Order of Man - 4 Great Lies About Masculinity ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart

00:00:04.980 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.

00:00:10.460 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who

00:00:17.180 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:22.740 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.

00:00:27.820 I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here and welcome

00:00:32.820 back. Really excited to be talking with you today because we're going to be covering issues that I've

00:00:37.380 been thinking about for seven, actually probably longer, probably more like a decade and why this

00:00:43.520 is so important in the concept and the conversations of masculinity and manliness. Before I do want to

00:00:48.420 make a couple of announcements. We've got a couple of really cool events coming up, guys. The first

00:00:52.960 one is on May 7th. This is an event that we're going to do in Northern California. It's a one-day

00:00:59.920 event. You're going to be able to come and hang out and spend some time with me and Bedros Koulian

00:01:04.900 and Jack Donovan, Tanner Guzzi, John Lovell, Steven Mansfield, Matt Boudreau. The lineup of men that we

00:01:13.400 have at this event is phenomenal. And we handpicked these guys to be at this event, to be able to speak on

00:01:19.780 the subjects of masculinity, to be able to have conversations with you, to be able to do breakouts,

00:01:24.840 to be able to eat and break bread together. This is going to be very, very powerful. And we're very

00:01:29.680 limited on seating. Again, it's May 7th. It's called Man Uncaged. So if you go to manuncaged.com

00:01:36.520 slash live, manuncaged.com slash live, then you're going to be able to have access to and pick up your

00:01:43.600 ticket and reservation for the very first inaugural Man Uncaged event. Again, that's May 7th,

00:01:51.360 manuncaged.com slash live. The next event that we have coming up is on May 28th. This is going to be

00:01:58.440 on my property here in Maine, and it's a father-son event. It's designed as a rite of passage.

00:02:04.600 So my oldest son and I went to this event in California last year, and it was so incredible

00:02:09.880 that I decided to partner up with Bedros Koulian and the rest of his team, including Ray Cash Care

00:02:15.360 to bring this event to the East Coast where it belongs on my property here in Maine. So you're

00:02:21.820 going to see the barn and we're going to put you and your son through some rigorous physical,

00:02:27.360 mental, and emotional events, activities, and challenges all designed to give you what you

00:02:33.400 need to help you usher your son into manhood. And it doesn't have to be just your son. It could be

00:02:38.640 a nephew, obviously a stepson, which I would still consider a son. Maybe it's a young man in your

00:02:44.740 community that you have permission in your mentoring. So if you're interested in that,

00:02:48.800 very, very few seats left. I think there's probably five seats left. That's May 28th of

00:02:53.820 this year. And if you go to squireprogram.com slash Ryan, squireprogram.com slash Ryan, you can

00:03:01.420 check that out. Now, one thing you'll notice from me, guys, is you're not going to hear a bunch of

00:03:05.560 ads. I know I talk about origin a lot because they're good friends of mine and I believe in

00:03:09.220 what they're doing, but you're not going to hear a bunch of ads for me hawking who knows what underwear

00:03:16.280 and mattresses and all kinds of weird stuff that some of these other podcasts do. The way that we

00:03:21.600 promote and sponsor and fund what we're doing here is through our events, is through book sales,

00:03:28.120 things like merchandise sales. It's all in-house. So if you want to support what we're doing

00:03:32.040 and keep it ad-free, which is what I want, I don't want that, then please support us by coming

00:03:37.280 to these events. They're good for you. They're good for us. And they advance the mission.

00:03:40.600 All right. Now, with that said, let's talk about the real subject of today, which is the four great

00:03:44.960 lies of masculinity. The first thing I want to do before we get into this is tell you that I don't

00:03:50.740 want to get tripped up in semantics in this. So you're going to hear me say some things that maybe

00:03:56.220 you agree with, maybe you don't agree with, but the words that are being used aren't as important

00:04:02.740 as the concepts that we're talking about. So if you want to use a different word or something

00:04:08.000 interchangeably, by all means, right, we got to look at these things in the context of the greater

00:04:12.900 conversation. It's the concept. And I'm trying to put these words to the concepts so that we all are

00:04:18.680 on the same page about what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man? What is manliness?

