The Art of Manliness - A Surprising Solution for Disordered Masculinity

00:00:00.000 We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.260 There's been a lot of media coverage and dialogue about the struggles men are facing in the modern

00:00:15.220 day. There's been some solutions forwarded to these struggles as well. Among these, Dr. Anthony

00:00:20.240 Bradley has a more surprising idea that you don't hear every day, revitalizing college fraternities.

00:00:25.700 Anthony is a research fellow and professor and the author of Heroic Fraternities, How College

00:00:30.880 Men Can Save Universities and America. In the first part of our conversation, Anthony offers

00:00:35.920 his take on the state of men in the modern day, the difference between heroic and disordered

00:00:40.100 masculinity, the insights that a writer from the mid-20th century can shed on the forms

00:00:44.320 that disorder can take, and why many men today are choosing the path of resignation. We then

00:00:49.640 turn to Anthony's idea that college fraternities can be a training ground for virtue. We talk

00:00:54.040 about the loftier origins of fraternities, why, at some universities, they devolved into

00:00:58.040 organizations that become symbolic of the worst traits of masculinity, and Anthony's six principles

00:01:02.580 for reviving the potential of fraternities to shape great men. After the show's over, check

00:01:06.680 out our show notes at awim.is slash fraternities.

00:01:22.100 All right, Anthony Bradley, welcome to the show.

00:01:25.020 Thanks for having me.

00:01:26.180 So you are a professor who spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about men and the

00:01:32.240 issues they face. And you've actually taught a course about the masculine journey. I'm curious,

00:01:37.440 what sparked your interest in the male experience and the development of manhood?

00:01:42.400 This actually goes back to when I taught high school when I was in grad school. This is

00:01:46.240 late 90s. I noticed as a high school teacher that the girls were doing great and the guys were not.

00:01:52.400 I mean, it was demonstrable. I would stand in the hallway and the girls were standing up straight,

00:01:57.920 shoulders back, dedicated, focused, ready to go, dialed in. But the guys, heads down,

00:02:05.960 shoulders slumped over, walking very slowly, lost, discouraged, confused. And this was 20 years ago.

00:02:15.180 So about 20 years ago, a lot of people, mostly conservatives, were saying, hey, there's a

00:02:18.880 problem, there's a problem, there's a problem. People in the culture said, no, no, no, there's nothing.

00:02:23.140 But I saw it back then. And then as I continued my academic journey and became a college professor,

00:02:29.640 what I've seen at every school I've taught is it's the same. Girls are doing great,

00:02:36.160 dialed in, focused, motivated, successful. Guys are falling behind. Right now we have a situation in

00:02:41.920 America where boys are falling behind girls in every grade, in every subject, in every school,

00:02:47.180 in every county, in every city in America. So we're having some major, major problems

00:02:52.640 right now. And I've just seen it as someone who teaches college, right? About the fall of 2021,

00:03:00.540 we begin to see a major shift that about 61% of all new students were women. Last year,

00:03:08.120 about 42% of all bachelor's degrees were awarded to men. That's it. So there's something happening.

00:03:14.640 We have about 9 million men right now who are not working. And this is prime working age between 24

00:03:21.140 and 54 who were not a part of the economy. So there's something wrong. And as I decided to come

00:03:29.280 up with a course, my whole goal was to get guys ready for the workforce and ready to be married.

00:03:35.140 So what I noticed that guys just needed a little motivation. They needed some direction and some

00:03:41.040 content of vision for what it means for them to be great men. And once they have that, once they have

00:03:46.920 that, they kind of light the fire under them. And I've, I've seen them soar.

00:03:51.780 So in your work, you talk about two types of masculinity, disordered masculinity and heroic

00:03:56.980 masculinity. Let's talk about disordered masculinity. What does that look like?

00:04:02.720 So disordered masculinity is a self-orientated masculinity. I talk about that in the book in

00:04:09.560 three parts, really, that, that a disordered man is focused on himself. He is a navel gazing

00:04:17.780 man. He is first self-serving. That means that he really uses his relationships in terms of what he

00:04:24.760 can get out of people. He kind of uses people. It's also self-centered. And by this, I mean,

00:04:31.480 it's someone who kind of thinks about themselves always first. They may think about others later,

00:04:37.500 but me first is always the mantra. The last part of disordered masculinity is the self-preserving

00:04:46.160 man. And this man really doesn't care about anybody else. I mean, this is, this guy is the narcissist,

00:04:53.420 right? And so this person who is self-preserving only wants to pursue things that benefit himself

00:05:00.820 and the heck with everybody else. If he has to hurt people, step on people to climb to the top and win,

00:05:07.140 he'll most certainly do it. So the disordered masculinity that we see in our, our culture

00:05:14.060 really elevates the self and centers the self at navel gazing and being hyper-focused on one's own

00:05:22.120 advancement, often to the detriment of others. It's something you've done in your work is you've

00:05:27.180 brought in this post-World War II psychologist. I never heard of her before, but I thought her insights

00:05:33.320 were really interesting. Karen Ornay, what did her ideas, how did that influence your idea of

00:05:37.860 disordered masculinity? So Karen Ornay was a psychiatrist in Brooklyn after World War II up

00:05:45.960 until the 1950s. And she wrote this fantastic book I would highly recommend called Toward Neurosis and

00:05:52.480 Growth. And Karen Ornay's work was instrumental in me helping guys to see some of the patterns and

00:06:01.760 habits in their lives over the years. I, I have, have used her work in a lot of my classes now for

00:06:07.380 15, 16 years. And, and she basically says this, that all of us, because we are born in homes of,

00:06:14.440 of imperfection, have uncertainties. We have insecurities. We have what she calls a

00:06:20.340 very, very basic anxiety. Now, now anxiety basically means that we have some sort of

00:06:26.520 apprehension or tension or uneasiness about the anticipation of danger, right? That the bottom

00:06:33.880 might fall. We think about, oh no, this, this might not go well. We kind of think about that.

