Man-oh-Manosphere | 15

Theme Song 00:00:06  

Natalie Blundell 00:00:26  Welcome to Chat In The Commons, where we tear it all down. One sensible conversation at a time. I'm Natalie Blundell, I'm in the corporate world and also the founder of an online women's support community.

Elle Kamihira 00:00:40  And I'm Elle Kamihira. I'm a documentary producer and podcast host. Welcome everyone.

Natalie Blundell 00:00:58  We're going to talk about men today. Boys are men. I guess it's just a change up, because, you know, a lot of our episodes are based on feminism and women's rights and looking at everything through a woman's perspective.

Elle Kamihira 00:01:11  Yeah, the focus is going to be on men, but we're still looking at it through a feminist lens. That's that's true. Unavoidable.

Natalie Blundell 00:01:18  I'm afraid I'm coming into the mic a little bit here, because secret is when I was researching this episode, I had a really hard time thinking of things positive to say about men and boys, and I kept defaulting to being critical and having it through kind of a critical lens.

Natalie Blundell 00:01:38  How about you?

Elle Kamihira 00:01:40  Yeah. You know, just so the audience knows, we're recording this the weekend after the Charlie Kirk assassination. And that is still very much like ongoing 24 over seven in the news. And it's just very chilling and very sad. And it's hard not to despair with male violence exploding like this.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:04  Yeah, true. Back in episode four, we actually said we would dedicate a full episode to, you know, looking and understanding the men's rights movements, but also the efforts to break in down the norms of, you know, how do we raise our boys and our expectation for young men?

Elle Kamihira 00:02:26  Yeah. To be better men. And I think everyone is aware that masculinity and sort of norms for men is changing very rapidly. But I think the sort of unknown here is that we don't know what it's turning into. We know from where we come, more or less, but we don't know exactly where we're headed in terms of masculinity.

Natalie Blundell 00:02:50  That's so true. So true. And I want to let everybody know that's listening today that tomorrow, November 19th, is International Men's Day.

Natalie Blundell 00:03:02  You may not be aware of that. I wasn't. This actually started back in 1999, in the Caribbean. Actually, yeah. As a counter statement to International Women's Day.

Elle Kamihira 00:03:16  And so is it about celebrating positive manhood?

Natalie Blundell 00:03:21  Yes, it is now. It really is about celebrating and appreciating and the guidance of boys and men. But strangely, now it's actually sponsored and run by an Australian religious charity called dads for kids. And they have a mission to kind of turn the tide on Fatherlessness. I guess similar to like fathers here in the US. Have dads be more involved basically.

Elle Kamihira 00:03:53  Yeah. Which is that's a very positive thing, I think. When I went researching for this episode, I interviewed some people on the subject of power about masculinities, and I'm also about to interview Australian researcher Michael Flood. And oh great. So? So I'm kind of like immersed in this at the moment, but I found an American study by the organization at Mondo about essentially State of American men 2025, and I just found it interesting to delve into what men are saying about themselves and manhood and masculinity.

Elle Kamihira 00:04:31  And so that's kind of the angle I'm coming from today is just like talking about how men themselves are discussing this.

Natalie Blundell 00:04:39  Sure. And I guess this is about you said American men.

Elle Kamihira 00:04:43  It is about American men. I do think that there's so much overlap and commonalities across the world between men and men. Yeah. Although there are some things that are uniquely American for sure.

Natalie Blundell 00:04:57  Okay. And so what did men have to say about themselves? I'm curious.

Elle Kamihira 00:05:02  They kind of created, like for headlines as to like the things that are top of mind of men. And so those things were. And I'll just rattle them off the four of them, and then we can break it down and talk about it. But one of them were economic anxiety. And your role as provider, that that is just kind of being challenged. And there's insecurity about that and nervousness about that and so on. So that's the role as provider is kind of on the move. The second one is that masculinity as a norm is becoming more restrictive.

Elle Kamihira 00:05:43  So like the man box as they call it, is becoming more and more sort of rigid as to what you're supposed to be or not be. And it's kind of rigid. On emotional stoicism, dominance and self-reliance that those things are kind of like ruling the man box.

Natalie Blundell 00:06:05  That surprises me a bit, because I think that it's been rigid from the beginning.

Elle Kamihira 00:06:10  For a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we can come back to that. And so and then number three is that men feel isolated and pessimistic, and then that there is a good deal of depression and loneliness issues.

Natalie Blundell 00:06:26  Are you had to bring up male loneliness, didn't you?

Elle Kamihira 00:06:30  Yeah. You know, the issue of the male loneliness epidemic is like all over, you know, social media. And but I think it's worth talking about because I think there are a lot of aspects to lonely men.

Natalie Blundell 00:06:42  Lonely, lonely men. Okay. Sorry. We're being positive about men. I'm so sorry.

Elle Kamihira 00:06:46  Yeah. Get it together. And the fourth sort of headliners.

Elle Kamihira 00:06:52  Too much time online. And so it's about all of the messages and all of the effects of boys and men spending an awful lot of time online.

Natalie Blundell 00:07:05  If this was a bar chart for those four items. I would say that one would be skyrocketing.

