Episode #36： The Decline of Males with Lionel Tiger
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the decline of men in Western societies, and the role of human biology in contributing to it. Dr. Lyle Tiger, the author of the book The Decline of Males argues that human biology is the main cause of the decline in men in the West, and that this decline cuts across cultures and socioeconomic groups.
Transcript
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welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you watch the news or read
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magazines regularly you may have come across a segment or an article highlighting the fact
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that men in america and basically men in the west and industrial societies just aren't doing very
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well today for example we hear statistics that fewer men are going to college today and those
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that do are doing are performing worse than their female peers fewer men men have been hit really
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hard by this recession and are a lot of men are unemployed today and men are actually earning
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less money today comparatively to women in some areas but why are men falling behind what's caused
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their decline in the past 50 years many sociologists argue that that the driving forces are economic
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and cultural in nature but our guest today disagrees and proposes that biology or rather humans messing
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with it is the main force behind the decline of men in the west his name is dr lionel tiger and he's
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the author of the book the decline of males the first look at an unexpected new world for men and
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women dr tiger is the dr tiger is the charles darwin professor of anthropology at rutgers university
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and he's written several articles and books on on how human biology affects human social interaction
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well dr tiger tiger you wrote a book um 12 years ago called the decline of males um in what ways are
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men in decline and does this decline that you you write about does this cut across cultures uh racist
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socioeconomic groups well for the diagnostics of decline are fairly clear for one thing uh the number of
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males who um for example lost their jobs during this current recession um is about 80 82 percent
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and women did better out of this disaster than men have and that's the first part secondly if you look
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at marriage rates you see the extraordinary number and this applies to the u.s as well as other country
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industrial countries that forty percent of babies are born to women who are not married which means
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they don't have husbands which means that the potential husbands don't have children not legally in any
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event now a lot of these babies are born to affectionate couples and it's it's not as dire as it may seem
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but the fact is that as i point out in the decline of males men are becoming outlaws not in-laws
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and they're not joining families and they're not having what we know to be in comparative health
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terms an advantage in life which is having a stable affectionate kind of environment which has its
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problems but nonetheless is better than the alternative which is singlehood and if i may just go on if we
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look at income statistics we see that in large cities among younger men and women say between 20 and 33 or so
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women now earn much more or not much more but they earn more money than men
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second and secondly and more importantly for the long run if we look at educational statistics we see that
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there's almost a a breakdown of uh 60 40 women graduates to male graduates in some places it's even higher
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so women are graduating from places which give them credentials men are not and the question then becomes who do
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women marry we know that women tend to want to marry guys that are a little older and a little richer
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because most women are going to be out of the labor force one way or another for from between five to eight years
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and so they want somebody to give them a hand usually when they're having children
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well who are those guys they're not around and as a consequence uh we see the situation i mentioned which is
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and so that that problem that's in your opinion is a problem for society uh you know where there's no stable family
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well we have every piece of data we have about uh criminal behavior drug use suicide etc
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indicates that the uh single male is at great risk and the children of women who are not married
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uh are consequently also at great risk risk especially the males
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interesting well so you wrote this book uh 12 about 12 years ago it was published in 1999
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in that time since then have you have things gotten better or worse for men and are there any specific
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examples where things have gotten better or worse well they've gotten worse in my opinion principally
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because the uh sort of feminist groups like the american university association of university women
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and national organization for women uh really controlled the dialogue and as we saw in the
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white house recently uh president obama announced with great pride a white house council on women and men
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on women and girls there's been some pressure to get an equivalent council on men and boys but with
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absolutely no success because there are some uh people who really don't think that guys need anything
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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
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at all these sort of national data the affirmative action for women which uh has gone on to this day even
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though it's no longer necessary in many places we can see that uh if things are harder for men than they
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they have been and there are other factors that don't seem to be immediately uh important but are
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for example at at my university rutgers and at countless universities in the united states the first
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day of class for men and women is a rape seminar where the guys are described in effect as potentially
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predatory and the women as potential victims now that's obviously done to cover their the the backsides of the lawyers
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who don't want a rape case and and a lawsuit but the fact is that it's humiliating to both men and women
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and they go through their college experience with this uh initial uh impression of who they are
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and with with no no basis in the facts of life of the people who are in the room this is all
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national statistics and a lot of it is simply um uh irrelevant to the people who are there who are
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mostly nice kids well so in the past it seems like in the past four or five years there's been an
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explosion of literature there's books uh been magazine articles uh you know there's a newsweek uh feature