00:04:23.920 So let's break this down. These are the four great lies. The sooner we can have the truth

00:04:28.440 and speak from reality about what masculinity and manliness is, the more, or the quicker,

00:04:34.860 I should say, that we can work towards becoming more proficient men. Number one, this is the one

00:04:40.200 you hear all the time. Masculinity is toxic. Guys, it's not toxic. And what people who use this

00:04:49.200 term quite frequently will say is they'll say, well, you know, Ryan, we're not saying all men are

00:04:53.520 toxic. You might not be saying that, but there are people who are saying that. And when you paint

00:04:59.920 masculinity with a broad stroke that says it's toxic, or even allude to the fact that it's toxic,

00:05:08.920 then you start to plant that into people's minds. And that's actually the intent more often than not,

00:05:16.460 not always, but more often than not, I believe the intent of saying that masculinity is toxic

00:05:21.100 is so that masculinity can be undermined, deconstructed, redefined, and rooted away

00:05:28.740 from society. Okay. I'm not interested in that. I don't think you are. You wouldn't be listening to

00:05:33.400 this podcast, but masculinity is not inherently toxic. Now the American Psychological Association

00:05:38.760 did a study. This was, gosh, I can't remember right off hand. It must've been several years ago,

00:05:44.660 maybe two, three years ago. And I'm using study very loosely. And they said in the study that the

00:05:51.500 attributes that we would typically associate with masculinity and the four they listed were

00:05:56.580 competitiveness, dominance, stoicism, and aggression are naturally and inherently dangerous and destructive

00:06:05.440 to young men. Well, that just isn't true. That's unequivocally false. Now, can those attributes be

00:06:16.040 dangerous? Yes, they can, but they're not inherently dangerous. Let's take violence as an example. If I'm

00:06:22.760 walking down the street and I decide to pull out a knife or a gun and stab or shoot somebody with that 0.97

00:06:28.720 knife or gun and steal their possessions, I think we'd all agree that that would be a violent act. 0.52

00:06:33.860 And I think we could all agree that that would not be in the best interest of other people.

00:06:39.300 So that is a dangerous situation. And that's a poor use to put it mildly of being aggressive or

00:06:47.760 being violent. Now let's counter that. If I'm laying in bed at 2 AM at night and I hear somebody break

00:06:55.880 into my house and my alarm goes off, or I hear the glass shatter, or I hear the door open and I grab the 0.98

00:07:01.980 firearm that's by my bedside and I find who that intruder is and I plant a bullet between his eyes

00:07:07.800 and neutralize that threat, I think the overwhelming majority of us would say that that was a righteous

00:07:15.820 use of violence. I have the moral right and not only the right, but the responsibility to protect myself

00:07:23.320 and protect other people by any means necessary. So is violence bad? Depending on the context,

00:07:31.660 it can be, but in other contexts, it could be righteous and it could be virtuous and it could

00:07:36.660 actually be moral. So we know that masculinity in and of itself is not inherently toxic.

00:07:41.900 Now, the next great lie is in line with what I just shared, because what I found is there's two

00:07:47.060 camps of people when it comes to this conversation. There's the camp generally that says, well,

00:07:51.560 masculinity is toxic and it's destructive and we need to root it out and we need to civilize men,

00:07:56.360 yada, yada, yada. And then the other side of the camp says, well, no, masculinity is good. 0.89

00:08:01.200 It's virtuous. It's right. It's moral. It's all these things. Well, it isn't that either. Okay. And

00:08:06.620 that's the second great lie is that masculinity is virtuous. Guys, it is not virtuous because again,

00:08:13.780 if I'm using the hormones and the characteristics and the behaviors that are coursing through my

00:08:21.420 veins to do harm to other people, we could say that that's a product of masculinity, but it isn't