Elle Kamihira 00:07:11  Yes. So they had done this survey of men about what being a man is dot, dot, dot. And so the top one was being providing for my family. But then there was also a sort of descending list from that. What being a man means. And I think it's just so interesting.

Natalie Blundell 00:07:33  I am curious though, real quick, is it because women are being also joint providers in the home? Is it shaming them in some way?

Elle Kamihira 00:07:42  I think it's making the role of provider more complex. I think they can no longer claim it for themselves because, you know, 70% of mothers work and. You know, a majority of households are two incomes, so they can't carry that mantle any longer. And I think it provided them with a lot of pride, but also a lot of power that.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:12  Yes.

Elle Kamihira 00:08:13  They no longer have.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:14  Yeah. It was their complete identity, the breadwinner. We talked about this in endless work.

Elle Kamihira 00:08:20  And in a sense like that is one thing that women have less of. I don't think our our like, shame and pride is ass bound up in the earning money pressure as men are.

Natalie Blundell 00:08:38  Definitely not. You and I have been single mothers for a long time, raising our children as single parents, where we are head of household, where we are the sole earner for the their family. Obviously. Yes. I wanted to make sure I had that income. It was more just logistics and, you know, making sure I can pay the rent and stay in the house type of thing. But it wasn't my identity. It wasn't who I was as a woman. My job.

Elle Kamihira 00:09:06  Although economic independence from men. That's a big one.

Natalie Blundell 00:09:13  Yes, yes. Yes, definitely.

Elle Kamihira 00:09:15  So that's at the top of the list of what being a man is for them, you know.

Elle Kamihira 00:09:19  So I think that says so much. But below that is being a friend, being strong, managing conflict with communication, giving advice. Fatherhood is really high up. Sharing care, work and housework is important. Having a salaried job, being in charge, being a winner, having a partner wife and then it goes on. But you know, that gives you a picture. Yeah, A lot of men in this study were frustrated with that. The American dream is out of reach. They feel like, you know, no matter how hard they work, you know, a good portion of men can't excel. And, you know, you're stuck in lower pay jobs or aren't able to get the things for the money that you use to get like a house and education for your children and so forth. So I think there's a lot of economic anxiety over that too. Like the jobs and the money that men are able to make doesn't provide them with status and power the way it used to.

Natalie Blundell 00:10:25  I mean, decades ago you would exit college, which was not that expensive.

Natalie Blundell 00:10:31  You know, everyone kind of went to college and it was affordable. And then you came out and most people were getting married and buying a house. Yeah. In their early 20s. You can't do that anymore. You've got even close of debt, years of student debt, It, and most college grads moved back in with one of their parents because it's so expensive. I mean, inflation. Again, they're talking about the Fed's going to raise the rates again. We're not out of this economic anxious world that we're living in right now.

Elle Kamihira 00:11:06  Know the meaning and purpose that men found in being able to have the power to buy a house and having so much status through employment. I think the fact that that's not possible anymore is taking a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose out of life for men.

Natalie Blundell 00:11:26  Yes, there's a lot weighing on that.

Elle Kamihira 00:11:28  So the whole masculinity is becoming more restrictive. And, you know, we were talking about this before when you and I were discussing this episode and we were saying, how were Gen Xers grew up in the 70s 80s and how gender bending.

Elle Kamihira 00:11:47  The culture was we had all kinds of pop culture icons that were not like Prince and David Bowie and Annie Lennox and.

Natalie Blundell 00:11:58  Yeah, no, we were making progress back then, like in the late 60s and then the 70s, heading into the 80s. Then it was like Wolf of Wall Street type of mentality. Capitalism like, became so strong and so influential. Getting rid of the hippie type emotional man, more sensitive man. And suddenly the definition of manhood changed in the 80s, 90s. And now it's been shifting again. And is it a backlash? Is this a backlash? Men on men on judging their manhood?

Elle Kamihira 00:12:39  Yeah, I mean, domination came into vogue so hard again from that, you know, from Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman and all these, like, anti sexy, you know. Yes. Male icons to Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood. It really did a complete U-turn away from a softer, more socially and emotionally attuned man. And all of a sudden that was like out the window. And now it's not just regressing, but the beliefs that are being espoused are so reactionary and so about having power and control over women.

Natalie Blundell 00:13:25  I guess historians will look at this and see the cyclical nature to it.

Elle Kamihira 00:13:38  And then the third issue, which is that men feel isolated and pessimistic about their romantic prospects in particular. Yeah. Let's talk about the male loneliness epidemic. I think my knee jerk reaction when I hear that is self-inflicted much.

Natalie Blundell 00:14:03  Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:14:04  To insist on being dominating and kind of having a grandiose image of manhood and yourself isn't going to make you part of humanity. To hold yourself above is not the way to get an isolated.

Natalie Blundell 00:14:24  I think for me, the whole male loneliness is it's like a response and a reaction to women's awakening. The fact that women have woken up and said, no, we're not going to put up with that. You don't meet the level or standard. That's important to me and I'm going to say no. So we have boundaries. And to me it feels like a response to that. And they're like, but you have to take care of us. You have to want us as romantic partners. They don't like that.

Natalie Blundell 00:14:57  We're saying no.

Elle Kamihira 00:14:58  And I don't think they like that. They're being held accountable in some sense, to cry loneliness is to fail, to take accountability for their own part in their own alienation.

