00:00:38.840And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:44.460Our brilliant guest today is a political scientist, an activist, and a prolific author,
00:00:49.240including of his latest book, The Boy Crisis. Dr. Warren Farrell, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:53.860Thank you. I'm looking forward to being with you both.
00:00:55.960It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. We're going to talk about some subjects that are
00:00:59.800fairly controversial in our society at the moment and fairly difficult to discuss. So I think
00:01:04.120before we get into them, it's important for people to understand your background because
00:01:08.480you were actually one of the first men to be involved with the women's movement all the way
00:01:12.740back when. And it's been quite a radical journey for you since. So talk to us a little bit about
00:01:18.080your life story. How are you, where you are? What's been the journey that brings you to be
00:01:22.360here talking to us about the boy crisis? Sure. I guess it was about 1969. I was in New York
00:01:29.140doing my doctorate at NYU. And the women's movement surfaced, and I took an interest in it.
00:01:35.480And I was teaching also at Rutgers at that time, Rutgers University in New Jersey. And the students,
00:01:41.320when I was talking about the women's movement, they were really saying, you know, you have fire
00:01:44.980in your belly, Warren, when you're talking about the women's movement. And they said, well, what
00:01:49.900are you doing your dissertation on? And I said what it was. And they said, you should think about
00:01:53.680changing it to something on the politics of the women's movement, because my doctorate was in
00:01:58.100political science. And so they, I ended up convincing my, my, the people, the, my doctoral
00:02:07.420committee was very reluctant. They said, you know, oh no, this is, you know, this is just a fad. It's
00:02:13.680going to go away very soon. And I said, no, I disagree with that. I think that it's, that there's
00:02:18.820an evolutionary shift happening. And the shift is that, you know, up until this point in history,
00:02:23.340in most developed nations, we were concerned with survival. And when you're concerned with
00:02:28.800survival, you have to have very strict roles to be able to do whatever helps your generation
00:02:35.420survive. Women's role is raise children, men's role is raise money. And so I think that that's
00:02:41.100going to become much more flexible for both sexes. And they sort of rolled their eyes. But at that
00:02:46.300point, I had been also appointed to be assistant to the president of NYU. So I was in some ways
00:02:52.540is their boss at that point as a student. And so they sort of backed off and said, and let me do
00:02:59.760my thing. And, and that got me immersed in the women's movement. And, and then I, as part of my
00:03:06.800research, I joined now the National Organization for Women in New York City. That led, long story
00:03:12.860short, to my being elected to the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York
00:03:17.500City. And that led to my speaking around the world on women's issues. And that lasted a few years,
00:03:27.180a number of years, about half a decade. But then in the mid-70s, early mid-70s, I began to see that
00:03:35.100there were a lot of divorces. And I began to see the first bit of research that was suggesting that
00:03:40.500children who did not have fathers, a lot of father involvement after divorce, were not doing very
00:03:47.120well. And so I brought this up to the board of now. And they responded, well, you know, Warren,
00:03:53.740women who are joined now, they want the option of being with their children full time or not,
00:04:00.240if they divorce, and they want the option to divorce and the option of being with their
00:04:03.400children full time if they divorce. And so I said, well, but don't you care whether or not
00:04:10.940it's the best for the children? And, and they said, listen, you know, we do care that it's
00:04:15.780best for the children. However, there's a bigger issue here, which is that we have lots of fish to
00:04:25.900fry. It's not just custody issues. And we have equal pay issues and sports issues and so on.