00:08:28.360 a righteous act, right? Masculinity is amoral. It's neither good nor bad, right versus wrong,

00:08:37.520 evil versus righteous. The way that we utilize and the way that we harness the masculine characteristics

00:08:44.300 and virtues coursing through our veins is what determines if we're being evil or we're being

00:08:48.840 righteous. And this is something that I think a lot of people who have listened to the podcast

00:08:52.620 for any amount of time or are connected with us in some way might actually disagree with me on,

00:08:58.640 but I've got another book coming out the end of this fall. And I've spent a lot of time thinking

00:09:02.480 about this and I've actually had to challenge my own perceptions of masculinity and manliness and what

00:09:07.580 it means to be a man. And the conclusion that I came to is that masculinity is neither moral or

00:09:13.740 evil. It's amoral. It just is because how do we define masculinity? That's the most important thing

00:09:21.080 we need to do in this conversation, define masculinity. And I'm going to throw out a definition

00:09:25.520 that I think is broadly applicable and it might vary a little bit here and there, but I think we can all

00:09:31.000 agree that masculinity is a set of characteristics and behaviors that is determined by our biological

00:09:39.660 makeup. So it's our testosterone. It's our other hormones. It's the way our minds work. It's how

00:09:46.060 we were introduced to these hormones, even in utero that really determine if we're going to be masculine

00:09:51.620 or feminine or, or, or where on that spectrum, I guess you could say that we might fall. Okay. So

00:09:58.140 it's very important. We get the definitions, right? And this is why I don't want to get tripped up in

00:10:03.820 semantics, but it is important to realize that masculinity is simply characteristics and behaviors

00:10:09.080 that we see and are a result, a proven result, by the way, of the hormones and the chemicals and

00:10:18.080 the biological makeup that we have as men. How we use it is what defines us as men, which leads me into

00:10:24.780 point number three. And that is the lie that masculinity is earned. Well, no, it's not actually

00:10:31.180 earned. If masculinity is amoral and masculinity is simply what we are as defined by our biological

00:10:38.660 makeup, then masculinity isn't earned. It's a birthright. Nothing more, nothing less.

00:10:47.740 You were born a man or you were born a woman, period. Now I know there's intersex people and

00:10:54.340 that's, you know, and obviously I'm not talking about trans issues at this point. I'm talking about

00:10:58.440 biological truth here, man, woman. And yes, there is a very, very small percentage, 0.01%,

00:11:05.360 maybe even less of individuals who are actually intersex people, but that doesn't make up a third

00:11:11.260 class of people. It doesn't make up a third sex. It means they fall out of the binary that we operate 0.98

00:11:16.980 in. Okay. So if it's not earned, then what about manliness or masculinity is? Well, if masculinity is

00:11:25.420 a birthright, then manliness is what needs to be earned. You need to earn being a man. Now, some people

00:11:31.760 will say, no, man just means you have a dick and balls. No, it doesn't mean that at all. Let's take 1.00

00:11:37.040 my sons, for example, or my sons who are 14, 10 and six. Are they men? Well, no. I mean, they have

00:11:47.320 the biological makeup. So shouldn't they be men? Well, no, they're not. They're boys. They're adolescent

00:11:54.040 males, but they're not men. Men makes them something more. Okay. You're not born a man. 1.00

00:12:01.400 You're born a male. Sure. But not a man. So what is a man? Well, a man is somebody who can take the

00:12:06.820 masculine virtues and characteristics that's coursing through their veins and they can harness them and

00:12:12.360 they can wield them and they can use them for productive outcomes for themselves and for other

00:12:17.020 people. That's where the whole motto on my hat here comes from. Protect, provide, preside. That's what

00:12:22.420 makes you a man. So there's stories and situations of young men who have lost fathers, who have gone

00:12:30.260 into the workforce to provide for their families. That's manly behavior. And alternatively, there's

00:12:36.180 other individuals who are male, but they're 30, 35, 40, even older, still living at home, still

00:12:43.660 mooching off the system, don't have a job, aren't contributing financially to the equation. And that's

00:12:48.800 not manly behavior. No one would say that's being a man. We'd say that's a male. We'd say that's a

00:12:54.700 little boy trapped in a man's body, but we certainly wouldn't say that's manly behavior.