00:06:38.900 And being raised in the context of imperfection means that we are suspicious about things. We are

00:06:45.640 often insecure about the future. And all of us have this. This is not necessarily something that

00:06:51.580 is unique to men or unique to women or age brackets. This is just a part of the human experience,

00:06:57.500 having certain questions and doubts and insecurities about the future. Now, what she does though,

00:07:04.100 she says that we tend to handle these things in one of three ways. We either with these uncertainties

00:07:10.740 or these anxieties, we tend to either take them out on people. She calls this the self-expansive

00:07:16.280 solution. And by this, we seek to master the uncertainty. We want to conquer it and win. We

00:07:22.900 want to dominate the vicissitudes of life. This person who's self-expansive is the narcissist.

00:07:31.100 Sometimes a self-expansive person is considered type A. This person is about winning. This person's

00:07:37.580 often very vindictive and above all else is going to use other people in their lives to always be on

00:07:45.140 top. The second way that she talks about the way that some people handle the uncertainty and the

00:07:51.240 vicissitudes and the anxieties of life is by being a doormat. She calls this the self-effacing solution.

00:08:00.280 And by this, we handle these things by being the classic people-pleasing nice guy. You might call

00:08:07.200 this person the simp of all simps, the beta of all betas, right? I mean, this is the guy

00:08:12.600 who is neurotically focused on making sure that no one's ever mad at him. This is the guy who comes

00:08:21.200 across as someone who's kind and pleasant. But the reason they're always doing something for other

00:08:27.380 people is that they are desperate to have other people's validation and love and affirmation.

00:08:33.600 So they're kind of chronic, chronic people-pleasers. The third way she talks about this is the

00:08:39.740 self-resignation solution. And this primarily is what I'm seeing massively across the country right

00:08:45.920 now. This is people who are handling the uncertainties, the doubts, the anticipation of a potential danger

00:08:54.500 in the future by simply checking out. I mean, they have resigned themselves from participating in the

00:09:02.200 sorts of things that would facilitate dating, marriage, college, jobs. They just want to be

00:09:09.600 left alone, right? I mean, this is the classic guy who is playing video games all day. He just wants to

00:09:17.160 smoke some weed, maybe get drunk every now and then, maybe have sex with a couple of girls every now

00:09:22.520 and then. But he just wants to be left alone. The self-resigned guy has a sign over his door that

00:09:28.400 says, do not disturb. Just leave me alone. I am done with all of this. I've completely checked out.

00:09:35.540 And then lastly, she says that what this kind of creates for a lot of men is the idealized self. I

00:09:43.280 mean, this is the ideal person that we think we must be or ought to be or should be in order to be

00:09:50.220 acceptable to ourselves and to be acceptable to others. And this is the birthplace of people being fake.

00:09:56.500 This is the birthplace of people wearing a mask and not being truly themselves. Now, the difficult part

00:10:04.400 is that you can have an idealized self. You can be a fake person and be successful, right? You could

00:10:10.540 end up being the CEO of a company, the president of your high school class. You can end up being the

00:10:15.640 governor. Our culture is set up so that the way the market economy works is that you can be a terrible

00:10:21.860 human. You can be a narcissist. You can be vindictive and be successful. And unfortunately,

00:10:28.400 unfortunately, there are a lot of guys who are this way and it's been normed. And she really does a

00:10:33.940 great job of calling out. I would say one last thing here is that when guys are people pleasing,

00:10:40.520 when they're self-effacing, right, they sort of cut off their face, they often find themselves in

00:10:45.860 relationships with people who are narcissists and self-expansive. And that might be relationships

00:10:52.820 or friendships. It might be employer-employee relationships. But lastly, and maybe more

00:10:59.180 dangerously, they may marry a partner who is self-expansive. They might marry a narcissist

00:11:06.400 and they are in a relationship where someone controls all of their lives, makes decisions

00:11:12.980 for them. It's often the context of emasculation. So Karen Ornay's work, I think, is really important

00:11:19.140 and it's been incredibly helpful for my students and the men that I've had reader.

00:11:24.360 Okay. So that self-expansive idea, that could be like that Andrew Tate type of masculinity. Win,

00:11:29.200 dominate, be the alpha bro. And then there's that self-effacing, the Mr. Nice Guy. The resignation

00:11:35.840 one. As you said, you said you're seeing this mostly amongst the men you interact with or the

00:11:40.440 young men you interact with. What do you think is going on there? What is it about modern life that

00:11:44.300 nudges more and more men towards self-resignation? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's

00:11:50.600 something different about the way our economy works today than it did, say, 50 years ago and, of course,

00:11:57.080 100 years ago plus. Guys are lost. They don't know where they fit into this current economy. For one,

00:12:04.640 we don't need men's bodies anymore. We don't really need men's physical strength anymore. So a lot of

00:12:11.280 guys don't know where their bodies fit into the economy. We don't really need men to pick up big

00:12:16.560 things anymore and move them. I recently saw a video of a construction site, an excavation site,

00:12:23.960 where these massive, massive tractors and excavators were being driven remotely off-site somewhere else

00:12:31.780 with a joystick and a screen. So you don't even need men to be physically driving bulldozers anymore.

00:12:38.480 And so, you know, men don't often know where they fit. I think also is there's a lot of neglect.

