Kind: captions
Language: en
if you want to put a human being in Hell
Rob them of meaning and purpose and
don't let them kill themselves the
political class as a whole has
fundamentally failed to recognize the
real problems of poys and Men there's
lots of discussion of AI girlfriends not
much discussion of AI boyfriends which I
think is pretty good evidence that there
are differences between men and women
the MTV show 16 and Pregnant had a huge
impact on pregnancy rates much more than
any any recognizable government
policy I want to start with just a a
simple question men are struggling right
now what has the US done to set men up
for failure right with the US is uh
actually by paying not enough attention
to what's happening to workingclass men
especially in terms of their employment
by neglecting ISS Rising issues of of
men's health um basically turning a
blind and eye to the way men have fallen
behind in higher education so I guess
what I would say is the way you frame
the question is more like a sin of
commission right is more a kind of
deliberate thing and I think it's much
more an accumulated set of sins of
omission I think it's the neglect and
the failure to address what were obvious
and growing and real problems facing
boys and men that has allowed them to
deepen and fester in many cases now it's
still a sin the sin of omission is is a
sin as well as a sin of commission but
it's important to the the way I think
about this not to immediately start with
a sort of finger pointing right or or or
to assume that it was somehow kind of
deliberate I think it was more you know
so I think it's more an act of neglect
than or of kind of malice if I can put
it that way interesting so this is
something that drives my team here at
impact Theory crazy but I'm a big
believer that you point fingers you need
to point fingers not with malice but so
that you can understand uh before we get
to the the people what kind of sin this
is I would love to get into the weeds of
uh so you gave us some highle stuff of
of the omissions but what are the
problems help set the table for where
men are
today the boys and men have have to
fallen way behind in education every
stage from prek to postgrad you see big
gender gaps and that in every single
case is with boys and men behind so in
the average school district in the US
now the boys are almost a grade level
behind in English and literacy uh if you
take the top 10% of high school students
measured by GPA twoth thirds of girls
onethird of boys among the 10% of high
school students who do the worst twoth
thirds of boys a third of girls that
plays out in College college campuses
are 640 female male now uh and in fact
there's a bigger gender gap on college
campuses today than the was in the early
'70s in 1972 when we passed Title 9 to
help women into college since then the
gaps closed and then reopened and so
that the specific data point is that
women are about 16 percentage points
more likely now to get a college degree
than men whereas in the 70s it was 133%
per more likely that men would get a
college degree than women so we've
reversed the old gender gap and and then
widened it and so what we see is a
growing Gap in the share of men and
women who have gone to college graduate
so educationally we just see huge drop
and and it's not just in relative terms
since 2010 college enrollments dropped
by about 1.2 million and that's for all
kinds of reasons good and bad uh but of
that drop a million is meant so of the
1.2 million drop million of its men whoa
It's much wider HBCU so actually this is
some work we haven't published yet but
there are actually fewer black men going
to HBCU colleges historically black
colleges today than they were in 1976
whoa and there are there are as many
non-black students going to historically
black colleges non-black students than
there are as many as there are black men
uh and so when you to look at it by race
it gets kind of worse and then just kind
of briefly on a couple of other areas
one is that employment we've just seen
male wages stagnating in the middle of
the distribution and at the bottom a
little bit better in recent years
actually we've seen some good wage
growth at the bottom of the distribution
just in the last few years but over the
last few
decades seriously stagnating wages for
men and then in Family Life we've just
seen an absolute transformation in
family life I'm sure we'll get to this
but for most um for most people who
don't have a four-year college degree uh
the norm is now for children to be born
outside marriage Jesus so that's just
and that's a transformation right so we
only have to go back you know two or
three decades um when that wasn't the
case but it's now more usual for a kid
to be born out outside marriage than
inside marriage unless they have a mom
with a four-year college degree now
among those with four-year college
degrees it's only 10% of kids born
outside marriage but it's the majority
of those outside much higher for black
kids of course when you think about race
and so across these different dimensions
what you're seeing and we can get into
some of the things that maybe lie Behind
these These are the data points that I
sometimes see as like the it's the it's
the eruption of the volcano or it's the
Tremor of the ground but there's
something happening beneath that there
are some tectonic plates shifting which
I think are more cult and I'm pretty
sure we're going to get into that but
but the data points that kind of Pop to
the surface of just cratering uh
educational achievement certainly
relative to women really really low
wages I should have added declining
employment as well so lower labor market
participation men less likely to work
than their fathers and then just this
dramatic shift in family life which has
left a lot of men uncertain about what
their role is in the family in 20124
yeah that that I think is going to be a
big part of this story um so when you
think about the first Domino because I
think you're right there's culture
there's policy uh if I think from a
policy perspective do you think that
title 9 with obviously wonderful
intentions was the lead Domino that
began the rise of women and the
unintended consequences became the
downfall of men or is it something
else so I think what Title 9 has done
has mostly been good in terms of just
trying to raise the educational
aspirations expectations and
opportunities for girls and women I
think that's it's important to kind of
recognize that that was that was part of
the mission of the women's movement and
the same the same with the rise of
women's economic
independence the way I think about this
is that not enough attention was paid to
a well what if the line keeps going what
happens if the gender gap flips and will
we update our view of the world quickly
enough when that's when that happens and
in education I think what's happened is
that the view about about what gender
equality looks like on college campuses
now has not updated with the data now
it's interesting that actually Title 9
itself doesn't specify women and so
you're now seeing more and more sex
discrimination claims under Title 9
being brought on behalf of men in
college campuses and with some success
so Title Nine is actually now becoming a
bit of a double-edged sword if you're a
women's rights campaigner and but I'd
see the kind of deeper Point here is
that there has been a failure to
recognize that as we've seen kind of
women rise in education and we've seen a
massive decline in the share of male
teachers and Men falling behind we need
to change our approach we need to start
worrying more about the men we need to
start thinking about men as the ones who
need more help and unfortunately for a
generation who are kind of raised in the
world where all the attention needed to
go to women and girls it's incredibly
hard to update your priors I think this
is a big theme that might underpin a lot
of what we're going to talk about Tom
which is that just
it's very hard to update your view of
the world when the data changes
especially if it changes quickly and I
just think there's a lot of people who
are who are stuck in their view about
what gender equality looks like and
they're stuck in the 80s or the 70s or
90s or whatever and they just haven't
updated it for what the real world looks
like in 2024 and that applies to title
N9 yeah that's a a note I've taken here
in Mark twice now is we're getting the
data points but we're not we're either
not responding or the narrative that
we're talking about with the data points
to your point isn't updating in a way
that makes any sense um so getting to
the underlying drivers my base
assumptions are that when you try to top
down manipulate a system through
incentives you will get second and third
order consequences that are very
surprising and often
horrific uh and we are now engaging in
Social Engineering in the same way that
we've engaged in financial engineering
and I think I I can give you a very
compelling argument on the financial
side that we have a moral obligation not
to manipulate the the currency and to at
a minimum have a non-inflatable currency
I think there's a a moral argument to be
made there um what is your argument on
cultural manipulation should we be
trying to say hey we need more women in
education in stem in firefighting in
fighter jet Pilots we need more men in
heel which you'll know the acronym
better than I but education uh nursing
things like that where traditionally you
won't find men do we actually need to
intervene or should we leave it
alone well that's a great question that
we could SP we could spend a lot of time
on and and the way I think about this is
Ideal World we shouldn't need to
intervene we should be confident that
the patterns that we see emerging are
the result of people having pretty
unconstrained choices and that they're
revealing their preferences in a way
that is consistent with their own ideals
and their own values and their own
skills so the question then so I think
the the default should be
non-intervention so I think we'll
probably share that default the question
then is okay where are there
circumstances where you would want to
intervene socially engineered to use
that term and I think that that the bar
for that should be when you've got
pretty strong evidence that there are
some artificial barriers here uh to
people right
so you would worry if you see for
example only 5% of Engineers are women
right you'd worry about that you might
not necessarily conclude that's a
problem but you might conclude it is a
problem you might say it matters that
engineering has more
diversity or you might not or you might
say well how on we suspect that we're
leaving some Talent on the table here we
ECT there are actually more women who'
be good Engineers than is being
represented by that 5% so let's go find
out and I'm very struck by a couple of
pieces of evidence here one is that in
this is the so-called stem Paradox which
uh you may have heard of David gir and
others done this work where you actually
find that in countries that have done
the most in terms of gender equality the
Scandinavian countries you start to see
a slight decline in the share of women
going into
stem and it's a paradox because it say
well hold on you'd expect actually that
as you become more and more gender equal
that the share of women going to stand
would just increase but it looks like it
just kind of levels off and even drops a
bit and their interpretation of it is
that that probably just means that
you're now reflecting actual levels of
Interest right you've reached a point
where you can feel confident that
actually if women in Sweden are choosing
not to go into engineering it's not
because they're being discriminated
against or being discouraged from
becoming Engineers it's because they
don't want to be
Engineers um and so that's a point at
which you can kind of chill a little a
little bit perhaps and not say
everything has to be 50/50 and so I
think it's partly an empirical question
which is like you look at a pattern and
you and you look at the evidence for it
and you say a does that pattern look
like it might just be emerging as a
result of natural choices and B um do we
care and the other piece of evidence is
some work by some psychologist James
rounds and the lead author is wrong Sue
where they actually looked at
personality differences between men and
women and interests especially on the
people versus things Dimension which
people talk a lot about on average men
are a bit more into things women are a
bit more into people that's true but of
course it's an average and the
distributions overlap so they said look
imagine a world where that was driving
your choice to either be an engineer or
a nurse what percentage of Engineers
would be women and what percentage of
nurses would be men and it was about 30%
25 25 to% to 30% so if you assume that
that personality distribution is
accurately capturing the preferences of
men and women for people and things and
that nursing and Engineering are
accurate proxies for people and things
then actually you should start to chill
about 25% 30% men in nursing and 25% 30%
women in engineering but you shouldn't
chill at 5% and you shouldn't insist on
50% and of course that's a very nuanced
position to take where most people would
say it's either 50% or there's something
wrong or yeah 5% is fine you know
women's Brains don't work that way which
is what I think the men's rights people
make the mistake of of doing so on the
one hand you get people who o overstate
the role of biology and natural
differences between men and women in
explaining these differences and others
who understate it so to Circle all the
way back I actually think that the case
for intervention has to meet a couple of
criteria and this is helpful I'm
thinking out loud here but is that one
you should feel like there's something
there that suggests there some artific
artificiality something getting in the
way of personal preferences right and
then secondly it's an area that we care
about so we might care about nursing we
might care about engineering but we
might not care about deep sea fishing
right which is almost all men and we
might decide as a society the fact that
deep sea fishing like off Alaska these
kind of long trips or my other favorite
example is smoke jumping do you know
what smoke jumpers are I do
y they're people who there people who
jump out of perfectly serviceable
airplanes into a raging Inferno to give
people an idea David gogin is a smoke
jumper so that's the kind of oh yeah
yeah yeah yeah you want to talk about
somebody fin absolutely does not need to
do that and yet does it it tells you a
lot about the type of person that's
drawn to
that yeah and it just turn and it's
basically almost all men uh there's a
few women and it turns out that if you
have an occupation that that asks you to
you know jump out of an airplane into a
Inferno you just select on certain
characteristics which are almost
entirely male now let's it's hard to get
good numbers on it but let's say 2% of
smoke jumpers of women right so you can
be a smoke jumper if you're a woman
there's nothing stopping you and you
know they get encouraged if they do it
but as a society how much do we care
about the fact that most of our smoke
jumpers are men I would suggest we don't
care very much all we care about is that
they go and put the fire out and God
bless them and we should honor their
courage um but I don't think that is a
societally there isn't a social welfare
issue at State there in gender balance
but I think of things like politics in
stem you know Tech interested in your
views on Tech like I think it's it does
matter to have some representation um
for social reasons and so that's the
second test like do we care yeah do we
care so I will say that I think you put
your finger on the right thing which is
what we should care about is whether
there are barriers to entry but I think
and this is a problem I see in companies
this is a problem I see in government
you need to state in a very simple
sentence this is the barrier to entry
name it don't don't be vague don't say
there are barriers to entry this is the
barrier to entry it's Tech is an all
boys club uh women are more drawn to
people and not things cool list them out
and then it becomes a question of okay
well how do we remove those barrier
entries so now if people want to go in
they can what I have a problem with is I
think that incentives come from the
right place I'll just assume incentives
come from the right place I won't even
get into the nuttiness of people that
are drawn to politics I will just assume
that people have good intentions but the
second and third order consequences of
incentivizing something I think is where
you get derangements uh I don't want to
turn this into uh an episode about
financial stuff but you need only look
at the financial markets to understand
how massively you can derange them by
trying to meddle with them in the hopes
of stopping there being a big crash and
in the hopes of helping their only ever
being soft Landings and avoiding bad
things I get it but you completely the
the system that we have financially is
to steal from everyone to protect
wealthy people from Ever experiencing a
crash that's what's happened to the
financial system and I'm speaking as one
of the wealthy people and I'm just
telling you it's a terrible system so
