The Art of Manliness - Episode #36： The Decline of Males with Lionel Tiger

00:00:00.000 welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you watch the news or read

00:00:21.720 magazines regularly you may have come across a segment or an article highlighting the fact

00:00:26.300 that men in america and basically men in the west and industrial societies just aren't doing very

00:00:31.200 well today for example we hear statistics that fewer men are going to college today and those

00:00:35.900 that do are doing are performing worse than their female peers fewer men men have been hit really

00:00:41.140 hard by this recession and are a lot of men are unemployed today and men are actually earning

00:00:45.900 less money today comparatively to women in some areas but why are men falling behind what's caused

00:00:52.420 their decline in the past 50 years many sociologists argue that that the driving forces are economic

00:00:57.540 and cultural in nature but our guest today disagrees and proposes that biology or rather humans messing

00:01:03.120 with it is the main force behind the decline of men in the west his name is dr lionel tiger and he's

00:01:08.960 the author of the book the decline of males the first look at an unexpected new world for men and

00:01:13.760 women dr tiger is the dr tiger is the charles darwin professor of anthropology at rutgers university

00:01:19.300 and he's written several articles and books on on how human biology affects human social interaction

00:01:25.260 well dr tiger tiger you wrote a book um 12 years ago called the decline of males um in what ways are

00:01:33.000 men in decline and does this decline that you you write about does this cut across cultures uh racist

00:01:39.680 socioeconomic groups well for the diagnostics of decline are fairly clear for one thing uh the number of

00:01:49.060 males who um for example lost their jobs during this current recession um is about 80 82 percent

00:01:58.540 and women did better out of this disaster than men have and that's the first part secondly if you look

00:02:09.600 at marriage rates you see the extraordinary number and this applies to the u.s as well as other country

00:02:16.200 industrial countries that forty percent of babies are born to women who are not married which means 0.53

00:02:22.600 they don't have husbands which means that the potential husbands don't have children not legally in any

00:02:28.920 event now a lot of these babies are born to affectionate couples and it's it's not as dire as it may seem

00:02:37.320 but the fact is that as i point out in the decline of males men are becoming outlaws not in-laws

00:02:44.600 and they're not joining families and they're not having what we know to be in comparative health

00:02:50.700 terms an advantage in life which is having a stable affectionate kind of environment which has its

00:02:58.140 problems but nonetheless is better than the alternative which is singlehood and if i may just go on if we

00:03:06.980 look at income statistics we see that in large cities among younger men and women say between 20 and 33 or so

00:03:17.960 women now earn much more or not much more but they earn more money than men 0.99

00:03:22.600 second and secondly and more importantly for the long run if we look at educational statistics we see that

00:03:30.260 there's almost a a breakdown of uh 60 40 women graduates to male graduates in some places it's even higher

00:03:39.460 so women are graduating from places which give them credentials men are not and the question then becomes who do

00:03:48.800 women marry we know that women tend to want to marry guys that are a little older and a little richer 0.70

00:03:55.080 because most women are going to be out of the labor force one way or another for from between five to eight years 1.00

00:04:01.600 and so they want somebody to give them a hand usually when they're having children

00:04:06.280 well who are those guys they're not around and as a consequence uh we see the situation i mentioned which is

00:04:14.200 women decide to have babies on their own 1.00

00:04:16.120 and so that that problem that's in your opinion is a problem for society uh you know where there's no stable family

00:04:22.600 well we have every piece of data we have about uh criminal behavior drug use suicide etc

00:04:31.200 indicates that the uh single male is at great risk and the children of women who are not married

00:04:40.960 uh are consequently also at great risk risk especially the males

00:04:46.980 interesting well so you wrote this book uh 12 about 12 years ago it was published in 1999

00:04:52.780 in that time since then have you have things gotten better or worse for men and are there any specific

00:04:58.960 examples where things have gotten better or worse well they've gotten worse in my opinion principally

00:05:04.420 because the uh sort of feminist groups like the american university association of university women 1.00

00:05:10.460 and national organization for women uh really controlled the dialogue and as we saw in the

00:05:16.960 white house recently uh president obama announced with great pride a white house council on women and men

00:05:24.420 on women and girls there's been some pressure to get an equivalent council on men and boys but with

00:05:32.380 absolutely no success because there are some uh people who really don't think that guys need anything

00:05:41.680 they've they've had this alleged 5 000 years of patriarchy and it's it's women's time now so if you look at um

00:05:50.520 at all these sort of national data the affirmative action for women which uh has gone on to this day even