00:12:45.240 We have not been paying attention to boys, particularly in the K-12 space. We've been focusing so much on

00:12:51.940 girls that we've just neglected affirming, validating, building up guys. A lot of guys lack a lot of

00:12:59.060 fatherly attention, fatherly affection, fatherly encouragement. So there's a dad deprivation

00:13:06.140 problem as well. And this is a really sensitive topic that could probably be an entire episode,

00:13:12.500 is mother enmeshment. I mean, we often talk about the ways that men suffer from father wounds,

00:13:18.540 but there is a pretty massive trend, longstanding data on the fact that moms who were neglected

00:13:27.720 or abused when they were girls often become neglectful and abusive moms. And so there's a

00:13:34.800 lot of boys who grew up with pretty toxic and narcissistic mothers. And there's a lot of mom

00:13:41.320 enmeshment where moms use their sons to get the emotional and sometimes physical support, affection

00:13:48.060 that they're not getting from their dads. And a lot of guys just don't want to have any of that

00:13:54.020 anymore. They don't date or anything like that. But we also have this ridiculous overemphasis on

00:14:00.680 quote unquote toxic masculinity, where being a guy is bad. There's some shame there where we place all

00:14:08.560 of the world's social ills, all of the evil in the world on the backs of men, that men are evil and

00:14:16.240 that being a man is bad and also evil. And there's a lot of emasculation there. So you add all those

00:14:23.360 things together. And a lot of guys are like, listen, I don't know how to date. I don't know

00:14:27.600 where to work. I'm dangerous. You've told me I don't have anything to contribute. I don't think

00:14:32.660 that anybody needs us. No one's asking us to do anything. So I'm out. I'm just going to resign

00:14:37.820 and live my life. So just leave me alone. And if guys are constantly told that they are the problem,

00:14:46.180 why would we expect anything differently? Why would we expect anything different from,

00:14:50.080 from a population of men who are told that if they exert any sort of influence, if they exert

00:14:56.900 any sort of, of agency, that they might hurt people just by being physically present. And a lot

00:15:05.600 of guys, I see this with guys beginning in middle school, all the way through their mid to late thirties,

00:15:11.600 they are done. Absolutely. 100% done. Throw in the towel. Give me a 10 count. I'm out. Leave me alone.

00:15:21.420 I'm going to play video games, have a part-time job, smoke some weed. And hopefully I'll figure out

00:15:27.760 how to have a life where people might want me. But we're seeing this more and more. And it just

00:15:34.740 reflects back on the data that we're seeing. One, spikes in anxiety and depression. Two,

00:15:43.460 spikes in suicide, particularly two age groups, 15 to 24. There's a spike right now, about three times

00:15:51.380 more likely to commit suicide than girls. Also major, major suicide spike is between the ages of 45 and

00:15:58.360 54. That's the next spike. And the last suicide spike are men who are over 65. So there's a

00:16:06.160 motivation void. Then there's also lastly here, a purpose void. And that purpose void, I think it

00:16:12.900 is really at the root of so much of the resignation is that guys don't have a purpose anymore. And

00:16:19.280 they've been told that if they have any purpose, it's potentially harmful to others.

00:16:23.440 Okay. So that's disordered masculinity and the potential sources of it. What is heroic masculinity?

00:16:31.520 Yeah. So the way I framed heroic masculinity is simply this. These are men who use their presence

00:16:41.940 and their power and their strengths and their creativity for the benefit of those around them.

00:16:48.900 They are primarily thinking about the ways in which their presence makes other people's lives

00:16:55.500 better. It is the exact opposite of the self-preserving and the self-centered, the self-orientated

00:17:02.780 approach. There's a way of thinking about the fact that my presence somewhere makes other people's

00:17:08.860 lives better. I am adding value to others. Everything about me, everything about him makes his environment,

00:17:17.840 makes his surroundings better. When I leave the room, people are much better off than they were

00:17:24.100 before I came. My friends are better. My siblings are better. My parents are better. It's a way of

00:17:30.560 thinking about how is it that I can add some sort of value and benefit with my gifts and talents and

00:17:38.900 creativity and my strengths so that other people can thrive and flourish. And the beauty of this is

00:17:44.780 simply this. If we had massive, massive armies of men who were committed to this level of mutuality,

00:17:54.720 our local communities, our states, I would say even our entire country would radically transform into a

00:18:02.540 place where everyone thrives. And it's not this idea that it's just about me. The idea is I'm here to

00:18:10.640 help others. And if everyone's helping each other, we all benefit. No one loses. And I think lastly here

00:18:17.120 that when guys really do give themselves to others, that's where they find themselves as well. They sort

00:18:23.780 of find vision, direction, calling by giving themselves to others. It's actually a win-win when men do this.

00:18:34.240 And the history of men and masculinity since the beginning has been primarily this, giving themselves

00:18:41.540 to others for the benefit of others. And in doing so, the man finds his own purpose and meaning and

00:18:49.060 significance. How is this others-oriented idea of heroic masculinity, how is it different from being a

00:18:55.820 doormat? That's a great question. So the doormat is people pleasing for the sake of receiving love,

00:19:07.440 receiving validation, receiving affirmation, because they don't think they're worthy of it unless they

00:19:13.900 please other people. The heroic vision, the heroic man knows he's a person of value. He's a person

00:19:23.040 of power. He's a person of strength. He is a person who has something to offer. So he's not people

00:19:30.440 pleasing. He's serving people because he knows he brings something of weight to contribute. He knows

00:19:37.560 that he is doing something and has real capacity and agency and self-efficacy that he can do something

00:19:46.040 to change the course of history. He has a weightiness about himself. He is confident and he is secure and

00:19:56.020 he is stable in terms of his self-perception. So he's not doing it for the sake of receiving love,

00:20:03.260 for receiving validation and affirmation, because he knows he already has it. So he's offering out of

00:20:10.480 abundance. He's not simply kind of rolling over, hoping that maybe, maybe if I do what everybody

00:20:16.820 says, then and only then will I get the validation and affirmation that I need to feel good about

00:20:23.880 myself. I'll say this lastly here. The doormat, the people pleasing person is so pathetic and neurotic

00:20:32.480 that he is willing to be hurt and abused and manipulated in order to receive love, affection

00:20:40.700 and validation and significance and community and connection. The heroic man will never do that

00:20:47.920 because he knows his value. And so if someone tries to manipulate him, abuse him, he's going to protect

00:20:54.660 himself. He's going to fight against it. And if necessary, he's going to walk away. The people pleasing

00:21:01.460 person will never walk away from abuse and manipulation because they need it because it

00:21:07.280 gives them a sense of purpose and meaning and they use it as a way to stay connected.