Natalie Blundell 00:15:12  Yeah, it's basically implying that the women have to be more caring and help them out of this hole. It's almost like they're blaming us, and we've got to fix the problem, too.

Elle Kamihira 00:15:24  Yeah, and I think a lot of women are just saying no to that, too.

Natalie Blundell 00:15:28  Yeah, yeah. Take a good look. Hold the mirror up. Be accountable. Be open and willing to change your ways. Understand why we're saying now all of this.

Elle Kamihira 00:15:40  Do the work to become more emotionally intelligent, emotionally attuned, relational. Like Terry Real says, you know, he's this famous psychotherapist who works with men and couples on, you know, male depression and a whole lot of other subjects. He works with men to become more relational, and I think that is what it is about. There's a clip of a woman on TikTok who talks about male alexithymia and alexithymia.

Natalie Blundell 00:16:15  Yeah, I've never heard of that.

Elle Kamihira 00:16:16  It is the inability to name your feelings, to articulate your feelings. Can we listen to that?

Natalie Blundell 00:16:26  Oh, please play that.

Elle Kamihira 00:16:27  So spot on. Yeah. Here is Katie Hanlon.

Clip: Katie Hanlon 00:16:30  Alexithymia is a psychological term for not being able to name or talk about your emotions. This doesn't mean you don't feel the emotion. Men feel the emotion, and they just don't know how to talk about it or how to garner empathy from each other about said emotion. That labor doesn't just go away. It gets passed on to us. We deal with your emotions. You're the lack of ability that you have to regulate yourself. Our households live and die by your insecurities. What? We're allowed to talk about, all of these conversations we're having about division of labor, emotional labor, mental load, motherhood versus fatherhood. None of this fucking matters if we're not addressing the problem underneath, which is the fact that men can't deal with their emotions, they can't label them, they can't talk about them.

Clip: Katie Hanlon 00:17:21  And we are dying early.

Natalie Blundell 00:17:24  Wow. I now have a new word like I'm going to start using that. I never knew that that was a thing.

Elle Kamihira 00:17:31  And I think it's bigger than what we understand. We're intensely social animals. We communicate with words in other ways. You can't not sense. You can't not have emotions.

Natalie Blundell 00:17:45  There's no doubt that women have been evolving and becoming more liberated. And I think men are failing to keep up with us. And we're not waiting behind anymore for men. We're just kind of moving on.

Elle Kamihira 00:17:59  Yeah. So in that sense, like the only path left for men, I think, is to follow women's lead and.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:08  Agree 100%.

Elle Kamihira 00:18:10  And get more relational.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:12  Yes.

Elle Kamihira 00:18:12  But the other thing about the isolation thing is, like we're apparently busy feeling a lot of sympathy for lonely men, but women are isolated also. They complain about it as well. There are high numbers of women who are depressed and isolated and despairing in lots of ways. But we're not talking about that because we accept that women suffer.

Natalie Blundell 00:18:37  That's so true. Should we start the women's loneliness epidemic?

Elle Kamihira 00:18:43  Yeah. Although I think I think the things that make women feel lonely and isolated and despairing are not the same as what makes men feel lonely, for sure. I.e. the great divorce. If we were happy and fulfilled and thriving in marriages, for example, then we wouldn't have the great divorce, would we?

Natalie Blundell 00:19:15  So the big one number for.

Elle Kamihira 00:19:18  Too much.

Natalie Blundell 00:19:19  Time online. So many thoughts about this. We're all as humanity spending too much time online. But what are the consequences? And I think we're really seeing that with a generation that has grown up online. Yeah. This generation now born like 2007, 2008. That generation. Yeah. They're becoming adults now. Yeah. And it's kind of unfolding.

Elle Kamihira 00:19:52  Too much time online and also anti-women or misogynist messages being shared online, and where boys and young men and even older men are getting fed a diet of hardened, sort of misogynistic messages, anti-feminist, not to speak of pornography, I considered pornography misogynist propaganda.

Elle Kamihira 00:20:18  It is the media that tells men who consume it that women are worthless and can be used for their bodies and being sexually degraded and abused. And so if men, young men and old. Both are constantly fed misogynist messages. That's not going to go anywhere. Good. No, and it isn't going anywhere good.

Natalie Blundell 00:20:46  No. And it's. The thing is, if for any new parents, I'm just worried for them. I'm worried about my kids having children because they're not just going to be the only ones raising that child. The internet's going to be raising the child. And it does remind me of a book from 2002 by James Steyer called The Other Parent. And I remember reading that, and it was basically like, there's a stranger in your house that your children are being bombarded with, like images of sex and commercialism and violence. But this was through TV. This was through the movies and music and computer games. We didn't know, you know, really.

Elle Kamihira 00:21:36  Where that was headed?

Natalie Blundell 00:21:38  Yeah. Where that was headed.

Natalie Blundell 00:21:39  That was a real canary in the coal mine because TV. That would be a dream right now if it was just TV. Yeah, because they're not connected to real people in real time. Answering them back. You've got this huge community out there of people that have your child's attention, and they are raising them and arguably are having more influence on your child than you are. And that's scary.

