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112. The Toxic War on Masculinity w/ Professor Nancy Pearcey · Radically Genuine

• Sean (00:01.388) Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. It has become socially acceptable to express open hostility against men. Even in supposed respected media outlets, such as the Washington Post, why can't we hate men? Almost half of American men agree with the statement, these days, society seems to punish men just for acting like men. In 2018, the American Psychological Association unveiled guidelines for the psychological practice with men and boys. These guidelines identified various aspects of masculinity that included competitiveness, stoicism and aggression, irrespective of context, deemed psychologically detrimental and harmful to society. Sean (00:58.584) and strength are notably absent. Masculinity is depicted in a supposed scientific publication similar to how popular media promotes men through gender stereotypes emphasizing traits like unbridled aggression against innocent victims, emotional suppression, and the objectification of women, perpetuating harmful ideals of masculinity. It begs the question, is there a war on traditional masculinity? and why. To help us explore this issue, we welcome Professor Nancy Piercy, a bestselling author and speaker, former agnostic, she was hailed in the Economist as America's preeminent, evangelical Protestant female intellectual. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, First Things, Human Events, American Thinker, Daily Caller, The Federalist, CNS News, and Fox News. She has appeared on MPR, C-SPAN, and Fox and Friends. She is currently a professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. Professor Piercy's books have been translated into 19 languages and include Total Truth, The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo, Finding Truth, Love Thy Body, and her new book, which is excellent, and the subject of today's interview. The Toxic War on Masculinity, which you can find on Amazon, anywhere you find your books. Professor Piercy, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. Nancy (02:38.414) Thanks so much for having me. It's a joy to talk to you all. Sean (02:42.328) Such an honor to have you in here. And when your book opened, there was a vulnerable reveal, which kind of led to, I would imagine, some of the inspiration about this project. And I think my listeners would be fascinated on why a woman scholar would be interested in this topic and if there was any challenges for you in being able to kind of reveal some of that personal story. Nancy (03:09.246) Yes, I do start the book with an introduction talking about my own childhood, which was severely abusive. So my father was physically abusive. And in books on abuse, they will sometimes ask, was it open hand or closed fist? And it was closed fist. It was a knuckle fist to make a sharper stab of pain. So he was punching us, kicking us and so on. And so as you can imagine, well, you can imagine I went all the way over to being an extreme feminist for several years, you know, the radical boomerang off to being a feminist and always had some feminist book by my bedside, always was reading, you know, all the major founders of the feminist movement, Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir and so on. At any rate. And it was only when I was a young adult that I started to get psychological, emotional, spiritual healing from my childhood trauma. And so it was a lifetime. In a sense, I put in the introduction, I've been writing this book my whole life, because as you know, being a psychologist, trauma often takes many, many years to really fully heal. And so I've been working on, you know, what does it mean to have a... healthy, positive, biblical view of masculinity for much of my life. And I was interviewed by another psychologist. And he said, when I first opened your book, I thought, oh no, an abused woman, she's angry at men. And then he said, as I continued reading, I realized, no, it's not that at all. It's very supportive, it's very positive. But then he added, well, at least we know you're not writing from an ivory tower. Right? We know that you're writing from the trenches. And that was the reason I put it there because I wanted people to know, I didn't come from some sort of loving privileged background that I'd ever known the toxic side of some people's masculinity. I really have known that. So I'm writing from the position of having seen that and still coming out with a positive view of masculinity. Sean (05:21.964) I am interested a little bit about your spiritual healing if you were willing to reveal. As a psychologist, I do work with, unfortunately, women who have been abused by men and what is absolutely typical and normal would be to see men from a perspective of being very dangerous and having to protect themselves from men. But you and this entire book kind of opens our eyes, provides a lot of data to why women can... can trust men and they're really good men out there. But I'm just kind of curious to know about your, your own spiritual healing. Nancy (05:57.522) Yes, well, you mentioned in the intro that I wasn't agnostic. So I was raised in a Lutheran home. I don't know if you know this, but all Scandinavians are Lutheran. It's kind of an ethnic thing, like all Irish or Catholic. And so it wasn't a really profound, deep personal commitment. And when I was in high school, I just started asking questions and not getting any answers. Actually, I was just