was
4:13
Speaker 3: not a lot of good like men's health at the
4:15
Speaker 3: demiology stuff out there in the literature. So I started
4:19
Speaker 3: to write on men's health just broadly speaking. And then
4:23
Speaker 3: we had another case in an exercise science journal where
4:27
Speaker 3: the authors were claiming that exercise students should be taught
4:31
Speaker 3: about gender based violence in their coursework. Now, this was
4:36
Speaker 3: a completely one sided presentation which just was all about
4:40
Speaker 3: women being the victims and men being the perpetrators. And
4:43
Speaker 3: I had been paying enough attention to this literature to
4:46
Speaker 3: know that this is completely rubbish.
4:48
Speaker 2: So I teamed up.
4:49
Speaker 3: With John Berry from the Center of Mail Psychology in
4:53
Speaker 3: the UK and Deborah Pawni, and we wrote a response
4:57
Speaker 3: letter saying this is completely inappropriate. This is not what
4:59
Speaker 3: the data show when it comes to intimate partner violence
5:03
Speaker 3: and stuff. So yeah, What's happened is it started to
5:05
Speaker 3: come into my field, and then I was pushing back,
5:09
Speaker 3: and then I just realized no one was talking about
5:11
Speaker 3: men's health in a serious way.
5:15
Speaker 1: I guess, how could you say that there's a whole
5:17
Speaker 1: like isn't there like a magazine literally called Men's Health,
5:20
Speaker 1: And isn't it like the total Like I mean, they
5:23
Speaker 1: have a magazine. How is that not for men? Like
5:26
Speaker 1: what are you talking about?
5:27
Speaker 2: That's right?
5:28
Speaker 1: You know, so wait, but I will say this though,
5:30
Speaker 1: you said that there isn't a lot of real serious
5:34
Speaker 1: research done for men's health, like from this sort of
5:37
Speaker 1: you know, exercise science perspective. Yet there there do exist
5:42
Speaker 1: a bunch of like you know, like I was bringing
5:45
Speaker 1: up the Men's Health magazine on purpose because it does
5:47
Speaker 1: like somebody could point to that. But you're saying that,
5:51
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of like what we consider the
5:53
Speaker 1: sort of mainstream conversation around men's health, in particular their
5:58
Speaker 1: physical wellbeing, and and you know, this kind of exercise
6:01
Speaker 1: science is not actually like very thorough and at least
6:06
Speaker 1: but not specifically tailored to what men need.
6:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, how there is a lot of research out
6:12
Speaker 3: there on men's health, don't get me wrong, But what
6:14
Speaker 3: I'm saying is that it's not framed as being men's
6:17
Speaker 3: health research. So the big difference here is that the
6:22
Speaker 3: term women's health is so catchy. So if you go
6:25
Speaker 3: into any biomedical research database and you type in the
6:30
Speaker 3: word a phrase women's health, you get all sorts of hits,
6:33
Speaker 3: all sorts of articles, But if you type in the
6:35
Speaker 3: phrase men's health, you don't get as many hits. And
6:40
Speaker 3: the reason is because we haven't kind of conceptualized or
6:43
Speaker 3: abstracted that men's health is a thing, whereas the women's
6:47
Speaker 3: health thing has just taken off and it's led to
6:51
Speaker 3: so many different organizations that have been founded, it's been
6:54
Speaker 3: led to government agencies that represent women's health. And so
6:59
Speaker 3: that's more what I mean. I don't mean to say
7:01
Speaker 3: that there's no research on men.
7:02
Speaker 1: No, of course there is.
7:04
Speaker 3: It's just not framed as being like male specific or
7:08
Speaker 3: male friendly.
7:09
Speaker 1: Right, But I mean there are things that you could
7:12
Speaker 1: say should be open to study, and I know that
7:14
Speaker 1: they are doing this work. So I'm not saying it's
7:16
Speaker 1: not happening, but that that is unique to men. They're
7:20
Speaker 1: you know, like when nobody's talking about things like you know,
7:23
Speaker 1: endocin disruptors in the food and in our water, and
7:29
Speaker 1: testosterone and why it's important like we treat I mean,
7:33
Speaker 1: at least I don't know, because I'm not in the
7:34
Speaker 1: field like you are. But I know that in like
7:37
Speaker 1: the sort of popular culture testosterone is seen is like
7:40
Speaker 1: a bad thing if there's too much of it, right,
7:42
Speaker 1: But it's like and I think that testosterone levels in
7:45
Speaker 1: general have dropped off a cliff in a while, and
7:49
Speaker 1: I think those are important things as well. As you know,
7:51
Speaker 1: there are certain like I don't know, if you're looking
7:53
Speaker 1: at the exercise science, maybe there are certain approaches that are,
7:58
Speaker 1: if not specifically tailor to men's needs, that men will
8:02
Speaker 1: get more out of, you know, like certain routines or practices, right, yep. Yeah.
8:09
Speaker 3: And I think it's most problematic in the field of psychology,
8:12
Speaker 3: and that's where that is really missing in terms of
8:16
Speaker 3: do we need to basically change the way that psychotherapy
8:20
Speaker 3: is delivered because men and women really aren't the same
8:24
Speaker 3: on average, and this whole setup has really been designed
8:27
Speaker 3: to help female patients. So there is a little bit
8:31
Speaker 3: of recognition due to people like you know, John Berry
8:36
Speaker 3: in the UK, that maybe we need to reconsider that
8:40
Speaker 3: type of thing. But the problem right now is that
8:43
Speaker 3: the feminists and sort of the feminist allies have such
8:48
Speaker 3: control over like the funding like of research, and it's
8:54
Speaker 3: just not male friendly. And as I've pointed out numerous
8:57
Speaker 3: times on my sub stack, we have all of these
9:01
Speaker 3: government grants in these offices. They're all when when research
9:07
Speaker 3: is done as in a sex specific way, it's for
9:10
Speaker 3: women otherwise not not for men.
9:15
Speaker 1: Yes, and I was gonna we're gonna get into that.
9:17
Speaker 1: You did a lot of digging into UN women and
9:21
Speaker 1: they are particularly vocal, you know, organization, and so like,
9:26
Speaker 1: can you give us like maybe the short version of like,
9:30
Speaker 1: first of all, why did you decide to look into
9:31
Speaker 1: this and what kinds of things did you find?
9:35
Speaker 3: Okay, So, a couple of years back, I published a
9:39
Speaker 3: paper which it's in an obscure journal, but it was
9:42
Speaker 3: the only journal I could get it into, which was
9:45
Speaker 3: a demonstration of the bias against men that exists within
9:49
Speaker 3: the UN and the UN's health branch.
9:52
Speaker 2: Which is the WHO.
9:54
Speaker 3: So what I did was I went through like their websites,
9:58
Speaker 3: I went through their social media prote files, and I
10:00
Speaker 3: just tallied up things like the number of time the
10:04
Speaker 3: word women is mentioned in all of their files versus
10:07
Speaker 3: the number of times the word men is mentioned, and
10:09
Speaker 3: you just see these big, big differences. So that was
10:12
Speaker 3: a few years back, and they've continued down the same path.
10:17
Speaker 3: Recently they've become I think, even much more vocal attacking
10:20
Speaker 3: the manisphere.
10:21
Speaker 2: Un Women has.
10:22
Speaker 3: And so I decided to because this was at the
10:26
Speaker 3: time when Doge was coming along in the US and.
10:30
Speaker 1: Investigating spending, right, Yeah.
10:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I decided that I was going to look
10:36
Speaker 3: into un women and see, Okay, where is all their
10:39
Speaker 3: money coming from?
10:40
Speaker 2: How much do they get?
10:42
Speaker 3: And now, thankfully that they do make all of that
10:46
Speaker 3: information publicly available, as they should because they are primarily
10:51
Speaker 3: supported by taxpayers of member states. Yeah, so I just
10:56
Speaker 3: did a full on investigation into what are their funding sources,
11:01
Speaker 3: how much does each country give, how much do other
11:05
Speaker 3: non for profit groups like the Gates Foundation give, and yeah,
11:09
Speaker 3: so I just laid out that story because they are
11:12
Speaker 3: very anti mail. They are an explicitly feminist organization and
11:16
Speaker 3: they have a lot of money.