now I think you will run into those same
second and third order consequences but
at a minimum you need to name the
barrier not insist on outcomes which is
how we're steering now and then read the
data so if we see data points that say
Hey this is working for women that's
super helpful but oh by the way this is
devastating to men it's like okay now we
have to figure out what we're going to
do in the face of that um what if you
had to put name to it what are and I'll
let you pick whatever you think is the
most obvious the least controversial but
what are the barriers to entry for women
that we were trying to overcome and what
policies actually overcame them
yeah so in the case of of women uh the
question is probably a little bit easier
than it will be maybe if we turn to men
um going the other way because for a
long periods of human history of course
women weren't allowed to do some of
these jobs so the barrier to entry into
certain professions was you weren't
permitted to do so right and so women
couldn't go to medical school for until
the second half of the 20th century
right so this is why the women's rights
movement kind of makes sense as a phrase
and the men's Rights Movement doesn't
right because women did actually lack
rights they couldn't you know get a
credit card without their husband's
permission until
1974 still B um and you see like and
it's really interesting I talked to a
friend recently and like her mom was the
kind of first chemistry professor at at
a kind of college right and she my
friend is a dean of a school at a
university and no one thinks twice about
the fact that 50% of professors of women
now increasing like getting towards 50%
and presidents of colleges no one thinks
anything of that but a generation ago it
was hard for women and they actually
faced Leal so in some case there were
literally rules laws laws and or
institutional laws preventing the second
barrier was that because those
professions yeah that's take any any you
want but science Etc because they were
so male and had been so male they had a
male culture now what does that mean
know very hard to measure but
is some pretty clear evidence that until
you get to about 30% representation and
both ways by the way an occupation will
tend to have a culture that is a bit
more male and a bit more female in in
communication style in the level of
competitiveness Etc um and so like being
the one woman in a engineering class of
100 that was hard right just as it's
hard to be the one man in a education
school now so I think there was second
barrier was just that that there were
these culture and there was some stigma
and resistance um I actually think those
have both been largely addressed so then
the third question is are there barriers
for women say in Tech or in some
consulting or law Etc which I would say
now they're less about them as women and
more about the fact that women have very
different patterns of caring and working
especially in their
30s um and there I think it's less about
fact they're women but they
disproportionately affected as women
because they still do most of the early
years child care and so that is
preventing a lot of women rising up
career Ladders because those career
ladders were designed for people who
didn't have caring responsibilities and
again that's no one's fault it's not
some plot it's not a plot to exclude
women at this point and it's not active
discrimination right the evidence that
women are discriminated against in any
of those spaces is is now zero right so
we're not talking about a discrimination
problem anymore we're not talking about
a rule problem now we're talk about
either a cultural problem or the
inadvertent consequence of career
ladders that are just designed for
people who who don't have kids basically
um or who don't have to worry about
their kids and so that's now the new
Battleground I think but as I say I'm
very struck by the fact that's true of
Single Sex parents as well right so
that's not about women anymore that's
just about having caring
responsibilities getting in the way of
your career uplift and that's a diff
that's a kind of different question so
that would be my sort of three-fold
attempt to to is this kind of History
really of the barriers that kind of
women have faced and a history of
progress that we've made over the last
50 years extraordinary progress on
getting women into those professions
like half the doctors half the lawyers
half the scientists are now women that's
an incredible achievement in a very
short short period of time okay so it's
interesting a lot of this comes down to
what are the goals you're trying to
achieve when I hear you talk and as
somebody who uh is married to a very
successful female entrepreneur who does
not have kids we certainly don't have a
traditional family structure yet when I
step back and I look at everything
that's happening um at a societal level
birth rates dropping which um not to
over dramatize but literally the human
civilization cannot move forward if we
don't continue having kids and if you
look back over different Empires that
have crumbled it's almost always tied to
a radical decrease in population either
because of birth rate uh famine um
pandemic whatever the case may be but
when you have a precipitous drop in
birth rate you are really in trouble uh
and when I look at what's happening
right now this is a tale of second and
third order consequences so we give um
rightly so we pursue women being able to
control their own reproduction I love
that the most is somebody who leveraged
birth control very effectively to create
the life that I want uh I'm not mad
about it but at the same time um you now
have this breakdown in what is the male
role and I think that that's the thing
that lurks behind the scenes in terms of
what's going wrong for men you remove
these barriers for Women Amazing they're
able to control their reproduction
amazing they go into the workforce to
your point about getting um access to
all that Talent not wanting to leave
anything on the sidelines amazing um
however it's broken the the way that the
um the way that religion and the family
transmitted a set of values that said
this is everybody's role this is what
you do and this is how you please God uh
and I'm not religious but I see the
value in the transmission of that Meme
and so everybody understands what their
role is there are some frustrations
obviously um but as that narrative
breaks down because when it to a woman
it's like there's nothing you can do God
has touched you with this blessing of
being able to create a child to have
children is to honor God and what what a
magical role that you play man you are
here to protect your family to provide
for your family and that is how you
honor God okay cool like everybody knows
what they're supposed to do now all of a
sudden you make progress and religion
starts to diminish uh in certainly
Western culture in terms of people
following those precepts in order to
live the good life so people are not as
many people are living in accordance
with the teachings of the religions you
begin to have a breakdown of what is my
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all of our good
times and so I will put the question to
you this way given the second and third
order consequences of that breakdown is
it actually progress to try to eliminate
all these barriers to entry and make
sure that uh women and men have maximum
flexibility is that act
advantageous well just a data point that
struck me recently is that actually men
are now more likely than women to say
that getting married and having kids is
important to them y I am not surprised
that that's a reversal and and it yeah
it speaks I think to this sense of like
self and hopelessness and I want to do
two things in response one is just to
know how you frame this which is you you
talked about the the rise of women in
two important ways one in terms of
control of fertility and the second in
terms of kind of control of economic
Destiny because of the rise of economic
power for women and you said amazing
amazing amazing and then you said
however what does that mean about the
change in roles what does it mean for
the roles of men Etc and the amazing
however move that you just made there is
what's been lacking and that there's a
real resistance to the idea that you can
have changes in society that on net
amazing but that still have second or
third order consequences which can be
challenging difficult and that it's it's
the ultimate cultural
naivity to think that massive social and
economic changes don't come they you
don't break some glass along the way
right and you have to deal with the
negative
consequences of even overall positive
social changes there's a kind of
blindness to that which is a real
problem and in this case I think I think
you're right that what's happened is
that the the sense of what the roles
were that they that's just been
absolutely transformed incredibly
quickly The more I've thought about this
the deeper I think this transformation
really goes since the 60s and the 70s so
since since the changes in in ability to
control fertility you've mentioned and
the economic rise of women so just to
put a point like 40% of women today in
the US earn more than the average man so
that's not 50% it's not full equality
but that compares to 133% of women in
1979 and so just since
1979 you know the the the chances of a
woman being earning more than the
average man has quadr almost quadrupled
it's tripled right and it's gone from
being quite unusual to being pretty
normal and the result of that has been I
think to just completely upend the
traditional scripts the scripts that
were provided sure by religion but I
think more importantly in this case by
kind of family role so my
dad like he knew his role he was all
kinds of things but he knew his basic
core role was economic provider that was
his core role and my mom knew her core
role which was to raise the kids and be
the main person on the domestic front
she also worked they had an incredibly
equal
relationship but it was an equal
relationship based on almost
unquestioned roles right they as you
said they knew their all I think what's
happened is that we've expanded the
script for women we've said let's ter
this old script of wife and mother and
replace it with a new script of you can
be whatever you want to be right the sky
the limit massive empowerment a hugely
positive message of empowerment you go
girl you know Etc and that has just I
think been wonderful to watch and so
what we've said to girls and women
effectively is like you're not trapped
by the old script that your mom's or
Grandmom's had you can be
anything we've replaced the old female
script with a new script about
empowerment and indep attendance we've
replaced we've torn up the old male
script protector provider bread winner
and we've replaced it with absolutely
nothing there is no new script there is
no new role and and and and we've just I
think we're in this really difficult
transition phase now and what I would
say is that there's a real difficult
balance now because a lot of people are
hearkening back to the era when we knew
our role we knew our place when things
were clearer you know when we had
institutions telling us what to do and
the hankering for that is real and in
many cases Noble but it is ill I think
it's ill- fated turning the clock back
is not generally very successful so I
think on the by contrast we should be
going forward we need to keep going and
we need to adjust our views about the
role of men in accordance with the rise
of women rather than thinking that for
men to rise we need to kind of somehow
turn back the clock on women that is in
my view not effective but also immoral
so we are where we are and right now
we're in a really difficult moment right
the average 27y old guy has much less of
a clue about what he's supposed to be
doing he has a pretty good clue about
what he's not supposed to do
interestingly now we have a long we do
have a long list of don'ts for young men
but he has a very little sense about
what as a
man he's supposed to do and that's
created a huge vacuum in our culture and
it's been filled in some unfortunate
ways in many many quarters because there
a M there's a massive cultural question
hanging over the role of men which we're
not responsibly answering okay so this
idea moving forward I think is really
important um I'd love to get clarity
from you about what a positive vision of
masculinity looks like um one thing at a
high level I want to see and as an
entrepreneur this is how I engage with
this debate uh which I want to see men
and women compete all out on a fair
playing field and
right now there's a sense of like men
should not be pushing as hard don't
follow those Natural Instincts for
competition or for really responding to
gamification uh which I think is a big
part of why more men play video games
man I just I hyper respond to
gamification in a way that my wife just
does not and I have a feeling that that
is uh that will carry out across the
broad population um one how do you feel
about just like all right boys and girls
go at it in a fair fight but go at it
full bore every individual regardless of
male or female you should be trying to
win your ideal job um and if that isn't
part of the path forward of defining um
masculinity in a positive sense what
is yeah so the way I think about it h is
well there's so many things I could say
here the first thing is to not end up
sort of shrinking ourselves I think
there been this dangerous Trend in some
quarters to say that somehow for women
to rise and to expand men need to fall
or to contract that men need to become
less in order for women to become more
less you know sure of themselves less
assertive less
competitive um no less physical that
whatever just to be just don't be less
of you right I think that's one of the
problems of some of the tropes we see
around kind of toxic m masculinity and
mansplaining and so on which is not to
say there isn't some substance there but
that the the message that too many kind
of men are getting is could you just be
less you could you be less male and
instead I think what we need to be doing
is kind of creating a situation where
like we're in shared environments and if
there is ways in which on average kind
of men act in a particular way um as
opposed to girls or women that's okay
it's just as okay and one example from
that you just alluded to is the
men and boys are on average a bit more
competitive right and they respond this
is why the gamification thing is
important they respond a little bit
better to
competition um and they're more seeking
that kind of competition well and girls
and women a little bit less so right the
evidence that is really clear men are Al
men and boys are also quite a bit more
risk-taking on average than women and
girls is one good or is one bad no is
the answer but what we don't want is to
lose some of that magic right some of
that magical Difference by somehow
saying there's something wrong with
attribute a or b risk-taking or
competition because it's associated with
men what we need to do is to say those
are not the only attributes that matter
and those shouldn't run the whole
economy so I'll give you two examples
one one is uh from business which is uh
we may have talked about this before but
there's some evidence that companies
that are run by women uh with CEO CEO
and coo uh CFO uh female they're a
little bit less profitable but they're
also less likely to go under those that
are run by men are on average a bit more
profitable but they're also a bit more
likely to go under so know there's a
little bit riskier right now so you
could conclude from that you could say
oh we shouldn't have women in leadership
because their companies are just boring
right we don't get the kind same
entrepreneurship we don't get the risk
taking um you know sure it'll be fine
but the profits will never be that great
so you could say like you shouldn't have
women in the boardroom but that reason
or you could say look these guys are
just recklessly acting out and doing
Boyhood fantasies and they're crashing
all our companies yes sure they're more
profitable when they work but look the
heck how many companies or or you could
say maybe we need a bit of both maybe
that's a reason why you need a mix in a
boardroom right and here again
I'm I need to say that the distributions
overlap example I was in a school
recently and this female cor Coral
teacher said she needed the boys as a
middle school she needed the boys to
sing soprano and none of the boys wanted
to do that they're very self-conscious
they're going through puberty and they
didn't want do that and didn't want and
the girls were around as well and so
anyway so she did two things she kicked
the girls out and just said okay I'm
just going to work with the boys and
then what she said was we're going to
have a competition to see who can sing
the highest and I'm going to give a
prize to the boy that can sing the
highest immediately they're all doing it
so I love that story because what's that
saying if here's a teacher that's
recognizing sometimes there's a space
for single sex but also okay so boys are
more competitive let's use that instinct
for more competitive for a positive end
rather than saying it's bad to be
competitive let's say okay boys are more