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about the the state of men uh the atlantic monthly had that article the end of men um and there's so
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many books about just the the state of masculinity in america um and these books usually when you read
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them they give these different sociological and sociological um and cultural explanations for the
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you know the decline of men but in your book you actually have kind of a unique argument uh you argue
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that the driving force is that men have been alienated from the means of reproduction uh what do you mean by
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that for the first time in human history possibly in mammalian history one sex can control uh
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reproduction and the advent of the pill which was a great drug is a great drug and very important for
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any number of reasons women could now control whether they would be pregnant or not guys had no idea
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in the 50s before this decline began the principal contraceptive that was available was the condom
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if you didn't use a condom and you were with a fertile aged female there was a reasonable chance
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maybe as high as 20 percent that any act of sex would lead to pregnancy and so we had a whole series of
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devices ranging from the shotgun marriage to pressures on men and women to marry during a pregnancy
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and we know from parish records and other sources that between a third to a fifth to a half of
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marriages occurred with the pregnancy you just look at when the marriage occurs and look when the baby's
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born so uh that was a way that uh women and men somehow engineered getting together and having
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children after this the pill came in the 60s and 70s and up until now men became as i said in the decline
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of males alienated from the means of reproduction because they had no way of knowing what the hell's
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going on and they depended on on females to tell them as should have been the case uh women have
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a major issue with reproduction much more so than males in in the kind of ongoing sense and women should
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control this kind of thing but it does mean that males don't and so i completely fail to understand why
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others who've written on the subject don't understand the absolutely critical consequence
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of change in the contraceptive technology which has had this phenomenal effect on men all over the
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world not just in the united states but everywhere so while sex has become easier for men and women to
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have because of the facility of the pill it has meant that there's been this uh disruption in
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the pattern of men uh engaging with a woman and having a child and then spending a lifetime
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more part of a lifetime dealing with the consequences in in uh terms of providing
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resources uh protection uh affection and the like so i i think that this is a biological issue much more
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in a way than it is an economic issue and and partly the reason for people not understanding that is that
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nobody really understands biology or given the people who are uh creationists they think it doesn't
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even matter which is complete nonsense and and irresponsible so um i want to shift gears here
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a little bit and talk about uh some of the work you're doing in the area of academics uh as far as
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men men go um you're part of a growing group of academics who are promoting uh what's called i guess
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people are calling male studies um it's a curriculum at universities um but how does this how does male
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studies differ from you know the men's men's studies you see um you already see at campuses across
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university what's the difference there men's uh men's studies i think uh are a wholly owned subsidiary
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of women's studies or gender studies the women have taken over this area in the university and nobody can
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shake them so if you look for example just uh i was in toronto giving a talk and some journalists at the
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university of toronto looked at the faculty and the course offerings at the university of toronto which
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is a major very big well-funded university and he found that there were 40 courses on women's studies
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two on men's studies one of which was about transgendered people and the other was on gay males
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there was not a single course at a huge major university which is uh possibly the leading one
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in canada that deals with guys just doing their lives but there were 40 on women and uh again that's
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perfectly fine you could say and it has been argued by many women's studies people who are
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often excellent academics that uh for the longest time things like history and political science were
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essentially the stories of men well now it's gone the other way and so some of us felt we had to
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redefine how we categorize and characterize males so that they're not put into a box which is all too
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common uh that they're kind of defective females and so you have a bunch of people writing about how the
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real challenges to make more sense men more sensitive to make them more feelings express their feelings
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etc etc uh all of which will fail uh as it's characterized and uh which uh doesn't deal with
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the fact that males and females are very different they have different rhythms and cycles in life and you
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can't uh by announcing it uh claim that men and women are the same that is completely uh uh counter to
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everything we know about human biology so um what kind of what kind of uh i guess disciplines
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would be covered in male studies it seems like you know women's studies it focus a lot on sociology
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um you know the cultural studies um would male studies be similar to that or would there be more
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less than that what what's the well that that would be part of it of course it would have to be
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but then we also want to begin looking at male other male primates because you can learn a lot
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from watching the chimps and the baboons and and how uh other primates manage their lives and
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there they have sharp sex differences often uh but they they work it works so that would be one
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way another another would be to look at men's health uh generally the diseases and difficulties men
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have uh are far less uh copiously uh attended to by researchers so breast cancer is a favorite one but
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prostate cancer i believe kills more people and uh and a male studies program would begin to look
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straightforwardly at what affects guys and uh what is the reason for some of their uh their