11:18
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so let's see what like what you
11:20
Speaker 1: found with the un women thing I see on your
11:23
Speaker 1: ex page. I tried to set up a thing so
11:26
Speaker 1: I can share, but I'm not able to do that
11:28
Speaker 1: right now, so I'm just gonna do it word of mouth.
11:31
Speaker 1: But it looks like you're looking at basically tax payer
11:35
Speaker 1: monies from different governments of different countries and how much
11:41
Speaker 1: went to un women. Now you describe it as confiscated
11:44
Speaker 1: because it is because you're an objectivist, Is that right,
11:47
Speaker 1: like you're a Randian? Yes? Correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
11:52
Speaker 1: you said for France, for example, between one and ten
11:56
Speaker 1: million dollars that would be like in US currency, but
11:59
Speaker 1: France confiscated from their wallets and sent to you with
12:03
Speaker 1: women like every year since twenty eleven, You and Women
12:06
Speaker 1: has received nearly fifty million dollars from taxpayers in France alone. Okay,
12:11
Speaker 1: and in South Korea this is actually interesting. In South
12:15
Speaker 1: Korea it's between five and twelve million dollars. And the
12:18
Speaker 1: reason why I think it's and it was all it
12:20
Speaker 1: all started around the same time. It looks like, is
12:22
Speaker 1: that right. You've got South Korea, You've got Japan here, Italy, Germany, Ireland. Rather,
12:28
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I get my flags confused. And what's interesting
12:31
Speaker 1: about South Korea is that there is like a well
12:33
Speaker 1: it is said by the mainstream that South Korea's got
12:36
Speaker 1: this massive like anti feminist sentiment among men there, but
12:41
Speaker 1: it's probably because there's an extremely strong feminist movement there too.
12:45
Speaker 1: So it's basically just men pushing back on you know,
12:48
Speaker 1: the sort of mainstream, right is that? So to see
12:51
Speaker 1: that they're spending a lot of money on this, you know,
12:53
Speaker 1: it is interesting because it's like they you know, they
12:55
Speaker 1: have to fight back. I mean again, I said fifty
12:58
Speaker 1: million in France, in Japan it's twenty five million, but
13:02
Speaker 1: in South Korea it's ninety million. So they're really spending
13:06
Speaker 1: a lot of money on that. I think it's to
13:08
Speaker 1: try to quash that descent. Like you mentioned, you know,
13:11
Speaker 1: UN Women is putting out now, they're going after the manosphere.
13:14
Speaker 1: I mean the UN in general is really but yep, yeah, yeah.
13:18
Speaker 3: So with all the graphs that I created, they all
13:22
Speaker 3: started the year twenty and eleven and then show annual
13:26
Speaker 3: funding And the reason for that is because that's when
13:29
Speaker 3: U and Women was started, was in twenty and eleven,
13:33
Speaker 3: and it started from kind of a series of other
13:38
Speaker 3: kind of women related organizations that existed in within the UN,
13:42
Speaker 3: and then they decided to all come together to now
13:45
Speaker 3: be UN women. So that's why those graphs that I
13:49
Speaker 3: created start at twenty and eleven. You mentioned a couple
13:53
Speaker 3: of the different member states that contribute the biggest supporters.
13:59
Speaker 3: Sweden is number one, well, Sweden, and then and then
14:02
Speaker 3: the European Commission as a whole.
14:04
Speaker 2: Actually, but Sweden is up.
14:06
Speaker 1: Nearby Russels like the UN the European Union, I mean
14:09
Speaker 1: the European.
14:10
Speaker 3: UA, yeah, yeah, and then and then then the various
14:13
Speaker 3: European countries then have their own on top of that,
14:16
Speaker 3: So Europeans are dumping a lot into it. Sweden is
14:20
Speaker 3: and I think, at about fifty million dollars a year,
14:24
Speaker 3: and then I think Norway, Finland, all so the Scandinavian
14:28
Speaker 3: countries are really high. And then you have countries like
14:32
Speaker 3: the US, Canada, Australia and.
14:35
Speaker 2: The UK who are at about.
14:38
Speaker 3: Fifteen million up per year. So those are the biggest
14:42
Speaker 3: kind of member state contributors. But there's something about this
14:46
Speaker 3: that's even more deceiving. Those are those are kind of
14:50
Speaker 3: underrepresentations those numbers, and the reason why is if you
14:54
Speaker 3: look at the rest of my post, you'll see that
14:57
Speaker 3: whereas eighty percent of the budget comes from individual member states,
15:02
Speaker 3: or countries. I think it's something like fifteen percent comes
15:06
Speaker 3: from other UN agencies like the UN Peacekeeping Group and
15:11
Speaker 3: all these other groups. I don't know how it all works,
15:13
Speaker 3: but let's just pretend for a moment they have money
15:16
Speaker 3: left over at the end of the year or something,
15:19
Speaker 3: and then they dump it into UN women.
15:21
Speaker 2: Now all that money is coming.
15:22
Speaker 3: From taxpayers as well, it's just coming from a different
15:26
Speaker 3: UN organization.
15:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So it's basically like a new way. Yeah,
15:31
Speaker 1: it's like there's more than just the direct method. There's
15:34
Speaker 1: all these other like other ways of getting all of
15:38
Speaker 1: these It's essentially what would you say, It looks like
15:41
Speaker 1: we're looking at something like five or six billion dollars, right,
15:46
Speaker 1: that is, I'm looking at your graph. Yeah, proportional contributions.
15:50
Speaker 1: You have a graph here, and the Member states make
15:53
Speaker 1: up eighty percent of that and it's four point two billion.
15:57
Speaker 1: Then you have national committees do like one percent, which
16:00
Speaker 1: is still fifty two million dollars. Private and NGOs, which
16:04
Speaker 1: I put in quotes because a lot of NGOs are
16:06
Speaker 1: not you know, NGOs, non government organizations, but a lot
16:09
Speaker 1: of NGOs are actually just goos. Four percent two hundred
16:12
Speaker 1: and twenty five million, and then other UN agencies that
16:15
Speaker 1: are essentially parallel to UN women in some way make
16:19
Speaker 1: up the remaining fifteen percent, which is about seven hundred
16:22
Speaker 1: and eighty three million dollars. So the and and uh
16:29
Speaker 1: that is Yeah, Sweden is number one and they're way
16:32
Speaker 1: up there. And then you have the European Commission, Norway, Finland, UK, Switzerland, Australia, Japan,
16:38
Speaker 1: the US down at the bottomy of China. That's kind
16:41
Speaker 1: of funny, but China's still giving, like they're still giving
16:44
Speaker 1: some So like, what what did you think about when
16:48
Speaker 1: you made these discoveries?
16:51
Speaker 3: Well, I thought about, we need to stop sending this
16:54
Speaker 3: money to you and women. It's a lot of money.
16:56
Speaker 3: I wanted to make people aware of what they're individual.
17:01
Speaker 2: Country was doing.
17:02
Speaker 3: Basically in the article, I come to the conclusion, Look,
17:05
Speaker 3: I'm not a big fan of taxpayer money being used
17:07
Speaker 3: for lots of different things, particularly a feminist organization. But
17:12
Speaker 3: if we're going to be sending this money to the UN,
17:15
Speaker 3: can we then at least just split it and create
17:18
Speaker 3: a UN men organization if we're going to do that,
17:21
Speaker 3: But that just goes to show you how bad it
17:23
Speaker 3: all is that we can't even have a un men organization.
17:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I honestly don't think that they're even trying to
17:30
Speaker 1: help women with this. I think this is just a
17:32
Speaker 1: way to get money redirected to the in the hands
17:35
Speaker 1: of people who don't want to work for it, honestly,
17:36
Speaker 1: because you mentioned the psychology field or the mental health field,
17:41
Speaker 1: and how there is more like talking about women's health
17:44
Speaker 1: and a lot of focus on it. But are women
17:47
Speaker 1: actually better off? I understand that that you know, twenty
17:49
Speaker 1: five percent of them are on SSRIs, so they're not
17:52
Speaker 1: even being served by all of the extra attention and
17:56
Speaker 1: money that we're giving them. So men are getting nothing
17:58
Speaker 1: and women are getting maybe you know, they're just getting
18:01
Speaker 1: like a kind of a I don't know, like a
18:03
Speaker 1: band aid on another issue, right, And it's filling the
18:07
Speaker 1: pockets of these people in a taxpayer money too.