asking, how do we know Christianity is true? I'm being raised with this belief system, how do I know it's true? Nobody in my life, in particular my father since I mentioned him. I asked my dad once point blank, he was a university professor, right? So I expected a little bit more of an answer from him. I asked him point blank, why are you a Christian? He said, works for me. That's it. And I asked an uncle who's a seminary dean, again, Lutheran. And all he said was, don't worry, we all have doubts sometimes, as if it was a psychological phase that I was going through. And so when I finally decided, I guess Christianity just doesn't have any answers. It has no defense against secular challenges of our day. And I very consciously left it behind and very consciously adopted a lot of secular isms of moral relativism, skepticism. determinism even, you know, from my science classes, I learned that we are just complex biochemical machines anyway. And so it wasn't until I went to a sort of a study center in Switzerland, I ended up there because we had lived in Europe when I was a child. And so I had gone back, I'd saved my money because I wanted to go back to Europe. I loved it. And I ended up at the sort of a study center that was called Labrie, which is French for the shelter. And it was run by a Christian intellectual pastor kind of guy who did apologetics. In other words, his whole ministry was, how do we give people good reasons for Christianity? And it was the first time I had ever met Christians who could engage with the secular isms that I had absorbed by that time. Who could discuss them intelligently with me, show me some of their weak spots. Nancy (08:15.53) you know, defend Christianity with good reasons, arguments and evidence. And I was blown away. I just never heard that before. And so I did ultimately become a Christian because of that time. But, and I've told that story, you know, this part of my life story, what I've never told before, and I tell in this book, is that's when I also started the emotional healing. So on staff at Lebrie was a psychiatric social worker. And... She was there because she knew that many people's objections to religion might not just be intellectual, but also emotional, especially people who've had conflicts with their parents, for example. You know, their ideas about religion kind of get mixed up with their normal rebellion, adolescent rebellion, and so on. And she herself was a missionary kid. And it was, her name was Sheila Bird. We nicknamed her Birdie. And it was talking to Birdie that helped me to work through my childhood trauma. I had tried to leave it behind. You will know that this is not possible, but as a 19 year old, I thought, you know, I left home, I'm going to create a blank slate. I'm going to start my life over again. I'm going to reconstruct my entire identity because, you know, my childhood was just too painful. And it was Birdie who helped me see, no, you actually, you cannot do that. You have to work through that trauma. You have to go through it. And there were two things in particular that mattered. One is that Birdie showed me a kind of love that I had never experienced before. Just Birdie herself, being able to listen to my pain, listen to me talk it through and not reject me, keep accepting, keep loving, even as I unveiled this incredibly deep emotional trauma, which nobody else wanted to listen to, right? You get paid to do it, you know, you'd hear this, but if you're just ordinary people, they don't want to hear this. And so I'd never phoned anyone to talk to before. So Bertie listened to it. And there was a second thing that I did not include in the book, but people sometimes ask me why I ended up at a Christian ministry when I was not a Christian. And the answer is it's because I had some family members traveling through Europe. Nancy (10:33.65) my parents and some of my siblings. And the upshot was that of that. And they said, so, you know, we're stopping at this place, come and see us. I was in Germany. And so I went to La Brea not to go to Christian ministry, which I had absolutely no interest in. But to see my parents before they went back to the States. And the upshot of that was Bertie saw my father. Bertie saw my father. And so when I first met her, she said, I took one look at your father and I said, there is a man who oppresses everyone around him. She could read him. And that's probably why I was able to talk to her because by that time, you know, I didn't, I might not have even mentioned it. You know, how people do, they suppress it so much. They don't even, they don't even talk about it anymore. It's not part of their conscious, you know, day to day memory, but because she had seen my father, she knew what to draw out. And through Birdie, I also then began to have a much deeper spiritual experience of God's love. Right? A lot of times it takes seeing a human example of love in order to have a really live, powerful, transformative experience of God's love. And it's love that heals. Love heals. You know, you can't explain that. You can't unpack that. It's just a fact. You can experience that with people. You can experience it with God. If you really work through to a deep, powerful, personal experience of God, God's love heals. And that was the ultimate form of psychological healing for me. I mean, I read a lot of books on, I can tell you this because I bore my friends with it. I tell them about all my wonderful books on psychology that I read. So I mean, I continue to work through. the best insights I could find