00:21:13.000 I think all of us have probably encountered men who have that heroic ideal that you're talking about

00:21:17.760 here. They're full of vitality. They're confident. And yeah, when you're around them, you just feel

00:21:23.140 better and they improve your life. And in your recent book, Heroic Fraternities, you make the case that

00:21:29.320 college fraternities can be a place where we cultivate men who embrace heroic masculinity.

00:21:35.520 But I imagine a lot of people who are listening are hearing this and they think, what, fraternities?

00:21:40.180 How could that be? This is the place where binge drinking happens and hazing deaths and sexual assault.

00:21:45.780 They're thinking animal house. So I want to unpack this idea that you have that fraternities can be a

00:21:50.820 place where we cultivate heroic masculinity. But before we do, what's been your experience with

00:21:55.720 college fraternities? So I got into this really, well, two things. One, I myself am a fraternity

00:22:03.520 member. So I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated at Clemson University when I was a

00:22:08.960 student there. I have to give a shout out to Clemson. Go Tigers. And I was in a fraternity. I was

00:22:14.460 very involved in Greek life, both in my own fraternity, but I also had a lot of friends in

00:22:19.380 other fraternities. And I saw some of the benefits that I talk about in my book. And as I have been

00:22:28.160 thinking about it, what really brought this to my attention in recent years, and I can't remember,

00:22:34.400 I think it was, I was teaching about fraternities in the course, because we do a section in the course

00:22:39.960 that I teach on the history of fraternities. And I just noticed in the news that about once a week,

00:22:45.240 a fraternity was getting suspended somewhere. And I set a news alert to have my inbox filled.

00:22:51.460 And about, about every week, somewhere in the country, at some university, a fraternity was

00:22:57.380 getting suspended for the types of things that you were mentioning. And I thought, man, something is

00:23:02.320 desperately wrong. Now, what's interesting, though, is when I began to dig in the data, and I'm following

00:23:08.420 about 2,200 fraternity chapters right now across the country, what I discovered is that those stories

00:23:14.420 of the hazing and the sexual assault, etc. That's actually the minority. I think the reason that

00:23:19.480 people have that is that that's primarily the ones that make the news cycle. But what you don't hear

00:23:24.500 are the fraternity chapters, which is the majority, where guys are really longing for brotherhood and

00:23:31.520 camaraderie and friendship. And guys are helping each other do great things. It is a mixed bag. And I

00:23:38.380 think that reputation does sustain at some universities more so than others. I think it

00:23:44.060 has a lot to do with the campus culture, particularly, right, sort of power five football

00:23:49.760 schools, ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12. I mean, that that sort of Greek life is different than you might

00:23:55.640 see at some of the smaller liberal arts schools. But right now, things are a bit up in the air. But I

00:24:01.800 just want to say for the record, that largely, primarily, those negative stories are really more

00:24:08.200 of the minority. We'll talk about the state of fraternities here in a bit. But let's talk about

00:24:12.880 the history of fraternal life in the United States. Like when did fraternities start? And why did they

00:24:18.020 start? So it's really fascinating, because when we look back at the history of them, in light of the

00:24:26.160 way that we see them, it's going to be a real head scratcher. So in the early, early 19th century at

00:24:33.100 Union College in 1825, a group of veterans were missing the camaraderie of serving together. They

00:24:43.280 were missing their brotherhood experience. And so there at Union College in Schenecte, New York,

00:24:51.140 there were a group of five men who decided to form a secret society. And the society was for the

00:25:00.680 purpose of being social. It also served the purpose of increasing their literacy. They wanted to refine

00:25:09.100 themselves as men. And they really wanted to sort of sort out how do we maintain some sense of fun

00:25:16.740 and brotherhood and camaraderie, the kind of things that we had when we were doing our military service.

00:25:23.380 So that very first social fraternity there at Union College was named Calpa Alpha Society. And that was

00:25:31.100 the beginning of the social fraternity life in America. Now, remember the years 1825. So this is the

00:25:38.560 beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And that's when life really began to change in the lives of men.

00:25:45.940 Men started for the first time in American history to primarily work away from home. They were not in

00:25:54.280 close proximity with their children. And we also had a situation where boys were going off to college

00:26:02.400 in really, really high numbers. Now, they were leaving home and they were also disintegrated from

00:26:09.640 community. So they needed some camaraderie and they needed some friendship. And this is one of the

00:26:16.360 things that fraternities really came to provide for these men was a way to have a home away from home,

00:26:25.640 a surrogate family, but to also continue to be refined in terms of their skills. So in the early days

00:26:33.380 of fraternities, singing was a requirement. It was necessary. Most fraternity houses in the early

00:26:39.900 days had a piano. Somebody could play the piano. And so they would sing together all the time. You

00:26:46.040 could think of glee clubs back in the 30s and 40s was a major, major part of college life.

00:26:51.940 They were also literary societies. So they read the classics together. These guys would get together

00:26:57.120 on the weekends and debate the classics. They would debate philosophy. They would debate Shakespeare.

00:27:03.900 Rhetoric was really also huge. So they had to learn how to speak. They would practice public speaking.