18:10
Speaker 3: So yeah, And I have not even investigated where this
18:14
Speaker 3: money goes. I'm not sure that should be publicly available
18:17
Speaker 3: from you and women, but I haven't looked into it.
18:19
Speaker 3: But I would be really interested to see where all
18:22
Speaker 3: this money goes because it's not clear and I can't
18:27
Speaker 3: imagine it's doing much that's very useful or helpful.
18:32
Speaker 1: To women. Yeah, well no, I don't think it is.
18:35
Speaker 1: I think it's just making like, you know, evil people rich.
18:39
Speaker 1: You've also so you have like a thing on your page,
18:41
Speaker 1: and again I suggest you guys check out his substack,
18:44
Speaker 1: the Nuzzle letter. You also have one here. This is all.
18:48
Speaker 1: This is all not shocking to me because we've talked
18:51
Speaker 1: about this on the show a lot. But you've also
18:53
Speaker 1: looked into NIH funding of men and women's health research,
18:57
Speaker 1: so that would be the National Institution of Health, right,
19:01
Speaker 1: and it looks like, well, what did you find with
19:04
Speaker 1: that when you looked into that.
19:07
Speaker 3: So just kind of recalling off the top of my head,
19:09
Speaker 3: you might have it in front of you. When the
19:11
Speaker 3: NIH gives out, the vast majority of NIH funding does
19:15
Speaker 3: not go towards.
19:16
Speaker 2: Sex specific research.
19:18
Speaker 3: About eight I think it's eighty percent of the budget
19:20
Speaker 3: goes to just research that's not designated as sex specific. However,
19:27
Speaker 3: when it does go to sex specific research, it primarily
19:30
Speaker 3: goes to women's health research. And I think it's maybe
19:33
Speaker 3: somewhere like fifteen percent of the budget goes toward women's
19:39
Speaker 3: health and then about five percent goes toward men's health.
19:43
Speaker 3: And that's been pretty consistent throughout the history from which
19:47
Speaker 3: we have that data or I have it, which is
19:50
Speaker 3: kind of the late nineteen eighties, and I can tell
19:53
Speaker 3: you that it's very similar In Australia. I have a
19:56
Speaker 3: separate post on the NH and MRC, so that's.
20:00
Speaker 1: Kind of the I got that right here, NHMRC, it
20:04
Speaker 1: looks the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry.
20:08
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, that's Australia's funding body
20:11
Speaker 3: for health research, government body, and the vast majority of
20:16
Speaker 3: that sex specific funding goes to women's health, as you'll
20:18
Speaker 3: be able to see that in that ground.
20:21
Speaker 1: Even more than maternal health, women's health in some places.
20:26
Speaker 1: In some examples it was almost twice or twice as
20:29
Speaker 1: much for women and men get like a sliver of
20:32
Speaker 1: that basically.
20:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's happening everywhere. I do have a separate
20:37
Speaker 3: post on Canada. The Canadian data is a little bit
20:40
Speaker 3: harder to find, and I had to write it up
20:43
Speaker 3: a little bit differently, but it's basically the same story,
20:47
Speaker 3: especially over the past i don't know, seven years or so,
20:52
Speaker 3: where they've just gone crazy with all these women's health
20:56
Speaker 3: initiatives in the spending.
20:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely, And we also see you have some
21:01
Speaker 1: data here on suicides among the Australian Defense Force and
21:06
Speaker 1: it's overwhelmed. Well, that's one place where men are winning.
21:08
Speaker 1: Apparently they're doing way better on that one than the
21:12
Speaker 1: women are in that they're suiciding more so. It's tongue
21:15
Speaker 1: in cheek. So when you found all this stuff, did
21:17
Speaker 1: you try You said that there was like, you know,
21:20
Speaker 1: this was lacking right when you first got involved, and
21:23
Speaker 1: you apparently had a difficult time getting your paper put in.
21:25
Speaker 1: Were did you get any resistance or pushback when you
21:29
Speaker 1: were trying to bring light to these things? Yeah, well I.
21:33
Speaker 3: Can tell you that trying to publish on men's health
21:36
Speaker 3: with a coming at it from a standpoint of kind
21:39
Speaker 3: of sticking up for men politically, that gets you into
21:42
Speaker 3: a lot of trouble in the peer review process. So
21:45
Speaker 3: people are just simply unwilling to empathize with men and
21:49
Speaker 3: the possibility of male disadvantage. And even at my sub stack,
21:54
Speaker 3: I write about my experiences trying to publish certain material
21:59
Speaker 3: and the pushback that I get when I try.
22:02
Speaker 2: To publish that material.
22:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I could just summarize it, it's just this
22:06
Speaker 3: inability to understand that male men are not as advantaged
22:12
Speaker 3: or as powerful as feminists say, and this just creates
22:17
Speaker 3: this huge roadblock to discussion in academic journals, which is
22:20
Speaker 3: why I now go to substack to publish this type
22:24
Speaker 3: of stuff.
22:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well it's a good thing that substack exists.
22:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's like a tremendous thing, right,
22:30
Speaker 1: because now people can find this kind of stuff that
22:34
Speaker 1: essentially the gatekeepers of you know what I can see
22:37
Speaker 1: knowledge are there are sort of you know, you can
22:40
Speaker 1: get around them. Now you can find this stuff. You'll
22:44
Speaker 1: wrote another piece here that I thought was very interesting.
22:47
Speaker 1: You sent it to me. Actually is man keeping? I
22:49
Speaker 1: never heard this one before. What so you wrote a
22:52
Speaker 1: substack article called mankeeping America's latest attack on men. For
22:57
Speaker 1: the people that are watching, what is man keeping? Can
23:00
Speaker 1: you help people understand this new made up word?
23:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, so man keeping.
23:05
Speaker 3: It's another one of academia's attack on men. And people
23:09
Speaker 3: might be familiar with terms like man'splaining and mannals and mantals.
23:16
Speaker 3: Think of the word panel as in panel discussion. Yeah yeah,
23:20
Speaker 3: it's this kind of critique that ah at conferences, the
23:24
Speaker 3: panels are always made up of men and women's voices,
23:26
Speaker 3: don't get heard and all that. So we have a
23:30
Speaker 3: list of these terms that are used to kind of,
23:33
Speaker 3: I don't know, demonize men in some way. So this
23:36
Speaker 3: one was recently put forward in an academic journal that's
23:39
Speaker 3: published by the APA to the American Psychological Association, which
23:44
Speaker 3: makes it all the worse. And it's a journal called
23:47
Speaker 3: what is it called the Psychology of Men in Masculinitiesies. Yeah, yeah,
23:53
Speaker 3: it's it's a feminist journal. It has nothing really to
23:56
Speaker 3: do with men, and they put forward this idea of
23:59
Speaker 3: men and keeping, which.
24:00
Speaker 2: If I could summarize, goes like this.