from psychology. But I would say that the ultimate healing is experiencing God's love. Sean (12:36.068) Thank you. What are your insights into kind of the origins of this cultural shift? I think we can all agree we see it on social media, we see it presented in popular media that portrays masculinity and traditional masculine traits as toxic. And what do you believe might be the overarching kind of objective behind this portrayal? Nancy (12:58.546) Yeah, well, I saw the examples that you started with. I mean, that one, that Washington Post article really caught my eye when it was titled, Why Can't We Hate Men? I thought, really? In a respected mainstream publication or the Huffington Post editor who tweeted, hashtag kill all men. You can buy t-shirts that say, so many men, so little ammunition. And there are books with titles that are just very blunt, like I Hate Men and No Good Men, Are Men Necessary. So this is what first caught my attention. I thought, why has it become socially acceptable to express such hostility against men? And by the way, you probably know this, but there are men jumping on the bandwagon as well. A fairly well-known male author wrote a book in which he said, talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer. And then this one was in the news. So it's not in the book, but you may have seen it. The director of the movie Avatar. Yeah, James Cameron. Yeah, said testosterone is a toxin that you have to work out of your system. And so I and then there's a there's a psychotherapist who writes for The Wall Street Journal. You might know her Erica. Sean (14:06.96) James Cameron, right? Nancy (14:21.882) commissar. And she wrote about the young men coming into her practice. And I thought this was especially poignant because she said the young men coming into my practice now are coming in demoralized, discouraged, defeated because they feel that they're growing up in a culture that's hostile to masculinity. In fact, when I told my class at Houston Christian University that I was writing a book on masculinity, one of the male students shot back, What masculinity? It's been beaten out of us. So it sounds to me, you know, where's this coming from? Well, I give a lot of the history. So, I mean, on the surface, obviously, I think it's a response to the Me Too movement and to the fact that many of us were shocked and repulsed to find that so many high-level powerful men were acting so sexually entitled. And the Me Too movement, I don't know if you know this, but was followed by the Church Too movement, exposing sexual abuse in the churches. So on the one hand, there's clearly a reason why people have become more concerned about abusive and toxic forms of masculinity. But I don't think this was the most recent reason. Excuse me, it's only the most recent reason. It's not the deeper reason, but certainly it's a reason that has exploded in just recent years. Sean (15:47.408) Now this was probably the most interesting aspect of the book for me is the aspect of men being torn between two competing scripts for masculinity. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what those are and we can get into that kind of discussion point. Nancy (16:02.954) Yes, I love this. This was a study done by a sociologist. And I'll give you some background on it, which is not in the book. The background is that this is the most controversial book I've ever written. And I really did not expect that. The last book I wrote was titled Love Thy Body, and it's on issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, which are exploding these days. And yet, this book has been more controversial even. And I ran classes on the manuscript. I ran reading groups. I like to get a lot of feedback, you know, to rub off the rough edges. And when they told their family and friends, in other words, people who weren't actually seeing the manuscript, oh, we're going through a book on masculinity, invariably the first question was, who side is she on? With that tone, who side is she on? By the way, the second question was always, and why is a woman writing a book on masculinity anyway? But what happened then is males would tend to assume, I'm a woman, I must be a male bashing feminist, and more progressive people tended to assume I was some kind of angry defensive reactionary. And so the hardest thing in my book is writing the first chapter and getting over that initial hostility, that initial suspicion. I rewrote that first chapter so many times. And this study is what finally kind of clicked for many readers. I put the study right at the front after the opening anecdote. The study was done by Michael Kimmel, who you may know because he is a fairly well-known sociologist and he gets invited to speak all around the world. And so he came up with this clever experiment where he asked young men two questions. First he would ask them, what does it mean to be a good man? You know, if you had a funeral and in the eulogy, somebody says he was a good man, what does that mean? And Michael Kimmel says, all around the globe, young men had no trouble answering that. Immediately they would say things like honor, duty, sacrifice, integrity, do the right thing, look out for the little guy, be a protector, be a provider, be responsible. And he would ask them, where'd you learn that? Nancy (18:26.574) And they would say, well, I don't know, it's just in the air we breathe. Or if they were from a Western country, they would often say something like, it's part of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Michael