00:04:31.980And so we can't afford to lose membership. And so I'm saying I can understand this politically,
00:04:36.820but to sacrifice our children because it's best politically is not a good trade-off from my
00:04:44.180perspective. And I said, you know, women, I'm 100% in favor of women having the option to have
00:04:50.020children or not have children, of course. But once a woman chooses to have a child, that's like me
00:04:57.220choosing to take on a job. I make a commitment to that job. I show up every day. And if I make
00:05:02.820a commitment to have a child, I put the child before me. And if it looks like the child does
00:05:08.120best when there's fathers and mothers both involved, then I have to pay attention to what
00:05:13.220is best for that child and not what is best for me, primarily, unless it's so not best for me,
00:05:20.220so to speak, that that would end up hurting the child. And so we went back and forth on this,
00:05:27.640but I could see that, you know, I had said that, you know, the research wasn't thorough at that
00:05:33.120point, because, you know, in order to find out whether something's best for the child, you have
00:05:37.240to not only look at one point in history, you have to wait for the child to get to be 15, 20,
00:05:42.22025, 30 to see how that child longitudinally does well or poorly. And so I acknowledged that that
00:05:48.900was not something we had enough longitudinal data to prove one way or the other. And they sort of
00:05:54.220basically said, well, you know, Warren, we thought you were really a big supporter of us. And, you
00:06:00.480know, you realize that all over the world, the reasons you're speaking all over the world and
00:06:04.520on all these TV shows and, you know, and getting famous is because, you know, is the recommendations
00:06:09.920of us. And so why don't you continue doing your research? You acknowledge yourself that, you know,
00:06:15.580that it's, you don't have enough longitudinal data. Well, I can see the handwriting on the
00:06:20.040wall was basically, you know, it's going to be the end of my career, the, you know, the income I was
00:06:27.380producing, et cetera, et cetera, if I chose to, you know, just follow the research without regard
00:06:32.720to the politics. And, but I did choose to just follow the research. And, but increasingly the
00:06:39.440research to a much greater degree than I would have even predicted at the time, show that children
00:06:44.260who were growing up with, that were dad deprived, those children were doing worse in all countries
00:06:52.340where there were significant percentages of children that were being raised without their
00:06:58.680dads. The UK, the United States, to a slightly lesser degree, Germany, all of this was being,
00:07:05.880you know it became very clear so I did start speaking up about that and you know everything
00:07:11.120that you know that was part of my infrastructure for producing income and every article I used to
00:07:17.500write for the New York Times used to be published and once I started to explain boys and men's
00:07:22.540positions they were not published anymore for the next 29 articles and you know and the all the TV
00:07:29.300shows, the operas and so on that I would be on. They stopped calling me, et cetera. And so it was,
00:07:37.260you know, I went from doing extremely well financially to, you know, doing much more
00:07:42.000marginally. But fortunately, I'm a reasonably decent business person and was able to invest
00:07:46.880the money I had made during the women's movement in order to support myself being able to share
00:07:51.020a more full story of what was happening with boys and men.
00:07:54.480And in your book, you detail in excruciating detail some of the things that are happening and have happened since those days, particularly, obviously, to boys and men.
00:08:06.380For people who haven't yet read the book, I'm sure lots of people will go out and buy it after this interview, but for people who haven't read it, in a nutshell, what is the boy crisis?
00:08:15.020What is it that is happening to boys and men in our society, in your view?
00:08:19.340In all 53 of the largest developed nations, boys are falling behind girls in every single
00:08:27.000academic subject, but especially in reading and writing, and reading and writing are the
00:08:31.520two biggest predictors of success or failure.
00:08:34.540And so I started looking at why that was the case, and I'll get back to that in a moment,
00:08:40.160but the key word is developed nations.
00:08:43.480The second thing I was noticing is that boys in all the developed nations were having,
00:08:49.900they were having mental health problems.
00:08:52.400They were, so when boys and girls, for example, are nine years of age, they're very rarely
00:08:59.360But when they do commit suicide, it's about equally.
00:09:03.560Between the ages of 10 and 14, boys commit suicide at twice the rate of girls.
00:09:08.880between the ages of 15 and 19 it's four times the rate between the ages of 20 and 24 it is
00:09:16.680five times the rate of girls and so very few people know that and or ask the question why
00:09:24.460is that the case on the mental health level boys are far more likely to get in feels depressed
00:09:32.480to feel that they have no option but to get involved with being addicted to drugs
00:09:39.120or being addicted to opioids, about the opioid deaths for boys versus girls is about four to one
00:09:44.900in the United States, about five to one in Canada. Boys are far more likely to be addicted to porn,
00:09:50.780be addicted to video games. Video game involvement is actually healthy up to a point,
00:09:57.540but the point to which men do it, males are more likely to do it, especially certain types of males.
00:10:02.480that it becomes addictive, that it becomes destructive. And so that's just the mental
00:10:09.220health. The physical health problems very manifest. Boys are far more likely to be obese.
00:10:14.920They're more likely to not attend school fully. They're more likely to have to drop out. Their
00:10:20.580grades are worse. They have to drop out of high school to a much greater degree than girls do.
00:10:25.480Boys who drop out of high school are far less likely to be employed in their 20s.
00:10:29.560boys who aren't employed are more likely to live with their parents boys are 66 percent more likely
00:10:35.800in the united states to live with their parents between the ages of 25 and 31 and the average
00:10:41.500girl that i know who you know goes out looking for a guy is not looking at unemployment lines
00:10:46.340or you know and searching out parents basements for boys to boys to have children with
00:10:54.660And so these boys are feeling not only like they're losers living with their parents, but they're also feeling like they're deprived of sexual intimacy.
00:11:07.040And they feel like if they reach out, they're always going to be rejected.
00:11:12.400That often makes them get into porn because porn is access to a variety of attractive women without fear of rejection at a price that they can afford.
00:11:20.920And since they're not earning money, that's the price they can afford.