24:03
Speaker 3: They start off the article saying that men are struggling
24:06
Speaker 3: in their social relationships right now, more lonely, and so
24:11
Speaker 3: you might want to stop right there and say, okay, well,
24:13
Speaker 3: if that's true, yeah, let's pay some attention to it
24:16
Speaker 3: and see what's going on with men. Let's survey them,
24:18
Speaker 3: how are they feeling? No, no, no, that's not where
24:20
Speaker 3: they go with it. They say that this then creates
24:24
Speaker 3: additional unpaid labor for women, because women have to serve
24:29
Speaker 3: as men's kind of emotional terror and their social facilitator
24:34
Speaker 3: throughout life. And this is more unpaid labor, and it
24:38
Speaker 3: reinforces the patriarchy and gender inequality. And so that's what
24:44
Speaker 3: man keeping is. And as you'll see, I criticize it
24:48
Speaker 3: from many different angles for sure.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's weird too, because essentially it's it's like,
24:56
Speaker 1: you know, housekeeping, but your housekeeping a man who is
24:58
Speaker 1: emotionally in need of support. And this is funny because
25:03
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that the same people who wrote that
25:07
Speaker 1: would also write about how men have to open up
25:09
Speaker 1: more because of toxic masculinity, right, and I'm sure that
25:13
Speaker 1: you mentioned that in your rebuttal or this article that
25:16
Speaker 1: you wrote about it. It's just it's it's so naked
25:20
Speaker 1: that this is just another way I wonder sometimes, you know,
25:24
Speaker 1: as someone who's also got definitely like an objectivist bent
25:28
Speaker 1: to my worldview, that these are not just things that
25:32
Speaker 1: are made up so that they can continue to get
25:35
Speaker 1: a paycheck. Like they have to constantly create new reasons
25:39
Speaker 1: to exist. You know. It's like any body that is
25:43
Speaker 1: funded by the state can't continue to exist on the
25:46
Speaker 1: basis of providing something that people want. Therefore they pay
25:50
Speaker 1: for it instead because it doesn't work that way. Instead,
25:53
Speaker 1: they have to essentially construct reasons to need to exist,
25:58
Speaker 1: which is why, by the way, feminism is always necessary
26:02
Speaker 1: and women are always in the worst possible time in history,
26:06
Speaker 1: because otherwise they wouldn't need them anymore, right, And that's
26:09
Speaker 1: what this seems like. It's always men when they are
26:12
Speaker 1: not showing their emotions, they're toxically masculine. And when they do,
26:16
Speaker 1: then you know, it's women's labor. That's like, that's there
26:19
Speaker 1: to support them. And of course men can't like you know,
26:22
Speaker 1: find ways to like heal by by hanging out with
26:25
Speaker 1: other men, by forming space with other men, because those
26:27
Speaker 1: have to include women as well, which you know you
26:30
Speaker 1: have also talked about in your papers.
26:33
Speaker 3: That's spot on, that's that's a great summary, and that
26:37
Speaker 3: that pull paper is just full of internal contradictions because
26:41
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, you know, if if men do go
26:47
Speaker 3: and decide to get together with the boys and have
26:49
Speaker 3: some social and leisure time together, well, feminists have been
26:53
Speaker 3: complaining about that for years that the men they're not
26:56
Speaker 3: at home helping with the laundry.
26:58
Speaker 2: And the cooking.
27:00
Speaker 3: So that's an internal contradiction. And then when men do
27:04
Speaker 3: decide to get together, for example, in men's sheds or
27:08
Speaker 3: sporting spaces or something, or the boy scouts will the
27:13
Speaker 3: women demand access to that space? What do you want
27:16
Speaker 3: us to do? Like, we just can't ever seem to
27:19
Speaker 3: get a break, can we.
27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, there's the Well you're not supposed to escape,
27:23
Speaker 1: because again, the purpose of this is to the job
27:26
Speaker 1: of this kind of I guess like these people in
27:29
Speaker 1: academia and in the media and in our government institutions,
27:34
Speaker 1: their primary objective is to justify their own existence, like endlessly,
27:39
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, right, So yeah, I mean that
27:43
Speaker 1: I don't like, I don't know how else to look
27:45
Speaker 1: at it. Oh so we got we got some three
27:51
Speaker 1: thirty three, so we're on really good time. What's the
27:55
Speaker 1: You wrote an article also about anti man bias in
28:01
Speaker 1: contemporary academia, and what's your summation of that piece. I
28:09
Speaker 1: see some graphs here as well. Okay, so I'm saying
28:12
Speaker 1: that women are killing it in academia right now, So
28:15
Speaker 1: but go ahead.
28:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So that's actually a good example of the
28:19
Speaker 3: peer review system being kind of rigged against men's issues.
28:23
Speaker 3: That piece stems from an article that I did publish
28:27
Speaker 3: about exercise science degrees, and it was just about the
28:31
Speaker 3: growth of the field, just quantifying how many degrees are
28:34
Speaker 3: earned each year. And I split the data by sex,
28:38
Speaker 3: and women are now much more likely to earn a
28:41
Speaker 3: degree in exercise science than men. So in my published paper,
28:45
Speaker 3: I took a little bit of time in the discussion
28:47
Speaker 3: to point out that difference, and I said, you know,
28:51
Speaker 3: why is it that there's now like men have clearly
28:54
Speaker 3: plateaued in their interest in this field. No one seems
28:57
Speaker 3: to be really talking about it or cancerned about it.
29:01
Speaker 3: And one of the peer reviewers of my paper was
29:03
Speaker 3: interested to know more about that, and so I use
29:05
Speaker 3: that for a full paragraph to explain things, and they
29:09
Speaker 3: were very open, and that was awesome. I got that published.
29:12
Speaker 3: But then what happened was a group of authors wrote
29:15
Speaker 3: a letter kind of challenging what I was saying. But
29:18
Speaker 3: basically what they were upset about was that I took
29:21
Speaker 3: that paragraph to talk about men's education. That's essentially what
29:24
Speaker 3: it was. Because they were saying, oh, well, what about
29:28
Speaker 3: women in STEM and blah blah blah, And I was like,
29:31
Speaker 3: what what are you talking about? This is just a
29:33
Speaker 3: paragraph about men's education.
29:35
Speaker 1: Why would you just one paragraph and like a longer piece?
29:39
Speaker 2: That's right, yep.
29:40
Speaker 3: And so in academia, in academic publishing, when someone writes
29:44
Speaker 3: in a letter challenging you, then are given the chance
29:47
Speaker 3: to reply with your own letter, and what happens is
29:51
Speaker 3: the two letters get published side by side so that
29:54
Speaker 3: the readers can look at them. So the editor invited
29:57
Speaker 3: me to write a reply to the letter challenging mine,
30:01
Speaker 3: and the editor rejected my letter reply, which is absolutely
30:06
Speaker 3: unheard of in academic publishing. The reason now that they'll
30:12
Speaker 3: say that there are various reasons why it was not published.
30:16
Speaker 3: But I came out and just said, in academia we've
30:20
Speaker 3: got antimail bias.
30:21
Speaker 2: We need to stop.
30:23
Speaker 3: And I laid out the argument and that's what my
30:25
Speaker 3: piece is. So because I couldn't publish that letter in
30:27
Speaker 3: the journal, I turned it into a substat post and
30:31
Speaker 3: so if people want to see what my argument was.
30:34
Speaker 3: But I was just coming at them. I'm saying, wait
30:36
Speaker 3: a minute, why are you talking about women in STEM
30:39
Speaker 3: right now? Women are represented very very well throughout academia.
30:44
Speaker 3: They earned sixty percent of all the degrees, they're making
30:48
Speaker 3: up more, they make up a huge amount of the
30:50
Speaker 3: admin staff and also the faculty. Why can we not
30:54
Speaker 3: take a paragraph to just talk about men's education. And
30:57
Speaker 3: the editor decided to reject my letter, and he didn't
31:01
Speaker 3: like that it said anti maail bias in academia in it.
31:05
Speaker 1: Wow, so your letter was rejected because you were pointing
31:08
Speaker 1: out something that and they didn't They didn't like try
31:12
Speaker 1: to counter you or debate you on this topic. They
31:14
Speaker 1: just decided not to publish it.
31:16
Speaker 3: Well, they the editor gave justification for rejecting it, which
31:21
Speaker 3: you know, they would say something like you kind of
31:24
Speaker 3: went off script here a little bit into a side area,
31:27
Speaker 3: and blah blah blah. But honestly, in letter writing, that
31:30
Speaker 3: shouldn't matter so much because it's just a short opinion piece.
31:35
Speaker 3: That's what a letter is. And I'm being challenged by
31:38
Speaker 3: these other people, so I should, you know, you know,
31:41
Speaker 3: so long as I'm not calling them names and swearing
31:44
Speaker 3: and stuff. Yeah, you basically should just publish whatever I write.
31:48
Speaker 3: But they apparently did not want my very kind of
31:52
Speaker 3: blunt opinion published on that topic. So that's why I
31:56
Speaker 3: went to sub stack with it.
31:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, if you're pointing out something as true,
32:00
Speaker 1: is it even your opinion anymore? Like you're just saying,
32:03
Speaker 1: here's the evidence for why we have anti mail bias.
32:06
Speaker 1: Women are doing really well. And we everybody knows this.
32:09
Speaker 1: In fact, when you bring it up, you know, it's celebrated, right, Oh,
32:13
Speaker 1: it's great. Women are doing so much better in academia.
32:16
Speaker 1: They're getting more degrees than men, and men are falling behind.
32:19
Speaker 1: And for some reason, they're they don't see this as
32:22
Speaker 1: a problem. They see this as some kind of like
32:25
Speaker 1: you know, it's I don't know, like there's something correcting,
32:28
Speaker 1: Like there's a correcting thing going on, and so you
32:30
Speaker 1: kind of like have to celebrate it and let it go.
32:32
Speaker 1: But then there's no thought given to what the downstream
32:36
Speaker 1: effects of that might be. Because you know, we are
32:38
Speaker 1: seeing now that women they get degrees. I don't I
32:42
Speaker 1: question how useful those degrees are a lot of times
32:45
Speaker 1: because I think that what you're sort of like touching
32:48
Speaker 1: on as well, are problems with academia as a whole,
32:51
Speaker 1: Like just like are people getting an education, are they paying?
32:55
Speaker 1: You know, are they going like so many six figures
32:58
Speaker 1: into debt, five figures into debt for a degree that
33:01
Speaker 1: they're not actually going to use because maybe they didn't
33:03
Speaker 1: really get anything of value out of it. And is
33:06
Speaker 1: that good? Because a woman like she might decide she
33:10
Speaker 1: didn't want to do that anymore, you know, or anybody
33:12
Speaker 1: might you know, And so you have to question, like,
33:15
Speaker 1: what is the is the degree worth it worth? All
33:19
Speaker 1: of the debt worth all of the time. And even
33:21
Speaker 1: if we are supposedly pushing women into STEM like I don't,
33:24
Speaker 1: I don't think we're gonna get the results. I think
33:26
Speaker 1: we're just sort of artificially boosting them. And what does
33:29
Speaker 1: that say about the quality of academia as a whole,
33:31
Speaker 1: especially if there's no sort of you know, rigorous process
33:36
Speaker 1: to like determine what is true so that you're teaching
33:39
Speaker 1: people something real.
33:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are many issues in academia. It's not specific
33:45
Speaker 3: to one country. As you know, I'm based in Australia.
33:49
Speaker 3: It's pretty woke here, a lot of the DBI stuff.
33:53
Speaker 3: It's bad in the US as well, it's bad in Canada.
33:56
Speaker 3: And essentially what's happening is particularly in the humanities departments,
34:01
Speaker 3: but it is coming into the medical and health sciences.
34:03
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, is just trying to turn people into
34:06
Speaker 3: activists rather than kind of cramming a bunch of knowledge
34:11
Speaker 3: about objective reality into their head. And they're very explicit
34:14
Speaker 3: about this in their academic papers. I know that many
34:17
Speaker 3: of your viewers won't have access to academic journals, but
34:20
Speaker 3: they are very explicit in the humanities journals about turning
34:25
Speaker 3: students into activists. That's what they see the purpose of
34:30
Speaker 3: universities to be. Now, to the extent that men are
34:37
Speaker 3: recognizing a lot of this stuff and choosing not to
34:40
Speaker 3: go to university, I think that is a good thing
34:46
Speaker 3: if they're aware of what they are doing. I think
34:49
Speaker 3: one thing that could happen is as that if that
34:52
Speaker 3: continues to happen and the quality of university education continues
34:57
Speaker 3: to decline, men are essentially going to be ahead of
35:00
Speaker 3: the curve because they'll be the ones taking the risk
35:03
Speaker 3: to say this doesn't seem right, so I'm just going
35:05
Speaker 3: to take the risk and not go to university and
35:07
Speaker 3: do this. But then what you're going to be left
35:09
Speaker 3: with is a lot of women with a lot of
35:12
Speaker 3: useless degrees, and they are going to complain about that,
35:15
Speaker 3: and they're going to say, look, this is again evidence
35:18
Speaker 3: of discrimination against women. We all went to university and
35:21
Speaker 3: now our degrees aren't worth anything.
35:22
Speaker 1: So they're always going to be and we're in debt,
35:25
Speaker 1: we're the victims, and they're going to ask that basically
35:27
Speaker 1: the government come in and pay off their debt, which
35:30
Speaker 1: is essentially taking money from men and giving it to women.
35:34
Speaker 3: So something like that, we can never win, that's the story.
35:37
Speaker 1: No, no, not unless some paradigm shift happens. I did
35:42
Speaker 1: get a super chat. Thank you Zaranks for the super chat.
35:45
Speaker 1: He gave us ten dollars and said it's interesting that
35:47
Speaker 1: the issue of male education is still intentionally ignored today,
35:53
Speaker 1: thirty three years after Christina Hoff Summers had her book
35:56
Speaker 1: tour talking about boys being underserved and education. Yeah, and
36:01
Speaker 1: Warren Ferrell has talked about this a lot as well,
36:04
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not It hasn't really changed a lot.
36:08
Speaker 1: And in fact, I think it's only gotten worse. And
36:11
Speaker 1: yet everyone is like, you know, they're they're all shaking
36:14
Speaker 1: their fists at like, I guess biological men playing in
36:19
Speaker 1: women's sports is like the thing we have to worry about,
36:22
Speaker 1: not like men falling behind. And another thing that's going
36:25
Speaker 1: to happen as a result of this is like the
36:27
Speaker 1: biological reality is is that women with degrees, even if
36:30
Speaker 1: they're useless, degrees, will still they'll be looking for men
36:34
Speaker 1: who have more earning potential than what their degree suggests.
36:37
Speaker 1: They should have even if they don't have it, do
36:39
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? So they're going to be
36:41
Speaker 1: looking for men that just don't exist. So yeah, and
36:44
Speaker 1: that's what's happening now, right, Yeah.
36:46
Speaker 3: Well, this is where it gets really annoying when you
36:48
Speaker 3: start reading articles in The Guardian and then New York
36:51
Speaker 3: Times and all these women complaining oh where did all
36:55
Speaker 3: the good men go? And all that, And so you're
36:57
Speaker 3: seeing the stream of those articles start to come out now.
37:00
Speaker 3: So it's just that they just don't understand all the
37:04
Speaker 3: all the connection points. They really don't get it.
37:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, No, it's a it's a it's gonna be
37:10
Speaker 1: a major issue. There was another article that I saw
37:15
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting. It was about It's kind
37:17
Speaker 1: of older, It's about Title nine, and you were saying
37:20
Speaker 1: that Title nine is, uh, it's sort of you know, uh,
37:24
Speaker 1: it was not the start of of history something like that. Yeah,
37:29
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit. I thought that
37:30
Speaker 1: was a really interesting one too, because a lot of
37:32
Speaker 1: people talk about Title nine like it exists in a vacuum.
37:36
Speaker 1: So what were you going to say about What do
37:37
Speaker 1: you say about that?
37:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that article relates to a topic that I've
37:41
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time on, which is about the
37:45
Speaker 3: representation of women as research participants in studies. And because
37:52
Speaker 3: this is a big part of the feminist narrative, it's
37:55
Speaker 3: one of the things they go with, and that is
37:57
Speaker 3: the continued claim that women are underrepresented as research participants,
38:03
Speaker 3: that women's health is underfunded. And I've written extensively about
38:06
Speaker 3: this and it's not true, and I show all the
38:08
Speaker 3: data now in my field, and so it's becoming This
38:12
Speaker 3: has existed within medical and health sciences since like the
38:15
Speaker 3: early nights, this narrative, but it's come in to exercise
38:19
Speaker 3: science within the past few years, and it's really accelerating
38:22
Speaker 3: and taking off that. You know, there's not enough information
38:25
Speaker 3: about women in sports because we don't ever do sports
38:29
Speaker 3: science research on women. Now there is more credibility to
38:33
Speaker 3: that claim in sports science than in health and medical
38:37
Speaker 3: science more generally speaking. But what a lot of contemporary
38:42
Speaker 3: female academics don't do is look at the historical archives
38:45
Speaker 3: of journals. My peace on history didn't start at title nine.