Kimmel has a Jewish background, so maybe that's why he picked up on that. And then he would ask a follow-up question though. He would ask, what does it mean if I say to you, man up? Be a real man. And the young man would say, oh no, that's completely different. That means be tough, be strong, never show weakness, win at all costs, suck it up. What else? Be competitive, get rich, get laid. I'm using their language. And so the sociologist concludes that men are sort of caught between these two competing scripts, that universally men seem to have an inherent innate sense of what it means to be a good man. It's not from any particular part of the world, it's universal. From Brazil to Sweden to Australia, he got the same answers. It seems to be an innate knowledge. I would say because men are made in God's image, they do know what it means to be the good man. But they also feel this cultural pressure to live up to the real man's, quote unquote, which involves traits that we probably do consider more toxic, especially when decoupled. from a moral ideal, it can slide into entitlement and control and dominance and so on. And so I kind of use this as a connecting thread for the whole book, which was what is the good man? How do we know it? But how has the real man gained more and more power in our culture to the point where we now have the Andrew Tate phenomenon, you know, the idea that the real man is defined by fast money, fast cars and fast women. So I wanted to sort of explain the development of the real man, because I think it's kind of what we're up against now. And it also, I think it gives us a different way to approach these issues. Instead of accusing men of being toxic, most men don't respond very well to that, surprisingly. What we should try to do is to tap in to their innate, inherent knowledge of what it means to be the good man. I think most men aspire, really, to be the good man. Nancy (20:51.918) One of my favorite psychotherapists is Terry Real. And he talks about this in his counseling. He counsels severely troubled marriages. And what he says is, I make an alliance with the good man part. He uses that language even. I make an alliance with the good man and get his help in working against sort of the negative traits that he is maybe enacting in his marriage. So it... It's something that I think even psychotherapists might be able to use. How do we tap into the good men? There's even a book called, When Good Men Behave Badly. When good men behave badly. So being able to approach men with the understanding that in the heart of hearts, they do aspire to be the good man, I think gives us a much more positive approach to these issues. Sean (21:48.08) So Sean and I are here, we're brothers, obviously both men, but also raising sons. And it's an interesting, Sean and I were having the conversation about his son who is three years old. And when we talk about testosterone, right? The natural inclinations of some boys to be aggressive and to be competitive. And there's always this, I think, challenge when you're trying to raise a son, you know that there are certain values around protection and standing up for those who might need to be protected and being able to be a man of honor and integrity. And sometimes that often comes with your own personal kind of challenges with fear. And when you do raise a child in a godly home or religious home, you do speak to that concept of love. that you so beautifully spoke about earlier. Like a love is, it's an action and it's an energy and it's a respect for others. And doing those right things are always around greater concepts of that we are all kind of connected. So it's how we raise our kids is really critically important and today's secular society, especially with exposure to popular media, social media. The things that you were you were speaking about Andrew Tate materialism, viewing your value as a man as someone to be able to conquer and to make as much money and have as many women as you can. How much as American society grows more secular, how does secularization kind of contribute to this negative script for masculinity? And then how is we how are we as fathers? How can we really protect our sons from this? Nancy (23:44.414) Yeah, by the way, I just saw a terrible image. It was a news tabloid from Australia and the cover image showed a boy about seven years old, he looked like. And the title, this big headline was, how do we prevent this boy from becoming a monster? What? And then underneath it's talked about how parents need to address this menace. What kind of ideology teaches parents that their little boys can become monsters and that they are potential menaces? I thought that was one of the worst examples of toxic masculinity I've ever seen, charging boys with toxic masculinity. Anyway, through the book, I do go through several stages of how our culture became more secular and it's view of masculinity. And why don't I just start with sort of the big picture. It goes back to many people think, you know, it goes back to maybe the 1960s, second with feminism, but no, because much further back, it goes back to the industrial revolution. Because before that men are working alongside their wives and children on the family farm, the family industry, the family business. And so the cultural expectation for men focused very much on their caretaking role, you know, on the responsibility for their children. You know, they had to be, they had to be gentle and patient. because they're working with the wives and kids all day. In fact, this was