00:27:09.280 They would critique public speaking. In most fraternity houses in the 19th century, the libraries

00:27:15.520 in the fraternity houses were actually better than the libraries at the university in terms of their

00:27:20.500 holdings. So they were mainly literary societies that were forming these virtues and values and men

00:27:28.840 preparing them for statesmanship and preparing them to be the leaders of business and politics and

00:27:36.420 culture. And that really was the framework that explains so many of every fraternity's vision and

00:27:45.320 mission and values. If you look at all of them today, they all are going to have some variation

00:27:51.120 on the theme of character formation and camaraderie and friendship and brotherhood, just like they did

00:27:58.740 when it began back in 1825. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:28:05.060 And now back to the show.

00:28:11.860 Okay. So fraternities served a bunch of different purposes. One was, it was a home away from home,

00:28:16.860 a second family when a young man was, went away to college and went away from his family of origin.

00:28:23.200 And then it was also a place where they could cultivate themselves, learn how to become well-rounded

00:28:28.220 gentlemen. So a place to develop character and also to a place to develop intellectually.

00:28:33.580 They read, they debated, they studied the classics together and the Greek names of fraternities,

00:28:39.600 they hearken to that classical education. So that's why fraternities started. How did college

00:28:45.500 Greek culture develop the bad reputation that it has today?

00:28:50.220 So the first major dip in Greek life was in the 1920s. You might think about the roaring 20s. And

00:28:57.680 unfortunately, so much, so much of that culture began to spill over into fraternity life. Now,

00:29:04.640 what's really fascinating, particularly as colleges, the universities in the country in the 19th century,

00:29:11.100 some had began to be co-ed. Fraternity men were fairly certain, very clear on this. They were never

00:29:18.640 going to dishonor the reputation of a girl on their campus. I mean, that was sort of a, that was a,

00:29:24.660 an absolute, a non-negotiable principle. We were never going to treat women poorly on our campus.

00:29:31.460 Now, off campus was different. So there's some times in the roaring 20s where guys would leave

00:29:35.520 the campus and go down into the city and things like that, right? Bars and brothels and things like

00:29:40.140 that. So the roaring 20s was sort of the first dip. But as soon as World War II started, as soon as the

00:29:45.660 depression started, as soon as we got into World War II in the late 1930s, early 40s, things changed.

00:29:52.460 A lot of those men, of course, during the war were fighting. They came back and were different men.

00:29:58.380 So after the 1940s, fraternity life almost died. It's really fascinating to think about a World War II

00:30:05.040 veteran who came back and to think that a bunch of lads who maybe didn't serve was going to have

00:30:11.600 them do pushups was just unreasonable, right? It's like, no, I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm not going

00:30:16.560 to be a haze or whatever by a bunch of guys that didn't even serve. So there was this major,

00:30:22.480 major dip. So fraternities were in decline after the war. They were also in decline in the 1960s

00:30:28.840 because they were part of the establishment, right? So there was a rebellion against institutions.

00:30:34.180 And what's fascinating is that as they were declining in the 1960s, those numbers went down.

00:30:39.580 There was a film about a particular fraternity at Dartmouth that really did change the nature

00:30:46.760 of Greek life. It was called Animal House. And anyone who is a Gen X or older will know that movie

00:30:52.580 in 1978. And Animal House, single-handedly, and there's really good data on this, it really does

00:31:00.460 speak to the power of film. Animal House is the reason. I can say this confidently that Animal House

00:31:07.100 is the reason for the negative stereotypes that we see in fraternity life across the country today.

00:31:12.780 So that movie was watched by us. I'm a Gen Xer. So what happened in 1978, a bunch of Gen Xers watched

00:31:18.920 that film. We watched Animal House. And we also watched a bunch of other films in that same era,

00:31:24.780 that same genre, sort of coming of age, like Porky's and movies like that. So a bunch of guys saw that

00:31:32.700 movie and said, when I get to college, I want to do that. And that's what they did. A bunch of

00:31:36.940 Gen X guys went to college in the 80s and the 90s and did exactly what that movie did. And that was

00:31:43.520 the beginning of it shifting. And so every fraternity film after Animal House is a variation on that

00:31:50.220 culture that was really normed and embedded by that one media production. And that's when we began to

00:31:59.480 see things sort of get off the rails, so to speak, and Greek life becoming something that it was never

00:32:07.540 intended to be. And we see some of that in the sorts of negative stereotypes that you mentioned

00:32:13.340 earlier. Yeah. On that chapter about the influence of movies on Greek culture, it reminded me of the

00:32:19.060 influence that mob movies had on mobster culture, like The Godfather and Goodfellas. What's interesting

00:32:25.920 about those? We did a podcast with a guy who did a book about the history of The Godfather. And so

00:32:31.520 The Godfather was based on mob culture, right? The author of it, Puzo, he looked at mob culture and he

00:32:36.920 put stuff in there. But what ended up happening was mobsters started imitating The Godfather. Well, we got

00:32:44.280 to act this way because The Godfather, that's what they do in The Godfather. So I thought the parallel

00:32:48.580 was interesting. Yeah. It basically became a social contagion. And this is what we do in America. This

00:32:55.200 is what happens when adolescents consume media products. They take them, they embed them, they

00:33:01.940 imprint them. And then later on, they act them out. And so I think what happened was you had men who

00:33:08.220 maybe had a type of disordered masculinity. Maybe they're like the self-aggrandizement type of man.

00:33:14.420 And they saw fraternities at this place. I could go there and act this out. And because fraternities

00:33:20.340 were diminishing, their numbers were small. They're like, yeah, we'll let you in. And so those

00:33:24.720 men with disordered masculinity in some fraternities took over the fraternity.