Elle Kamihira 00:22:08  Yeah, it absolutely is. And in this study that we were referencing before, they looked into what are the narratives that men and boys are hearing online and in a 2024 study on the manosphere. These are the messages that men are picking up. Men have it harder than women when it comes to new opportunities. Men can have their reputation destroyed just for speaking their minds these days. Things are generally better when men bring in money and women take care of the home and the kids. So very regressive. You know, feminism is about favoring women over men. 61% of men believe that you must be an alpha male these days.

Elle Kamihira 00:22:58  To get a partner is a popular belief.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:01  Oh, gosh.

Elle Kamihira 00:23:02  More masculine energy is needed in the workplace. Another really popular belief.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:08  Unreal.

Elle Kamihira 00:23:09  And the kind of winner takes all. For one group to succeed, one has to lose.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:16  yeah. And we're seeing that divisiveness. And pick a side. And these online spaces are radicalizing young men. It's not just giving them ideas. It's cult like. It's signing them up. I think the manosphere also believes that men are the oppressed class.

Elle Kamihira 00:23:36  Yes.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:37  And they bond through this kind of shared misogynistic and racist attitude.

Elle Kamihira 00:23:42  That there is a certain, like aggrieved entitlement, that they're feeling kind of righteously angry, that things have are being taken away from them that belong to them.

Natalie Blundell 00:23:55  Right. There's some kind of anxiety around the fact that they perceive their losses in social status.

Elle Kamihira 00:24:04  Yes. In fact, there's I came across this clip. Her handle is T Sierra, author on TikTok. She's talking about there was an article in New York Times that talked about that.

Elle Kamihira 00:24:19  White men are getting a lot less accolades in literature these days. They're not getting picked for literary prizes anymore. And so she went looking. She went researching into like the top. Kind of literary process. And she found it to be entirely untrue. Oh, in fact, we can just hear the clip and she tells the story.

Clip: Tracy Sierra 00:24:44  Sorry, where are the biggest prizes in English literature? Like none of these articles published in the last six months mention even mention the Pulitzer in the US or the Booker in the UK. So I went and looked at the last decade of winners and it became very clear why they don't mention it. It's because a completely, it completely and utterly undermines this idea that the men are vanishing, that they aren't getting the awards. In the last ten years, men have won the Pulitzer. 75% of the time, 75% of the time. Okay, straight white men have won it 25% of the time, which is equal to the total number of women who have won, all women who have won it in the last ten years.

Clip: Tracy Sierra 00:25:27  No women of color won the prize in the last decade. The Booker was an itty bitty bit more diverse. Women of color tied one year, which meant that men. Won about 70% of the time. So much for disappearing. And it meant that straight white men won 25% of the time, which is the same number as white women, the same the same number of times as white women. So not so much. Not vanishing. No men are dominating in that market in those prizes. If anything, it seems to me to show bias for prizes toward men. I think this is an example of when you're used to everything looking like you. Even the slightest change can feel like an extinction level event can feel like a lack of representation.

Elle Kamihira 00:26:15  You know, it's interesting to think that you have this like, anger out there in men that's saying things are being taken away from us or we're not getting the flowers that we deserve.

Natalie Blundell 00:26:27  And it was baseless. Completely baseless.

Elle Kamihira 00:26:29  Yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:26:30  I mean, that's the thing about everything on the internet, too.

Natalie Blundell 00:26:33  It's just clickbait or they sensationalize things. Maybe there's an element of truth and then they run with it and very quickly that gains traction. And it's based on nothing. And that's concerning. These manosphere online groups I wanted to go through a few of them, talk about them. So obviously we have the incels. Yeah. Meaning involuntarily celibate. And they really blame women and society for finding it difficult to enter romantic relationships.

Elle Kamihira 00:27:19  Yeah. They blame. They have this whole system of beliefs that's very, very superficial. Believes that only, like top percent of males get women and that they're not good looking enough or rich enough or fit enough to get women, and they're like, embittered over it.

Natalie Blundell 00:27:37  Yeah, they're all grouping together online and complaining about this. And again, that sparks kind of a hatred and misogynistic attitude.

Elle Kamihira 00:27:47  In fact, we have plenty of violent episodes with incels who have committed mass murder in the name of.

Natalie Blundell 00:27:55  Yeah, there are other manosphere online groups. There's the pickup artists pose, and they attempt to really kind of seduce women through manipulation.

Natalie Blundell 00:28:07  But it's all like a game. It's just to be the more powerful sex and string women along.

Elle Kamihira 00:28:17  To, like, gamify relationships with women in this way, to think that it's all cynical, cruel game. If you think that is going to be a place where men thrive, where are you going with that?

Natalie Blundell 00:28:36  Well, they end up leading into men's rights activists, the MRAs and the fathers rights activists. Those are two very powerful and influential groups.

Elle Kamihira 00:28:48  I think this is a dead end road, man. Yeah. To, like, hang on to your, like, superiority and entitlements and insist on dominating women. It's just not going to end well.

Natalie Blundell 00:29:01  Yeah, I don't want to ignore the other group called the men going their own way. Groups. Oh, sure. So they are centering women in a response to feminism and the way feminism is centering men. So men going their own way. Lots of online chat groups about that.

Elle Kamihira 00:29:21  I really think what's missing, and maybe it's not missing.