00:05:58.200 though it's no longer necessary in many places we can see that uh if things are harder for men than they

00:06:04.600 they have been and there are other factors that don't seem to be immediately uh important but are

00:06:13.220 for example at at my university rutgers and at countless universities in the united states the first

00:06:19.260 day of class for men and women is a rape seminar where the guys are described in effect as potentially

00:06:28.680 predatory and the women as potential victims now that's obviously done to cover their the the backsides of the lawyers 1.00

00:06:36.920 who don't want a rape case and and a lawsuit but the fact is that it's humiliating to both men and women

00:06:45.220 and they go through their college experience with this uh initial uh impression of who they are

00:06:53.900 and with with no no basis in the facts of life of the people who are in the room this is all

00:07:01.940 national statistics and a lot of it is simply um uh irrelevant to the people who are there who are

00:07:10.520 mostly nice kids well so in the past it seems like in the past four or five years there's been an

00:07:14.880 explosion of literature there's books uh been magazine articles uh you know there's a newsweek uh feature

00:07:21.880 about the the state of men uh the atlantic monthly had that article the end of men um and there's so

00:07:28.340 many books about just the the state of masculinity in america um and these books usually when you read

00:07:33.900 them they give these different sociological and sociological um and cultural explanations for the

00:07:38.960 you know the decline of men but in your book you actually have kind of a unique argument uh you argue

00:07:44.660 that the driving force is that men have been alienated from the means of reproduction uh what do you mean by

00:07:51.420 that for the first time in human history possibly in mammalian history one sex can control uh

00:07:59.780 reproduction and the advent of the pill which was a great drug is a great drug and very important for

00:08:06.500 any number of reasons women could now control whether they would be pregnant or not guys had no idea

00:08:14.320 in the 50s before this decline began the principal contraceptive that was available was the condom

00:08:23.280 if you didn't use a condom and you were with a fertile aged female there was a reasonable chance 0.99

00:08:31.340 maybe as high as 20 percent that any act of sex would lead to pregnancy and so we had a whole series of

00:08:39.680 devices ranging from the shotgun marriage to pressures on men and women to marry during a pregnancy

00:08:47.760 and we know from parish records and other sources that between a third to a fifth to a half of

00:08:53.560 marriages occurred with the pregnancy you just look at when the marriage occurs and look when the baby's

00:08:58.580 born so uh that was a way that uh women and men somehow engineered getting together and having 0.90

00:09:07.500 children after this the pill came in the 60s and 70s and up until now men became as i said in the decline

00:09:16.980 of males alienated from the means of reproduction because they had no way of knowing what the hell's

00:09:21.880 going on and they depended on on females to tell them as should have been the case uh women have 1.00

00:09:29.420 a major issue with reproduction much more so than males in in the kind of ongoing sense and women should 1.00

00:09:38.800 control this kind of thing but it does mean that males don't and so i completely fail to understand why

00:09:46.840 others who've written on the subject don't understand the absolutely critical consequence

00:09:52.700 of change in the contraceptive technology which has had this phenomenal effect on men all over the

00:10:00.340 world not just in the united states but everywhere so while sex has become easier for men and women to

00:10:07.600 have because of the facility of the pill it has meant that there's been this uh disruption in

00:10:13.700 the pattern of men uh engaging with a woman and having a child and then spending a lifetime

00:10:22.100 more part of a lifetime dealing with the consequences in in uh terms of providing

00:10:27.540 resources uh protection uh affection and the like so i i think that this is a biological issue much more

00:10:36.560 in a way than it is an economic issue and and partly the reason for people not understanding that is that

00:10:43.600 nobody really understands biology or given the people who are uh creationists they think it doesn't

00:10:52.080 even matter which is complete nonsense and and irresponsible so um i want to shift gears here

00:11:00.500 a little bit and talk about uh some of the work you're doing in the area of academics uh as far as

00:11:06.720 men men go um you're part of a growing group of academics who are promoting uh what's called i guess

00:11:12.720 people are calling male studies um it's a curriculum at universities um but how does this how does male

00:11:18.400 studies differ from you know the men's men's studies you see um you already see at campuses across

00:11:24.420 university what's the difference there men's uh men's studies i think uh are a wholly owned subsidiary

00:11:32.840 of women's studies or gender studies the women have taken over this area in the university and nobody can 1.00

00:11:39.680 shake them so if you look for example just uh i was in toronto giving a talk and some journalists at the

00:11:47.100 university of toronto looked at the faculty and the course offerings at the university of toronto which

00:11:53.280 is a major very big well-funded university and he found that there were 40 courses on women's studies