38:50
Speaker 3: What I mean by that is, if you look back
38:53
Speaker 3: through old physical education journals or physical therapy journals, those
38:58
Speaker 3: are fields that pre dated excerpt size science and if
39:01
Speaker 3: you take time to look through the archives of those journals,
39:04
Speaker 3: you'll find all sorts of women participating in research studies,
39:08
Speaker 3: having their maximal strength tested, their vertical jump ability, their
39:13
Speaker 3: ability to learn the tennis, serve in physical education class.
39:17
Speaker 3: And so the whole point of that article was to say,
39:20
Speaker 3: because right now we have a huge problem. It relates
39:23
Speaker 3: to this kind of the poor education that university students
39:27
Speaker 3: are getting. They are not encouraged to look at history
39:30
Speaker 3: and study history. So basically they look at journal articles
39:33
Speaker 3: published maybe as late as two thousand and five, and
39:36
Speaker 3: then they have no idea what happened before, like they
39:39
Speaker 3: were born, for example. And if you look into those archives,
39:43
Speaker 3: you'll see all sorts of photographs of women.
39:46
Speaker 2: Participating in research.
39:48
Speaker 3: It may not have been fifty percent representation, but who's
39:53
Speaker 3: why should we expect that anyways, So the point of
39:57
Speaker 3: that article was just to say we kind of these
40:00
Speaker 3: people seem to think that history started at title nine
40:02
Speaker 3: for women, but no, no, no, no.
40:05
Speaker 1: Uh.
40:06
Speaker 3: Female physical educators and female physical therapists were very interested
40:11
Speaker 3: in women's health prior to title nine.
40:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And speaking of which, you were talking about
40:17
Speaker 1: how how much of a huha a hullabaloo they make
40:23
Speaker 1: about women's representation in sports, and a lot of the
40:26
Speaker 1: arguments that come out will be something like, well, if
40:29
Speaker 1: women don't see other women doing well, like why we
40:33
Speaker 1: spend so much money trying to make the WNBA happen,
40:37
Speaker 1: for example, so that women will like it? Will have
40:39
Speaker 1: the same kind of cloud that say the NBA has,
40:43
Speaker 1: is that otherwise women, if women don't see it, it doesn't happen.
40:46
Speaker 1: But do women even watch this stuff? Because I know
40:48
Speaker 1: you did a piece on that as well, so do
40:51
Speaker 1: women watch women's sports? What did what did you find
40:54
Speaker 1: with that?
40:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, well just to start, you know, it's actually kind
40:58
Speaker 3: of challenging to find that data, which is very strange
41:02
Speaker 3: considering how many people and groups do surveys and how
41:05
Speaker 3: many academics do surveys on different topics. And I think
41:09
Speaker 3: the reason that that data is so hard to find
41:11
Speaker 3: is because they don't want to see what the answer is, right,
41:15
Speaker 3: which is that which is that women are generally not
41:19
Speaker 3: so interested in watching women's sports. And what the data
41:24
Speaker 3: that I put together that I found show is that
41:26
Speaker 3: men are more likely to watch women's sports than women are.
41:30
Speaker 3: So I think that's why we don't have that data
41:33
Speaker 3: is they don't want to see it.
41:34
Speaker 2: They don't want to see that result.
41:37
Speaker 1: Yep, and that's what the that's what you so you
41:41
Speaker 1: you did find it, but it was hard to do
41:44
Speaker 1: and obviously not popular because like essentially the you know,
41:49
Speaker 1: the results are not convenient because it goes against the narrative.
41:54
Speaker 1: So it looks like, yeah, in every country that that
41:59
Speaker 1: you have data for France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia, UK,
42:03
Speaker 1: USA that men more men watch women's sports than women do.
42:07
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, that's funny. Is there any way
42:10
Speaker 1: of knowing why men would watch that? Is it like
42:13
Speaker 1: curiosity or go ahead?
42:16
Speaker 3: Well no, I think men have an inclination toward like
42:19
Speaker 3: rules based games and situations and in strategies and stuff
42:24
Speaker 3: like that.
42:25
Speaker 2: And and that's what that is.
42:26
Speaker 3: What's so unfortunate about all the feminist narratives is just
42:30
Speaker 3: this inability to understand men and women at a fundamental
42:33
Speaker 3: level and talk about these different these things that make
42:37
Speaker 3: us unique and interesting. And yeah, there's there's men that
42:42
Speaker 3: will watch all sorts of stuff that involves like strategy
42:46
Speaker 3: and gaming and.
42:47
Speaker 1: More leticism or something, you know, like they want to
42:50
Speaker 1: see what the human body can do. I remember as
42:53
Speaker 1: a child, I used to like watching this TV show
42:56
Speaker 1: called American Gladiators, and you have these like you know,
42:59
Speaker 1: theseeople that were very fit, and they were like engaging
43:02
Speaker 1: these competitions was men and women. So yeah, I mean
43:05
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about, you know, like how many
43:08
Speaker 1: men are there or how many women are there. It
43:10
Speaker 1: was more abstracted, I guess. Yeah.
43:13
Speaker 2: No, I totally agree with you.
43:15
Speaker 3: And I think one of the really unfortunate things with
43:17
Speaker 3: sports is that they're they're trying to push so hard
43:22
Speaker 3: that they come out with over kind of messaging about
43:25
Speaker 3: you know, feminist related messaging. Whereas I never used to
43:28
Speaker 3: think about that. When I would watch sports. I would
43:31
Speaker 3: go and I'd watch the high school's girls volleyball team,
43:34
Speaker 3: and I would love watching that, and it was oh yeah.
43:37
Speaker 1: Women's volleyball is always fun to watch.
43:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, But now my mindset is completely different because, especially
43:45
Speaker 3: like on television, you get all these personal stories worked
43:49
Speaker 3: in about this and that, and it's like, I'm not here.
43:52
Speaker 2: This is my escape.
43:53
Speaker 3: From the political realm. I just want to see people
43:56
Speaker 3: do sports and watch their kind of technical expertise. But
44:00
Speaker 3: now it's become so politicized that. I think a lot
44:04
Speaker 3: of guys are tapping out from watching sports.
44:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the whole thing is not like when I
44:11
Speaker 1: was a kid and I watched my bulls play when
44:14
Speaker 1: I was I lived in Chicago, when Michael Jordan was
44:16
Speaker 1: on the team, and it was just it was so
44:19
Speaker 1: much fun. But I think we've certainly lost that because
44:21
Speaker 1: one of the other things that I think men really
44:23
Speaker 1: enjoy about sports too is watching like the cooperation between men,
44:28
Speaker 1: like the teamwork. Is that that could that leads to
44:30
Speaker 1: your comments about strategy. When you see a team that
44:34
Speaker 1: is like in the zone together and they're like executing
44:37
Speaker 1: something whatever sport it is, that is extremely like fun
44:40
Speaker 1: to watch. That's what I think that people miss about
44:43
Speaker 1: what sports is. A lot of times they think of
44:46
Speaker 1: it as competitive. That's part of the feminist narrative around it,
44:49
Speaker 1: is that men are competitive and they want to dominate
44:51
Speaker 1: each other, but they they don't notice that there's a
44:55
Speaker 1: cooperative element too, and sportsmanship, you know, which is kind
44:59
Speaker 1: of like I think that's also something that's lost in
45:01
Speaker 1: modern sports. A sportsmanship or good sportsmanship is something where
45:05
Speaker 1: you know, the loser is glad they played and they
45:08
Speaker 1: learned something from it, and there's you know, they sort
45:10
Speaker 1: of like like boxers, they grow closer together after the fight,
45:13
Speaker 1: you know.
45:13
Speaker 3: And just to tell your readers, a lot of the
45:17
Speaker 3: problems that come into the sports realm, like the politicalization
45:20
Speaker 3: of it and all that it stems from academia. You
45:23
Speaker 3: can trace it back to academic journals. The things that
45:26
Speaker 3: are written in sports philosophy journals, for example, or sports
45:30
Speaker 3: sociology they're just complete rubbish. But that's that's where a
45:35
Speaker 3: lot of that politicalization happens the way that and feminists
45:38
Speaker 3: are very much involved in that. So they see sports
45:41
Speaker 3: as a tool for social change, but in a very
45:45
Speaker 3: explicit way, meaning that that's sort of like its main purpose.