competitive how do we channel that to
good social ends um and that was a long
kind of slightly rambling answer but
there's something there about just not
apologizing for those differences and
finding ways to channel that energy in
those differences in ways that kind of
benefit all of us rather than
pathologizing either so a patriarchy
might be a society where more typically
feminine traits are seen as lesser
than and matriarchy would be where it
was the other way around and we don't
want either of those things we we really
don't want a patriarchy or a matriarchy
we want a society that genuinely honors
the differences and I talked about risk
and courage you talk we talked about
smoke jumpers awesome that that we have
people that are willing to do that and
the fact that they're almost all men
amazing and we shouldn't have any
apology about saying that yeah totally
agree so when you were talking about the
business corporations run by women are
going to be less profitable but more
stable and and the flip for ones run by
men uh and then you said what we want is
a little bit of both or maybe what we
want I think is what you said we want a
little bit of both how do we decide
because as somebody who builds companies
invests in companies um I would say I
literally do not care if the person
running the company is male or female I
care very much about the metrics that we
agreed that we are going to hit and who
is more capable of hitting those metrics
so um I I don't care if every single
Fortune 500 company is run by a man I
don't care if every Fortune 500 company
is run by a woman what I care about is
whether those people were allowed to
compete in a relatively unbridled
fashion I I'm not a no government guy uh
so I do believe in in sensible
regulation um so with within sensible
regulation I would want them to really
be able to go in and compete um would
you be uncomfortable in a world where
the men and women were allowed to
compete sensibly with an even starting
point of Education I'm talking when
they're five years old uh but that all
Fortune 500 companies in the end are run
by men would that bother
you it would bother me for the reasons
that we talked about earlier which is
let's assume that there's a certain set
of attributes that make you more likely
to be a good CEO of Fortune 500 company
right and let's assume let's assume that
the market is selecting reasonably
rationally on that right and so that the
people who are getting to be CEOs are
being selected against a certain set of
characteristics if if every single one
of those CEOs is male then I think you'd
have very good reason to worry that the
the number of women who also have those
characteristics is not being reflected
in those numbers that something is
happening to
artificially hinder the progress of
women up the corporate hierarchy such
that we are missing some potential
leadership Talent all right but if you
looked at everything and you did not see
any barriers to entry uh would it bother
you
um if you didn't see any barriers to
entry well this is where I think things
get a little bit difficult around
representation I'm thinking about
politics as well right maybe you could
apply this to politics but I don't want
to seem like I'm kind of moving away
from the question um I'm just thinking
of other areas where does representation
matter in and of itself in certain
roles because the absence of women in
CEO positions whether we like it or not
sends a cultural signal to other women
and to girls that that's not a job for
you but where do you think we should
solve that problem so here would be my
pitch
uh that is that is true I think
representation actually matters but I
don't think it matters enough to engage
in Social Engineering except at the
family level at the family level I want
to see parents tell their kids hey just
because you don't see somebody that
looks like you in this thing I assure
you this is about can you get so good at
something that people can't stop you
from doing it and look at Mom and Dad
like we do these things that are very
unexpected and we did that because we
got so good that people couldn't stop us
from doing it now if that message were
propagated with
ferocity and then people were educated
in a way that didn't make me want to
headbutt uh the head of the educational
system then I I would be here for it but
the thing I worry about is people are so
concerned about their being
representation that they end up doing
the social engineering that has all
these crazy distorting KnockOn effects
that end up ultimately being
worse okay yeah I think that's right and
I think that's why in the end um end up
being against as a general proposition
quoters whether they're kind of hard or
soft quoters obviously that can work in
different ways in say a business setting
now of course in Europe and many
countries there are you quotas soft or
hard that are set and in some
Scandinavian countries by law a certain
percentage of the directors of publicly
traded companies have to be women now um
and so you do get these kind of that's a
hard quer system but you also get soft
coder systems where it's kind of
implicit that you're trying to get to
certain number so I that's not the
solution because it doesn't actually
address the problem IT addresses the
symptoms of the problem
artificially um by by actually it
actually skips over the problem so
rather than asking ourselves the
question if we think that the
representation of a certain group and it
could be people of color it could be
whatever uh in a certain if we think
it's suspiciously low right it's low
enough to make us think that doesn't
look like it could have happened unless
there
going on here like if all of the members
if all board members of Fortune 500
companies are white men I wish they were
not that long ago that's reason to be
suspicious about the fact that there are
things getting in the way of uh black
Hispanic women uh and men getting into
those no could that be the education
system all the way back maybe could it
be what happens in the labor market
maybe could it be middle management
maybe could it be discrimination in
hiring whether adverse maybe let's go
find out and let's try and do everything
we can to kind of remove those
artificial barriers but you wouldn't
solve that by saying okay we're just
going to have x% of that group in there
because actually in the end that doesn't
solve what might be leading to that
outcome and I think it's just so it's
impr practical but in politics I feel
different because in a representative
democracy the people who are making the
decisions about the laws under which we
live I think there's a strong moral case
that there should be decent levels of
representation in a representative
democracy and so there I think there's a
case for some pretty strong social
engineering in order to try and get to
that and get to it quicker than might
happen naturally but I don't think that
that argument that I would make in
politics and in representative
democracies applies to say boardrooms or
or other places where I think the
argument would go the other way okay so
how do you social engineer then when are
you going to go to a district and say
you guys have to elect a
woman that's what the labor party did in
the UK where I'm I'm from it's be very
interesting to see what happens now this
is actually this is a really good test
case actually of the theory so let's put
it on the table so when Margaret
Thatcher became a uh prime minister only
5% of members of parliament were
women so that tells you something about
Margaret Thatcher no kidding uh at the
time right I mean this is extraordinary
for all kinds of reasons but just to
come from like one in 20 of even MPS
were women and she managed to become not
only leader of the conservative party
but prime minister for most of my
childhood um now it's about a third of
MPS are women and the majority of all
the other parties except the
conservatives uh are now women so
actually this is above 50% women in in
all the other parties but the labor
party still has a policy of women only
short lists and so in certain
constituencies or districts to use the
US language they actually they actually
say that District can only have a woman
and so it's exactly what you just said
which is that like you have to so the
primary in The District in the US would
would could only be women and so it's
very interesting now now that the labor
party is actually slightly more female
than mail what do they do about that
policy and that's something that's being
kind of discussed right now and I think
you can let get rid of the policy my
view is well mission accomplished right
um but once the policy's in place it's
really difficult to get rid of and so I
would I was in favor of all women short
lists at the time to just try and move
the needle a bit on women's
representation in Parliament but job
done and pretty pretty quickly in terms
of labor party so like great now we can
get rid of them but they haven't gotten
rid of them yet and so that's a good
test of whether or not you were serious
about this just as a means to an end
rather than an end in itself wow uh I am
I am shocked that you were for a where
you are quite literally distorting the
Democratic process now this may be your
British upbringing uh but to an American
ear that hits gnarly that people I
already have a problem with the way that
the two-party system works and the way
that like we effectively just witnessed
uh the Democratic party give no option
like hey it's going to be kamla Harrison
that's that I hope you enjoy um that's
really bad if people are like you can
vote for anyone as long as it's a woman
it's like the um the Henry Ford quote
you can have any color you want for your
car as long as it's black it's like whoa
that in politics man that's that's
pretty crazy so make me a Believer how
is it possibly a good idea to tell the
voting public you guys are too stupid to
elect the right person and so we're
going to artificially narrow the choice
to one gender
yeah so of course what they could do is
in in these seats where there was a
woman only short list and so the labor
candidate was going to be a woman in
those constituencies so you could of
course vote for the Conservative
candidate or the Lial Democrat candidate
who might be male but you're right that
what's happening there is that the party
is deciding that it cares sufficiently
about representation that it's going to
change its own internal processes it's
going to socially engineer its candidate
selection process to significantly
increase the share of women because what
they were finding is that that the
constituency parties the districts who
who made the decision so it's not like a
primary system it was it was made by
kind of a pretty small group of kind of
local party members but they were kind
of they weren't choosing that many women
and so there was some top- down social
engineering now of course that's been
true in lots of countries actually why
why is
Mexico uh 50/50 female male in its
Parliament now because of quotas and so
it's something that's not very
controversial in other countries the
reason I was in favor of it was because
yeah yeah wow okay um it's very common
um and it's actually one of if you look
at kind of if you look at the countries
that are just like Rwanda Mexico um that
have just made massive just like
overnight almost changes in the share of
women in politics they've almost always
had some sort of quota system put in
place um as an accelerant uh to get
there and it clearly works as an
accelerant now are there downsides we
can obviously discuss that but the
reason I was I was in favor of it until
now now now I think the mission
accomplished and so it can go now is
because it just felt a bit stuck it felt
like the political system was stuck and
that the lack of representation of women
in politics specifically just in
politics in a representative democracy
was a problem in and of itself it wasn't
just a it wasn't just a symptom of a
broader of another problem which is what
we've been talking about up to the point
it was a problem in itself but how do we
have a representation problem when
Margaret Thatcher was prime minister it
it's the same way that it feels to me
when we say that racism is as bad in
America as it's ever been oh except for
the fact that we just had a two-term
black president it's like I cannot
reconcile that those two things are true
I can say hey it's still a problem and
we need to keep going yeah word but I
cannot say that it's just as bad as it's
ever been so anybody African-American
would look at that in America and be
like oh my God this is amazing uh
representation in the extreme anybody
that's a woman in the UK looking at
Margaret Thatcher being in office not
briefly being in office for a long ass
time at the like one of the most pivotal
moments in the history of most people
that are alive today right so obviously
post World War II
but this was not a flash in the pan this
was not just sort of a forgotten time in
history I mean the Faulkland War like
this is this is somebody that was like
in the thick of it so any young girl
growing up is like I can be that
obviously so why in a postm Margaret
Thatcher world would we
need quotas quotas to up that
number yeah and to be clear again it's
quotas at the party level it's because
despite Margaret Thatcher and her rise
the share of women in politics remained
very low and was growing pretty slowly
and so one party the labor party the
most Progressive Party decided to take
it upon itself to accelerate share of
women into it through social engineering
what do you think was the barrier to
entry because to me it seems like the
barrier is voters is there something
that I'm missing was there a barrier in
the party itself it yeah it seemed to be
in the selection process so it seemed to
be in kind of I'll try and use us
language like in the in the district
that was deciding who was going to be
their labor candidate that there was a a
distinct skew in favor of the male
candidates H now maybe it's because the
male candidates were better and they
were making kind of good choices right
that we can't get inside that kind of
the black box of the decisions that were
happening in every constituency across
the country um and it it was felt and I
agreed with it at the time that actually
something we needed a shortterm
accelerant to get the share of women in
politics to a point where we could feel
comfortable about the fact that politics
felt like it was a place that women
could go it also as a result of the
share of women in politics did start to
change the culture of British politics
and it started to change you know the
provision of things like child care in
the House of Commons um the ability to
kind of take time off I don't think that
David Cameron would have taken paternity
leave as prime minister in 2010 if the
culture of British politics hadn't
changed sufficiently maybe we can get
back to whether the you think that was a
good or a bad thing but let let me turn
the tables a little bit if you felt
confident that there were no legal
barriers to or formal barriers to women
entering politics in the in the US as
now and every single member of the House
of
Representatives and every single Senator
and every single cabinet minister was
male if we had an all male
Congress would that trouble you
the first question I would ask is what
is the outcome that I'm aiming at for me
it's human flourishing next I would ask
are we achieving human flourishing if
yes I have no problem whatsoever
literally none if no then I start asking
okay something has to change what is
going to be the thing that changes and
on my list of very early questions to
ask would be is this being a male
dominated field creating a problem are
we being blindsided to the way that
women think and could that be just
wildly advantageous to us moving towards
human flourishing but that's the primary
question that I'm asking is where am I
trying to end up what reason do I have
to believe that the following experiment
would actually yield that outcome and
then PS if we were to run this
experiment and go yes we're going to try
this and right now let's say we're at
12% women uh by the time we're 20% 25%
I'm going to check in and be like Are We
Now moving towards human flourishing
because if we're not if moving that wild
because that would be a true doubling if
moving that wildly in that direction is
not yielding an outcome I will just tell
you right now from a a entrepreneur up
against the market perspective you have
not identified the real solution so at
that point I would have said ah it has
not led us to where we want to go what I
fear we have is this is a luxury belief
people are complaining about a luxury
item we are in such an amazing time in
human history that people can actually
worry about the uh gender makeup of
their government instead of fighting
tooth and Claw just to exist which is
that's the tale of human history so yeah
I would be really thoughtful to map out
here's where I want to
go here is what I think is causing the
problem again if there is a problem uh
and then this is a hypothesis more women
will help us and I'm going to when I
bring women on this is a key that people
always lose sight of I'm going to run
this experiment and I expect this
outcome so once I have doubled the
number of women in Parliament I would
expect to see this Improvement do I see