00:12:01.300 two on men's studies one of which was about transgendered people and the other was on gay males

00:12:10.020 there was not a single course at a huge major university which is uh possibly the leading one

00:12:16.320 in canada that deals with guys just doing their lives but there were 40 on women and uh again that's

00:12:24.840 perfectly fine you could say and it has been argued by many women's studies people who are

00:12:29.980 often excellent academics that uh for the longest time things like history and political science were

00:12:36.140 essentially the stories of men well now it's gone the other way and so some of us felt we had to

00:12:43.240 redefine how we categorize and characterize males so that they're not put into a box which is all too

00:12:54.640 common uh that they're kind of defective females and so you have a bunch of people writing about how the 1.00

00:13:02.160 real challenges to make more sense men more sensitive to make them more feelings express their feelings

00:13:09.040 etc etc uh all of which will fail uh as it's characterized and uh which uh doesn't deal with

00:13:16.840 the fact that males and females are very different they have different rhythms and cycles in life and you

00:13:23.060 can't uh by announcing it uh claim that men and women are the same that is completely uh uh counter to

00:13:31.260 everything we know about human biology so um what kind of what kind of uh i guess disciplines

00:13:37.320 would be covered in male studies it seems like you know women's studies it focus a lot on sociology

00:13:42.500 um you know the cultural studies um would male studies be similar to that or would there be more

00:13:49.020 less than that what what's the well that that would be part of it of course it would have to be

00:13:53.260 but then we also want to begin looking at male other male primates because you can learn a lot

00:13:59.300 from watching the chimps and the baboons and and how uh other primates manage their lives and

00:14:05.520 there they have sharp sex differences often uh but they they work it works so that would be one 0.57

00:14:14.160 way another another would be to look at men's health uh generally the diseases and difficulties men

00:14:23.460 have uh are far less uh copiously uh attended to by researchers so breast cancer is a favorite one but

00:14:33.680 prostate cancer i believe kills more people and uh and a male studies program would begin to look

00:14:41.720 straightforwardly at what affects guys and uh what is the reason for some of their uh their

00:14:50.720 difficulties it's uh there is a at columbia uh a program run by uh dr legato who recently got a

00:15:01.620 very large grant from the national academy of sciences or i forget which agency to study men's

00:15:07.720 health and that's the first time so and she is in fact going to take part and be one of the co-chairs

00:15:14.780 of a meeting that the male studies group is having at the new york academy of sciences in uh in a few

00:15:21.500 weeks and that's a good sign but it's taken years to get to this point because in uh in nash

00:15:28.980 initially the response of women in the both in the medical and in the governmental uh areas was to say

00:15:36.540 well men don't need any research it's women who suffer the various disabilities etc even though

00:15:44.680 on average women live seven or eight years longer than men we're gonna take a quick break for a 1.00

00:15:48.920 word from our sponsors and now back to the show so um dr tiger one of the criticisms um levied or

00:15:56.900 at women's studies programs is at universities that they have been overridden um that the educational 1.00

00:16:03.020 goals of women's studies programs have been overridden by the political mission of feminists 1.00

00:16:06.880 um do you think a male studies program runs a risk of becoming politicized

00:16:11.840 um instead of focusing on rigorous you know objective uh research well it's quite possible

00:16:18.700 it it it could but but hey give us a chance and there's no reason to believe that we're doomed at

00:16:24.720 the outset i don't certainly don't think so and i know many people who are involved in trying to have a

00:16:29.860 uh federal attention to boys and men who are are not politicized they're actively concerned about the

00:16:38.440 the number of men who don't graduate from educational institutions who are incarcerated who

00:16:45.060 are commit suicide who are drug users who have no access to children uh this is not a political 0.71

00:16:52.880 activity it's a sharply humanitarian one and it's about time uh the uh people on the other side if you

00:17:00.160 will of the gender divide the feminists stop accusing those concerned with the males of of being partisan

00:17:07.700 and so uh kind of in the same vein as this um there's male studies and kind of a a growing trend

00:17:14.120 for you know male studies to be placed in universities alongside that there there's a there's a small um but 0.96

00:17:20.560 growing men's right movement uh in seems like in western countries um that they deal with a variety of

00:17:27.260 issues uh you know father's rights false rape issues uh you know discrimination of men you know in the

00:17:34.800 workplace etc what are your thoughts about this growing men's rights movement uh well it's obvious

00:17:40.360 that for example the divorce courts are a slum a moral slum by and large there are countless cases and i know