45:49
Speaker 2: Now, sports might.
45:50
Speaker 3: Lead to social change, but it happens more naturally, it's
45:55
Speaker 3: not the kind of explicit goal. So when you see
45:59
Speaker 3: these different things pop up in the sports realm that
46:02
Speaker 3: kind of rub you the wrong way, like the too political,
46:05
Speaker 3: you can blame academia.
46:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The idea is to get to essentially
46:10
Speaker 1: make it to where you can't really escape it. So
46:12
Speaker 1: that's why they put it everywhere because they're trying to
46:14
Speaker 1: force the dialectic right, like everywhere you look, there's the dialectic,
46:18
Speaker 1: and you have to because they're trying to push it,
46:20
Speaker 1: push it, push it. Okay, so we're we're getting like
46:26
Speaker 1: getting close to the end. But I do want to
46:27
Speaker 1: ask you, So I did we did talk a little
46:30
Speaker 1: bit about your interest in talking about well, I guess
46:32
Speaker 1: you could say cultural things. You have an article here
46:35
Speaker 1: called and I didn't read it, so I don't really know,
46:37
Speaker 1: but you have an article here called men Masculinity in Movies.
46:40
Speaker 1: One thing Kevin Sorbo got wrong, And so I get
46:43
Speaker 1: is that like your first sort of like dipping the
46:46
Speaker 1: toes into this romantic, you know, cultural thing.
46:50
Speaker 3: I've published one other piece on my substack. It is
46:52
Speaker 3: called Free Will and the Romantic Revolution at the Cinema,
46:57
Speaker 3: I think is the name of that piece. And so
47:00
Speaker 3: I'm I'm a big movie fan, but I'm not the
47:02
Speaker 3: sort of person that just watches random movies and just
47:06
Speaker 3: likes random bits of action or anything like that. Movies
47:09
Speaker 3: are a form of art, and they serve a very
47:12
Speaker 3: important purpose in our lives, and they represent the underlying
47:16
Speaker 3: philosophy of the of the screenwriter. Basically, I think we
47:22
Speaker 3: don't have a good understanding like the common viewer doesn't
47:25
Speaker 3: really realize that, And I think if some basic principles
47:30
Speaker 3: can be taught about what it is you're kind of
47:32
Speaker 3: watching and why some movies cause you to have like
47:36
Speaker 3: kind of a more sort of profound emotional reaction that
47:38
Speaker 3: make you feel kind of not necessarily good afterwards, but
47:43
Speaker 3: like they make you feel something, as opposed to movies
47:47
Speaker 3: that you kind of walk out of the theater and
47:49
Speaker 3: you're like, you know, what was that? So my goal
47:51
Speaker 3: is to try to explain that to people so that
47:55
Speaker 3: it's interesting. That piece on Kevin Sorbo.
47:58
Speaker 1: So I.
48:00
Speaker 3: Wrote a really good piece for Fox News, and I
48:03
Speaker 3: really liked it, and I think it was mostly spot
48:05
Speaker 3: on except for one thing, and that's where I am
48:07
Speaker 3: critical of him. And that piece at my substack has
48:11
Speaker 3: gotten a lot of attention with men debating each other
48:15
Speaker 3: and debating me. It's it's probably been the one that
48:18
Speaker 3: has rubbed men the wrong way the most out of
48:21
Speaker 3: anything I've written, and it's because it sort of comes
48:23
Speaker 3: down to like defining characteristics of masculinity and stuff. And
48:28
Speaker 3: I can see that there was more comments on it
48:30
Speaker 3: this morning when I woke up. So I'm gonna let
48:33
Speaker 3: that one kind of continue to settle. Let people talk
48:36
Speaker 3: about it and think about it. But basically my reason
48:39
Speaker 3: for writing it is it just stems from my personal
48:42
Speaker 3: interest in movies and recognizing their importance.
48:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so actually, you know, I'm a big movie fan.
48:51
Speaker 1: I love movies, and I get what you're saying. I
48:55
Speaker 1: think that films can give, or any kind of media
48:58
Speaker 1: that tells a story give I guess one of three impressions.
49:02
Speaker 1: One of them is the kind of like, you know, indifference,
49:06
Speaker 1: Like there was not a lot of substance there. Maybe
49:09
Speaker 1: it was a fun popcorn movie, but you didn't really
49:12
Speaker 1: walk away with like a lot from it. It's not disgusting,
49:16
Speaker 1: but there's just nothing there, you know, like a Michael
49:19
Speaker 1: Bay Transformers flick or something like that. Not not my thing.
49:22
Speaker 1: Then you get like the movies that leave an impression,
49:25
Speaker 1: and they're not necessarily like you said, they won't necessarily
49:29
Speaker 1: like be uplifting, but sometimes they will, but they'll definitely
49:33
Speaker 1: leave you thinking, and if they're really good, they're profound
49:36
Speaker 1: in that and a lot of that. And then you
49:38
Speaker 1: have the ones that give you that revulsion, sometimes because
49:42
Speaker 1: they're really bad, but sometimes it's because when you realize
49:45
Speaker 1: what the person who made the film is trying to
49:48
Speaker 1: say it tells you something really dark about them and
49:51
Speaker 1: that and that's what like, that's the one that really
49:53
Speaker 1: gets you know what I'm saying. Do you have it?
49:55
Speaker 1: Do you do you? Can you think of an example
49:57
Speaker 1: of a movie that's done that to you?
49:59
Speaker 3: That's that's kind of made me feel the creeps.
50:02
Speaker 1: Yes, like about the director and the writers like that.
50:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well anything that is basically that shows the
50:09
Speaker 3: worst in man, I would say, we'll do that. I
50:12
Speaker 3: haven't watched American Psycho in a while. I watched it
50:15
Speaker 3: once the Michael or Christian Bale or Christian but it's
50:21
Speaker 3: just about basically about like said, he's just a serial
50:23
Speaker 3: killer and he just goes around killing girls that he
50:25
Speaker 3: invites over to his apartment or something like that. So now,
50:29
Speaker 3: I know some people will come up with different arguments
50:31
Speaker 3: about why that sort of thing is important, but mostly
50:34
Speaker 3: you can you can show evil things, but within the
50:38
Speaker 3: context of a of a different film. So in those
50:42
Speaker 3: sorts of films that give me the creeps, the sort
50:45
Speaker 3: of the bad guy is kind of put out there
50:48
Speaker 3: as the main focal point and almost kind of like
50:51
Speaker 3: a hero kind of you admire it, and that is
50:55
Speaker 3: not the romantic school of art at all. So I'm
51:01
Speaker 3: I'm a big advocate of Yeah, like you said, romantic
51:04
Speaker 3: realism doesn't it's they're not cheesy movies.
51:08
Speaker 2: That's not what that is.
51:09
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean and it doesn't even mean romantic love necessarily.
51:14
Speaker 3: Romantic love does feature in a lot of movies because
51:19
Speaker 3: it's a huge part of human nature, so it should feature.
51:23
Speaker 3: But yeah, these these types of realistic movies. I think
51:28
Speaker 3: I haven't seen much of Stanley Kubrick's stuff recently, but
51:32
Speaker 3: Kubrick sort of came across as a bit of a nihilist.
51:35
Speaker 3: Some of the stuff that he would make, those would
51:38
Speaker 3: be just some off the.
51:39
Speaker 2: Top of my head.
51:40
Speaker 3: But I struggle because because after I watched them once,
51:43
Speaker 3: I don't go back to them because they there's no
51:46
Speaker 3: reason for me to watch them. They don't do anything
51:49
Speaker 3: to my to my soul, they don't they don't uplift
51:51
Speaker 3: me in any way.