fascinating. One of the most surprising historical facts I found was that most of the literature on parenting in that day, which would be sermons, advice manuals, and so on, was addressed to fathers. You know, if you go in a bookstore today, most of the books on parenting are addressed to mothers. But back then, fathers were considered the primary parent. And they were even called house fathers. We say housewives. They said house fathers. So they had a very much of a fathering definition of manhood. In fact, there was another phrase that was often used. Fathers were also expected to be quote, fathers of the community. In other words, they were supposed to bring that fathering ethos out into the community and the way they interacted with other people. And again, a caretaking role. How did we lose that very rich understanding of masculinity and masculine virtue? Nancy (26:08.25) So the Industrial Revolution took work out of the home. Men, of course, had to follow their work out of the home into factories and offices. And for the first time in American history, they were not working with their families, with people they loved and had a moral bond with. They were working as individuals in competition with other men. And that's when you first start to see the language change. The literature of the day began to protest. You know, they didn't like it. They began to protest and then... were losing that caretaking ethos. They were becoming egocentric, individualistic, self-centered, greedy and acquisitive, making an idol out of their career and so on. I'm giving you some of the language of that day. So this is really when you start to see the shift. The first time you really see negative language applied to the male character was already in the 19th century. Which, which. course does give us some sense of how we need to respond to it. Can we reconnect men to their families? And you asked about the secular script. So the secularization was also happening at this time because through the Industrial Revolution, there emerged a very large public square with factories and businesses and financial institutions and universities and the state. And people began to argue that these large public institutions should be should operate by scientific principles, by which they primarily meant value free. In other words, don't bring your private values into the public realm, which is what we still hear today. And since it was men who were getting that secular university education, working in that secular field, that secular work environment, already in the, again, in the litter to the day, people began to complain that men were becoming more secular. They were not going to church as often. They were not governing their behavior by a biblical ethic. 19th century is known for having a huge rise in drinking, gambling, prostitution, the whole range of sort of traditionally male vices. And that's why. In the book, I go through several stages beyond that in terms of how the secular script developed. But... Nancy (28:30.114) That's sort of the starting point. You know, you can't really stand against the social trend unless you know where it came from. How did it start? How did it develop? So that's why I go back to the Industrial Revolution to kind of help, help people understand how it started. Sean (28:44.676) least in our lifetime, I have a tendency to be influenced by pop culture. So film, television, and I worked in advertising for 15, 20 years. So I really paid attention to advertising commercials and there's just a general portrayal of men as buffoons. And I always saw the commercial end of it as recognizing that women were primarily the primary purchaser for the home. So they wanted to represent the women in the household as the ones making the decision, you know, almost like. saving the husband from making horrible decisions. So I kind of saw the humor in it. But if you go back to film, you have like Mr. Mom, you have all these TV shows that just showed men as helpless, basically. Homer Simpson. Yeah, like what happened that transition from the 80s until now, that was the general path for men versus what it was in the 60s and 70s where, you know, father knows best. Nancy (29:28.078) Yes. Nancy (29:40.758) Yes, well, it's a negative view not just of men, but particularly of fathers. And by the way, one of my sons loved the Berenstain Bears. Did you read them? You know, again, the father was always the incompetent bumbling idiot. So again, though, you have to go back to the Industrial Revolution. That's actually when it started, because when men were taken out of the home, they began to be sort of out of touch with the family dynamics. They didn't know their children as well. Sean (29:48.718) Oh, yeah. Sean (29:52.525) Yeah. Nancy (30:09.162) as when they work side by side with them all day. They were not as aware of what their children were thinking and feeling. They were not as aware therefore of, what might be the most appropriate ways to deal with the issues of the home. And so already in the 19th century, you see people start to say, well, men, fathers have become kind of irrelevant. They are not really part of the family anymore and incompetent. That's the one that really caught on. They're incompetent. They don't really know what their kids need anymore because they're just not there enough. And again, most people at the time protested this. They were not happy about it. Frances Willard, she gets slighted by feminist histories because she was not a feminist, but she was in fact the most influential woman