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difficulties it's uh there is a at columbia uh a program run by uh dr legato who recently got a
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very large grant from the national academy of sciences or i forget which agency to study men's
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health and that's the first time so and she is in fact going to take part and be one of the co-chairs
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of a meeting that the male studies group is having at the new york academy of sciences in uh in a few
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weeks and that's a good sign but it's taken years to get to this point because in uh in nash
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initially the response of women in the both in the medical and in the governmental uh areas was to say
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well men don't need any research it's women who suffer the various disabilities etc even though
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on average women live seven or eight years longer than men we're gonna take a quick break for a
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word from our sponsors and now back to the show so um dr tiger one of the criticisms um levied or
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at women's studies programs is at universities that they have been overridden um that the educational
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goals of women's studies programs have been overridden by the political mission of feminists
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um do you think a male studies program runs a risk of becoming politicized
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um instead of focusing on rigorous you know objective uh research well it's quite possible
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it it it could but but hey give us a chance and there's no reason to believe that we're doomed at
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the outset i don't certainly don't think so and i know many people who are involved in trying to have a
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uh federal attention to boys and men who are are not politicized they're actively concerned about the
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the number of men who don't graduate from educational institutions who are incarcerated who
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are commit suicide who are drug users who have no access to children uh this is not a political
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activity it's a sharply humanitarian one and it's about time uh the uh people on the other side if you
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will of the gender divide the feminists stop accusing those concerned with the males of of being partisan
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and so uh kind of in the same vein as this um there's male studies and kind of a a growing trend
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for you know male studies to be placed in universities alongside that there there's a there's a small um but
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growing men's right movement uh in seems like in western countries um that they deal with a variety of
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issues uh you know father's rights false rape issues uh you know discrimination of men you know in the
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workplace etc what are your thoughts about this growing men's rights movement uh well it's obvious
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that for example the divorce courts are a slum a moral slum by and large there are countless cases and i know
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people who haven't seen their children for 15 years guys because their wives claimed rightfully or wrongly that
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uh the guys were abusive uh a summary judgment was entered in the court and uh a judge made a decision
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at a hearing very often at which the male is not even present because he doesn't know
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and the the um state loves it because it means that then they can collect child support from the guy
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and rather than from the taxpayers and so it's part of a major conspiracy which
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has punished countless men countless men and while obviously divorce is not a happy
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uh result for women either and many women have suffered uh tragically through divorce nonetheless
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there's no reason for the antidote to that that to make men suffer so uh there is this um
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very large group of of men many of whom try their best to pay child support but then they
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they lose their jobs as countless millions of men have done recently and they can't pay child support
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so they're put in jail and they keep running up their bill plus interest and they're doomed there's
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nothing they can and will do they may try to leave the state but that's now become uh difficult with
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the ways that the governments have of catching these guys because they see them as revenue sources and
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as we all know governments want revenue more than they want justice and it seems to me that this this
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men's right movement it's very splintered right now i mean there's all these different you know
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different um groups that have different uh i guess goals and there doesn't seem to have been a
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coalition of men like you would see like with the with now the national organization of women um do you
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think there would ever be a male version of now um or is there something about you know the psychology
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of men working in groups which you've written about when one of your first books you wrote um that
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would prevent you know a large group of men organization of men getting together fighting for men's rights
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you know one of the problems is with that is that guys are not that interested in talking about
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themselves you never there was for five minutes men's consciousness groups but guys just don't want
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to sit around talking about their feelings they couldn't care less they want to get something done
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and so the if you remember the origins of the feminist movement had endless uh consciousness groups
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uh i remember friends of mine who were writers sending in articles to ms magazine and they couldn't get
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an answer on whether they were going to use it or not for months because there was a big discussion
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going on and all of these decisions were taken in the circle and and so on guys don't do that and as a
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consequence the um uh there's been a failure to connect in this uh way which
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uh has effective consequences i i'm i'm not wholly optimistic that this will change
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simply because i think it's in the nature of guys to want to get things done not get things discussed
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and in this realm discussion is the first part of of action and i don't know if there are enough guys
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who are willing and able to do it uh in a systematic way there are some who are i know many of them and
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and there are um heroic characters trying to figure out how to take the next steps to protect half the
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population from uh it's as it were the other half which is a got a very very good network thank you
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very much for protecting itself so uh again as i said in the decline of males um guys sort of look on
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and then they're baffled about why this is happening to them and they're at first vaguely irritated and
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concerned and then of course if things keep getting worse they become devastated and then they become
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dysfunctional and uh that's going to be hard to to uh to change remember the argument has always been
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that men are all powerful and males can do whatever they want and women can't it's obviously not true in
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this area so what what is your answer then to them you kind of dovetailing off that your last statement
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there what what can be done to uh you know in the decline of males i mean is it what is there any
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changes we can do i mean is the first thing has to happen is a discussion amongst men about this
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um before anything can happen or i mean or we just is there no hope for for the decline of males to end
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no there's always hope because first of all uh there's always a crop of youngsters coming through
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and they want lives the way that they look they want not ones they've been forced to have
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uh there's some change i suspect that in the next election we'll see some some interesting changes
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because it appears still that the white house hasn't figured out that one reason why they did
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so badly in the last election cycle was that white men just wouldn't vote for democrats and they won't
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again because they don't see the democrat that the uh republican rather the democratic party uh with its
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sort of nancy pelosi cast of characters uh has the interest of working class males at heart
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but eighty percent of single women voted for the democrats because this group precisely uh
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meets their their needs now i'm not taking a political position here it's not my job i'm not
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that interested in taking such a position but it's quite clear that there uh will be and it's already
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uh a realignment which uh obama called a shellacking well it wasn't a shellacking as much as it was a big
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shift in the gender patterns of voting and the uh as we can see in the fights about unions working class
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men for whom the unions were always strong supporters uh are losing out and uh that probably will
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begin to have some effect on on politicians i know that some of the people interested in this male studies
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activity are trying to uh begin uh uh uh and um um meeting of minds with uh politicians in both parties
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without being exclusively one uh one focus or the other because it's got to happen
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so uh just out of the self-interest of the political parties who are ruthlessly self-interested
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at all times uh we can assume that there will be some shift here because people vote
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well it's kind of interesting too i mean just you brought that up i was trying to think where would
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men go because it seems like the alternative the only other alternative we have in america is the
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republican party i mean where do where would men go well they'll go to both parties remember that
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uh you know there are a lot of very uh baffling things going on you have michelle bachman who's
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now threatening to run for for uh congress uh or the senate uh maybe even the presidency who makes
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sarah palin look like simon de bobois so you you you you've got some some realization that uh on
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both sides of the aisle uh which there shouldn't be anyway not on this issue we don't need an aisle
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we need a and uh we need a connective tissue uh on both sides there's a real need uh to do something
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when my decline of males book came out i was surprised and i shouldn't have been that the warmest and the
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most vociferous response i got was from the mothers of boys the mothers of boys kept telling me you
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don't know what's going on in the schools you don't know what kind of slum emotionally my son's
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forced to live in because of all these teachers that are that have been instructed only to recognize
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the girls to push the girls into math and science and for which the government pays huge sums of money
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for no particularly good reason or too many too much effect and um and i think that's that's going on
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a lot mothers of boys are irritated and uh parents of boys not just mothers because they can see what
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the consequences of this feminist uh issue has uh has been now the feminist uh initiative was very
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worthwhile and and uh remains an important element of our national life but it's come at a considerable
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cost to the boys that are failing out of school uh and being drugged one of the things i simply don't
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understand is why so many boys and 90 percent of the victims of riddle in our boys are given drugs to
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try to turn essentially turn them more into girls for behavioral purposes and they're giving this very
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powerful drug to kids that are barely three or four five years of age ritalin in france is an illegal drug
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it's a highly controlled drug and this was about 10 years ago i was told told by a professor at the
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university of paris medical school that there are only 4 600 descriptions given for ritalin in all of
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france and it's for adults but we're just having school nurses and doctors giving these drugs out to
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people because teachers find boys that are medicated easier to deal with
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well dr tiger we are running out of time but before we go um where can our listeners find out
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more about your work well the most direct uh recent uh is the decline of males which is in paperback and
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it's available on you know amazon barnes and noble and so on and uh through google
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put my name in and there are references to some articles i've written uh which can be uh useful
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for anyone trying to um look at this freshly and empirically and decide how to proceed
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so uh you know i'm not exactly a worldwide figure but i'm not exactly inconspicuous either and if somebody
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wants to go into this there's ample opportunity for them to do so and i as i said i think the most
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efficient ways uh for 12 or 15 bucks or whatever to get a copy of many groups or go to i'm sorry the
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decline of males and go to the lie or go to the library and read it there excellent well dr tiger
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this has been an interesting conversation thank you for your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure as
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well and good luck with what you're trying to do our guest today was dr lionel tiger dr tiger is the
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author of the book the decline of males and you can pick up his book at amazon.com
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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