that Improvement and if I don't you have
not identified the right problem but
people just get so myopically focused on
the outcome they actually want is 50%
representation or 70% representation or
secretly it's being driven by people
that want 100% representation and just
like any man that says women in politics
uh you know that's terrible and they can
never be a good leader they are a
there's nothing that I have seen at the
population level that tells me that that
would be true but it is equally true to
say that men are all toxic and we have
to get them out of politics both are
stupid yeah so there's two there's two
issues that stake here one is the uh
just a kind of moral Claim about who
should be making the laws that we all
have to live under and should should
that should it should we have a degree
of
representation about the people who
making the laws and what and the second
question is are we making better laws
for human flourishing there a more of a
kind of performance side of it too is is
this institution performing well against
this this outcome right which you've
said is human flourishing and I guess
you would feel the same about
juwes right so if it was if all our
juries were men if everybody's tried
under a jury and there it's 12 good men
right T SE old and we didn't have women
on juries as we have to now I'm pretty
sure we have to actually I'm saying this
and someone needs to fact check this but
like I don't know what the rules are but
I don't think we can have all male
juries or all female juries um and you
can imagine some trials but that would
really matter but you'd feel the same
about that if if all the if all the
members of juries in Trials were
male if you felt confident that Justice
was being done and that this justice
system was working and that people being
treated fairly men and women you know
whatever were being treated equally
fairly by these all male jewries then
you wouldn't have a problem with it not
in the slightest because before you get
to that let me say why I don't think
that I would have a beef why I would not
have a beef with that it is an
adversarial system that creates that
pool of jurors so you have both sides
saying I need this juror on and both
sides saying I absolutely cannot have a
given juror and so they're battling to
make sure that they have a pool that
they think is most likely to win for
their side if they both agree this is
all women this is all men this is all
Asian people this is all black people
whatever rad I don't care that that that
is the nature of the adversarial system
and that's what I'm talking about in
politics that's what I'm talking about
in business I want people to compete
against the marketplace so we pick a
metric for the nation whether it's um
happiness r whether it's GDP whatever
but we say here are the metrics that we
think matter and here are the probably
policies way before people here are the
policies that are getting us there and
here are the people that H happen to
represent those policies that we believe
in and by the way you the people via a
representative democracy I'm here for
that but that's how we're getting there
so yes what whatever
the constitution of humans whether it's
race or gender that move us towards the
metrics that we want human flourishing
by my vote then that is what it
is yeah so you're being you're being
entirely and consistently instrumental
about this and consequentialist about it
and applying that to all these
institutions whereas I'm I'm doing a
carve out for representative democracy
from that um and saying that I think
it's a it's a different a different
creature than some of these other
institutions we we've talked about
whereas I think you're applying the same
you're applying the same moral logic to
Politics As You Are to business as you I
have a feeling you are as well I don't
think you are uh and and let let me ask
a clarifying question um do you want
women in government for the sake of
representing the people's wishes or do
you want women in government simply
because you believe that it is a moral
good to have uh like literally pure
representation so if the women that made
it into Parliament voted exactly the
same as their male counterparts brought
exactly the same ideas as their male
counterparts uh would you be perfectly
fine with that or would you say okay
this actually didn't do the thing I
wanted which was to get a feminine
perspective yeah that's a great
clarifying question because I
presume in my argument for greater
gender representation some like politics
that that is bringing different
perspectives to the process of making
laws I'm presuming that and that that is
a good thing and the same in jurs and
that that is a good thing because it has
a good outcome or for some other reason
because it's a good outcome yeah it has
a good out you and I are saying the
exact same thing so we we are both
saying outc I have an outcome that I
desire and I think by doing this thing
we get that outcome the only difference
is I'm saying uh I think social
engineering is a bad way you're going to
guess poorly you're going to think it's
this but there are second and third or
Consequences that probably don't lead
you there and you're saying no no no
there are things that we can know and
getting both perspectives is inherently
more likely to lead us to the desired
outcome but we're both instrumental we
are both driving towards an
outcome yeah that's that's correct it's
that I I guess I don't feel very
confident that I could identify external
metrics of performance against which we
could kind of measure the success and so
I'm kind of betting quite heavily on the
fact that
that there will be improved
outcomes as a result of
diversity um such that I would I would
not be comfortable with an all male uh
Congress um even if we could somehow
invent some sort of external measure
that said okay well that Congress is
doing just as well as one with women in
it because I don't know how we would
ever know and so because I don't think
we would ever know I think we have to ER
on the side of in in representative
democracy to be clear uh on the side of
representation
because then at least we can we can
eliminate the risk that we're
underperforming if we think that
diversity is bringing more performance
to it but I will say one more thing and
this might Bridge us to some other issu
so some other areas that I worry about
which
is it's back to year we had the
conversation about kind of barriers to
entry into a kind of particular
profession and one of the ones I
identified was if you don't see you know
this is one of the feminist mantras is
you can't be it if you can't see it I
think there's some truth to that I think
that one of the barriers that there
might be to entering a certain kind of
profession or a certain activity might
be that you just don't see anybody like
you doing it it's one of the reasons I
worry for example about the kind of lack
of male teachers because at a certain
point if you ever never see men in
classroom then you grow up thinking
that's not something men do uh and I
worry a lot about that I worry that it
gets harder and harder to get people to
go into those professions if they just
don't see anyone like them so I do also
worry about these Tipping Point effects
and these can't be it if you can't see
it effects and so if you have a
profession that's all male or all female
it just gets really hard to persuade
people to go into that profession if
it's going against that grain and in
some professions I think that really
matters so we talked a lot about
politics where I think it matters but I
think it matters in something like
education or the Mental Health
Professions which are increasingly
becoming female does it matter if there
aren't any male teachers like how would
we feel about an all female teaching
profession I wouldn't feel great about
it and there's a number of reasons I
wouldn't but one of the reasons that's
relevant to this discussion that I
wouldn't feel great about it is because
it's going to get much harder to
persuade a boy that he could become a
teacher if that's really what his
vocation could be and what his skill set
would lead him to if he would be
literally the only male teacher in the
US right it's just going to get very
very hard to persuade him so there is a
bit of a v there is a bit of a vicious
and and a virtual cycle here which again
I don't think leads you to say you have
to have quotas or you have to have 50%
but I think it means you have to be
attentive to areas where there is a very
low representation of one gender and
worry a lot that there's something going
on there that is leading to such low
representation and try to do everything
you can to reduce those barriers so you
shouldn't fetishize 50% and you
shouldn't have quotas but you should
worry if it's
3% if it's an area you care about so
we've already talked about smoke jumpers
don't care broadly speaking
education politics
science medicine and I do care if it's
only 3% of one sex or the other and as I
say that's partly because it then just
becomes intergenerationally a vicious
cycle it took ages for me to persuade
one of my sons that men could be doctors
because he'd only seen female doctors
and then we saw a male doctor I can't
remember how old he was but like seven
or something and we went and on the way
home he said dad that I didn't know men
could be doctors wow could be Physicians
my how things have changed I said what
are you talking about because he'd only
ever seen and so of course of course he
drawn the rational conclusion if you
only see people of one sex doing doing a
thing you naturally assume that that's a
thing that that sex does and if you're
of the opposite sex you assume that's
not for me and that's a problem in
itself I think I don't know quite how to
think about that in terms of the numbers
or the shares um and as I say there is
about there does seem to be some
evidence for like a 30% Tipping Point
but I worry about that just in terms of
the messages we're sending to the next
generation and that's a social Norm
effect rather than a it's not a legal
barrier or a or a formal barrier but it
can be an informal barrier if you think
you're going to be a freak by choosing
to be the one female engineer or the one
male primary school teacher yeah okay so
uh I think that all of the problems of
letting people sort themselves out into
um what they want to do the the barriers
for women they go away when you remove
any and all laws that say that they
can't be financially independent so
we've already talked about that that's
an absolute must glad it happened it has
happened certainly here in the US uh and
then the next one is now that women have
control over their reproductive um
timing you do those two things and now
greedy capitalists are going to take
over because if somebody comes into my
company and they are smarter than the
next person they are more capable than
the next person and they happen to have
a uterus I'm here for it like I don't
care I just want the most intelligent
driven uh like person that's a great
teammate that elevates the other people
here makes them play at a higher level
like I just don't care so I feel like
people want to do the social engineering
rather than just letting the fact that
we've solved that problem already run
its course and the fact that we have in
places quotas that we have scholarships
incentives and things like that that are
meant to act as accelerants and quite
frankly they do but now you get this
huge pendulum Swift swing that is
inevitably going to go too far and then
you start doing damage which is how we
open this conversation men are
struggling and I would say after
researching you now multiple times uh
that what I see is all the things that
were meant to be accelerants for girls
worked
extraordinarily well but now the
narrative that we told was that men were
creating these barriers men are the
problem and now men are withdrawing they
are tapping out they are not engaging
and so all that talent that we were
worried about leaving on the sideline
we've just changed it's now not the
females that are being left on the
sideline it's the
men and the thing I would hope people
take away from my worldview that they
are welcome to reject but I would love
them to understand it is just that when
you Tinker with a system that is as
complicated as what jobs are filled by
what gender that oh dear lord there's no
way you're going to
avoid very problematic second and third
order consequences now what's my
solution my solution
is this is to a hammer every problem is
a nail I understand that but to me the
solution is storytelling you need to
tell stories of the little boy who never
sees a female or never sees a male
doctor and thinks that men can't be
doctors and then oh my gosh you have
story and that book makes its way into
households or they read it online or
they see the cartoon or whatever that
kind of telling a new story so that
people can see beyond the limitations
that they see now I think that's
incredibly potent and is probably one of
the greatest services that art can
perform for
society yeah I I strongly agree with
that and actually I've just been writing
a little bit about um um Pamela Harris's
pick for her VP her running
Tim wal he's getting a lot of attention
for having been a he's a former High
School teacher uh and a high school uh
football coach and my son is just
starting his career as a public school
teacher also social studies which is
what um Tim Waltz go and he texted me to
say Hey Dad I might end up being vice
president um and it was just a kind of
jokey text but it but it was very
interesting to see like okay you can be
a high school teacher you can be a
public school teacher so the
storytelling around to him I think is
going to be quite important and quite
interesting so here we agree is that
actually the stories you tell about what
kinds of people can be teachers nurses
um Tech Etc I think is important but I
guess a lot of this will come down to
what we
think what tinkering means right so one
of the things I'm very interested in is
the programs that are really encouraging
young men to consider teaching as a
career by having kind of Role Models go
into schools and talk to them um I'm
actually in favor of even some Financial
incentives to get more men to go into
teaching I that's where we'll disagree
just as there are some Financial
incentives to going to women into to
stem so it's not a it's not a quota it's
an incentive uh and it's deliberately
trying to incentivize an
underrepresented group in this case men
in teaching to go into teaching when
they wouldn't otherwise through a kind
of financial incentive sounds like we
might we might agree that it's not great
if there aren't any men in teaching and
it's down to 23% now was 33% when Tim
Walls became a teacher in the in the
Reagan Era and fall in I would be in
favor of some tinkering to use your term
if that means some Financial incentives
some messaging some
storytelling some soft power around
trying to make teaching a more uh
attractive profession to men also making
lateral moves into teaching more
attractive because a lot of men come in
later from other professions and so you
do that specifically try and get more
men in what would be your reaction to
that that's the kind of tinkering I'm in
favor of to try and address that gender
imbalance and it sounds like you'd
probably be against and you just want to
let the market keep doing its thing
around teaching which would probably
mean fewer and fewer men yeah uh so that
would very much be my instinct is okay
there's an outcome that I want because I
share your desire for it not to be only
women um so the question is how do I
culturally incentivize people to
recognize that it would be useful now I
don't I don't trust myself enough in my
ability to see what is true where I
would want to Tinker so one base
assumption you have to understand about
me for anything that I say to make sense
is that I think every human being needs
to wildly distrust themselves and it is
mostly not entirely but it's mostly in
the aggregate that we find our way to
something sensible so I would want the
opportunity to write stories tell
stories do podcasts all of that put
ideas out into the system and say hey I
really believe that we need more men as
school teachers we really need more
women as Pilots whatever I don't believe
that one but if I did that I would put
that idea out into the marketplace and I
would very much be as passionate as I
can tell that story as convincingly and
compellingly and just data rich as I can
get it in front of as many people as
possible and then get them at a
Grassroots level with their own children
to go to the school and make demands I
know your own story is that uh you ended
up going to a school cuz the new
Headmaster came around and said hey dear
neighborhood I need you to send your
kids to this aien school that I am going
to turn around but I need you guys to
send me your kids and that kind of
Grassroots a parent making the decision
about their own child that's what I'm
talking about so let putting the idea
into the world fighting for it as as
just passionately and and convincingly
as possible but then knowing I don't
want people to just believe me I want
people to push back and then I want old
Ely people to make their own decisions
in their own
lives what do you make so I I I agree
with all of that I think that a lot of
what we are very often attempt to do
through tinkering policy making incent
changing incentives is actually much
more effectively done at a kind of
cultural level um and I'll I'll I'll
give an example of that from a paper
that Melissa Carney did she's a Maryland
Economist who's actually you'd love her
work I think her recent book is called
two privilege and it's all about this
issue of marriage and family and she's
really taken on this kind of very
difficult debate particularly on the
left around two parents being better
than one she does it brilliantly she did
a study earlier where she showed that
the MTV show 16 and
Pregnant had a huge impact on teen
pregnancy rates really much more than
any any recognizable government policy
and the reason that they were able to
track that was because that show aired
at different times in different states
wow and so they had a wonderful natural
experiment and so they could see that
show a in you know Nevada at this point
in time and then like in Illinois at
this point in time and they saw the teen
pregnancy rate drop and stay lower as a
result of that MTV show so I think
that's actually great data point for
your position which is an MTV show can
be much more powerful in shifting a
narrative about the pros and cons of
becoming pregnant as a teenager than any
amount of government policy or
government certainly government
lecturing on it which tends to fall on
kind of deaf ears and so I agree with
that one of my questions for you is what
do you think of the culture making
institutions right now specifically
around these kind of issues of of gender
one of the criticisms that's made more
from from the conservative side is that
the commanding Heights of of the
cultural economy already dominated by a
very very Progressive World viiew um one
that may not be kind of being updated
and that's kind of making it harder to
kind of get cut through with other
cultural messages whether that's kind of
pro marriage or Pro religion or I would
say from my point of view like stories
about men in teaching or or or whatever
um so I just kind of be very interested
given that you've made the case for
culture and
storytelling how would you rate the
performance of our current cultural
Industries against that metri
um I don't have a problem with the
culture engines per se what I have a
problem with is um censorship so that
you don't know are there cultural
entities that would be putting great
ideas into the system but that system is
behind the scenes stopping them from
finding Their audience that that would
bother me a lot so I operate under the
cultural belief that every period in
time gets to create the world that they
want
and as I get older some of the changes
that people want to make just seem
absolutely absurd to me based on my
metric of human flourishing I don't
think the things are going that they're
doing are going to lead to human
flourishing uh case in point open
borders case in point um uh the quotas
in making sure that the only person you
can vote for in a given district is
female like that that that is crazy to
me however I recognize I can't trust
myself I don't want to be dictator like
I want to be able to argue that idea and
give you data and give you why I think
that's absurd but then I want people to
be able to make that decision and I just
fully understand that when um when any
generation has their moment of control
they get to create the world that they
want and so cool there it if you live
long enough if you were that fortunate
you will inevitably look back at the
world and go you guys are making dumb
decisions and that that is a question of
frame of reference more than it is
objective reality now that brings us to
something that we just cannot move on
unless we touch because you hit me so
hard with something you said because I
realized you have solved a problem for
me of why uh so much the world seems
like they have Roaches on their face to
me uh which is we can't identify the
right metrics and so this is me putting
words to what you said so you're going
to go by proxies instead so having 50%
women in government is a proxy for human
flourishing I think you'd be comfortable
with that uh but since you'll never be
able to identify those metrics or
measure them accurately you just have to
go by a proxy and I have a feeling
you're just going off of gut instinct
about what those proxies would be um my
beef with that is that we can tell there
are metrics so for instance I know
somebody who wrote a really amazing book
called of boys and men which details
very compellingly statistics that you
can look at that show boys and men are
in real trouble and so I would say the
data is out there for anybody that's
willing to Define where they're trying
to go to Define what metrics would
indicate that we're headed in that
direction and then have the courage to
look at the data that we see now and
either say yes we're moving in the right
direction or no we are
not right and so a lot here is going to
hinge on our our selection of metrics
yes um and and
so uh if if you were
to like we spent a lot of time talking
about arcan aspects of British politics
gender politics but you know you could
say we increased the share we
accelerated the share of women MPS and
then entered a decade of the fastest
economic growth that the UK has
experienced for you know significant
period of time do I think they're
related no um but you could choose a
metric uh particularly under an umbrella
like human flourishing um that would
that would give you what that would
allow you to kind of post Hawk I there's
a lot of post hwk rationalization going
on in fact post hoc rationalization is
the kind of ultimate postmodern skill
and so you could do some post hoc
rationalization to support that but I
will say this that I I think that
probably for reasons that are not
related to tinkering or kind of social
engineering that the political class as
a whole has fundamentally failed to
recognize the real problems of boys and
men and the lack of flourishing in so
many boys and men and so that that's an
interest as to why that's happened like
why that fa if if you agree a there are
real problems facing boys and men B the
political class as a whole has largely
failed to acknowledge let alone address
them why is that I think that's a a
perfectly reasonable and a criticism I
make a lot of the political class as a
whole now as to why that is I don't know
but I do know that it's true and I think
that that failure on the part of the
political class to recognize the
problems of boys and men is in and of
itself now part of the problem because
it means that so many boys and men feel
unseen and unheard and in a way I think
that's a kind of mirror image of how a
lot of women may have felt pre
previously um which is that just I don't
feel seen I don't feel heard I don't
feel like the issues that kind of women
are confronting this is a big part of
the women's movement are being properly
addressed and not being seen and not
being heard and that's one of the
reasons why there's a big argument for
having more female representation
because it's a sense that you're going
to be seen and heard and so here I guess
I'm going to argue against myself
because although us politics is still
skewed male there has been a huge
failure in seeing male problems
now as to why that is as I said I don't
know but the downstream consequence of
that failure are ones that we're still
coming to terms with
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today well so I have a hypothesis about
what happened it's something I'm sure
you've heard about a lot of the audience
will have heard about but you had a slow
March through the institutions of a um
hyper Progressive agenda to um Elevate
marginalized so-called marginalized
voices uh and when you have 30 40 Years
of putting students through that
cultural Machinery well on the other
side is going to be a culture of people
who believe that uh America as an
oppressive Nation it was founded on
oppression uh that men are problematic
uh that men should feel bad about what
they've done about uh they should feel
bad about their um more masculine um
impulses and tendencies and those things
are bad and that men are basically
broken women and if we're going to fix
you you're going to act more feminine uh
so people need a narrative they need to
understand the world around them and a
large way that they get that education
is through the school system and so
again if you spend 40 years putting
people people through that system that A
system that is increasingly that because
first they go through a students then
they come back as Educators so now the
next bat of students has a sort of
double reinforced thing um and it is not
surprising to me that we've seen despite
the fact that men remain in politics I
would say largely because of biology uh
so I'm sure you've seen these studies
where it's like if you show uh God I
can't remember if it's toddlers but you
show real really young kids just
pictures of a guy's face from a real
election and they can accurately predict
the person that's going to win just
based on the features of their face so
it's like usually the taller person wins
like this this is not culturally
inculcated stuff this is your history is
a red and tooth and Claw thing and when
you want somebody to lead you're going
to want the person that's going to be
out front of the battle that has
military intelligence that knows how to
take on a foe and so that that's just so
ingrained in Us in the same way that
we're afraid of snakes we turn to the
bigger stronger more intelligent person
to lead it just is what it is and I
would say that the um same March to the
institutions that has painted this
oppressor oppressed narrative has also
painted a picture of biology doesn't
matter we're a blank slate uh it it's
just it's it's all discombobulating it
makes no sense and has led to the weird
things that we see which is hey it's
still all run by men for the biological
reasons that I just laid out and men
aren't thriving because of that shift of
like well men you don't have any
position all of your instincts you're
told are bad and so you do that and you
just get the the pulling back no sense
of meaning and purpose not knowing what
their role is which I think if you want
to put a human being in Hell Rob them of
meaning and purpose and don't let them
kill themselves and I know that sounds
terrible but living without meaning and
purpose is horrific that's why people
with no meaning and purpose commit
suicide yeah so um the the points
there's a point of disagreement and then
a point of significant agreement I think
between us on this so number one is
around the kind of
leadership uh leadership qualities and
because we've been talking so much about
the UK and I just you know have to go
back to Margaret Thatcher when when the
argentinians invaded the Faulkland
Islands in 1982 every single man around
her said we cannot get them back they're
the other side of the world um it just
costs so much money and lives and you
know it's just not worth it prime
minister they and and one of her
Admirals we'd have to send in the whole
Fleet and she said so send in the whole
Fleet go get them back um
so you know and that was a very
impressionable time of my life and so
kind of seeing Margaret Thatcher a woman
overruled all the military men around
her to send the nation to war and to
Commander cruise
ships um to fill them with soldiers to
send them in some cases to their death
to reclaim these Barren rocks of Ireland
because by God they were
British suggests that it's not only men
that can have those characteristics and
the distributions at the very least
those distributions overlap in terms of
those qualities so that may be the point
of disagreement I I would violently with
that that's why I'm saying these are all
proxies I about the outcome so Margaret
Thatcher and and a cabinet of women but
she's bi but you said it was biolog you
said it was biology correct and she's bi
obviously biologically a woman correct
that's but you have to admit that's the
exception not the rule so I am for sure
not saying that women can't do it 100%
they can it is possible for any woman to
be better than a man at something but
once you start going onto the averages
now all of a sudden it's like
you the the averages begin to matter
sure and I think that's the that's the
point one of the points of agreement is
and maybe this is a good way to kind of
loop back some of the discussions we had
earlier somebody once said that a huge
amount of our problems stem from
people's
unwillingness or inability to imagine
overlapping
distributions and to imagine so when you
say men are taller than women everybody
knows what you mean by that what they
know that what you mean is that on
average men are taller than women right
not that all men are taller than all
women right um it means that very few of
the people over six foot are women I
don't know what the number is but it's
tiny percentage of people over six foot
but
like a significant minority I wouldn't
say the number because I get it wrong of
women are taller than the median men
right the distributions overlap in terms
of height that's true of lots of the
other characteristics we're talking
about right so there is a difference on
average between men and women on a bunch
of characteristics and the distributions
overlap and actually on many of those
characteristics someone like Margaret
Thatcher may have been more quotes male
right or in my case I'm much more
agreeable which is more a feminine trait
than my wife she doesn't like me saying
that on air so let keep that between us
and and your listeners but she's much
more disagreeable than I am right she's
more male typically and so the point
being that the distributions kind of
hugely overlap and that that's just
something that people really struggle to
get their head arounds they either think
men like this women like this or they
think men and women are just the same
and everything socialized we're tabular
Raza and the only differences between
men and women are the ones we learn and
that's crazy I mean anyone that's been
around men or women or raised them it's
just it's in it's Insanity um to suggest
that everything's socially determined as
much as it is to suggest that
everything's biologically determined so
it's FR you know if I'm sound frustrated
it's because it's just a stupid debate
um where I think we can I agree with you
is that recent Trends in a lot of
political debate especially around
gender especially on the left um have
kind of framed this as quite zero
some um and have have in fact kind of
cast men as the problem rather than the
system as a problem and and that's a
real shift away I think from the best of
the women's movement the best of the
women's movement was kind of looking at
structures and rules and various ways in
which kind of women's opportunities were
being enhanced and it was very much for
women
and I think in recent years it's become
more framed more negatively and it's
become more against men obviously
against you know smash the patriarchy
Etc um mansplaining tox the rise of the
term toxic masculinity I think is a
really good leading indicator of a very
worrying Trend where it was actually
about kind of pathologizing certain
aspects or of male behavior and so I
think that's been a really unfortunate
turn uh in politics and I would i' have
to add though that the reactionary right
has very often done the same thing in
saying that yeah men are struggling
because women are doing too well and we
have we know women have to get back we
have to go back on women in order for
men to rise again and so it's
frustrating to see both sides very often
playing a zero sum game but just from
different sides right as if somehow for
men to flourish women need to do worse
or vice versa whereas actually we have
to rise together um and we have to we
have to see it interesting something
interesting happened to me recently
which is that Melinda French Gates who's
one of the leading uh philanthropists
around kind of women's rights tapped me
to spend $20 million of her money on
boys and
men and that's a surprising move a lot
of people were surprised by that but as
she said publicly since it's because
it's not good for women and girls if
boys and men are
struggle right and so there you have one
of the world's leading feminists I think
she would accept that later
recognizing that we have to rise
together and that women have a vested
interest in male
flourishing and vice versa and it's I
think the ice is really breaking around
this now I think people are over the
zero some and they're ready for
a a conversation which says if there is
someone struggling to flourish if we if
we're losing 40,000 men a year to
Suicide that is a massive problem 40,000
every as many as many as we lose women
to breast cancer different a problem but
like in terms of scale um and Rising the
fact that suicide among young men has
risen by a third just since
2010 the fact that we lose so many male
lives to drug poisonings now and deaths
of Despair Etc the fact that so many men
feel unneeded to come back to your point
being unneeded is death like it's either
a social or literal death sentence
people are ready to really pay attention
to those issues and they're sick of
being told that they can't otherwise it
would mean they somehow don't care about
women and girls anymore like I've really
disc just in the last couple of years
even even since we spoke last I've
really felt that the ground is moving
here and that people are perfectly
willing to have a conversation about
boys and men so I wrote about it and
everyone said be careful now I've
created a whole new Institute the
American Institute for boys and men and
initially people are not sure about that
now they're like yeah sure fine it's
becoming boringly normal now right we do
research we do policy we're worried
about the and Men sure and I think
within a couple of years people will
wonder why will wonder why we didn't
exist before so in other words the
normies are winning on this stuff we are
winning I'm I'm a self- declared proud
Normy and and I just think that being
able to think two thoughts at once and
recognize that paying attention real
attention to the problems of boys and
men in a respectful and a compassionate
way does not Mark you out as a frothing
at the mouth misogynist we're winning
um but it's it's we haven't won there's
still a lot of obstacles to this but I
have to tell you I've been pleasantly
surprised by people's willingness to
have this conversation I love that it's
great uh on the surface it I think we we
agree on most things but I can tell you
feel that there's a thing that we
disagree on which we do to put a fine
point on it it is the base Assumption of
whether tinkering is going to lead us
somewhere good or whether the second and
third order consequences that can't be
seen by default you should just assume
they're going to be problematic I think
that's where we disagree um but now that
we've planted a flag um a because I'm
extremely convincible uh and B even if
you can't convince me I'm still very
sincerely interested as a a
self-proclaimed policy wonk somebody
that is uh building an Institute to
think about these things with the 2024
election coming um do you hear policies
coming out of the Harris and Trump camps
that make you optimistic about the
future of uh a nonzero sum game for men
and
women
no that's the short answer short answer
is no not yet at a national
level I find politics to be pretty
Frozen in a zero some position on issues
of gender
and I think that that is likely to
deepen um we we'll see obviously Harris
W it's new um but certainly all the
signs I've seen so far is if anything it
will deepen because actually the
Republicans are attracting a lot more
support from young
men um whereas young women are tending
even tending more liberal obviously the
Democrats are running on a very kind of
pro-woman agenda not least around
Reproductive Rights Etc but even things
like College college deck can olation is
massively popular among women not so
much among men and so there's lots of
issues where they're kind of trying to
really trying to win by turning out
women's votes to a very significant
extent including Suburban women around
some of those issues meanwhile there has
been a move among men uh young as I said
young men also Black and Hispanic men
we'll see if that continues to the
Republicans and so you'll see JD Vance
in particular but kind of trump really
doubling down I think on this kind of R
anti-feminist rhetoric
you know the childless cat lady stuff
that we've heard from Vance and others
and and they'll do that because they
actually you know it's working to some
extent they're actually kind of if there
are men out there who feel like you know
things have gone too far or that men
aren't being treated properly or they're
not being respected Etc then I think
Trump and Vance can they have a certain
AFF effect and a certain set of
messaging that can draw them but when it
comes to policy there's just nothing on
either side um you know I just think
they're they're just dug in and an
example that would be I don't if you
know Senator Josh Hy or his work at all
he's the Missouri Senator he's written a
book called manhood and he's very he's
he's really very interested in these
issues and what I find interesting is
that when the when the bipartisan
infrastructure bill was passed which was
the first major piece of legislation
really helped working-class men most of
the benefit went to working-class men
because it's construction Transit man
you um and the Democrats did everything
possible to avoid that conclusion right
when they were asked about it they would
really Dodge the question they wouldn't
say this is good for workingclass men
they couldn't say
that and then Josh Hy and I would say
Trump Vance who say that they're on on
the side of workingclass men a lot of
them are against and Josh voted against
the infrastructure bill right and so
this's this kind of weird issue here
where the people who claim to be on on
the side of boys and men actually don't
have policies to do anything to help
them and the people who are interested
in policies the policy wonks more on the
left actually just aren't right now
addressing the issues of boys and men
that said at the state level at the kind
of Governor level at the state level
there's a lot more going on you're
seeing moves to try and get more men
into teaching Washington state is
considering a commission on boys and men
and they're obviously more Progressive
State um the governor of Utah has
created a c a task force on the
well-being of poisoned men and there are
a number of Governors and education
secretaries who kind of engaged in this
so once you get away from the national
level at a state level there's just a
much better conversation going on so
I've been really pleased by the movement
there let's see what happens after
November I'll give you one like if super
nerdy it like this isn't just in the
weeds this is in the weeds within the
weeds this is in the roots of the weeds
it's so boring but there's something in
the White House called the gender policy
Council it replaced the Council on women
and girls renamed itself but only
addresses issues of women and girls so
it's called the gender policy Council
but doesn't do anything about boys and
men even when there are massive gender
gaps going the other way it just won't
do it it's baked in it will only do it
one way I think it's quite likely that
if Harris wins she'll just keep it like
that and it's quite likely that Trump
wins he'll abolish it he'll just say
this is a bunch of woke nonsense I'm
getting rid of that right I can imagine
that actually working for his base You'
probably agree too because it's very
tinkery right it's a gender policy
counsil for goodness sake it's another
piece of the
government I would want either of them
to expand its remit to actually try and
work across departments to tackle some
of the isues facing boys and
men right now I don't see either
candidate being willing to keep the
gender policy Council but broaden its
remit that it actually looks at the
problems of boys and men I think the
Democrats will keep it in its current
asymmetric mode and the Republicans are
quite likely to abolish it I don't know
they haven't stated a position on that
and so I'll give you that as an example
of what I would consider my sort of
boringly moderate Centrist tinkerer
position on this which is say the gender
policy Council would expand it is
unlikely to find favor at a national
level but that's exactly the kind of
thing that's happening at a state level
I like to think of it as the sexy Center
uh and as somebody who also finds
himself right pole dancing in the sexy
Center uh in the middle of the White
House exactly um so that's troubling and
it's troubling because it feels so
accurate but what do you think about um
Harris's historical I don't know if
she's going to update her thinking but
her historical um hard push for Dei
equity
um that really turns me off I am I am
wildly opposed to equity meaning equal
outcome I don't think there's any way to
do that except tyrannical top- down
control um but maybe you have a
different read what do you
think well I don't do I don't do
political punditry the last um senior
politician I advised was Nick CLE when
he was Deputy Prime Minister of the UK
and after I advised him his part went
down to its biggest electoral defeat
since um World War II so since you know
my phone hasn't been ringing off the
hook since then for political advice and
I'm I'm genuinely nonpartisan one it's
very easy to appear nonpartisan when
you're actually nonpartisan I've
discovered so I'm not um and so I I I
obviously don't know what either
campaign will say about this but I do
have views about Dei and equity and my
basic view on this is that if you if you
feel as if this I think is consistent
with our conversation if you feel like
the push for diversity Equity inclusion
obviously you have to Define what you
mean by those terms but if it's
basically about trying to ensure more
opportunities leveling the playing field
reducing barriers if you feel like
that's being driven by the
data by the empirical evidence rather
than by a fixed ideology then I think it
doesn't run into some of the challenges
that's run into now and so for example
on college campuses one of the things I
will say to to kind of college leaders
Etc they will sometimes find that their
Dei programs and this is obviously
happening in a lot of States now they're
being shut down or defunded and so on
and what I'll often say to them is well
I've just we've seen your numbers right
you have a huge problem with male
enrollment with male completion your own
surveys show that men do not feel
included on your campus so where in your
Dei strategy is the stuff for
men right and if it isn't then
then it's reasonable to worry that your
strategy is not actually being driven by
your
data it's being driven by some fixed
ideological views about who you should
be providing Equity to and if you've
baked into your definition of equity
that it can't possibly include
men then it's you've just revealed your
hand and you've shown that your agenda
is not being driven by evidence is being
driven by ideology and that's a
frustration for me because I do think
that a lot of the arguments that are
made around diversity inclusion and even
Equity depending on how you define it
are pretty strong it's just that it's
not being applied even-handedly right so
like where are the men's Resource Center
where are the male success centers
where's the Outreach to men what are you
do like what are you doing for men on
your campus uh as part of your Dei
agenda and by the way just from a
tactical point of view if you wanted to
save your Dei office from being shut
down by it would be largely kind of
Republican lawmakers what if you could
turn around to them and say well we're
doing this whole thing for white rural
men because we've discovered that white
rural men are not doing well on our
campus do you make it a bit harder for
them to shut you down wouldn't
it I'm not saying he wouldn't shut you
down but it would make it harder because
you could say look we just go away we we
we've looked at our data we've seen
where we lack diversity we've seen where
we lack equity and we've seen who
doesn't feel included and guess what a
bunch of them turn out to be men and so
a big part of that agenda is men but
that never happens and so to some extent
I think it so many of the people who are
pushing the equity agenda are shooting
themselves in the foot by not following
the data so for what it's worth that's
my current view on it and that means of
course that we might as a horrible
cliche throw the baby out with a bath
water and and what I find interesting is
that these very small efforts that we
see on college campuses now to help men
they're usually out of the D I office so
they're getting shut down as well
ironically so even in the places where
they have done it too little they're
getting shut down as well that's really
interesting the idea of following the
data obviously that is speaking my
language uh I'm really here for that I
just worry tremendously about trying to
steer towards equal outcomes just
because everybody is so different even
if just at the level of um intellect
level of Desire like you're never going
to to get an entire population there
unless you tell everybody to slow down
to the lowest common denominator uh
which I very much don't think we want to
do um but speaking to actually helping
men I want to put to you what I think is
legitimately the hardest question in
what's going on with men right now which
is through all of human history we have
averaged twice as many women having or
us having twice as many female ancestors
as we have male there have been times
post agriculture where that number was
as high as 17 women reproducing for
every one male uh that those numbers are
are terrifying beyond belief to me and
one solution that I see that will make
it very clear how people think through
this problem is AI Companions and sex
robots and especially one coming
together because now for the first time
in human history we may be 7 to 10 years
away from every every man being able to
have a
thriving sexual they won't be able to
reproduce but a thriving sexual
relationship with a companion uh that
they can be intimate with and and no one
need be left behind from that
perspective you the reproduction part is
different but um what do you think about
that terrified or
encouraged yeah I have mixed feelings is
the honest answer answer and I I the
twice as many ancestors want fact as one
I like I haven't heard the 17 to one one
before I'd love to learn maybe you can
send me something about that yeah
absolutely one of the things that I one
of things I actually one of things I
find really striking is there's lots of
discussion of AI
girlfriends um not much discussion of AI
boyfriends which I think is pretty good
evidence that there are differences
between men and women when it comes to
sex but someone said yeah but said that
they could the AI
husbands um and then actually I have a
friend who got the AI to talk to his
wife when she was having trouble at work
and she said actually the AI is doing a
better job than you because he would get
frustrated and just want to fix it and
be he wanted to go and watch the the
ball game um whereas the AI was just had
all time in the world was very
thoughtful and just said God that must
have been so difficult for you tell me
more about that and how did that make
you
feel so he just left the AI playing
while he went to watch the ball game and
so the intriguing idea is that AI might
substitute better for husbands in terms
of relationships but but substitute um
uh for men in terms of sex so I've mixed
the reason I've mixed feelings about it
is because I think that to go back a
little bit the problem of surplus men
which is the one you're pointing to with
those statistics is a problem that every
society's had to deal with what do you
do with the men who are you're not going
to reproduce and of course monogamy
basically as Joe Henrik shows really
kind of largely solved that problem
um by actually doing monogamy it meant
that most men would at least have a
chance of maing if not
reproducing and that massively changed
those numbers just in the last few
centuries but it's still been a problem
what do you do with the men uh and we've
had this growing problem of surplus men
in the last few decades as well kind of
men who are not marrying maybe men who
are not in the labor market but that's
coincided with the rise of technology
and in particular video games and
pornography and so we may have talked
about this before but I think it's quite
interesting that as we've seen more and
more men at a loose end or without clear
role you would have predicted that we'd
see a massive rise in crime and
antisocial Behavior but the Opposites
happened you know with few few obvious
exceptions but like crime and disord has
gone down during the period where more
and more young young men especially have
had less to do in every previous era of
human history that would have predicted
more disorder CME those men would have
been acting out on the streets it would
have been would been more like more like
mad Ms you know on the streets but
actually the opposite happened and I
think part of that is because of games
uh and they've had somewhere else to go
um somewhere else in some ways quite
attractive and quite enticing and so you
could if if that's right if the screens
have to some extent saved us from what
would otherwise potentially been some of
the worst cultural consequences of male
lack of purpose redundancy almost
okay maybe maybe the counterfactual
would have been a lot worse let fast
forward that to AI girlfriends well
what's the counterfactual if the
counterfactual is men with good healthy
in-person relationships then AI
girlfriends in my view worse if the
counterfactual is
nothing maybe better right and and I
think that's a really difficult position
to
take I would
suggest though that if we do end up with
massive demand for artificial forms of
intimacy including sex but more
generally we should treat that very
seriously as a symptom of a lack of
human flourishing to use your good I I I
don't want to be judgmental about it and
I'm being quite careful what I say
here but I would say in general the
evidence would suggest to me that over
the long run especially that real human
relationships are much more conducive to
human flourishing than anything that
you're likely to get with an AI and so
if human flourishing is the goal that
Trend where that to happen should really
trouble us and if we see more and more
young men resorting to that whilst it
may not be bad in
itself I think is a very bad
sign it is a bad sign uh in terms of how
many people are being left behind but if
let's just assume that it's 50% and that
um the because the stat that I was
talking about I I think they're being
very careful to denote that before
agriculture no one could amass resources
because resources you had to go kill in
real time uh to eat but once agriculture
comes along now you can amass real
wealth uh and now suddenly one person
I've heard you say I think it's utterly
brilliant you mentioned it I think
earlier but would you rather be the
third or seventh wife of Jeff Bezos or
the only wife to an unemployed steel
worker um and that's what history is is
uh up until agriculture it was
probably two to one just given where
we're at and then at some point it
you're able to get these disproportion
but it's really only in the last call it
10 to 12,000 years uh which is a blink
in the eye of
evolution okay so uh if it's a two to1
ratio yeah I'm not get yes no please
no I was just saying that relates to the
fertility question you raised earlier
which is that one of the interesting
Trends I just put the data point is that
until about 10 or 15 years ago most of
the decline in
fertility uh was people having fewer
children right so having two not three
say but since since about 10 15 years
ago it's been fewer people having
children that's driving it and that's a
that's a very different kind of ISS
that's that that's a a big change kind
of what's driving it I wasn't so worried
about it when it was kind of people
having fewer children I think it's a
more troubling sign about human
flourishing if it's more people not
having children unless you had strong
evidence they didn't want children right
and that and the evidence for that is
not that strong um it typically is
people who otherwise otherwise probably
would have had children but for whatever
reason don't and one of the reasons they
point to is because there aren't there
aren't any there aren't any men around
that they want to have children yeah
yeah that that is uh probably too
complicated for this interview it's it's
worth an interview unto itself but um
where I was going is if you have this
2:1 ratio then forever all throughout
human history you've had this problem to
deal with and up until now there really
hasn't been a solution I don't think
anybody except the most distressing
among us uh would ever say well women
should just marry a man that they're not
into to make sure that that man isn't
lonely um so assuming that no sociopaths
are around and we are not suggesting
that the very bad it's a very bad sales
pitch to women isn't it h yeah terrible
uh so assuming that we're not talking
about that now you have literally for
the first time ever you have an ability
for those people not to get left behind
and so for me even though I live in
Perpetual Terror of second and third
order consequences and I really cannot
see around this corner and of course it
will never
be all the people that they maximized
themselves did everything they could and
they still can't find somebody that's
interested in them them and so they turn
to this it will be uh for many people
just going to be the default because the
the AI is not going to reject you it's
going to embrace you um
so I'm ecstatic that for the first time
in human history we have a solution I'm
terrified for all the questions that it
begs but let's for the thought of a
thought exercise or for the sake of a
thought exercise let me put it to you
this
way
um how would you want the AI companion
stroke sex robot to be programmed so my
wife for instance has shaped me and both
through approval and disapproval would
you want the AI wife we'll just assume
wife would you want the AI wife or
husband to shape their significant other
through encouragement and discouragement
to say that I'm out of my lane and
comfort zone would be an understatement
I just want to say one other thing maybe
to buy a bit of time but um like we did
have a solution uh it was called
monogamy um and and it worked pretty
well so we had polygamy for in most
societies right and that's that caused
this 5050 ratio that the two you know
men only had a 50% chance of reproducing
because you don't actually need that
many men right so some men were doing a
lot more reproducing with a lot more
than one woman monogamy came along um
larges of the church and and this I'm
just really channeling Joe henrik's work
here and so for a long that's sort of a
pretty good solve and because women
basically had to marry to
survive then that lasted quite a long
time as a solution quote unquote to this
the problem of surplus men you didn't
have Surplus men because the women had
to marri to survive and they only and
and men were only allowed to marry one
right so do the math I think the issue
is now is that we're entering a new
phase and I talked bit about to Joe
Henrik a bit about this myself which is
that I don't think that we're going to
go back to polygamy in any big way I
mean obviously this discussion about
polyamory I think instead what's going
to come after monogamy is
celibacy s single a single life for both
men and women which is one of the
reasons that we see this decline in
fertility and and which I do think in
the long run obviously there are lots of
exceptions but it's kind of bad for long
run human flourishing there's this
phrase in kind of Chinese the empty
branches I think it's either Japanese or
Chinese like you get to old age you just
don't have any
relatives um and that's just not not
great especially for flourishing in old
age but I to come back to a question I
just I'm desperately trying to draw on
any kind of well of knowledge that would
allow me to kind of answer that that
question um about about kind of a ai ai
robots and I just don't think I've got
anything good to say about it um and so
I think I'd probably better just duck
the question Al together because it I
I'll I'll be honest and say just I can't
help but not feel a little bit
dystopian um in even contemplating it
and so it almost gives a bit too much
Credence um to the idea that we're going
to be reliant on AI for me to feel
comfortable with it okay I'll see if I
can draw you into those Waters in a
minute but first I'll take the bait of
what you've handed me uh so how
is
culturally enforced
monogamy not forcing women to choose a
man they would not otherwise be
with say that again I didn't so we had
said earlier that neither of us would
want to see women be forced to choose a
man that they don't want um sure in a
world where dating apps have proven that
women just aggregate to um sexual
encounters with a very small number of
men uh so that most men are not being
successful on dating apps and when I say
successful I mean penetration most men
are not having sex with uh women and
most women are gravitating towards a
much smaller subset of men so one man is
having sex with multiple women so women
are saying when you give me this
technology and the ability to choose I
would rather be with the popular guy
with the access to resources and be the
17th girlfriend then be the first and
only girlfriend to somebody who I think
is beneath me so they the question has
been asked and answered so now that we
know the question has been asked and
answered uh and you have men being
forced into celibacy and you have women
that are saying no I'll have these
flings or whatever and I may not end up
having kids because I never find anybody
to settle down with but I'm certainly
willing to have these sexual dalliances
with these very high status males okay
so we are maybe we're not calling it
polyamory seems like it Rhymes to me but
if if that's where people left to their
own devices settle out if we turn to
monogamy and go well this was really a
good
solution how would that not be in the
modern
context forcing them to be with somebody
they wouldn't otherwise be with now it's
cultural enforcement it is not um
governmental enforcements not be done by
physical Force but how is that not
enforcement
nonetheless right so I think that I I
think it's a mistake to extrapolate from
what's happening in dating apps and
Dianes um and very short-term
relationships perhaps largely based
around sex to people's preferences for
long-term relationships and so I think
you've described as far as I know what's
happening on dating Maps very accurately
but I take at face value the fact that
most people will say that they do want a
long-term relationship that they do want
to probably have a family um and that
very often what women say the problem is
not on the demand side it's on the
supply side and and that they just can't
find men with whom they are willing to
have children and that maybe they've
expected men to do more of than maturing
before the relationship before the
marriage than in the past where the men
would mature through marriage and so I
actually do think there was something to
the fact that kind of marriage kind of
was a me institution that helped to help
men to mature to kind of to be civilized
to use some other language that people
use whereas I think now women are saying
no no no I'm my I'm I'm not civilizing
you you get civilized first right you
get mature first you you get your act
together first and then then I might
marry that's a massive change and I
think that kind of a lot of men are
really struggling with that shift even
if they don't think about it that way
and so
no coercion but take it face value that
is probably what most people want um and
do everything we can to help men to be
better partners and better husbands and
be better prospects I mean I do think
there's something to the fact that
improving the kinds of men that are on
the market to use this
terminology is a big part is a big part
of it and that that will be so I don't
think we solve the problem by in any way
in I mean you've made it clear you mean
culturally but even culturally
suggesting to women that they should
marry men that they don't feel they want
that they are happy with we should
create men that they will be happy with
and so that brings us back to I think
where we started which is the challenges
that men are facing in their physical
health their mental health their
education their sense of themselves
their efficacy their all of the all of
the things that men are really
struggling with with are not only
hurting them they're hurting the marital
prospects of their female peers and I
find it super interesting that when I
talk about these issues of men
middle-aged women sort of women in their
40s 50s 60s they're like really like is
that right because they faced a lot of
glass ceilings maybe kind that doesn't
sound right women in their 20s
regardless of their politics they get it
straight away because I'm talking about
that we're talking about their peers um
and so it's interesting that you don't
have to do as much convincing of the
typical 25y old woman as you do the
typical 55y old woman that young men are
struggling um because it feels
existential for those L those young
women and I presume based on some pretty
good evidence that most of those young
women would actually prefer everything a
equal at some point to find a partner
and have children with that partner and
raise those kids together that is still
the stated preference of most young
women so I don't think it's a problem of
what people's preferences are I think
it's a problem of finding someone who
can do that
I do worry a lot that right now young
women and young men don't feel very
aligned in their interests they don't
they feel if anything like they're
separating not only kind of physically
and romantically but also and we saw and
I said politically but just culturally I
kind of think there's this kind of
growing gap between young men and young
women and that really troubles me from
all kinds of perspectives not least
family
formation yeah so I think that you've
got your fing
on a potential solution which is for men
to rise up uh let me ask do you think
that China's policies are going to
Output men that women will prefer
compared to what we're doing here in the
US currently which is letting them
flounder which policies which policies
do you have in mind specifically you may
know more about this yeah so this is
utterly fascinating in fact I have a
quote here uh that I pulled during my
prep so according to the BBC a top
Chinese official said and I actually
went and read this um so I I will agree
this is what it says uh there is a trend
among young Chinese males towards
feminization which would inevitably
endanger the survival and development of
the Chinese Nation unless it is
effectively managed uh and so they're
doing all kinds of stuff that there's
like a whole list of proposed policies I
don't know how many of these they have
or will implement but this was the um
government the educational body making a
proposal that they wanted the government
to basically sanction and they said
uh we want um more focus on physical
education getting the boys out there
playing sports being aggressive uh
getting physically fit we want more um
former athletes as physical education
instructors uh they're putting huge
limitations on the amount that um people
under 18 can play video games um and
there was a couple other things designed
basically to get the PE oh uh getting
stars that are uh represent a very masc
UL muscular physique so that people that
are being celebrated uh to the country
represent that sort of um male
traditional male they didn't say like
80s Action Hero and I doubt they mean
something like that but the images at
least in the article were just um guys
that were ripped they had muscles and
they were in the middle of doing very
physical things um but just they are
just stating outright that they're
worried that um Chinese men are becoming
uh feminized in and of itself is is
pretty interesting and given that they
are so prone to controlling their
populace through policies that are very
difficult to sidestep like they'll just
shut off your internet or uh they won't
let you spend money on things that they
deem
unworthy so uh do you think Draconian or
not that that will end up outputting men
that women are more satisfied
with yeah I mean say they don't Tinker
the Chinese they're not a little beyond
that which is
I mean at the very least as a social
scientist I'm excited by the opportunity
to research it agre and I what I hope
they'll do what would be great is if
they introduce these rules say the
internet rules or the you the gaming
rules at different times in different
provinces so that again we get a nice
natural experiment there is really good
work showing the impact of the one child
policy on the number of surplus men
later uh and they could do that because
it was the one child policy was
introduced at different times in
different Chinese provinces and so you
could literally time it till 18 years
later so look I mean as you go through
the list of things and byy and Li I
don't think starting off by kind of
telling men that they become too soft
and feminine is a great PR approach um
so I would say that that's bad messaging
um but in terms of like the the specific
things you've mentioned like I think
it's quite hard to argue against most of
them I don't freak out about video games
like some people people um I worry that
it kind of pushes out some other
activities I worry a lot about the lack
of physical health um and phys you know
boys and this is true for boys and girls
but for kind of boys and men especially
I think kind of lack of physical
activity seems to be particularly
damaging so I worry a lot about that so
more of that would be good um so on the
face of it some of this stuff looks
looks interesting even the role model
stuff seems okay it's just that you
don't want to do that so here I'll end
up agreeing with you you just generally
don't want to do that through kind of
top down policies and I think that if it
feels top down it's much less likely to
succeed than if it feels organic but one
of the things I'm very interested in now
if you look at people who are online and
the kind of the sorts of podcasts
perhaps including this one that that a
lot of men kind of Might listen to or
the sort of figures they turn to of
course you've got the kind of extreme
manosphere men's rights types but what I
find quite interesting is how many
people are attracted to more of the kind
of Fitness types the kind and you know
I'm thinking about people Andrew
huberman and Peter AA you mentioned
David Goggins earlier and so on too like
these are these are men who no one would
think of as in any way kind of crazy or
reactionary or anything and they're all
about like living well and a lot of
Fitness stuff and so I'm very struck by
how many young men are really into that
kind of thing and so I think what's
happening there is that a model of
masculinity if you like that's largely
being refracted through discussions
about physical health and so it's not
threatening to a lot of men but they
embody a certain way of being male
that's very attractive and very
aspirational to boys and young men and
that's good right we should want them to
Aspire to be physically healthy to be
strong right that's good that's just
good for your
health and and if those men are also
just they have a way of being in their
conversation that's aspirational as well