in the 19th century. And she said, here's how she put it, the father. who is meant to be the prototype of the Heavenly Father is no longer even in the home except from Sunday to Sunday. Now, how could this, how can this be good? So people were upset about it even then and but that's when you start seeing the language of fathers being irrelevant and incompetent. And again, you know, how do we fix that then? In the book, I have to have some solutions, right? You can't write a book without some solutions. And so I do have a whole chapter suggesting ways in which we might be able to flex the workplace today. One psychiatrist put it this way, we're not going to have a better class of men until we have a better class of fathers, fathers raising the next generation. And so the pandemic actually had a small silver lining, which is that a lot of men discovered they actually liked being home more. The New York Times just recently had an article where the title... The title was something like, during the pandemic, fathers got closer to their children and they don't want to lose that. And 68% of fathers said they did not want to go back to the office full time. They wanted at least some kind of a hybrid situation which would allow them to have more time at home. So that's kind of my solution side of the book is, are there some practical ways that we can make it easier for fathers to be more involved? And it's mostly anecdotal. Sean (32:28.172) I mean, I'll, yeah, I'll totally, I'll totally agree with those statements because my wife got pregnant right at the pandemic. Our son was born in the middle of it. And I've had this, I call it a blessing where I've been home for most of my child's life. I think a hybrid work environment is the best environment for everybody because you do need that separation. Not only Nancy (32:29.848) It's mostly... Sean (32:52.56) for yourself, but also for your partner, your wife, she needs you to step out of the house and give her some space also. But, uh, I cherish it because I've witnessed so much and I think my child is benefiting from having both, you know, mom and dad, uh, in the house for most of his, his life. Nancy (33:09.674) tell you the major pushback I've gotten is that these solutions are mostly for white-collar workers, you know, the knowledge class. But I have had friends who were blue-collar or pink-collar, you know, women. For example, I had a friend who owned an auto repair shop. Well, of course, he didn't bring his cars home, but he could bring his bookkeeping. He could bring his bookkeeping home and he could sit at the kitchen table while his kids sat around him doing their homework. so that he was there to answer questions and discuss what they were learning. So it's not that every job can be done from home, but aspects of pretty much every job can be done at home. And again, I'm only talking about when your kids are young. I'm not saying it's a perfect situation for everybody at every stage of life. I'm just worried about children and especially boys. When fathers were taken out of the home and boys were first being raised pretty much just by women. Sean (33:52.453) Mm-hmm. Nancy (34:09.13) of the leading psychologist of the 19th century, put it this way. He said, never before has the American boy been so wild, wild because they were growing up without their father's supervision. Never before has the American boy been so wild and so half orphaned and left up to female guidance in school, church and home. In other words, we're so used to fathers being out of the home, we don't realize what a shock it was at the time. they really felt the loss of the father, half orphaned and left up to female guidance in homeschooling. And what did he say homeschooling and church? Anyway, so people at the time were much more aware of how boys were suffering because their fathers were no longer there. One, I think it's Michael Kimmel again, the same sociologist I quoted before. He said, for the first time, boys experienced an identity crisis. They had never really had that before because they had a father, you know, as a role model in the home day in and day out. So he said, after the industrial revolution, boys experienced their first identity crisis. And then a historian that I quote, who wrote a book called American Manhood said, well, you were the father taken out of the home. Boys were alienated from the adult world of men. You know, they. for the first time, they lost their main connection to the adult world. And so, and then even Robert Bly, you know Robert Bly, who started the men's movement in like the 80s and 90s, he too says the main issue facing men even today is that they're growing up with their fathers, my fathers are basically invisible most of the day. And he says, without that, you know, daily presence of a role model. Boys are growing up not knowing who they are. And he calls it industrial fatherlessness. Isn't that a great term? Industrial fatherlessness. And he too says, you know, the, why does he, why does he ask men to go out in the wilderness, right? For those, you know, wild men weekends. You know what he says? It's to, it's to grieve our father wound. That's why he does it. It's not really because he's telling men, you know, you should bang on drums and Nancy (36:34.434) Howl at the moon, although they do that. But that's not the main reason. He says it's to heal their father wound because they've grown up without a close connection to their father. Sean (36:44.516) Yeah, what's interesting in my field, and I do agree that society seems