00:12:58.940 So guys, masculinity is not earned. Manliness is. Masculinity is a birthright and manliness is

00:13:05.560 something far greater. And we've been talking about that for seven years. So if you have questions

00:13:09.780 about what that is, if you're just joining us, you can go back and listen to any podcast that we've had

00:13:14.680 because we talk about this in depth. All right. And then the last point that I want to make here,

00:13:19.480 so this is lie number four, is that masculinity is not as needed in society as it once was. This is

00:13:26.700 one that I hear quite often that masculinity is not needed in society as it once was. And while I can

00:13:32.660 agree that the likelihood of you having to fend off a violent attacker or protect yourself or a loved

00:13:41.320 one from a dangerous encounter is not as prevalent as it once was, I disagree with the premise that

00:13:48.240 it's as not needed as it once was. Now, the way we might go about doing it is going to change.

00:13:54.200 The way we administer manliness is going to change over time. It's going to evolve a hundred percent.

00:14:00.840 So if you take, let's take a farmer 200 years ago, wanted to put food on his family's table,

00:14:07.520 wanted to make sure they have a roof over their head, wanted to make sure that he had a safe place

00:14:11.860 that they could grow and thrive and live. Well, what did he have to do? Well, he had to fend off

00:14:17.300 intruders. He had to fend off warring tribes. He also had to go out and till the ground. He had to raise

00:14:25.000 the cows. He had to go hunting. He had to go fishing. These are all the things that he needed to do

00:14:32.000 the repairs on the house. These are all the things that he needed to do 200 plus years ago. And now you don't

00:14:37.240 have to do any of that, right? Like when's the last time for the overwhelming majority of you,

00:14:42.000 I know there are some of you and I commend you. When's the last time you actually raised an animal

00:14:46.400 and then killed it, slaughtered it and consumed it? When's the last time that you actually went

00:14:52.200 hunting? When's the last time you did a major repair on your house? No, you probably called

00:14:58.020 somebody to do it. And this is the benefit of modern times. I don't have to do it all, right? I can be on

00:15:06.820 this podcast and I can offer other programs and courses and events like we have coming up and books

00:15:10.940 and I can make money. And then I can take that money and I can spend it on food at the grocery

00:15:16.460 store. I don't have to go hunting. I do, but I don't have to. If there's a big project around the

00:15:23.940 house, I don't have to do it myself. I can hire somebody to do it. I don't have to worry about

00:15:30.020 fending off an intruder, right? Or deal with an emergency situation because in the majority of

00:15:36.880 those situations, not all, somebody could simply call the police or the fire department.

00:15:42.080 So we've outsourced a lot of this, but that's not to say that we aren't without risk. And it's not to

00:15:46.520 say that we still don't have to put food on the table, a roof over our family's head, make sure

00:15:51.340 they're protected, make sure they're safe. And how many of you have actually dealt with a violent

00:15:56.020 encounter? Quite a few of you probably have had to either draw your gun, fire your gun,

00:16:02.040 fight somebody, defend somebody else, pull somebody out of a car, pull somebody out of a building.

00:16:07.520 These are all reasons why masculinity is so important. And not only that, you had to build

00:16:13.080 things and you had to do the rougher jobs like construction and building skyscrapers and picking

00:16:21.200 up the trash and working on the plumbing and working on the heat. These are the harder jobs.