00:11:24.080so they get into porn but the problem with one of the problems with porn aside from it objectifying
00:11:28.340women is that it also it uses men because it gets men addicted to beautiful women's bodies
00:11:36.560first it's just the body that he sees it gets him excited but after he's seen a few hundred bodies
00:11:43.340he needs to move to some type of sexual behavior and then more advanced sexual behavior or more
00:11:49.140you know challenging sexual behavior like like watching a guy come in a woman's face and then
00:11:55.540he gets finally he gets to meet a real life woman and he's so addicted to what porn has
00:12:01.760addicted him to in order to keep his excitement up that the woman feels like she's a porn object
00:12:09.220and she feels and so she and because she is a porn object and so she withdraws from him which
00:12:15.040only reinforces his feelings of being sexually rejected and therefore addicts him more to the
00:12:21.580porn. So there's so many vicious cycles like this that I talk about in the Boy Crisis book
00:12:27.320that boys are involved with. And so obviously this is the academic health, the academic lack
00:12:36.240of academic success leads to a lack of economic success. Lack of economic success means that
00:12:42.320girls aren't interested in you, leads to depression, leads to sometimes suicide, leads to
00:12:47.760boys acting out. So, you know, when I started researching the mass shooters who were school
00:12:54.820shooters, so for example, in the United States in the 21st century, there are only five school
00:13:01.160shooters who have killed more than 10 people, but whose family backgrounds we know of, and all five
00:13:07.140of them, 100%, are dad-deprived. The ISIS recruits in the United States are almost all
00:13:15.880dad-deprived children, including girls. The ISIS recruits, smaller percentage of ISIS recruits who
00:13:21.220are girls. And so the prisoners in the United States are 93% men. But of those 93% men,
00:13:29.520about 90% are dad-deprived. And I base this on my research going around from prison to prison
00:13:35.340in California when I ran for governor of California and asking prisoners how many had
00:13:41.800involved dads when they were growing up. And about 10% did, but the other 90% did not.
00:13:49.900And so on and on. And so I began to look at why were boys having so many problems? And it really
00:13:56.300wasn't all boys that were having problems. It was the percentage of boys who were dad-deprived.
00:14:03.760they were the ones that were having problems and so I found out that the boy crisis resides
00:14:10.040where dads do not reside so that was the beginning of my exploration of what you know what is the
00:14:17.260connection between dad deprivation and the boy crisis you know why what's what is the importance
00:14:23.320of dads what and then I found that dad's parent very differently than mom's parent not all dads
00:14:30.560And, you know, and I want to make it clear also that many children grow up with single
00:14:35.080mothers who are, I mean, almost all single mothers that I know of are devoted to their
00:14:39.720children and they're overwhelmed in the work that they do and they care enormously.
00:14:44.920And many children grow up with single moms that do do well, boys as well.
00:14:50.900But where you see the boys who don't do well, the great majority of those are deprived of
00:14:58.200their fathers. And so I started asking the question, you know, what is their dads do that
00:15:03.820moms, that is different from what moms do? And that's what really fascinated me about the
00:15:10.340differences between dad-style parenting and mom-style parenting. And my findings in the
00:15:16.140boy crisis that made me, where I was able to report that the children who do the best by a
00:15:22.120long shot, are boys and girls who have what I call checks and balance parenting. They have two
00:15:29.520parents that are actively involved, even if they're divorced. They have two parents that
00:15:33.940are actively involved about 50% of the time. They live close to each other. They communicate well
00:15:39.660with each other. They don't badmouth each other. And if the children who are of divorce have those
00:15:45.240four must-dos, 50% time with each parent, parents that live close to each other, parents that are
00:15:52.440involved with communication and counselling, so that they get on the same page with each other
00:15:56.840and see each other's best intent, and children that do not hear any bad-mouthing from mother
00:16:02.140to father or father to mother. Those are the children I found of divorce that do the best,
00:16:08.060and the rest of them that do the best are ones that are in intact families.
00:16:12.480Warren, we're having this conversation, and you're telling me all these things. Now,
00:16:17.620I used to be a teacher. I was a teacher for 12 years. But to me, this seems like common sense.
00:16:23.760Everybody would listen to us, would go, that makes absolute sense, of course. But why is it taboo?
00:16:30.160Why is it taboo to suddenly say that children need fathers? That if you come from a broken home,
00:16:36.700you're going to do less well. Your chances are that you're not going to be as successful. You're
00:16:40.600not going to stay in education as long. Your grades aren't going to be as good. Your life
00:16:44.900outcomes aren't going to be as positive. Why is that suddenly become a taboo thing to say?
00:16:50.740Because it reduces the, well, I'll give you an example. In both the last two major elections,
00:16:58.700I went out to Iowa where the presidential candidates are beginning to try to make their
00:17:04.160mark. And I interviewed at one point all Republicans and another point all Democrats.
00:17:10.600and the Republicans tended to agree with me on this issue, and they said, yeah, this only makes,
00:17:16.220as you said, common sense. And I was able to talk to Andrew Yang, who was a leading candidate at
00:17:22.600that time, and John Hickenlooper, who was a candidate at that time as well, who is now a
00:17:26.920U.S. Senator. And after I talked with Andrew Yang, who really understood the importance of fathers,
00:17:32.920the importance of families, and the fact that boys were in crisis, the campaign manager overheard me.
00:17:40.600And, and Andrew Yang was, she could see Andrew Yang was really excited. And the campaign manager pulls me aside and says, you know, Dr. Farrell, we have a problem here because if, if, if Andrew Yang speaks up about these boys issues, that's going to make many of our feminist followers feels, feel like he's pro male and anti female.
00:18:07.420and if he's and we're to lose a lot of our feminist base and it's also it's going to make
00:18:12.200a lot of single mothers feel like they're not adequate and that's going to lose a single
00:18:17.120mother base and our single mother base is largely a democratic base and um and our um and and the
00:18:24.480and the women who um want to raise children um by themselves that's they're largely a democratic
00:18:31.240base and the feminists will turn against us if we start losing our feminist base there's no way
00:18:36.380were going to win the Democratic nomination. And after that, Andrew Yang did not speak up.
00:18:43.280And I had the same experience with John Hickenlooper, very understanding, very compassionate,
00:18:47.800wonderful man, really understood these issues very well and had a good hour-long interview
00:18:54.020with him, educating him about this. But the same reaction from the campaign manager.
00:19:01.940Whereas I went to the White House under the Trump administration to brief them on the
00:19:06.600boy crisis book, and there's 14 people sitting around, not just from the White House, but
00:19:11.760also from HHS, Health and Human Services, also from the Department of Justice, and they're
00:19:17.100all going, you know, my God, you know, on some level, everything you're saying is obvious.
00:19:22.440On another level, you're giving us precise data as to understand why we understood that
00:19:28.720fathers were important, but we didn't understand what the value of roughhousing was, for example.
00:19:35.260And we would never have suggested that the value of roughhousing among its values was postponed
00:19:42.100gratification. Among the values of postponed gratification is that it's postponed gratification
00:19:47.620is the biggest predictor of success or failure. And we never would have predicted that roughhousing
00:19:52.900was a predictor of empathy and and when you're telling us why and how it's a predictor of empathy
00:19:59.560all that makes sense but that's you know we couldn't no man that we know says to his wife
00:20:06.600you know I'd like to rough house with the children so it'll help them be more empathetic
00:20:11.840the connection is counterintuitive and this is what this is what we're learning from you and so
00:20:17.940So it was it was these types of seven major differences and a number of minor differences between dad style parenting and mom style parenting that really were the eye openers that I think I was able to find when I researched the boy crisis book as to know exactly what the dynamics were that lead to so many children doing so much better when they have both dad style parenting and mom style parenting in their life.
00:20:43.700Warren it seems to me that we don't take this crisis seriously enough and I'll give you an
00:20:50.020example a few weeks ago I was reading about education results in the UK and they were saying
00:20:57.720what you were saying girls far outperform boys and the Times in the UK wrote this quasi jokey
00:21:05.040piece about how maybe girls were just smarter and they couldn't have done that the other way around
00:21:12.200Because if they did that the other way around.
00:21:38.920Why is that acceptable to do that? And, you know, we talk about, you know, male mental health, you know, suicide rates going through the roof, you know, more and more men feeling displaced from society, feeling angry, the rise of the incel culture.
00:21:56.520But yet it's acceptable to write a piece about that. I don't get it.
00:22:00.360Here's why. And this is not an easy answer to hear. And it's going to take us deep.
00:22:06.080And the brief reason, the headline reason, is that the reason we males exist as humans and as animals, all the way from insects to human beings, is we exist to be willing to die to protect women.
00:22:26.220The essence of masculinity is the preparation for disposability.
00:22:30.520in every war men were told you will be a real man if you um if you know in the united states
00:22:40.480we said uncle sam needs you boys you know grew up and they saw their you know the uncle joe
00:22:47.160with a marine uniform on and everybody talked about uncle joe as a hero who died when he was
00:22:52.82017 or 18 in world war one and he um you know and when the boy is being criticized by his mother
00:23:00.200his father and mocked by other kids at school, he says, all right, there's a way I can be a hero.
00:23:05.540And that way that he can be a hero is to be willing to be disposable in that generation's war
00:23:11.840and to think that he will be a hero, that he will be respected. And he's disposable
00:23:18.200in order to be able to save all the women in the society and the children and other males that
00:23:27.280aren't in in that war or weren't courageous enough to join that war and if he's if it's not wartime
00:23:33.540he's learns that he also needs to be um historically um in the last in previous generations
00:23:39.420he needed to learn that he learned that he needed to be the primary breadwinner that he needed to
00:23:44.540earn money and so he learned to climb the ladder of um of success and not to ask himself what do
00:23:54.180should I do what I want to do what do I want to do but what do I need to do to earn more money
00:24:02.080when I was when it was apparent when I was in high school that I might be a decent writer
00:24:07.600my my father you know took me aside and said Warren you are a good writer but you know
00:24:13.820only about one out of a hundred you know writers even get a publisher and if you can't find a
00:24:19.760publisher, you'll never find a wife, at least not a good wife, not one that's not worthy of you.
00:24:24.780And so you've got to drop this little dream, Warren, of being a writer. And even after I
00:24:31.360published my first book and got a very good advance for it, he said, that's right. You got
00:24:36.080a good advance. You lucked out. But supporting a family is not about lucking out once and then
00:24:44.180taking a chance with your family. After that, it's about doing what you need to do, Warren.
00:24:48.800is not doing what you want to do. So get out of your mind the focus on doing what you want to do
00:24:55.140or what you're, quote, gifted at. Do what you need to do, which is raise money that's predictable
00:25:01.580and dependable so you can support a wife and children and family. Now, fortunately, in the
00:25:06.460last generation or two, women have shared a lot more, many women have shared a lot more of that
00:25:10.940burden. But even women who do share more of that burden are usually looking for men to marry if
00:25:16.720they want to have children. If they want to have children, they're looking for men to marry who
00:25:20.840are earning at least as much or more than they, or soon will have the potential for earning as
00:25:25.680much or more than they, to give them the option of being full-time with the children, part-time
00:25:30.460with the children, or full-time in the workplace. And so men learn, men are still learning today
00:25:37.820that if they're not doing what they need to do, they're not going to be wanted by women.
00:25:44.200And so we often hear that the pay gap is about men earning more than women for the same work.
00:28:42.940it seems to me that there's a thing underpinning all of this
00:28:47.480that I find incredibly wrong and distasteful,
00:28:50.760which is we've somehow ended up in a position
00:28:53.080where the relationship between men and women
00:28:56.540is seen primarily through the prism of competition
00:28:58.980when that is frankly absurd historically isn't biologically evolutionarily historically to to
00:29:06.640suggest that men and women should be in competition with each other instead of in collaboration
00:29:10.700it's the most self-destructive way of looking at this whole thing that you could possibly imagine
00:29:16.140isn't it i could not agree more um the you know part of what i say in the boy crisis is that you
00:29:22.820So rather than think about competition between men win, men win, women lose, basically we are all in the same family boat.
00:29:33.640When only one sex wins, everybody loses.
00:29:36.620And this is something that we in the feminist movement, and as you know, my background was as a, you know, speaking around the world as a male feminist.
00:29:46.220And this is a huge mistake that we made.
00:29:50.680it was like you know women are put down men women must be oppressed by men men are earning more
00:29:57.700money we must be the oppressors as opposed to understanding everything I was just mentioning
00:30:02.480to you a few moments ago that that biologically and historically if you look at the earning money
00:30:10.340as a toll road very frequently and yes it if you if you're one of the one percent or so that earns
00:30:16.940a great deal of money. You've usually sacrificed your life to do that. You usually will go to your
00:30:22.500deathbed saying, I wish I spent more time with my family. You'll be usually disconnected from
00:30:27.460your feelings in order to be able to repress your fears and your feelings of inadequacy in order to
00:30:34.220prove yourself, in order to not acknowledge any weakness that other people can take advantage of
00:30:38.980in order to become, quote, successful. And you're successful at work, but you're often successful as
00:30:44.520a human doing, not as a human being. We often said, you know, if women go to a party and they're
00:30:50.660single and they're looking for a future husband, the other woman at the party says, oh, you know,
00:30:57.680go over there to Warren. His books are selling really well. Go over there to, you know, Joe.
00:31:03.820He's a doctor. He's so-and-so. He's in law school. He'll be making a lot of money. He's really sharp.
00:31:09.760They don't say, you know, there's a sensitive, loving, you know, Francis guy. Look at how sweet
00:31:14.220is, why don't you go over and make contact with Francis? He really listens better than most people
00:31:19.700do. And you'll feel really heard by him. And so it's really destructive to see men and women
00:31:26.600as opponents because, you know, great, you know, in my couple, I do couples communication workshops
00:31:31.720around the United States. And in my couples workshops, about a third of the people are there
00:31:37.600on the verge of divorce. And yet I have people make secret little notes to write in a piece of
00:31:46.360paper. If your partner's life was in jeopardy and there was a hundred percent chance that they will
00:31:53.200die, but you knew that you could save them and you'd have a hundred percent chance of saving
00:32:01.340them, but a 50 percent chance that you would lose your life in the process, would you do it?
00:32:06.400Now, remember, a third of the people in the workshop are considering divorce, and between 90 and 95% of the men say, nevertheless, that they would be willing to risk their life at the 50% level if they had 100% guarantee that they could save the life of this woman that they might be divorcing or breaking up from, as well as the ones who are there just to improve their relationships.
00:32:35.780when women are asked the same question, and this is all done secretly, the partners never find out
00:32:41.640what the answers are. It's about 75, 80% of the women still feel that way as well. And so mostly
00:32:50.340men and women will forfeit an enormous amount to save their partner, to be connected with the
00:32:58.040other one. And yet, as you mentioned, we're treating men and women as if they're competing
00:33:02.720with each other. And the gain of one is the loss of the other. Warren, do you think, and you touched
00:33:10.620on this in your book, that society has become more and more and more feminized, especially when
00:33:17.860you compare it to 50, 60 years ago? Definitely. And I have no problem with society opening up
00:33:28.320the option of more feminine behavior on the part of men, as well as having opened up the option of
00:33:36.720more masculine behavior on the part of women. But we're not just doing that. We're making the
00:33:43.420feminine behavior as the superior behavior and the masculine behavior as the toxic masculinity.
00:33:50.720And there is a lot of toxicity in both sexes, both sexes that took their femininity or masculinity
00:33:58.220to the extreme, both sexes became toxic in the process. And so women who were not ever comfortable
00:34:07.900taking a sexual initiative directly had to learn to take sexual initiatives indirectly. If they
00:34:15.580didn't learn to take sexual initiatives indirectly, which is a type of manipulation,
00:34:20.800then they didn't get a man that they wanted. They didn't get a man that they wanted. They
00:34:28.120were often very unhappy. And so women developed a lot of toxic behavior if they weren't able to
00:34:35.060express a more masculine side of taking the risk of asking a man out, taking the risk of sexual
00:34:41.220rejection, taking the risks of starting a business that might fail. And so it was very helpful for
00:34:49.280women to learn male skills, but either gender skills taken to their extreme became toxic.
00:34:57.840On the male side of the coin, men, in order to be loved, had to be willing to risk their
00:35:05.800lives like dying in war, risk their lives in a different way by, you know, working either
00:35:11.140if they're a working class male in the hazardous jobs, as I'm sure is true in Europe, there
00:35:17.680is about 93% of the people who die in hazardous jobs are males. And those are the ones that just
00:35:26.980die in hazardous jobs, ones that die in jobs that have what is called remnant deaths, like black
00:35:35.260lung disease from working in coal mines, where you don't, or as a firefighter, you don't die
00:35:40.440right away on the job. You die much earlier after you leave your job because of the black lung
00:35:46.560disease, et cetera, those are almost all men. So if you're in a boot camp and you learn that your
00:35:54.660job is to be willing to die for your country and the sergeant or the person above you, the officer
00:36:02.920in the boot camp says, you know, make some anti-Semitic comments or some anti-female or
00:36:09.420anti-male comments and you're, let's say, short. He makes a comment about being, you know, a little
00:36:15.960a pygmy or a midget and you say that's you know really racist or that's sexist or
00:36:20.920you know or that's anti-semitic the the job of that officer in the army is to tell you
00:36:27.860oh you sweet little boy you're going to make a really wonderful soldier worrying about what's
00:36:33.860anti-semitic your job is to die to be part of the war machine your job is to be a cog in the war
00:36:41.560machine. The war machine does not work well with squeaky wheels like you. Get down and do five
00:36:48.780push-ups. Get down and do 20 push-ups if that doesn't work. Get down and do 40 push-ups. Guys,
00:36:54.360you have permission to mock this guy until he straightens up and he stops being concerned about
00:36:59.760who he is and what his sensitivity is and focuses on recognizing that he's here to be willing to die
00:37:07.960so this country can survive and to live.
00:38:04.440And so both sexes have toxicities. But we have framed the world in the last 50 years as there's, you know, there's toxic masculinity and there's sort of, if you will, superior femininity. And that's just a miscalculation of the understanding of both sexes.
00:38:22.780And Warren, another thing that I found really interesting was the point that you made in the
00:38:28.400book where you were talking about the men who felt unheard. These were liable to be your Brexit
00:38:33.460voters, your Trump voters, because the only way that they had of actually making themselves heard
00:38:38.860was at the ballot box. Yes. Yes. And Trump was sort of like, he was articulating without worry
00:38:48.680about what he said. And just sort of like, you know, I'm going to lambast, it's going to land
00:38:54.400where it does. I'm going to tell the truth from the way that a lot of people in the United States
00:38:59.300who felt left out, who felt unheard, especially the more developed the woke culture became,
00:39:05.740the more canceling the cancel culture became, the more junior high school teachers were saying the
00:39:11.680future is female and boys were feeling that, you know, I'm a male and I'm hearing that the future
00:39:17.340is female, that doesn't inspire me very much to do really well in school and to really, you know,
00:39:22.240watch out for my future. Because if I succeed, I'll be told, I'll be told it's because I have
00:39:26.900male privilege. If I fail, I'll be, you know, I'll be ignored. And so a lot of people felt
00:39:34.260caught between a rock and a hard place. And it appeared to them like Trump, you know, for all
00:39:40.060the bully that he was, was just cutting, you know, cutting right through that rather than sort of
00:39:44.620what they would think of as namby-pambying around, saying everything with precise sensitivity and precision
00:39:52.540that so many politicians did on the part of both the left and the right.
00:39:57.260And so, yes, there's so much that the political left was not hearing about what the average experience was of the average person.
00:40:08.240The average family felt that they saw the father going out early in the morning, becoming that firefighter, becoming the logger, doing the hazardous job, making more money at a career, but also sacrificing, being away from the children, experiencing what I call the father's catch-22, the dad learning to love his family by being away from the love of his family.
00:40:35.040most women got this most families got this but they didn't feel that the political left got this
00:40:41.960and so when when trump was willing to speak about these things without
00:40:45.740any fear of stepping on toes it felt like finally they had a champion
00:40:51.600that's that's very interesting and you you alluded earlier when you were talking to
00:40:57.560to the kind of angry bitter young men who often find themselves in positions where they're so
00:41:04.400angry that they start acting out. And obviously the extreme end of that is the mass shooters that
00:41:09.280you talk about. But there's a bigger, seemingly a bigger culture, a bigger movement or a bigger
00:41:15.660group of people who've been enabled by social media and technology to congregate, to share
00:41:21.020thoughts, to kind of talk to each other, whether it's incels or whatever that is. What should
00:41:28.700society's attitude be to those people? Because I have to say, as a man who's always tried to
00:41:36.460embody the traditional qualities of masculinity, which is you strive, you work hard, you have
00:41:42.020ambition, you have drive, etc. I do struggle to have empathy. I mean, just in general, because
00:41:48.740I'm Russian, but in particular to that group of people, because I always, there is a kind of
00:41:54.280what now is fashionably termed victim-blaming in my psyche, which is like, well, why don't you get
00:42:00.180up off the couch and go and try and do something? And of course, I recognize that factually,
00:42:06.860based on what you've said, it's a lot more difficult for them than it maybe was for me
00:42:11.100when I was growing up. Well, it's a very good question. So let's look at the words like
00:42:15.920incel incel for the novice tuning in here it means involuntarily celibate involuntarily celibate
00:42:25.840so these people these men are saying that i don't want to be celibate i'd like to be sexual with a
00:42:34.520woman but i'm involuntary but i i have to prevent myself from doing it because you know for example
00:42:42.040if I put my penis in a woman's body, I'm putting my life in her hands. She can choose to have an
00:42:47.720abortion or she can choose to sue me for support. If she decides to not abort and to have the child,
00:42:57.620I am sued and I'm sued for support. From that one sexual experience, I put my life in her hands.
00:43:03.860If I want to have equal access to that child, because even though I didn't intend to have the
00:43:09.240child, I nevertheless feel like I want to help raise that child because I know children do best
00:43:14.860when raised by both parents. And I feel it's only fair for me to be equally involved. And I'm being
00:43:20.960told that I don't have an option to be equally involved in that child's life. I only have an
00:43:26.600option to pay for that child's support. And I see that in court after court, I don't have more than
00:43:33.700a little chance of winning. And if I had a chance of winning, I'd at least have to spend the
00:43:38.800equivalent of 150,000 US dollars to hire lawyers, hire expert witnesses, hire people to convince
00:43:46.960the judge to allow me to be a good father. That feels like too much of a risk for sex.
00:43:53.620So you and I are programmed, Constantine, to work our rears off and to do what we need to do. You
00:44:00.480wouldn't be doing this podcast if you were that type of male. I wouldn't be writing books if I
00:44:06.160wasn't that type of male but not every male is like that some men do not have you know they may
00:44:11.900have been brought up by them you know by without a dad themselves they may not be as motivated
00:44:16.160they may but they still are heterosexual they still care for women but but it's too complex
00:44:22.920it's too dangerous to be involved it's like somebody wanting to desiring enormously to ride
00:44:31.840a motorcycle and take risks riding that motorcycle, but then reading and understanding that it's
00:44:38.76036 times more likely that you're going to get into an accident per mile of motorcycle riding.
00:44:44.820So you give up what you want to do because it's too dangerous to do it. That's incels. And basically
00:44:50.820that's the same psychology behind men going their own way. However, there's two types of things that
00:44:56.220can come out of that. When men going their own way or incels meeting together and get together
00:45:02.940and sharing feelings and sharing their pains and sharing their anger and sharing sometimes hatred
00:45:08.220of women because they're so, that either can be very healing because for moments when we're angry
00:45:16.900and we feel vulnerable, anger is vulnerability's mask. And in any therapy group, every therapist
00:45:26.140knows, that sometimes the anger of a woman or the anger of a man will be exaggerated.
00:45:41.480That is a hatred of the moment, of course.
00:45:44.740But almost always, I learn this again and again from doing my couples communication
00:45:50.120workshops, anger is vulnerability's mask.
00:45:54.320if you ask what's the vulnerability behind this anger you have a totally different feeling about
00:46:02.480what's happening usually what happens is the anger is a stage and having a chance to vent feelings
00:46:09.620is therapeutic as it is in a therapist's office and this is a very healing men like this getting
00:46:16.980together and venting can be very healing and occasionally it can be very destructive if they
00:46:23.660don't get off the venting and move into a more constructive life. Now, for me, a constructive
00:46:29.300life is not withdrawing from women or withdrawing from society. For me, a constructive life is
00:46:35.300learning how to listen, learning how to interact, learning how to work things through. And I can
00:46:43.340write about what I feel and talk about what I feel, and I'm able to make a living doing that.
00:46:49.140and but let's open our hearts to the people who can't make a living doing that they're not saying
00:46:54.220they're not saying I want to destroy women I want to hurt women I don't want women good things for
00:47:01.180women they're just saying it's too complex for me to be out there with women I need to withdraw
00:47:08.320and be by myself and Warren the the thing that really struck me when I was reading your book
00:47:14.960which I really loved actually and it was very very powerful was a fact that really hit home
00:47:22.060which was more people would prefer to have a girl than have a boy and that to me really hit home
00:47:29.580where the problem is and that it seems to be as a society we seem to prefer girls now. Yes yes
00:47:36.280absolutely and what I think is at the beginning of the boy crisis I sort of talk about this and
00:47:41.160You know, one of the ways this came up was I was, you know, with a number of people in a dinner party and and, you know, one was a strong feminist and another one was, you know, a minister.
00:47:53.860And the other one was a former governor of a state in the country who's pretty well known.
00:48:00.840And and so and there were six of us around there.
00:48:03.940And so Sam Keene, the fellow that wrote the book on masculinity, he just asked the question, if you were having a boy or a girl today, which would you prefer?
00:48:20.500And five out of the six of us said a boy.
00:48:22.800and so I started asking myself I wonder whether this is true more than in a cherry-picked anecdotal
00:48:28.800type of way and was able to see that you know the data on now today the great majority of mothers
00:48:35.060and fathers would prefer to have a girl even though the fathers say oh I feel like I could
00:48:41.720have a lot more fun with a boy I'd have a lot more permission to play soccer or football or
00:48:46.160roughhouse with them and you know really tease them and stuff like that but so they if I asked
00:48:53.960the question with whom would you feel like you'd have more fun raising the fathers would say a boy
00:49:01.860but if I asked them who would you rather have a boy or a girl the fathers and the mothers both
00:49:10.300said a girl and the reason the father said that when I questioned the fathers on that and confronted
00:49:15.820of them, they said, because a girl will have an easier option, more options in the world at this
00:49:22.320time. They'll be more supported. They'll be more loved. I don't want to, I'm afraid to bring a boy
00:49:27.980into the society at this time. And so this is statistically what both females, mothers and
00:49:35.080fathers, future mothers and future fathers would both today prefer to have a girl because they
00:49:42.420feel the girl will have more options, more support emotionally, more support economically
00:49:50.280in this society at this time and for the future of their life.
00:51:40.760And so the good news about children being raised by both parents, especially if they're really involved with them and they're balanced people themselves, is that the boy will make it through this enormous maze of challenges and probably be all the stronger for it.
00:52:00.460But the males, particularly those without dads, really have a huge amount of challenges before them.
00:52:16.320And so let me spend a moment talking to the single mother that's listening here.
00:52:20.820So, you know, you may become depressed if I'm talking about the importance of both parents being involved.
00:52:25.660And so the first thing to do if you are a single mom is to make sure that you look at the parts of the boy crisis that focus on what are the differences between dad-style parenting and mom-style parenting and what's the value of each of those differences.
00:52:43.500And so when you value what dads can contribute and you let the dad know why you value him and why you need him in the child's life, remember, almost all throughout history, when men were told they were needed, like Uncle Sam needs you, the government needs you to fight this war,
00:53:06.560men are willing to die if they feel they'll be needed and be of value contributing. So if you
00:53:14.700understand what men, dads contribute, and you communicate that effectively to the dad,
00:53:20.600the chances of having him involved are great. However, if for whatever reason, the dad cannot
00:53:27.300be involved, make sure you get your children involved in what I call in the Boy Crisis book,
00:53:34.020the liberal arts of sports. Pick up team sports, team sports, sports like gymnastics or tennis,
00:53:41.020which are largely based on the development of your own skills. Discover why all those are
00:53:47.700necessary. Get your son involved in the equivalent of scouting. Find in each of the sports good
00:53:55.360male coaches who are willing to support him emotionally, but also prod him on and expect
00:54:02.340more of him, get mentors for him, and have him read in the Boy Crisis book why being a mentor
00:54:12.120is even more important for your son than being mentored. Both are important, but a boy who
00:54:19.420has somebody to mentor begins to take on psychologically responsibilities that make
00:54:26.100him feel like he's needed if he succeeds as a role model to the boy he's mentoring.
00:54:31.900So look at, there's many, many things you can do
00:54:34.260if you have the equivalent of Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts
00:54:36.580in your country, get them involved in that.
00:54:40.060If you have a faith that you care about,
00:54:42.680get them involved in a faith-based organization,