to be punishing men for acting just like men. So let's look at the rise in the ADHD epidemic that exists. Boys who are naturally active, being kind of forced to sit in school environments without being able to be connected to nature, move their bodies in the way they need to move their bodies. There are so many outlets that are needed for, for boys to be able to regulate their emotions. Sports are one of those where you can be able to be in a competitive environment around rules and around respect and learn important values. And you can utilize that natural aggressions. But yet the American Psychological Association tends to vilify these things. Competitiveness as if it is dangerous and it always leads to something that is harmful. In my opinion, competitiveness brings the best out of both people. You learn to push yourself in a way that your mind sometimes limits you. And of course that natural production of testosterone requires that. And if we're going to, if men, boys are going to learn how to regulate their emotions, they have to do it with strong role models, both masculine and feminine. Have to be able to manage that their emotions and their, their urges in, uh, and for that to be produced for things that are good. Um, you know, we look at our, our military or our police or even a psychologist, you know, you can, you can use and, and harness that and learn how to harness that natural energy for a lot of positive outcomes, but when the American Psychological Association vilifies stoicism, for example, so we're expected to have control of our emotions, be there for our families. But yet if you are stoic, you're somehow then suppressing emotions and that is bad for. for mental health, it seems like there's almost like a no win situation. Nancy (38:42.13) Yes, yes, that American Psychological Guidelines in 2018, right, it was horrible. It was terrible. And did you notice, I thought it was fascinating that they got a lot of negative backlash and they were shocked. You know, they're so ensconced in the sort of social science environment where everybody agrees with them. Apparently that, you know, that's kind of the dominant view. among sociologists, psychologists, and so on. They were shocked. They had no idea they would get that kind of pushback. So I was happy to see that, that a lot of people, starting with what, Jordan Peterson, I think, he said, this is reprehensible. At any rate, yeah, one of the things I say in the first chapter, I take the APA to task for those guidelines, and I say, they don't give any... to the idea that sometimes it's a good thing for men to be aggressive. And I start with that opening story of a shooter in a bar and then of the young college student who saved a lot of lives. You know, the two competing, there was the two competing scripts for manhood right there, you know, the good man and the quote unquote real man. One using his masculine strength to take lives and the other one using his masculine strength to save lives. And so the APA is not acknowledging that, yes, we want men who can use their strengths in positive ways. And I think what you're putting your finger on too is that when we don't acknowledge boys' unique abilities, I have two boys by the way, so I saw this, I saw this myself when they were in, especially elementary school, when they are not affirmed for their masculine characteristics, then they do worse. And that's... I think it's a big reason why boys are falling behind now at all levels, starting in kindergarten. This is so sad. You know, they don't have the same fine motor controls to operate as scissors. And so already in kindergarten, they're starting to feel like, you know, there's something wrong with them. As one psychologist put it, boys are treated as defective girls in the school system today. And there are books with titles like The Boy Crisis, The Trouble with Boys, Why Boys Fail. Nancy (41:02.21) The war against boys, people are really waking up to the fact that the school is not doing right by our boys. I quote one teacher who literally said that what she was taught as a teacher was, when girls were behind, the reason was discrimination. It was the system. Now that boys are behind, it's said to be their own fault for being too masculine. They can't sit still, like you said, they can't focus. It's their fault. And I thought that was fascinating to hear that from a teacher's mouth, that that's sort of the mentality among the teacher teaching profession. And of course, college is the same. The average college now is 60% female, 40% male. And graduate school, more women than men in graduate school, even more women than men in professional schools, like law and medicine. And then, and then after school. men are falling behind on a lot of areas, a lot of counts. They're more likely to be homeless, more likely than women to be homeless, to suffer mental illness, to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, to be in prison, 90, 95% of people in prison are male. And did you see the recent statistics showing that men's unemployment is now at Great Depression levels? It's not showing up in the normal statistics. statistics because they're not looking for work. So researchers had to dig deeper. It's at Great Depression era levels. That was a shock to me because we think of that as a huge crisis time. And then also their life expectancy is going down. Women's is staying the same. So it's not a general trend. It's just men's life expectancy that's gone down. So that a magazine called The New Scientist said the major demographic