00:17:49.900 people who haven't seen their children for 15 years guys because their wives claimed rightfully or wrongly that

00:17:59.640 uh the guys were abusive uh a summary judgment was entered in the court and uh a judge made a decision

00:18:08.560 at a hearing very often at which the male is not even present because he doesn't know

00:18:13.880 and the the um state loves it because it means that then they can collect child support from the guy

00:18:21.980 and rather than from the taxpayers and so it's part of a major conspiracy which

00:18:27.400 has punished countless men countless men and while obviously divorce is not a happy

00:18:35.180 uh result for women either and many women have suffered uh tragically through divorce nonetheless

00:18:42.640 there's no reason for the antidote to that that to make men suffer so uh there is this um

00:18:49.280 very large group of of men many of whom try their best to pay child support but then they

00:18:58.180 they lose their jobs as countless millions of men have done recently and they can't pay child support

00:19:06.080 so they're put in jail and they keep running up their bill plus interest and they're doomed there's

00:19:12.700 nothing they can and will do they may try to leave the state but that's now become uh difficult with

00:19:20.200 the ways that the governments have of catching these guys because they see them as revenue sources and

00:19:25.980 as we all know governments want revenue more than they want justice and it seems to me that this this

00:19:31.940 men's right movement it's very splintered right now i mean there's all these different you know

00:19:35.600 different um groups that have different uh i guess goals and there doesn't seem to have been a

00:19:41.980 coalition of men like you would see like with the with now the national organization of women um do you

00:19:47.520 think there would ever be a male version of now um or is there something about you know the psychology

00:19:52.540 of men working in groups which you've written about when one of your first books you wrote um that

00:19:57.640 would prevent you know a large group of men organization of men getting together fighting for men's rights

00:20:03.000 you know one of the problems is with that is that guys are not that interested in talking about

00:20:10.280 themselves you never there was for five minutes men's consciousness groups but guys just don't want

00:20:16.960 to sit around talking about their feelings they couldn't care less they want to get something done

00:20:21.500 and so the if you remember the origins of the feminist movement had endless uh consciousness groups 0.82

00:20:30.340 uh i remember friends of mine who were writers sending in articles to ms magazine and they couldn't get

00:20:37.560 an answer on whether they were going to use it or not for months because there was a big discussion

00:20:43.040 going on and all of these decisions were taken in the circle and and so on guys don't do that and as a

00:20:50.120 consequence the um uh there's been a failure to connect in this uh way which

00:21:00.180 uh has effective consequences i i'm i'm not wholly optimistic that this will change

00:21:09.960 simply because i think it's in the nature of guys to want to get things done not get things discussed

00:21:16.240 and in this realm discussion is the first part of of action and i don't know if there are enough guys

00:21:23.020 who are willing and able to do it uh in a systematic way there are some who are i know many of them and

00:21:30.140 and there are um heroic characters trying to figure out how to take the next steps to protect half the

00:21:38.480 population from uh it's as it were the other half which is a got a very very good network thank you

00:21:44.460 very much for protecting itself so uh again as i said in the decline of males um guys sort of look on

00:21:54.180 and then they're baffled about why this is happening to them and they're at first vaguely irritated and

00:22:00.240 concerned and then of course if things keep getting worse they become devastated and then they become

00:22:05.880 dysfunctional and uh that's going to be hard to to uh to change remember the argument has always been

00:22:16.060 that men are all powerful and males can do whatever they want and women can't it's obviously not true in

00:22:23.140 this area so what what is your answer then to them you kind of dovetailing off that your last statement

00:22:29.280 there what what can be done to uh you know in the decline of males i mean is it what is there any

00:22:34.340 changes we can do i mean is the first thing has to happen is a discussion amongst men about this

00:22:38.660 um before anything can happen or i mean or we just is there no hope for for the decline of males to end

00:22:44.880 no there's always hope because first of all uh there's always a crop of youngsters coming through

00:22:52.820 and they want lives the way that they look they want not ones they've been forced to have

00:22:57.980 uh there's some change i suspect that in the next election we'll see some some interesting changes

00:23:09.540 because it appears still that the white house hasn't figured out that one reason why they did

00:23:15.000 so badly in the last election cycle was that white men just wouldn't vote for democrats and they won't

00:23:22.360 again because they don't see the democrat that the uh republican rather the democratic party uh with its

00:23:30.800 sort of nancy pelosi cast of characters uh has the interest of working class males at heart

00:23:37.700 but eighty percent of single women voted for the democrats because this group precisely uh 0.99