that's amazing and so I'm picking on
Andrew huberman but like you take
someone like hu huberman who's just all
about the just geeky scientist Fitness
guy but he's also you know fit and he
talks a lot about his own Fitness and so
on too he has a huge following of young
men among young men that's awesome I
don't think the Chinese government
saying you should be like Andrew
huberman or whoever the Chinese Andrew
huberman is is a very effective strategy
I think what's great is if Andrew
huberman exists and millions of young
men flock to him awwesome
that's happening organically and it also
shows you that is really what young men
are interested in and will that help to
create more marriageable men more
metable men let's hope
so yeah I agree I think putting it out
into the well so let me State the answer
to my own question simply yes I think
that uh by focusing men on an Ideal that
is more masculine that will pay off in
terms of creating men that Wom women are
far more likely to be attracted to now
if you leave out things like emotional
intelligence a desire to see your
partner Thrive you're going to have
problems so if you're hearkening back to
sort of caveman Style no that's not
going to work but um I think it is very
instructive if men look at the uh female
version of pornography which is the
romance novel I'm sure some people will
take exception to that until you read
one and then you realize it really is
pornography for women uh and and that
like that breaks into these just super
clear-cut archetypes of the pirate
vampire werewolf billionaire doctor and
I think there's one other but it's like
that women just go Cowboy yeah basically
women are going for it's the Beauty and
the Beast archetype they want to tame
the untamable man who through their sort
of um feminine wilds and sexual prowess
they are able to tame this
all-conquering Beast that for nobody
nobody else could get access to this
sort of inner gooey Center of uh
emotional communication and attachment
that's the female fantasy and so once
you understand oh you can actually
become that but you all you have to be
an integrated beast and have that gooey
Center that can be access that you can
be articulate and loving and committed
um and if you can find a path to that
integration then you've got a real shot
and if you can't then you're going to be
in trouble
all right yeah it's I do I find those
sort of fantasy things instructive and
interesting as long as we always
remember of course that they kind of
fantasies but I was I I ran across a
news article the other day which showed
which said that romance novels are
really booming among gen Z women so
young women in particular seem to be
kind of turning to those those novels
and I was frustrated with the way it was
reported because then it kind of talks
about the lack of diversity in the
authors um but and which I thought kind
of missed the lead which is how
interesting that kind of young women are
turning to these kind of romance novels
and so I talked to some young women
about it um this one of my my son's
friends were over and they were like
well it's because a lot of those young
women feel they lack it in real
life um now of course you can have it in
real life and still have want the
fantasy and so on too I'm not suggesting
that they are counterposed but but
nonetheless it was instructive to me
that there's a danger that in some of
our slightly antiseptic approaches is to
sex ed and to relationships and to a
kind of risk aversion in some ways that
we do take some of the romance out um uh
and that actually being able to
successfully navigate those romantic
relationships is part of growing up we
had a we we actually published a piece
by Daniel Cox who's a scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute on why
he's worried that teens aren't dating as
much so was it's good news that teen
pregnancy's down um and and it may be
good news that teens are having sex
later
it's not good news that they're dating
less and the reason he believes that and
I believe this too is that because it's
through those earlier dating experiences
that you you learn a lot of those skills
like it's hard there's rejection there's
misunderstanding there's kind of how do
you how do you like it's it's one of the
most difficult areas of human life to
navigate right that kind of that
entering the zone of kind of romance and
I I worry a lot about
deskilling I worry a lot the both young
men and young women but perhaps are
getting deskilled around that and then
they hit they hit the kind of world of
Romance the world of dating in their and
actually Dan Cox is writing a book about
this like in their mid 20s and they're
still pretty
unskilled right so they've maybe got the
skill level of yesterday 17y old or
whatever whatever you want to say and so
they blunder and they don't really know
what they're doing and they lack
confidence and they they get it wrong
and so anyway it's a it's a a long
answer but I
I'm I'm I'm really interested in what's
happening to young people
romantically and a bit troubled by the
signs that there's been this Progressive
deskilling because it's difficult right
and you know I'm old and I'm my mid-50s
and like you learn this stuff the hard
way um by getting it wrong and learning
how to take rejection and and so on and
I worry that without the skills you you
just Retreat and so this maybe brings us
back to where we were a while ago which
is the thing that worries me most about
young men in particular but perhaps I
shouldn't perhaps men generally is not
the ones who are acting out there are a
few of those but not many it's the ones
who are checking in it's the ones who
are retreating sometimes online spaces
and I think it's that sense of male
Retreat I think you maybe even use that
term before are just kind of backing
away from the challenges
of work study life self-improvement
right that is the most troubling of all
right it's it's that it's the checked
out men that we should be spending most
of our time on but it's the acting out
men who get the headlines uh rather than
ones to just quietly giving up and
sometimes most tragically giving up even
on themselves what do you think they
have in common have they em bibbed an
idea that's holding them back are they
um just getting clobber an education
system that's wildly
female I I think they're coming out of
an education system that has not served
them well and that has sent them the
message that they're just not very good
at this education system that has not
provided them Alternatives I mean this
is a very wonky point to make along the
way but I think that I've written a lot
about this that the lack of vocational
training the lack of Hands-On learning
opportunities has just been really bad
news for boys and men um because the
last year or two of high school is just
basically just a massive cratering waste
of time for a lot of boys and so they
drop out I mean they just they fall off
the end of the conveyor Bel of the K12
education system having basically felt
like they
failed um and then they may be trying
and get some sort of post-secondary
Education they really struggle in the
labor market employers are actually a
little bit less likely to want to hire
young men than young women now um
because they see them as slightly
riskier highers they're struggling in
the labor market wait can you
I've never heard that before people
consider men
RIS yeah we've actually again I'm just
advertising but um we just published a
piece by Matt Darling which had a really
nice natural experiment in it where they
basically made it a bit more expensive
for employers to fire people in one
state compared to another state it
changed the law around unemployment
insurance and what that's an experiment
what that tells you is if you make it
slightly you you make it a little bit
riskier to hire people
then see what happens to hiring patents
and what happened was by raising the
cost of firing people employers became
less likely to hire young men than young
women and so the obvious conclusion
there is they just see young men as a
little bit riskier right that's the the
natural conclusion is you just you raise
the you raise the kind of like if am I
am I going to have to fire this person
and if so that's going to cost me more
then you're going to be more careful who
you hire right you're not going to take
a risk
and it turned
out less like our young men so you can
look at Matt darling's paper on that so
but I think more generally there's just
this sort of sense of deskilling a
city and and also I just think back to
this question that we've been I think
talking about a lot in this conversation
which is a lot of young men will say to
me something along the lines of I've
been told a lot about the things I
shouldn't do and the things I shouldn't
say so they've effectiv been given a
long list of don'ts don't say this don't
do that don't think this don't be like
that right it's a long list largely
negative and really no dos it's back to
this point we made earlier about not
having a
script and so if they found themselves
and their own sense of themselves as
boys and men if it's defined at all
defined largely in negative
terms but still none less being a man
right that leaves them really
underpowered really risk averse really
uncertain about how to engage and really
worried that if they engage and they get
it
wrong that they'll be shouted down or
they'll fail or they'll crash and burn
so better not to try and so I do think
that that kind of backing away from some
of these challenging situations which is
really what you see like young men just
that young men are less likely to leave
home than women they're less likely to
move away than women they're less likely
to study abroad than women um and so
you're just seeing this kind of sort of
wh you know the IDE the idea of the kind
of Go West Young Man Adventurer thing is
just completely flipped in terms of
gender and it's great that women are
doing that but it's not great that young
you know 24 year old man is 10
percentage points more likely to be
living at home than a 24 year old woman
like it's 34% versus 24% wow and so
there's just this Failure to Launch
thing that's a Trope but
true and I think it's because we're not
telling a good story to come back to
your point
about how great it is to be a guy right
I'll risk saying that right and if we're
not telling if we don't have stories and
Role Models about how fantastic it is to
be
male and we have a lot of stories about
what's bad about being male the
resulting asymmetry is incredibly
disempowering especially for men who
maybe don't have the resources or the
skills to navigate and so we're
navigating much much more difficult
Waters now romantically and economically
and socially and culturally and the guys
who have the skills to navigate that
water are going to do fine but the guys
who don't are not going to do fine and
they're the ones I'm really worried
about why is it awesome to be
male isn't it I think it is don't you
think it for sure yeah but I also grew
up in the 80s so I got a way better
story yeah me too yeah I
well I I think about a lot about male
friends I think first like
the the way the male friendships work
the kind of banter and the just the kind
of way we lovingly lay into each other I
think that's and I have it with my sons
now I think that's beautiful I think
some of the kind of physicality of being
male is great right I've kind of loved
Sports and just like that sense of um
uh yeah physical Adventure I think
that's great um there's something about
I mean obviously I can't put myself kind
of in the the kind of Mind of a woman
but I think just male
sexuality um and sex drive U which is
one of the kind of big differences I
think obviously channeled appropriately
all the usual caveats I think that's
it's great it's kind of great to be
interested in uh into sex and it's great
to have desire and I think there's a lot
of desire on the male side of the
equation sexually and so I think that's
that's great and I also think it's great
to in some way
feel like because of the physical
differences that there are between men
and women to feel like you can to some
extent still if necessary be kind of
physically
protective um now of course fortunately
that's much less necessary
now actually I was on a I was on a panel
recently with the governor of Maryland
Wes Moore and he said um I don't if you
know him but he's a former parat TR er a
US paratrooper huge guy incredibly fit
guy um and he said my wife actually says
she never feels safer than when I'm at
home with her and I said it's weird
because my wife never says that about me
but she would say that about you um
where if Cy is a formidable physical
presence but that's not quite true
actually um and one of the things that I
I think that it's okay to say is that
there is a male responsibility to
look after those who are weaker or more
vulnerable um than themselves and so one
of the things I've I've tried to do and
I've said this in various places so I
apologize if you heard me say this
before but but that as I've raised my
three boys all now grown men all in
their 20s I've tried to raise them to
have the courage to ask a girl
out the grace to accept no for an answer
there's no entitlement there and the
responsibility to make sure but either
way she gets home
safely and so what's captured in that is
the sense of like being willing to put
yourself out there ask a girl out right
just being willing to kind of just like
go for it and that's that's not only
okay it's good that you can win but then
the second bit of it is Grace except no
you have no sense of entitlement about
that there is absolutely like she can
say no it might not work out hopefully
she'll she'll say no gracefully as long
as you've done it gracefully there's a
Grace to rejection but then either way
like you need to make sure she gets home
safe and I used to have an extension on
their curfew they could get they could
actually come home a little bit after
their curfew this is when they were
teenagers um if if I knew that was
because they were getting someone home
safely usually a girl and I'm sorry but
like my son's are 6'4 and you know they
they're big guys and maybe that's maybe
size is not the thing it matters there
but like if that meant getting someone
safely that's great it's just a truth
and just very recently I was at a
conference and I was with a female
colleague about the same age as mine and
she was going to get her car
um kind of in a coverboard garage and I
went with her and I said would you like
me to said thank God you asked right but
I think a lot of men now actually
wouldn't even ask for sure they'd be
worried that that would be misconstrued
they'd be worried that you're being
sexist or creepy or whatever and she was
like thank you for asking right because
she didn't want to go in there on her
own she just felt a bit safer to have
someone go with her and and do that so
anyway I'm going on a little bit and
answer your question but there are some
aspects of being kind of male that I've
listed there that are just a little bit
off the cuff um and that are great and
you don't have to say them necessarily
but you just have to show them and kind
of be them and make sure that we're
again that's not defining this in the
wrong way I just had this um there's a
feminist philosopher called Kate man and
she just wrote something just today
saying Tim Walls is a got a model of
non-toxic masculinity
um and I and I just like is that the
best we can do like really like yeah and
for her that was a concession but like
non-toxic masculinity like know what an
exciting Vision that you could actually
not be poisonous you could actually not
be a
pathogen yay you too you too could be a
non-toxic male I mean talk about a bad
PR campaign and then we wonder why boys
aren't attracted to those messages which
is like we're going to teach you to not
be toxic and again more deeply you're
just framing this whole thing in
negative
terms it's like original sin it's like
we're just we're going to we're going to
we're going to show you how to not be
not be
bad well for the love of God could we
not actually talk about how to show you
how to be good and what it means to be a
good man not just how to not be a bad
man and that's been a big problem in our
cultural discourse over the last couple
of decades we've just done we have not
done enough of how to be a good man and
we've done too much of the how not to be
a bad man I love it man I totally agree
I always love my time with you where can
people follow you read your
work I'd love people to go to the to the
brand new Think Tank the American
Institute for boys and men and that's
just
aibm uh.org uh and I'm on all the usual
places with Richard V Reeves and Twitter
Etc and that's my website address too
love the conversation took as always
took us to places that were unusual and
discomforting and Illuminating so I
thank you for that truly my pleasure man
thanks for joining me everybody out
there if you haven't already be sure to
subscribe and until next time my friends
be legendary take care peace if you like
this conversation check out this episode
to learn more do you think men are being
taught to be weak right now yes
definitely what oh no it's worse than
being
taught they're being enticed toward that
in every way tell me more and punished
for not doing it well they're enticed to
work