00:33:29.500 Absolutely. What's interesting, and this is something that I learned from Chad Frick. He was

00:33:34.920 the president of one of the fraternities at Clemson. He made this point really, really clear

00:33:39.040 that fraternities don't make men terrible. Terrible men join fraternities. And they use the fraternity

00:33:45.320 context and culture as a place to exercise, I would say, being self-expansive, right? Being

00:33:50.860 disordered. They were disordered before they came. And they were looking for a place to exercise their

00:33:57.700 disordered behavior.

00:33:58.960 So you mentioned earlier the state of Greek life today. I think the point you made is that a lot of

00:34:04.640 ideas about what fraternity life is like we get from the big, the power schools. So I went to the

00:34:09.760 University of Oklahoma where Greek life, I don't know what it is like today. I'm sure it's still

00:34:13.660 big, but it was really big when I was in college. I imagine the Greek life at the University of

00:34:18.420 Oklahoma is going to be different than Greek life at, say, a smaller liberal arts school.

00:34:23.120 Yeah. And that's in part because the chapters are smaller. So, I mean, there's some chapters across

00:34:28.460 the country where there's like 20 guys in the whole chapter. Whereas at some of the big football

00:34:33.300 schools, there might be 200, right? And so managing a chapter of 25, you know, 19, 20-year-olds is

00:34:41.320 different than managing a chapter of 200. So from the research you've done, the statistics,

00:34:48.120 what's the state of things like drinking and drug use amongst fraternity members?

00:34:52.780 This is really fascinating. I think Gen Zers in general are drinking less. And so one of the things

00:34:59.740 that surprised me when I was doing these interviews and the data is that I found more and more fraternity

00:35:06.120 members who don't drink at all. In fact, I've found fraternity presidents who don't drink at all.

00:35:11.160 So overall, what you see in Greek life is going to mirror some of the trends that we see with Gen Z

00:35:17.580 in general. So there's going to be less alcohol use. There's actually declines in sexual activity.

00:35:24.880 One of the alarming trends, though, is a tick in substance abuse. So taking pills and marijuana

00:35:32.760 and things like that, those things are on the upswing. But things like drinking are actually

00:35:37.740 on the decline. And this is, by the way, true in general, that you're not going to see in Greek life

00:35:44.800 anything different than you're going to see in male populations in colleges in general.

00:35:50.620 They're not going to be any worse necessarily than what you see on the campus. And so as we see

00:35:57.600 these trends with Gen Zers, in general, those same trends are going to manifest themselves in

00:36:03.520 fraternity life. What's your take on the hazing part of the pledge process?

00:36:11.260 Yeah. So again, back to Animal House, I think one of the problems with hazing, and maybe we can talk

00:36:18.100 about this later, is a lack of a very clear rite of passage for men to know that they're men. So for

00:36:27.660 guys to go from boyhood into manhood. And what happens is that guys will make up their own rites

00:36:34.060 of passage. When rites of passage aren't given, where they're not bestowed, teenagers and young

00:36:40.440 adults are just going to make them up. And what's happened in the context of hazing,

00:36:44.480 the whole point of hazing, if I could talk about in a positive sense, is to use obstacles, to use

00:36:52.800 challenges as a way to help men see new capacities and strengths that they did not have, and to build

00:36:59.700 a sense of camaraderie. That's the whole point of it, to make this sort of pledge class bond together.

00:37:06.380 And because of disordered masculinity and a lot of recklessness, the absence of very clear markers

00:37:13.060 of rites of passage, they're just making them up as they go along. And even worse, there is a problem

00:37:20.800 in a lot of fraternities of escalating. So when I was in college, they might have had us go do some sprints

00:37:30.080 sprints on the street. Well, you know, 20 years later, well, now we got to do sprints on the street,

00:37:36.640 but now we can't wear shoes. 10 years after that, well, if they do sprints on the streets with no

00:37:41.420 shoes, well, now they have to have no shoes, and then be in their underwear, right? So there is this

00:37:46.160 sort of odd escalation, and we have to top the previous generation or the previous year's obstacles.

00:37:52.920 And there was just no direction. And that's what I found so sad, is that these guys have just been

00:38:00.160 left to figure this stuff out on their own, and they just haven't been given the investment

00:38:04.520 of how do you do the sorts of things that hazing is meant to accomplish, right? You might think about

00:38:11.020 it in the same way that men join the military, just kind of strip themselves of individualism,

00:38:16.360 and to see themselves as a part of a group, and to be challenged to accomplish things as a group

00:38:22.400 together, to build camaraderie, to give a sense of we instead of me, and for a guy to find out

00:38:29.640 that he has some new capacities about himself. I've seen this across the country. When guys are given a

00:38:36.300 clear vision of what that entry point is, what the right passage is, when they're given a new

00:38:40.960 imagination of how to introduce obstacles to achieve those ends, you don't get the kind of hazing

00:38:46.500 happening. And the dangerous hazing that puts people's lives in danger that we see on far too

00:38:53.420 many campuses. You talk about what bull elephants can teach us about bad behavior that occurs in

00:38:59.440 hazing. Tell us about that. So there was some work done in South Africa at a nature reserve. And

00:39:08.680 because of the ways in which they have to manage those, because of the park restrictions, they often

00:39:15.900 have to move populations around in order to manage that land well. And there was a section of elephants

00:39:23.200 they were trying to move in and repopulate. And what they did is they moved a bunch of adolescent

00:39:29.420 elephants over to this one side of the park where they noticed that all these other animals were dying,

00:39:34.680 particularly rhinos were being killed. And it wasn't poachers because the rhinos would have their

00:39:40.840 horns intact. And what they realized is that these rhinos were being killed by these adolescent

00:39:47.420 elephants, these immature elephants who were having massive spikes of testosterone and it was making

00:39:54.880 them aggressive. They were going into this sort of rut season fairly early. There's a hormone that gets

00:40:01.760 secreted behind their ear and it makes them really, really aggressive. And what was really

00:40:07.700 fascinating, they were trying to figure out what was going on. How come these adolescent elephants were

00:40:11.940 killing, just randomly killing rhinos? So what they did is they transported some mature bull elephants.

00:40:20.340 And what was so fascinating is that the day, the very day the bull elephants showed up,

00:40:27.680 the killing stopped. In fact, it actually tempered the testosterone secretion of these adolescent

00:40:35.560 elephants. They became less aggressive because the more mature elephants were just physically present.

00:40:42.760 And I also heard there's a video of one of these bull elephants body slamming one of these

00:40:48.340 adolescent elephants. It was just fascinating to see that just simply the presence of maturity

00:40:54.100 and the very presence of age really had a way of tempering the aggression, helping these young

00:41:02.520 lads manage their aggression, manage their sexuality in these elephant populations. And sadly, I think

00:41:09.800 that's what we're missing on a lot of college campuses today. And what we need is simply the presence of

00:41:17.200 older men, chapter advisors, alumni who are older to just be around the guys. And that would

00:41:24.100 overnight change a lot of the pathologies that we see because the presence of older men really does

00:41:31.480 have a positive effect in providing some direction and emotional regulation for young men. It sort of

00:41:39.900 teaches them how to be great men. Yeah. So if there was a chapter advisor or an older alumni, if the

00:41:47.280 students were thinking of doing some really crazy hazing ritual, when they have the influence of that

00:41:52.360 older advisor, they might think twice. Absolutely. Right. If you know, one of the things that I would

00:41:57.780 tell a chapter is like, you really shouldn't do anything during the pledge process that you would

00:42:02.260 not do in front of the guy's dad or in front of your dad. Because if these older men are just physically

00:42:08.560 present during the process, they're the guardrails to tell this developing brain of a 20, 21 year old

00:42:15.560 leadership. Okay. That's too far. You can do that. No, you can't do that. And they need that sort of

00:42:20.840 direction. And the best chapter advisors are the ones that provide that. And there are very good

00:42:26.880 chapters across the country that are able to have that level of direction by older men.

00:42:33.260 So in response to deaths and sexual assaults that happen in frat houses, many colleges, their response is

00:42:40.480 just to suspend the fraternities or some colleges have gotten rid of Greek life altogether. And you

00:42:44.960 argue that these measures actually don't solve the problem. Why not? Because if you look at the data,

00:42:51.340 as soon as you remove a fraternity, sexual assaults don't necessarily decrease. Hazing doesn't

00:42:58.440 necessarily decrease because what the guys are going to do is they're going to form their own little

00:43:03.460 secret society and do it anyway. So you can get rid of fraternities, but they might have hazing and

00:43:08.760 band. They might have hazing in a club. They're going to have hazing. We've seen this at some

00:43:14.380 universities with their athletes who are playing for the school. So it doesn't actually work in terms

00:43:20.940 of trying to rid the campus of those sorts of pathologies. Those pathologies happen whether

00:43:26.680 a person is in Greek life or not. I think the difference is that Greek life gives more opportunities

00:43:33.500 and easier access for terrible people to be terrible. But terrible people are on everybody's

00:43:38.820 campus. And so getting rid of Greek life doesn't really help. And then secondly, and more importantly,

00:43:45.260 by removing Greek life, you lose the opportunity for formation. If I was a college president, I would

00:43:51.820 think about it this way. This is the last opportunity that you would have as a college president to isolate

00:43:58.620 a group of guys and form their virtues for the good. It would be virtually impossible to do that

00:44:05.420 on a campus without Greek life, without college fraternities. And college fraternities really do

00:44:10.300 serve as a place of formation. So what do you think fraternities need to do to become this heroic

00:44:16.200 fraternity that you have in mind? Walk us through the roadmap from rush, pledge, and beyond of your ideal

00:44:21.820 fraternity. Yeah. So I think fraternities, first and foremost, need to, more broadly speaking,

00:44:28.860 recapture, I'd say maybe restore their original values and virtues. Whenever I travel and speak

00:44:36.060 to a chapter of any fraternity anywhere in America, one of the things I do is I call them back

00:44:40.860 to their original vision and mission and values. Those things are all already there. Every fraternity

00:44:46.980 in America has heroic values embedded in its own mission and vision and virtues. So first of all,

00:44:52.920 I want to really sort of call them back to those things and think about ways to live those out.

00:44:58.540 I do have sort of a six step process, sort of six principles. These are not necessarily in order

00:45:04.460 of importance, but these are sort of the six things that fraternities really focus on. They will never get

00:45:10.040 suspended ever, and they will always add value to their campus. If fraternities do these six things,

00:45:19.380 presidents will want them around. And if they threaten to leave, a president will beg them to

00:45:24.100 stay. Here they are. First is friendship and acceptance. So fraternities that allow guys to

00:45:30.840 not have an idealized self to sort of work through their anxieties, to be vulnerable. There's a sense

00:45:37.620 of camaraderie that you're accepted, not because of what's on the outside, but what's on the inside.

00:45:43.380 You can be a person that is imperfect. It's really important for guys to have at least two or three

00:45:50.080 friends that they can be completely vulnerable with that knows all of their faults and weaknesses.