00:23:45.920 meets their their needs now i'm not taking a political position here it's not my job i'm not

00:23:53.080 that interested in taking such a position but it's quite clear that there uh will be and it's already

00:24:01.320 uh a realignment which uh obama called a shellacking well it wasn't a shellacking as much as it was a big

00:24:10.020 shift in the gender patterns of voting and the uh as we can see in the fights about unions working class

00:24:17.720 men for whom the unions were always strong supporters uh are losing out and uh that probably will

00:24:26.940 begin to have some effect on on politicians i know that some of the people interested in this male studies

00:24:33.520 activity are trying to uh begin uh uh uh and um um meeting of minds with uh politicians in both parties

00:24:43.700 without being exclusively one uh one focus or the other because it's got to happen

00:24:50.580 so uh just out of the self-interest of the political parties who are ruthlessly self-interested

00:24:57.300 at all times uh we can assume that there will be some shift here because people vote

00:25:03.360 well it's kind of interesting too i mean just you brought that up i was trying to think where would

00:25:08.140 men go because it seems like the alternative the only other alternative we have in america is the

00:25:12.440 republican party i mean where do where would men go well they'll go to both parties remember that

00:25:20.520 uh you know there are a lot of very uh baffling things going on you have michelle bachman who's

00:25:28.520 now threatening to run for for uh congress uh or the senate uh maybe even the presidency who makes

00:25:36.680 sarah palin look like simon de bobois so you you you you've got some some realization that uh on

00:25:45.160 both sides of the aisle uh which there shouldn't be anyway not on this issue we don't need an aisle

00:25:51.480 we need a and uh we need a connective tissue uh on both sides there's a real need uh to do something

00:26:01.400 when my decline of males book came out i was surprised and i shouldn't have been that the warmest and the

00:26:07.320 most vociferous response i got was from the mothers of boys the mothers of boys kept telling me you

00:26:14.260 don't know what's going on in the schools you don't know what kind of slum emotionally my son's 0.80

00:26:19.200 forced to live in because of all these teachers that are that have been instructed only to recognize

00:26:24.680 the girls to push the girls into math and science and for which the government pays huge sums of money 1.00

00:26:30.300 for no particularly good reason or too many too much effect and um and i think that's that's going on

00:26:38.140 a lot mothers of boys are irritated and uh parents of boys not just mothers because they can see what

00:26:46.500 the consequences of this feminist uh issue has uh has been now the feminist uh initiative was very

00:26:54.500 worthwhile and and uh remains an important element of our national life but it's come at a considerable

00:27:02.700 cost to the boys that are failing out of school uh and being drugged one of the things i simply don't

00:27:10.600 understand is why so many boys and 90 percent of the victims of riddle in our boys are given drugs to

00:27:18.580 try to turn essentially turn them more into girls for behavioral purposes and they're giving this very

00:27:26.140 powerful drug to kids that are barely three or four five years of age ritalin in france is an illegal drug

00:27:34.000 it's a highly controlled drug and this was about 10 years ago i was told told by a professor at the

00:27:41.840 university of paris medical school that there are only 4 600 descriptions given for ritalin in all of

00:27:48.200 france and it's for adults but we're just having school nurses and doctors giving these drugs out to 0.92

00:27:55.840 people because teachers find boys that are medicated easier to deal with

00:28:02.140 well dr tiger we are running out of time but before we go um where can our listeners find out

00:28:09.060 more about your work well the most direct uh recent uh is the decline of males which is in paperback and

00:28:18.580 it's available on you know amazon barnes and noble and so on and uh through google

00:28:24.860 put my name in and there are references to some articles i've written uh which can be uh useful

00:28:33.100 for anyone trying to um look at this freshly and empirically and decide how to proceed

00:28:40.780 so uh you know i'm not exactly a worldwide figure but i'm not exactly inconspicuous either and if somebody

00:28:48.300 wants to go into this there's ample opportunity for them to do so and i as i said i think the most

00:28:54.140 efficient ways uh for 12 or 15 bucks or whatever to get a copy of many groups or go to i'm sorry the

00:29:00.380 decline of males and go to the lie or go to the library and read it there excellent well dr tiger

00:29:05.180 this has been an interesting conversation thank you for your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure as

00:29:10.620 well and good luck with what you're trying to do our guest today was dr lionel tiger dr tiger is the

00:29:16.060 author of the book the decline of males and you can pick up his book at amazon.com

00:29:23.660 that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:29:27.980 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at part of manliness.com and until next time stay

00:29:40.620 up

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #36： The Decline of Males with Lionel Tiger

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript