The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 65 - Our Country Needs More Masculinity, Not Less

00:00:00.000 So it seems, I'm sure you've noticed, that there's always some kind of campaign going on

00:00:04.380 with the aim of dismantling the dreaded masculinity. And the latest campaign comes

00:00:11.020 to us courtesy of a menswear company called Bonobos. I'm not really sure how to pronounce

00:00:19.900 it. But this week, they launched their hashtag Evolve the Definition. That's what the campaign

00:00:28.560 is called Evolve the Definition, which they hope that through the sale of pink blazers and through

00:00:35.700 Twitter activism will change society's conception of masculinity. Because of course, pink blazers are 1.00

00:00:44.760 very unmanly as opposed to this, I don't know what I have on this baby blue weird shirt I have,

00:00:50.480 which is, which is of course very manly. But according to, is this, I don't even know what

00:00:54.980 color. See, I, anytime I wear an unmanly color, I have an excuse because I'm colorblind. So I

00:01:00.040 really don't know, I never know what color I'm wearing. I just, I'm just, I just put something

00:01:04.000 on and then I judge based on the reactions of other people. And if people start making fun of me,

00:01:09.060 then I know that, okay, I wore an unmanly color. Anyway, the, according to the, to the company,

00:01:15.500 the traditional definition of masculinity is broken and outdated and tired, they say,

00:01:24.440 and it needs to be updated to fit our, you know, enlightened, um, our enlightened understanding

00:01:30.640 of things. Now, if you haven't, I wrote a piece about yesterday and I linked to it, but if you,

00:01:35.400 if you haven't had a chance when this is over, go watch the video that the company used to launch

00:01:41.300 this campaign because it's really an amazing video. It's amazing only because it's exactly

00:01:48.040 what you would expect. You know, it's, it's, it's like, imagine a campaign by a trendy menswear

00:01:56.200 company to, to, um, change the definition of masculinity. And it's just without even seeing

00:02:02.560 the video. It's, yes, it's exactly that. What do you have in your mind? That's exactly it.

00:02:05.840 It features this, uh, kind of collection of stylish, feminine dudes with nice hairdos 1.00

00:02:12.540 reading synonyms for math. So it starts with, they have their phones out and then they pull up

00:02:18.400 the definition of masculinity from the, from the dictionary. And then they start reading synonyms

00:02:22.980 for masculinity or for masculine. And the synonyms are like macho, manly, strong, brawny, powerful.

00:02:31.200 And then all the men, they react to that. They react with horror at that definition.

00:02:38.980 One of the guy goes, I'm not kidding. One of the guy goes, my goodness. He re I think he reads,

00:02:44.560 uh, you know, one of the synonyms for masculine is, uh, is brawny and strong. And he goes, my goodness.

00:02:50.240 And then another guy wearing a beanie says, um, I think that definition is a little,

00:02:54.880 is a little scary. He says he's scared. He's scared by the definition of masculinity.

00:03:01.200 And then the men all proceed to give their own definitions of masculinity. Um, and those

00:03:06.040 definitions include things like being able to smile and cry and, um, being brave enough to be who I am.

00:03:16.280 Now, I don't want to get off on a tangent, but, um, of course my whole video, every video I do is

00:03:22.780 just consists of me getting off in tangents. So I don't know why I even say that, but I just want to

00:03:27.380 begin by noting that, um, because it's kind of pet peeve of mine. It's not brave to be who you are.

00:03:35.580 Okay. You shouldn't be proud of being who you are. You don't really, you don't have any other choice,

00:03:41.580 but to be who you are. That's just, that's who you are. So you have to be it. So you don't,

00:03:45.840 you don't get any credit for being who you are. Um, you have no choice in the matter. So that's not,

00:03:51.560 who else are you going to be is the question. And by the way, if yourself is a person who's cowardly 0.96

00:04:00.600 and weak, then actually it's brave to not be who you are. So it's never really brave to be who you

00:04:08.260 are because that's just who you are, but it is often brave to not be who you are and to become

00:04:15.640 something better. It's just, I love when people do that. They, they go, you know, I'm just being

00:04:22.220 myself. And they think that that justifies their behavior. It's especially, it's something people

00:04:26.360 say, especially when they want to justify some negative characteristic about themselves. And they

00:04:31.940 say, well, I'm just being myself. And then the answer to that is, okay, well, have you considered

00:04:35.600 not being yourself? Have you considered being something better than yourself? Because yourself is

00:04:40.220 precisely the problem here. That's what, that's what needs to change is yourself. Yeah. You're being

00:04:44.440 yourself. Exactly. That's the issue. Be something better because yourself isn't great right now.

00:04:49.540 But that's kind of beside the point. The real point about this masculinity thing is why I have three

00:04:54.280 points that I want to make. Actually, I think five, three to five. We'll see. First of all, if your

00:05:00.480 objective is to take hold of something and change it, well, fine, but that's not evolving. You're not

00:05:08.580 evolving anything in that case. That's not how evolution works. As I understand it,

00:05:13.260 evolution is not something that can be imposed from the outside. Evolution is a natural, gradual,

00:05:20.240 internal, improving process. And so if something evolves, that means that it should now function

00:05:26.920 better than it did previously. That's what, it happens on its own naturally. And then by the end of

00:05:34.120 it, this thing that evolves now should function better than it did before. So, okay, let's look at this

00:05:40.840 new version of masculinity, this effeminate version of masculinity, this, this, you know, a man who cries

00:05:48.820 and sobs and is, it cares a lot about fashion trends. Like that's the new masculinity. How is that an

00:05:55.160 improvement? In what way does a man now function better with this new masculinity than he did before?

00:06:04.560 Because if we say that bears have evolved, well, that should mean that the bear of today is an

00:06:13.120 improvement upon the bear of 10,000 years ago. That's what it should mean. The bear of today is

00:06:18.520 a better bear. He's better at being a bear. So how is the new masculine man better than the older one?

00:06:26.400 Let's think about it. The old masculinity, while it was maybe a bit scary, according to one of the guys in the

00:06:35.000 video, it was a very scary thing. But at the same time, if you could get past the scariness of it, the old

00:06:40.160 masculinity drove men, motivated men to provide for their families, to protect their loved ones, to win

00:06:47.260 wars, to build, to build things, to build civilizations, among many other accomplishments. The new

00:06:53.880 masculinity, now it may make men more comfortable in many respects, but what are they achieving? What are

00:07:00.340 they doing that traditionally masculine men could not do as effectively? A traditionally masculine man

00:07:08.520 will have actual skills, actual abilities that the new masculine man does not have. So how, what is the

00:07:15.500 reverse of that? It just, it seems to me that the, the, the so-called evolved masculinity is more likely to

00:07:23.440 prevent men from functioning than it is to help them function. So then it's not evolution. Second point, we have

00:07:29.420 this idea that we have to change the definition of masculinity, because so many men today fall short of that

00:07:37.120 definition, and so therefore it needs to change. But is that the right response? I would say no, it isn't. I would say

00:07:42.600 that actually, that's the whole reason why we shouldn't change it. The fact that men are falling short of it is all the

00:07:49.140 more reason to reassert the definition, to strengthen it, fortify it, to, to declare it from on high.

00:07:55.480 It's not why you should change it. The fact that people falling short of the definition proves the

00:08:01.600 necessity of the definition. You know, the whole point of having a concept like masculinity is to

00:08:07.020 establish standards. It is to kind of draw lines and to kind of clarify things. And masculinity

00:08:13.920 femininity for men, just like femininity for women, has helped to answer some very important questions.

00:08:21.680 Like, what are men supposed to do? What are women supposed to do? How are men supposed to act? How are 0.83

00:08:28.800 women supposed to act? Men and women in society have always asked these questions about themselves.

00:08:35.260 People will always look at themselves and wonder, what am I supposed to do? What is my role? What is my,

00:08:42.100 what is my place in society? But by getting rid of masculinity and femininity, 0.89

00:08:48.000 all we've done is we've removed the answer to the question, but we have not removed the question.

00:08:54.600 People are still asking the question, but all you've done is you've taken away the answer,

00:08:59.100 which means that now there's going to be confusion. There's going to be paralysis where there used to

00:09:03.620 be clarity and action. The left seems to think, because the real problem that the left has

00:09:10.980 is not even with the answers to the question, it's with the question itself.

00:09:16.640 They don't like the idea that a man should do or shouldn't do anything, or that a woman should or 0.51

00:09:23.340 shouldn't do. They don't like this idea that men and women are looking at themselves and each other

00:09:27.400 and asking, like, what am I supposed to do, given that I am a man? And what are you supposed to do,

00:09:32.500 given that you're a woman? That's the question that the left doesn't like. So they want people to 1.00

00:09:36.780 stop asking it, but they can't get people to stop asking it. So instead they just get rid of the

00:09:41.140 answers. Gender roles is another example related to this. You know, people in a marriage, man and

00:09:47.420 woman, are going to naturally wonder what they're supposed to do, what their role is, how they're 1.00

00:09:53.500 supposed to work together to accomplish the task of building and sustaining a family. And gender roles 1.00

00:09:59.460 answer that question. But by getting rid of the gender roles and replacing it with nothing, which is 1.00

00:10:04.620 what we've done now, people are still asking the question. They're still wondering. You know,

00:10:09.620 people in a marriage are still like, what am I supposed to do? How is this supposed to work?

00:10:13.220 Okay. But now there's no answer because we don't have the gender roles. So now they just end up 1.00

00:10:17.320 confused and marriages are dysfunctional because nobody has any idea about how they should function.

00:10:22.040 So rather than changing masculinity or abolishing it to compensate for the fact that men so often fall

00:10:29.260 short of the label, I think what we should do is we should challenge men to live up to the label.

00:10:34.620 Because it's true that not every man is strong, not every man protects, but every man should be

00:10:41.100 strong. And I don't just mean physically. Obviously, an 85-year-old man is not going to be physically

00:10:46.400 strong, but every man should be emotionally and morally strong. And I also believe that where

00:10:53.220 physically possible, he should strive to have physical strength as well because that's, you know,

00:10:58.720 something that men are needed for in society. Not every man protects his family, but every man

00:11:05.820 should protect his family. Again, not just physically, but spiritually. These are, yes,

00:11:11.740 not every man does it. Not every man wants to do it, but every man should do it and they should all

00:11:16.560 want to do it. They should. That's the standard that they should aspire to. When you take the standard

00:11:22.140 away, now we have nothing to aspire to. We have nothing to strive towards. Third thing, or am I,

00:11:28.460 I don't know, what number am I? Second, if any, it doesn't matter. A couple other quick notes. You

00:11:32.640 know, we say that we are changing the definitions of things so that people can be different. Like we

00:11:40.400 look at a feminine man and we see that he's different than other men. And so we say, well, 1.00

00:11:45.520 we need to change the definition of masculinity in order to accommodate this guy and his differences.

00:11:52.840 But do you know what actually happens? When you change the definition, all you've done is you've

00:11:57.860 taken away that guy's ability to be different. So even in the, even in the dark old ages, when you had

00:12:04.460 traditional masculinity and that was like the standard, there were still some men who fell outside

00:12:09.340 of it. It was even okay to follow. Maybe some men are just, just naturally kind of fall more

00:12:15.080 outside of that. And so you, you still had this diversity and this, this, these differences and

00:12:20.740 personality. But when you change the standard by which the difference is judged and by which the

00:12:26.080 difference is recognized as a difference, then you've gotten rid of the difference. And so you've

00:12:30.980 actually, by kind of expanding all definitions and opening everything up in this, in this effort to,

00:12:36.260 to welcome diversity, you've actually abolished diversity. Now nobody can be different because there's

00:12:42.560 nothing to be different in comparison to. The last point I want to make here, I think it's an important

00:12:47.160 point. And, uh, I had to do this video in my car and I don't know if you can tell, I'm like, I'm burning

00:12:52.660 up right now because it's hot out and I have to keep the windows up and I can't have the air on because

00:12:56.360 that would make noise. It'd be distracting. So I'm like sweating right. It's like 95 degrees in the car and I'm doing

00:13:00.900 this. This effort to, to abolish masculinity is being imposed upon society by our cultural

00:13:08.520 institutions. It is not something that most people want. That's why it's not a natural problem. Because when

00:13:15.460 you, when you, in fact, even you look at a campaign like this, uh, change the definition of masculinity, most

00:13:20.900 people react negatively to it. They think it's stupid and ridiculous. And you talk to the average woman, as long 1.00

00:13:27.040 as you're not pressuring her to pretend that she's more progressive than she really is, she's going to admit

00:13:31.320 that, yeah, you know what? I want a man who's a man. And you talk to the average man, as long as he doesn't feel

00:13:36.120 pressured to pretend that he's more progressive than he really is. He's going to admit, yeah, you

00:13:39.740 know what? I want to be a man. I want a woman who's a woman. I want a woman who's feminine and 0.96

00:13:44.340 who is, you know, who is, who is, has a kind of maternal instinct and who has that womanly affection

00:13:49.760 and compassion. Like that's what I wanted a woman. I don't want a woman who's, who acts like a man. 1.00

00:13:54.600 That's not what I'm looking for. That's what men and women still naturally want, even now, even our

00:14:00.820 progressive age, but it is our cultural elites and our institutions, academic institutions, the media,

00:14:06.480 Hollywood, government, so on. They're the ones who are trying to impose this change on us. And so we should

00:14:13.460 resist it because we, you know, these, this, this natural inclination that we have is right and it's good

00:14:19.580 and we should stick to it. All right. We're going to cut it off there. Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:14:24.320 Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - July 19, 2018

Ep. 65 - Our Country Needs More Masculinity, Not Less

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