51:53
Speaker 1: You know, you want to hear something really crazy, literally,
51:55
Speaker 1: I watched American Cycle last night with my wife. I'm
51:58
Speaker 1: gonna be doing a discussion about the movie with someone
52:02
Speaker 1: else on a video, and he proposed the film he
52:05
Speaker 1: was like, how about American Psycho, And I say, yeah,
52:07
Speaker 1: oh well, I own it on DVD because I don't
52:10
Speaker 1: think it's well, I don't want to get too much
52:12
Speaker 1: into it, but I don't actually think it's as nihilistic.
52:16
Speaker 1: It does tell you something though, about the writer of
52:19
Speaker 1: the original book, as well as the director of the film.
52:21
Speaker 1: It's one of those movies where the people who made
52:24
Speaker 1: it wanted to say something. They were obviously trying to
52:27
Speaker 1: critique masculinity, toxic masculinity. It's not just that late stage capitalism,
52:34
Speaker 1: like all of these, you know, sort of like bog
52:37
Speaker 1: standard leftist talking points. They just crammed them all to
52:40
Speaker 1: one movie. And the guy who wrote it was a
52:42
Speaker 1: self admitted sexually confused weirdo that wanted to and he
52:47
Speaker 1: was trying to suggest that he's not the weird one
52:50
Speaker 1: everyone else is, and that's kind of what the book
52:52
Speaker 1: is about. And you end up not necessarily like sympathizing,
52:58
Speaker 1: because that's the thing you don't want is to like
53:00
Speaker 1: make an obviously evil, nihilistic character and then make people
53:04
Speaker 1: like them. But they don't really make him unlikable. They
53:08
Speaker 1: make everyone else unlikable, and he seems like the normal one,
53:12
Speaker 1: and I don't think that was on purpose. You know,
53:13
Speaker 1: sometimes films get made and the director has an intention
53:17
Speaker 1: or the writer has an intention, but it doesn't hit
53:19
Speaker 1: the same way. They thought, kind of like Paul Vererhoven's
53:23
Speaker 1: Starship Troopers, which was trying to say, you know, was
53:26
Speaker 1: based on Heinlend's book of the same name, and he
53:29
Speaker 1: was like a libertarian, kind of a radical libertarian for
53:32
Speaker 1: the time, you know, and he was telling a story
53:35
Speaker 1: about a libertarian society. And Vierhoven saw that, saw that
53:42
Speaker 1: and thought, oh, he didn't even read the book. He
53:44
Speaker 1: just like read the back of it or something and said,
53:46
Speaker 1: this guy's fascist and tried to tell like a fascist story,
53:50
Speaker 1: but didn't change the story that much. So when people
53:53
Speaker 1: left it they were like, oh, those are the good guys.
53:56
Speaker 1: They just dress in like, you know, Hugo Boss uniform,
54:00
Speaker 1: but they're actually not villains, right. So yeah, it's just
54:03
Speaker 1: funny because I just watched the American Psychle that's really
54:06
Speaker 1: interesting for me. There is one movie that I always
54:08
Speaker 1: bring up because it left me feeling like really like
54:12
Speaker 1: off and it was it's called Midsommer and it's a
54:15
Speaker 1: horror film. I believe the I can't remember the name
54:18
Speaker 1: of the director, might be Alex Garland, but I might
54:20
Speaker 1: be wrong about that. And it is about like this
54:23
Speaker 1: holiday in Sweden called Midsummer, which is like the longest
54:27
Speaker 1: day of the year. But it's essentially this cult and
54:30
Speaker 1: it's very very misanderous. Like when you know some degree
54:34
Speaker 1: of miss injuries in films, I expect it because that
54:37
Speaker 1: is sort of like the water we swim in, but
54:40
Speaker 1: this one was really bad, like the way that and
54:43
Speaker 1: and what was worse than that is that all of
54:46
Speaker 1: the people who reviewed it not only didn't see that,
54:50
Speaker 1: but they actually agreed with the missingry, like you know,
54:53
Speaker 1: without knowing they did. They were like, oh, this was
54:55
Speaker 1: all everything that happened to the men in this movie
54:58
Speaker 1: was deserved, right, And so yeah, I think that that's
55:01
Speaker 1: the one that puts me off. So if you want
55:03
Speaker 1: to like do an analysis of something really misaddereous, watch Midsummer.
55:09
Speaker 1: That guy always makes nihilistic movies. He made that movie Hereditary,
55:13
Speaker 1: that one, like obviously it ends in a really like
55:16
Speaker 1: black note as well.
55:18
Speaker 3: So yeah, I've not seen either one of those, and
55:21
Speaker 3: they don't sound like anything. I want to spend an
55:23
Speaker 3: hour and a half watching sometimes, Yeah, you do need
55:27
Speaker 3: to expose yourself to it to just kind of yeah,
55:30
Speaker 3: to be able to see the differences between the different
55:33
Speaker 3: schools of art. But yeah, like you said, it's kind
55:36
Speaker 3: of a way to enter into the mind or the
55:39
Speaker 3: philosophy of the person that.
55:41
Speaker 2: Wrote the story.
55:42
Speaker 3: And you know, we do have the capacity to choose
55:46
Speaker 3: what we do and don't write about.
55:48
Speaker 2: And I think we're due for.
55:50
Speaker 3: Sort of what I call the romantic revolution, or maybe
55:53
Speaker 3: you think of it as kind of a counter revolution
55:55
Speaker 3: actually where we yeah, we establish you know some of
55:59
Speaker 3: these less is kind of nihilistic or and kind of
56:02
Speaker 3: less Like Kevin Sorbo is pointing out on that piece,
56:05
Speaker 3: you know, not every movie has to show some clown
56:07
Speaker 3: of a guy, you know, who's got low self esteem
56:10
Speaker 3: and he he can't make something out of himself and
56:14
Speaker 3: you know.
56:14
Speaker 1: All a manchild character.
56:16
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, And so that's the sort of thing
56:19
Speaker 3: that Kevin Sorbo was going on about that I also
56:21
Speaker 3: agree with. So, you know, hopefully we see some changes
56:25
Speaker 3: out of Hollywood, because I don't know, they're not really
56:27
Speaker 3: putting out much that's worth watching.
56:29
Speaker 1: All they've they've had, like a writer Shrike, and I
56:31
Speaker 1: think they're in real serious trouble. And James guns from
56:34
Speaker 1: what I understand, James Gunn made a new Superman film
56:36
Speaker 1: and Superman is another manchild's you know, whiny like Zoomer Kid,
56:43
Speaker 1: So they're not going to learn. But you know what
56:45
Speaker 1: that James, that was a really good conversation. Tell everyone
56:48
Speaker 1: where they can find you. Maybe we'll have you back
56:50
Speaker 1: on and just talk about like movies. I think that
56:53
Speaker 1: could be fun or cultural things.
56:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that that would be great, and hopefully I
56:57
Speaker 3: can publish a few more things about it as well.
57:00
Speaker 3: It's just a little bit tricky this all this other
57:03
Speaker 3: stuff related to funding differences and men's health is important,
57:07
Speaker 3: so that takes up a lot of my time. But
57:08
Speaker 3: you can find me at my substock which is called
57:11
Speaker 3: the New Zoh Letter. And then also I'm quite active
57:13
Speaker 3: on x and my handle is at James L.
57:17
Speaker 1: Newso all right, thank you so much, James. Sorry for
57:21
Speaker 1: mispronouncing your last name. I didn't know what was going on.
57:24
Speaker 1: I should have asked you before, So my bad on that.
57:27
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I don't have any more messages from anybody,
57:30
Speaker 1: but I do see the chat is lively, so thank
57:33
Speaker 1: you guys. So much for joining us on the show,
57:35
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for coming on, James, I
57:38
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. We'll have to have you back on
57:40
Speaker 1: to talk about movies and stuff. So with that said, guys,
57:44
Speaker 1: if you like this video, please hit like subscribe. If
57:46
Speaker 1: you're not already subscribed to the channel, hit the bell notifications,
57:49
Speaker 1: leave us a comment, let us know what you guys
57:50
Speaker 1: think about what we discussed on the show today, and
57:52
Speaker 1: please please please share this video because Sherry is caring.
57:56
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for coming on today's episode
57:58
Speaker 1: of The Fireside Chat. I'll talk to you guys in
58:01
Speaker 1: the next one. Holy shit, you're fucked.