factor and early death now is being male. So I think it's time that we start saying, can we have compassion on men and boys? Can we start looking at possibly programs to help boys in school, to assist men better who are out of work? Have you seen the new book by Richard Reeves at the Brookings Institution? It's called, Of Men and Boys. So yeah, you'll probably wanna look at that because he's a policy wonk. Sean (43:17.404) Mm-mm. Nancy (43:25.334) It's not a really profound analysis, but it's a good book. And he's also saying, you know, can't we start programs to help boys out? Christina Hoff Sommers, who's a philosopher, wrote the first book on the subject. She wrote The War Against Boys. And she said, anytime they tried to start a program to help boys in school, feminist organizations would say no, you know, they would shut it down. Successfully, they would successfully shut it down. So. But as a result, girls have had the benefits of tied in line, girls have had the benefits of 1994 Gender Equity Act, pouring millions of dollars into curriculum, into equity workshops and so on. There's been nothing like that for boys. I think it's maybe time to say, there's even a White House counts on women and girls. They tried to start one on boys, men and boys, White House said no, they won't do that. William Farrell was the guy who tried to spearhead that and he was shot down too. So we must realize that there has been a lot of opposition to the idea and I think it's time to say, you know, it's time to have compassion. It's time to make programs that will help men and boys. Sean (44:36.896) We've kept you a while. I just want to have one final question. The role of the church. The Christian men are often portrayed as oppressive patriarchs prone to abuse themselves. Your book was well researched, provides kind of important data that contradicts the narrative. The idea of rejecting biblical masculinity turns men from protectors to predators. Can you tell us more about that? Nancy (45:03.394) Yes, I have to say that title was chosen by the editors of the magazine. I didn't have it quite that succinct. But yeah, it was very easy to find accusations. Quick Google search was easy to find accusations that Christian men are particularly abusive. You know, they're exhibit A of toxic masculinity because anyone who holds any notion of male authority in the home You know, that turns them into abusive, overbearing, tyrannical patriarchs. I'll give you just one quote. So this was the co-founder of the Church To movement, which followed the Me Too movement. And she said, the theology of male headship feeds the rape culture that we see permeating American Christianity today. And the social scientists were reading these kinds of accusations and saying, where's your evidence? You know, you're making these charges, but where's your data? And so psychologists, sociologists went out and did the studies and I cite about a dozen of them or so in my book. And they found that the media narrative was completely wrong and that in fact, evangelical Christian men who actually attend church regularly, for whom it's a real thing, authentic commitment, test out at the top, they're the most loving and engaged husbands and fathers. Their wives test out as reporting the highest level of happiness with their husband's love and affection. Evangelical fathers are the most engaged with their children, both in terms of shared activities like sports and church youth group, and in terms of discipline, like setting limits on screen time or enforcing bedtime. Evangelical couples divorced at the lowest rate of any major group in America, 35% lower than secular men. And then the real surprise was that in fact, they have the lowest rate of domestic abuse and violence of any major group in America. And so this information is really not out yet. I had to go digging in the academic literature to find it. And it is the final reason I said, I've got to write this book. You know, if I want to get this information out, both for the churches, so they know they actually are doing a good job, you know, and stop scolding men. I had a graduate student who's the... Nancy (47:23.458) head of the Women's Ministry at a very large Baptist church. And she said, on Mother's Day, we hand out flowers and tell the women they're wonderful. On Father's Day, we scold the men and tell them to do better. And so I worked very hard to avoid a scolding tone in my book. I think it's time for the Christian churches to get hold of this information so they can be positive and supportive and encouraging. But it's also very good to bring out into the public square to show that the media narrative is wrong. talk from some religious leader, right? This is solid empirical research from the social scientists. This is evidence-based findings that shows that Christianity really does have the power to reconcile the sexes, as I put it in the subtitle of my book. Sean (48:11.184) Refreshing conversation from a woman scholar. We really appreciate your time. How can people connect with you, find some of your work? Nancy (48:21.71) Yeah, my publisher very graciously just redesigned my website for me. So it's friendly and colorful. Come on over. It's NancyPiercy.com. P-E-A-R-C-E-Y. And you can browse my other books. You can leave a comment. I do read the comments. I don't always have time to answer them, but come on by and say hello. NancyPiercy.com. Sean (48:45.264) Thank you. Professor Nancy Piercy, we really do appreciate a radically genuine conversation. Nancy (48:54.233) Thanks.