00:16:26.020 That generally women aren't doing. It's not to dismiss what they do. It's not to dismiss what 1.00

00:16:31.940 women bring to the equation because what they do is crucial. And maybe I'll do another episode when 1.00

00:16:36.320 we talk about the four great lies of femininity. And I can tell you the first one is that you don't

00:16:41.660 have to act like a man in order to be a woman. That's the first one I would say. But guys, it's very, 1.00

00:16:47.300 very crucial that we understand that masculinity, even though it's not inherently toxic, it's not

00:16:55.020 inherently virtuous and it's not really earned, doesn't mean that we don't need it. We actually

00:17:00.900 do need it. And the way that we harness it, the conversations that we have, the way we teach our

00:17:08.020 sons, the way we honor and celebrate masculinity, the way that we reward and encourage an effective

00:17:15.760 use of masculinity. The more that we can do that and show, hey, when your sons are angry,

00:17:20.680 it's okay to be angry. Let me show you how to use that anger to produce productive outcomes.

00:17:26.880 I know when I was a little boy, I had a lot of anger issues and I didn't really have a permanent

00:17:32.460 father figure in my life to start working me through how I deal with those anger issues.

00:17:36.960 So I was left to fend on my own. Now, my mom did a great job to the degree that she could,

00:17:41.060 but she's a woman. She'll never understand what it is to be a man. Never. And so we need other men 1.00

00:17:47.720 in society who are taking these young boys and instructing them and coaching them and counseling

00:17:55.520 them and guiding them and ushering them into manliness by harnessing their masculinity. 0.98

00:18:04.020 I wanted to talk about this today because I think it's so important that we get the verbiage and we

00:18:09.080 get the language right. And I've been talking about this for a long time. So it's very clear in my head

00:18:13.480 and it's become more clear as I wrote that book that's coming out in the fall.

00:18:18.100 But these are the types of conversations that we all need to get on the same page with us.

00:18:22.520 And I'm not saying I'm a hundred percent accurate or right. In fact, I'd love to hear from you. If

00:18:25.880 you have a differing opinion, please let me know what it is. But these are the kinds of conversations

00:18:31.260 that we need to have. Truthful conversations, bold, tough conversations. We need to be able to share

00:18:38.520 our opinions in a meaningful way where we can start to figure out what is going on. Like what is going

00:18:45.300 on with our men? Suicide, depression, drug use, alcohol abuse, pornography use. Then our younger

00:18:54.360 men are falling behind in academia, falling behind in work, falling behind in income, their crime rates,

00:19:00.420 imprisonment. And this is only going to get worse as we see a growing wave of young boys who are being

00:19:07.480 raised without masculine, manly. They're different, right? I explained masculine, manly men in the

00:19:15.080 home, permanent fixtures of the home and permanent fixtures of society. This is what I want. This is

00:19:21.740 what I think you want. This is who you want to be. This is who you want your sons to be. So let's get

00:19:27.080 the verbiage right. Let's come at it from the right framework, the right understanding, the right

00:19:30.920 foundation. So we can have more meaningful conversations about how in the world do we actually do

00:19:35.800 this? And I'm going to follow up next week with how exactly we do this. But the first thing is,

00:19:41.400 is let's lay the groundwork, lay the foundation. Masculinity is not inherently toxic. Masculinity 0.96

00:19:46.700 is not inherently virtuous. Masculinity is not earned. Manliness is. And masculinity is needed,

00:19:52.420 is needed just as much now as it ever was. If you have other ideas, other thoughts, you think I'm on,

00:19:59.420 you think I'm off, whatever, share with me on the gram, share with me on Facebook, Twitter,

00:20:02.860 wherever you are, make sure to check out the couple of events because they're right in line

00:20:07.080 with what we're talking about. The Man Uncaged event, May 7th. So that's manuncaged.com slash

00:20:12.520 live. And then on May 28th, we have the Squire program, which is for fathers or father figures

00:20:18.860 and their sons or son figures. I think you guys understand. That's May 28th. And you can go to

00:20:24.420 squireprogram.com slash Ryan. That one's in May, May 28th.

00:20:28.640 All right, guys, we'll be back for our interview next week. Until then, go out there,

00:20:33.380 take action and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man

00:20:37.960 podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

00:20:43.060 We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - April 15, 2022

4 Great Lies About Masculinity ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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