00:45:55.820 One of the things that we see in the news cycle regularly are guys who get taken out because

00:46:01.920 they have some Achilles heel weakness that destroys their marriage, destroys their career,

00:46:08.020 destroys their company, et cetera. And when guys have at least a couple of people that know those

00:46:14.340 things, that's the best protection against that. So we want to have context where there's real

00:46:19.840 friendship, there's real vulnerability and real acceptance. Second is brotherhood. One of the

00:46:25.720 things that really sets guys on fire is knowing that they have a group of guys that have their

00:46:32.840 back. It is the birthplace of risk-taking. If you know that a group of guys has your back no matter

00:46:39.820 what, you will do great things. And the brotherhood aspect of fraternities to foster that on purpose

00:46:46.600 is really, really key. You can do amazing things in the marketplace. You can take a risk and ask a girl

00:46:55.000 if you know that if she rejects you, you're going to have a bunch of guys who are going to build you

00:47:01.880 back up and put you back on the horse, right? Sort of get you back out there. So that brotherhood

00:47:06.060 piece is really, really important and vital. Guys will run through a wall if they look behind them and

00:47:13.560 see they've got 15, 20, 30, 100 guys cheering them on. Thirdly here is initiation. We talked about this

00:47:22.260 a few moments ago that there needs to be a sense of a rite of passage to recognize that you're

00:47:29.340 actually transitioning these young men from boyhood into manhood and to be deliberate about these

00:47:36.780 stages, to be deliberate about creating a context where there is a rite of passage where a guy knows

00:47:43.880 that by the end of the four years that he is going to be a much stronger, better, more virtuous,

00:47:51.360 more dynamic man than he was when he began. And to really plan that out. You've got four years,

00:47:57.480 you know, you've got three or four years with these guys. So what kind of things could you do

00:48:01.080 to be making sure that you're embedding and integrating the values of your fraternity throughout

00:48:08.260 the entire life of a brother in the chapter? So that rite of passage, that initiation part is

00:48:14.580 really important because the main opportunity with initiation is to help a guy find what he's good

00:48:21.080 at, to help him find his strengths. I mean, college is a place where guys leave their home and they can

00:48:27.480 be developed and formed. They can find what they're good at and then they're sent back into the

00:48:32.200 community. So fraternities should really think of themselves as places where they're forming men's

00:48:37.680 virtues and values. They're helping them see what they're good at. They're helping them see their

00:48:41.580 strengths so that when they leave, they can make an even better, more deliberate, concentrated,

00:48:48.300 clear contribution to the communities that will be there to receive them. So it's really important

00:48:54.300 that their brothers really want to invest in helping other guys find out what they're good at.

00:48:59.980 Fourth here is fun. College is supposed to be fun. I mean, heck, life's supposed to be fun.

00:49:05.420 The data is really, really clear that having fun is really important and necessary for good mental

00:49:12.520 health. It protects against anxiety. It protects against depression. It protects against suicidal

00:49:17.760 ideation. It actually protects against, in many respects, some of the pathologies and substance abuse

00:49:23.560 that undermine thriving. And so fraternities need to think about ways to have fun. Now I'll talk about

00:49:28.860 virtuous fun, fun that adds value to people's lives. I am convinced that if we got these guys in a room

00:49:36.240 and introduced some more creative ways for them to have fun beyond what they see in the movies,

00:49:41.600 they would do it. But what happens? They default to what they've seen on screens instead of thinking

00:49:47.020 about being creative about new ways to have fun that actually makes people's lives better. Fifth here

00:49:53.440 is to be developmental, to work on character development and professional development. And

00:49:58.940 this is where the alumni networks are really, really important. One of the great added values of being in

00:50:05.060 a chapter is to be in a context where alumni and even peers are going to set you up so that you can have

00:50:13.100 a successful career and to use those networks really deliberately. So I think the best fraternities are

00:50:21.940 the ones that have really involved alumni who are on campus quite frequently to help these guys

00:50:27.980 manage entering and sustaining success in their career. Lastly here is character development. This

00:50:34.620 goes back to the vision, mission, and values of their fraternity in general. Every fraternity,

00:50:40.920 again, across the country has fantastic values. And what's it mean to develop virtue, moral virtue,

00:50:48.500 character in these men so that the reputation that they have on campus and the reputation they'll

00:50:55.440 have in society is that they are the kinds of people that are going to make our context better.

00:51:02.480 I'll give a quick example of what this looks like. One of the things that I invite chapters to do

00:51:07.580 is to think about what does it mean for us to develop a reputation of being the safest place for women on

00:51:14.100 campus, the best place for women on campus, the safest, the most ennobling place for women to be,

00:51:19.960 and to think about that as something aspirational. What do you need to do to have a reputation?

00:51:25.760 I can tell you right now that every chapter I've spoken to you across the country, when I invite them

00:51:31.620 to have that reputation, they get excited about it. They want to have that reputation because of the

00:51:38.540 negative stereotype. They celebrate that because that's the kind of men they actually want to be.

00:51:44.380 Lastly here, I think in general, people don't understand this, but fraternity men want to be

00:51:49.580 great men. That's why they joined a fraternity. The problem is they don't know how. And if we can do

00:51:55.960 that, I think we can really change the trajectory of men in college and Greek life in general.

00:52:02.760 Well, Anthony, it's been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your

00:52:05.940 work? Great. So I have two places. One, you can just Google my name. I have a website,

00:52:12.240 DrAnthonyBradley.com, but also you can also just Google Heroic Fraternities and you can see more

00:52:17.400 about the book and more about the work in general. Fantastic. Well, Anthony Bradley,

00:52:21.780 thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

00:52:25.380 My guest today was Dr. Anthony Bradley. He's the author of the book Heroic Fraternities. It's

00:52:29.240 available on Amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:52:32.660 DrAnthonyBradley.com. Also check out our show notes at AOM.is slash fraternities,

00:52:37.860 where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:52:47.540 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. The Art of Manliness website has been

00:52:51.580 around for over 16 years now, the podcast for over 10, and they both have always had one aim

00:52:56.380 to help men take action to improve every area of their lives, to become better friends, citizens,

00:53:01.780 husbands, and fathers, better men. If you've gotten something out of the AOM podcast,

00:53:06.660 please consider giving back by leaving a review or sharing an episode with a friend.

00:53:10.380 As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay.

00:53:14.160 Remind you to not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - July 10, 2024

A Surprising Solution for Disordered Masculinity

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