Elle Kamihira 00:29:25  You know. I do know many, both men and women, who are really working towards a positive vision for boys and men. And that's what's needed here, is that men who have a vision of a more positive, open, emotionally intelligent manhood.

Natalie Blundell 00:29:48  Why can't those men, those healthy, balanced, good role model men, be the ones that are soaring in the news and everywhere? Why does it have to be the Nick Fonterra's the Charlie Kirks, the Andrew Tay? Obviously Charlie Kirk's deceased now. Why did they have a wider reach? You know these influencers, they're young, like they started in their 20s, all of them. And were able to capture Literally a sitting, waiting audience of young men who were looking for a role model. And personally, I think Andrew Tate is the least of our problems because some of these kind of either alt right or far right white nationalists, this movement, they are very influential and honestly playing a significant role in moving like this political culture to being more radical and more violent.

Elle Kamihira 00:30:54  The whole thing about violence, I feel in some sense like it's a water we all swim in in America at least. I went to see a movie the other day. I went to see Naked Gun, but I sat through, you know, as you do 15 minutes or more of the trailers, and it was an assault, one trailer after the other, with big muscly guy of this flavor of that flavor they all, like, blurred together to me with big guns, big explosions. It was just 20 minutes of absolute carnage and also at the same time, male worship. So this is the diet, this is the media diet. And so I think there's a lot of responsibility on Hollywood. This is what we're fed.

Natalie Blundell 00:31:45  Yeah, exactly.

Elle Kamihira 00:31:47  We have had decades and decades and decades of this, of Hollywood showing us that all problems get resolved with violence and guns.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:00  And then you win the woman.

Elle Kamihira 00:32:02  And then you win the woman.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:04  We have to have a complete paradigm shift in all of this.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:08  Something major has to change. When are we going to serve our children and our young adults, our young men, and help them lead a more fulfilling and save for life.

Elle Kamihira 00:32:22  Make the case that this is not good for men either. This is a violent hierarchical system where we all lose. It's not just women. You all lose out on being a human being by this patriarchy.

Natalie Blundell 00:32:42  That would be the paradigm shift when men under patriarchy have that realization and see that, and that has to change from within.

Elle Kamihira 00:32:52  But, you know, funny enough, in this study, one of the top things that gave men meaning and purpose was marriage. Being in a relationship with the woman, or being able to be in a relationship with a woman, and also fatherhood. So it's very paradoxical. You want to dominate. You want to be on top. You want to rule everybody, but you also your top wishes in life or the things that give you meaning are relationships. Your intimate connection with a partner and having a family and children and devote yourself to fatherhood.

Natalie Blundell 00:33:35  Yes, yes, actually, NBC had a little clip about the differences and the views of what was top of mind and most meaningful for the difference between men and women. And it was very different. And men had the marriage and the children up right up top.

Clip: NBC News 00:33:53  Gen Z men under 30 who voted for Donald Trump, what were they most likely to say makes for a successful life? Having children number one women. Gen Z voted for Kamala Harris. Where's have it? Wow. All the way down here at the bottom. Couldn't be more opposite. Second to last for women who voted for Harris. Was being married. Being married. Look at this. Near the top of the list for men who voted for Donald Trump. Another huge difference. A very common answer for Gen Z. Women who voted for Harris was having emotional stability for Gen Z, men who voted for Donald Trump. You got to go all the way to the bottom to find that one. These are some core basic questions about how people think about life.

Clip: NBC News 00:34:31  And you can see here this rising generation in this country very far apart.

Elle Kamihira 00:34:37  I think most men understand that the solution is in intimate connection and relationships, even if they aren't able to construct a world or deconstruct masculinity in order to access those vital, vital relationships and connections.

Natalie Blundell 00:35:13  So the fifth item was violence, right?

Elle Kamihira 00:35:16  Yes. The fifth item was violence. But of course it's like it's so much bigger. I look at this like latest disaster with the Charlie Kirk assassination and another gun control conversation back to that, which is so the the refrain in America, whenever something like this happens and I feel like it's always turns into this virulent right left discussion and no one ever talks about male violence.

Natalie Blundell 00:35:47  We just stop pointing fingers, adding left or right or mental health. They'll always throw that one in there. Yeah. Then we circle the drain until the next big event, or the next mass shooting, or the next assassination. And then we we react again to it, you know, in the same way.

Elle Kamihira 00:36:07  Madness, madness, madness, madness.

Natalie Blundell 00:36:10  Yeah. But you're saying as item five of this survey that men recognize Knives. This they're saying. This is one of the issues of the problem with masculinity and the struggles of men. So they're aware of their violence.

Elle Kamihira 00:36:27  Sure. And they're also aware in an American context. You know, they're aware of firearms and guns in connection with male violence. And, of course, you know, just because men know that violence is a problem doesn't mean that they are rolling up their sleeves to solve it.

Natalie Blundell 00:36:46  No, it reminds me of the essay by Michael Kaufman on the triad of men's violence that violence against women is connected to violence against other men, which is connected to violence against themselves. Yeah. As in, like suicide or turning that violence inwards. They're in a triangle together. And I would love to actually play a clip from Jackson Katz.

Elle Kamihira 00:37:18  I love him, I think he's right on.

Natalie Blundell 00:37:21  Yeah, he's really kind of explaining about this violence that men experience from other men, leading them to have these issues.

Clip: Jackson Katz 00:37:32  I made the connections between all these forms of violence, and feminists have been making these connections, even though centering women's and girls experience is critical, obviously. And it's a it's the it's the central feminist project. It's it's broader than that. And so the reason why I'm saying this is if we want to talk about building male out, you know, men getting men to start standing with women and feminists, if you say to them, you know what? Feminists have been talking about this for decades. The feminists care about men's violence against men. Feminists care about boys, for example, growing up in homes where their father abuses their mother and traumatizing the kids. You know how many boys and men have been victims? Like how many boys and men's mothers have been murdered by their fathers or their mothers boyfriends and the trauma, the incredible loss and sadness. How many men, by the way? Not just boys, but how many adult men, myself included, have women in our lives who have been victims of other men's violence? I mean, the idea that somehow it's anti male to challenge men's violence and to try to change systemic practices around, you know, sexism, that somehow it's anti male.

Clip: Jackson Katz 00:38:34  It's just to me it's so intellectually dishonest and disingenuous.

Elle Kamihira 00:38:38  You can't talk about the violence we're seeing out here all around us without talking about the normalization of it. We're watching a genocide on our social media. We're watching all kinds of really horrific, isolated and patterned events, mass and individual violence on our phones, which has a normalizing effect on all of us.

Natalie Blundell 00:39:06  Well, we're not built either to process any of that as human beings.

Elle Kamihira 00:39:10  We're not wired for it like we're really not.

Natalie Blundell 00:39:13  Know and our children are seeing this stuff real time. Also, as long as they have a smartphone in their hand. So many people, young people saw the clip of Charlie Kirk before it started getting censored. That started going around the internet pretty quickly and there was no protection against seeing that, and that has an impact. We don't know how to handle a death like that before our eyes.

Elle Kamihira 00:39:43  Know and just again, to, you know, to remind ourselves. Human beings are wired for intimate connection. We are intensely social creatures that survive and thrive only when we're connected to other people.

Elle Kamihira 00:40:01  And we have these intricate care structures in our brains and in our bodies that Require nurturing, that require care, that require other people to care for us. And the shock to the human system of like seeing this kind of brutality. You really can't overestimate how damaging it is.

Natalie Blundell 00:40:32  So this cycle, I think the cycle of violence, if young boys are being influenced online or they saw and witnessed violence as a child, then they become the perpetrator of violence as they are older and then their children see it and then they do it. When does it end? What stops this cycle from continuing?

Elle Kamihira 00:40:58  Yeah, again, I think the remedy for this is to connect men to other humans, to bring them into community, bring them into family, bring them into relationship, into intimate connection with all of the people around them. We can't afford to have alienated men. Some of it is self-inflicted alienation. If you insist on dominating everyone, or you insist that you are better than everyone, or you have the right to control other people, than you are going to be lonely.

Elle Kamihira 00:41:37  And so I think men somehow need to come around to that. They need to approach other human beings, some life, maybe with more humility.

Natalie Blundell 00:41:49  Yeah, we need a mass awakening for men.

Elle Kamihira 00:41:52  For sure, for sure. But I also do think as masculinity is in a place where it's being redefined and deconstructed and all of that, I do think it's an opportunity for male leaders and for men in general, to reshape what it means to be man, reshape purpose, reshape meaning, and do the hard work, the emotional work that's needed to build back healthy, so to speak.

Natalie Blundell 00:42:19  Yeah, and they've really got to have the courage to go against the grain, to know that they're not going to fit in, but they would be able to find a sense of belonging if they do. Actually, Brené Brown has a great piece on just understanding the difference between belonging and fitting in.

Clip: Brené Brown 00:42:42  I was so shocked to learn in the research that the opposite of belonging is fitting in, because fitting in is assessing a group of people and thinking, who do I need to be? What do I need to say? What do I need to wear? How do I need to act? And changing who you are and true belonging never asks us to change who we are.

Clip: Brené Brown 00:43:00  It demands that we be who we are. Because if we if we if we fit in. Because how we've changed ourselves. That's not belonging. That's not belonging. Because you betrayed yourself for other people. And that's not sustainable.

Elle Kamihira 00:43:19  That is such an important distinction. The conforming versus belonging.

Natalie Blundell 00:43:25  And if you go back to talking about what we were talking about with boys spending too much time online and having that influence, they're looking to fit in somewhere, which is not the sense of who they are. You're not going within and their physical community around them. Their influences around them in real life, not online to have them find that sense of belonging. They're changing themselves to fit in. And so it's the opposite. And it I think it's leaving them fragile and vulnerable.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:02  Absolutely.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:03  And perhaps they are doing Violent acts or mass shootings. I mean, you can't. It's not sustainable. As Brené says.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:12  It reminds me of something. This interview with Michael Conroy that I did.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:17  That was a great interview, by the way.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:19  Oh thank you. I really love the work that he's doing. He. He really doesn't like jargon and labels, and he's really one for just calling things concretely and specifically what they are. He spoke about that boys and young men have the same needs as everybody else does. They want to be seen and known and recognized for who they are.

Natalie Blundell 00:44:49  Exactly, exactly.

Elle Kamihira 00:44:51  Women. We know that about each other. We know that need in us. And I think men need to come home to that in a real way.

Natalie Blundell 00:45:01  I think that our culture and society has to offer an environment to make them feel safe, to be that way and to show up that way.

Elle Kamihira 00:45:11  Yes, I absolutely agree with you, but I also do think that we need male leaders to, like, metabolize these messages and like Jackson Katz or Michael Conroy or Michael Flood or a whole lot of other people that can talk to men and can help change the culture. I don't think it's on women necessarily.

Natalie Blundell 00:45:34  No no no no no.

Natalie Blundell 00:45:36  This is a man's issue to experience and to solve as well.

Elle Kamihira 00:45:41  Yeah. Although no one will be as happy and grateful as women for men to start doing this deconstruction of patriarchy on masculinity and empower themselves to be more relational. In fact, I have another clip from She Goes by solid seven on TikTok, and she has this great kind of meditation on like I was not born hating man. But she talks about that her experiences shaped her, how she felt about men. I think in some sense, like she's really holding on to like a love for men, but so many experiences have beaten it out of her and I. I so, so relate to that.

Clip: Solid 7 00:46:26  It means that I still don't hate men. There's a difference between hating them and also feeling like I need to protect and defend myself against them. I don't think you need to hate them, to not want to be around them, like there is a certain level of fear and awareness I have now that is not tied to hate. That's too much energy.

Clip: Solid 7 00:46:48  What I do need to use my energy for is to protect myself and make sure that I'm not over exerting myself or putting myself in dangerous situations to the best of my abilities. When I am engaging with men and for short stints of time, I can enjoy being around them, but I don't let it lead to hope anymore at all. Not. Not in the hope that they will be a good friend. Not in the hope that they will be a good lover. Not in the hope that they will be a good short term or long term partner. I don't have that hope anymore. That has been crushed and dissolved.

Natalie Blundell 00:47:21  I relate to that too. Completely. Yeah, completely. I mean, I've dissented men now for three years and counting, but at times, sure, I miss having a good, healthy man in my life, but for me, there's no going back now.

Elle Kamihira 00:47:37  Sad to say, but where you've just given up. Yeah. Or you make do with the non partner men you have around you, which I have many in my life, whether it's like sports coaches or workmates or collaborators or whatever.

Elle Kamihira 00:47:55  Yeah, yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:47:56  That's close enough for me. Yeah.

Elle Kamihira 00:48:00  Yeah. There's a 4 billion strong cheering section here on Earth. Just hoping you guys are gonna be met. Men across the world, the other 4 billion are going to turn it around and be human with us. So one interesting part of the study was that men overwhelmingly support care policies, meaning things like paid parental leave, child tax relief, subsidized elder and child care. Like there's an overwhelming amount of male support for those type of policies. And I think that's indicates a lot that men think deeply about their children's future and are occupied with care. And I think that's a really positive thing. Some of the sort of solutions that women do is suggesting at the end of their report is to heed this instinct by men to care about caregiving and fatherhood, and that there's a lot that can be done to make a path for men to take on a bigger role in caregiving, whether that is as a father, as a son, as a partner, or anything else inside their family or their clan.

Elle Kamihira 00:49:43  That we ease that path, that we economically and politically make that possible.

Natalie Blundell 00:49:49  Yes, actually, I was listening to Melinda French Gates talk about that on a podcast, too. We have to stop calling it maternity leave and just give women time off that we have to invest in parental leave, shared parental leave for that first year that we really are also acknowledging the having the man be home and supporting the family altogether financially, so that the man and the woman can be home, will completely change the dynamics of the fathers role in the children's lives and ease things up for the woman who's just gone through the physical being pregnant and giving birth again, just a paradigm shift of switching the way we think about things, to say no, this is an investment into a future generation.

Elle Kamihira 00:50:45  100%, and also make a role with dignity that is the helpmate of the mother and as in matriarchal societies as we know, that isn't always the biological father. That is often the mother's brother. I would love to see, like the role of the uncle really get promoted, or for men to step into helpmate roles that are really important for bringing up young.

Natalie Blundell 00:51:20  100%.

Elle Kamihira 00:51:22  The other thing they mentioned is supporting young men through mentorship, coaching and apprenticeship. And I think that's kind of like no brainer. Yeah, young men need positive role models, no question.

Natalie Blundell 00:51:35  Of good positive role models and influences. Not bad ones. If you haven't got that mentor at home, you can have that outside of the home in a good, healthy, structured way. Yeah, having an emotional literacy and brotherhood, building, that kind of connection and communication for men And we'll definitely put some links in the show notes to groups like the Men's Collective, ReMasculine, Mankind Project, XY Online, just to name a few resources.

Elle Kamihira 00:52:10  Yeah, but.

Natalie Blundell 00:52:11  I have to ask you, other than positive men influencing young boys. What are your thoughts on woman only household raising a feminist son? Just women raising boys as you say. If there was like an influence of a of an uncle or somebody. Peripheral men, role models, but not a male household.

Elle Kamihira 00:52:38  Yeah. I mean, I feel a lot of different ways about this.

Elle Kamihira 00:52:42  I mean, it is absolutely known, like in traditionally matriarchal societies, that the males who have the larger roles in child rearing and care are the mothers, brothers Biological connection in that sounds like in matriarchal societies, the child belongs to the mother in matrilineal societies. And so the brothers are on the mother's side, so they are the direct kin connection to the child, whereas the bio father is just not considered so vital. But aside from that, we live in the patriarchy. We can't, you know, there's no escaping in this structure. The patriarchy is not going to end in our lifetimes. So let's say this I think it's a shame that sons have their identification and connection with their mothers severed so early. That is just something that happens in patriarchy. Essentially, the messages they get is that women are weak, embarrassing, bad. Whatever you do, don't be like a woman. And of course their mother is a woman. So that's severing between mothers and sons so early in the son's life, and that he then gets absorbed by the patriarchy away from his mother is bad for men.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:05  It's traumatizing.

Elle Kamihira 00:54:06  Yeah, it's traumatizing. And it's bad for boys. Yeah. Boys need identification with their mother and intimate connection with their mother for a long time, just like girls do.

Natalie Blundell 00:54:17  Yeah. I love Sonora Jha, who wrote the book How to Raise a Feminist Son. And she, in her book dedication, like in the front cover, she says it's a love story for feminists who hope to change the world one boy at a time. Let's play a clip real quick from Sonora. Why she wrote the book.

Clip: Sonora Jha 00:54:39  When I had my baby, I, you know, I was so terrified that he would grow up to be like the the men that I had grown up around. Violent men, you know, men with insecure egos and fragile egos that I realized I needed him to be a feminist and to see a woman's place in the world to uphold the full humanity of women.

Elle Kamihira 00:55:01  I love that this is such an important message to mothers of every kind. Like your connection to your son, your son's connection with you.

Natalie Blundell 00:55:13  Have you heard of the Icelandic Hijalli Model?

Elle Kamihira 00:55:16  Yeah.

Natalie Blundell 00:55:17  Yes. So there's this basically is a preschool program in Iceland that is trying to combat sex stereotypes.

Elle Kamihira 00:55:27  Well, that's the key.

Natalie Blundell 00:55:30  Yeah. They do it really early to prevent the children adopting, like these traditional sex based roles. They separate the boys and girls throughout the day. So the boys are all up in one group and the girls are in another. And the girls are encouraged to show, like, their physical strength and their boldness and be direct, teaching them how to be direct, and they do more physical things outside and yelling. And the boys are inside and they're engage them into like caring and nurturing activities to develop their emotional skills.

Elle Kamihira 00:56:08  Why is it that Iceland comes up with all the good things?

Natalie Blundell 00:56:13  Well, we said that in our Mad Men episode, we said that Iceland ranks number one for sex equality, right?

Elle Kamihira 00:56:22  Yeah, well, this is how you do it worldwide.

Natalie Blundell 00:56:24  So yeah, this program has been going for 30 years.

Natalie Blundell 00:56:28  They've actually on their website. They have data on their results that doing this in preschool helps them, like the rest of their academic life, that their reading fluency is higher, they're scoring higher, that there's actually less noise in the classroom and distractions from the boys through the older grades. I think again, like as a society, we need to be looking at this. We need to adopt some of these models.

Elle Kamihira 00:57:00  100%. Yeah, that is the way forward right there.

Natalie Blundell 00:57:04  And I've always personally thought teaching mindfulness and meditation in preschool, in elementary even teaching compassion. Honestly if we had K through 12 compassion as a core subject like math and English and social studies, I think we would be raising a different type of generation.

Elle Kamihira 00:57:28  I couldn't agree more. It's an embodiment approach to humanity and life in that we're not separating our brains from our bodies. It is all one. Our mindfulness is in the how we care for our bodies and our whole neurobiology. It is something that we all need to kind of relearn.

Natalie Blundell 00:57:53  If we did that kind of teaching, it would be addressing the root cause versus what we're trying to do right now, which is address the symptoms of a society.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:03  So true.

Natalie Blundell 00:58:04  Well, there's some encouraging things to think about, and we would love your input, as always, to let us know what you think, too.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:14  There's a whole lot more to talk about. I feel like we only scratched the surface of like, manhood masculinities, manosphere, like all of the things.

Natalie Blundell 00:58:24  Well, until next November. Happy International Men's Day.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:29  Happy International Men's Day.

Natalie Blundell 00:58:30  All right, bye for now.

Elle Kamihira 00:58:32  Bye for.

Theme Song 00:58:32  Now. Yeah. 

Elle Kamihira 00:58:40  Thank you for listening to Chat In The Commons. We would love to hear from you about anything we talked about on this episode. You can reach us via our social media on our website chatinthecommons.com. You can also find links to all the resources mentioned in this episode in the show notes.

Natalie Blundell 00:59:00  If you like what we're doing here, please share with all your friends.

Natalie Blundell 00:59:04  And the best way to support our work is to follow us on your podcast app.

Elle Kamihira 00:59:10  Chat in the comments is produced by me, El Camara and Natalie Blundell. Audio engineering by Jason Chihuly at abridged audio. Artwork by Rita Dominguez, music by midnight DAW and theme song by Megumi.

Theme Song 00:59:28  You got no conscience, so I'll do it again. And. I'll do it again and again and again.