Welcome back to episode 2 of the To Be a Boy podcast, and I think
we need to start with a thank you, Jodie.
I mean, what a response. It's been incredible.
We're being, we're so grateful. Thank you, everybody that's
tuned in and listened. I think it's even astounded us,
hasn't it, for how many listeners we've had.
I mean, I thought people would like it, hence why we're doing
it, but actually people really love it.
So thank you. It has given us so much
confidence and motivation to to bring you more amazing episodes.
And Apple said we have the number one or had the number one
podcast for parenting in the UK last week which?
Mind blowing. So thank you everybody for the
love and support. Really, really appreciate you.
I guess the timing of it is, you know, couldn't really be better
in many ways because as we've seen in the news this week,
things are getting pretty hairy out there, aren't they?
So you've got Trump wanting to get into bed, for want of a
better word, with Andrew Tate, which they know about you, but
makes me feel physically sick in every way.
Actually, the fact that I phrased it as getting into bed
with Andrew Tate probably didn't help the feeling of wanting to
vomit. You've got the rollback of
diversity and inclusion policies.
Goldman Sachs and Deloitte have both said they're going to
sunset the diversity and inclusion policies.
What else? What else?
What else has gone on this week that's been horrendous?
Why did the post this week on LinkedIn?
Because I've been reflecting quite a lot about the fact that
I'm leaving pregnant. That's great.
And it's been 10 years and I was thinking about what my
inspiration was for starting it. Now, obviously I got pushed out
of my job when I was pregnant, which, you know, it was a pretty
big trigger. But I also know that a big
inspiration for me was Naina Cherry when I was nine years
old. I loved top of the pups, loved
Naina Cherry, probably my first love I would say.
And she came bounding out onto the stage in a high top trainers
and a big medallion necklace. I think she was seven months
pregnant at the time singing Buffalo stands, which is still
one of my favorite pop songs ever.
Can do the rap if you give me a few drinks, big tune.
And I remember sitting looking at her and back in those back in
those days, Elliot. In those days.
You just didn't see pregnant women on the TV.
And even if you saw them out in the wild, they were wearing like
a tent. That's, you know, there was no,
you didn't really show your pregnancy bump.
It wasn't something that you were particularly proud of.
You sort of hid away. And I was absolutely agog that
this incredibly beautiful, achingly cool woman was bouncing
around on stage seven months pregnant.
And it obviously really resonated with me that she was
like, I can fulfill my dreams and I can have a baby.
I can do all of this. And you aren't going to tell me
otherwise. And I was listening back then to
Nina Cherry after, you know, reflecting on this and listening
to Manchild, that you will maybe remember that.
I know that song. And I have had a number of
boyfriends. What kind of podcast is this,
Jodie? This is in the kids and family
section. Just one or two, you know, not,
not that mess, but I have had, you know, more than one
boyfriend who I would say has Peter Pan syndrome.
They just never wanted to grow up.
And it seems to be a particular thing amongst some men.
And I don't know women like that.
I only know men like that. So I wanted to ask you what you
thought about me. Well.
First of all, Peter Panther, can we get Nina Cherry on the
podcast please? Oh hell yeah.
Nina Cherry, if you're listening, hit us up OK to be a
boy team@gmo.com. We'll be from the podcast.
I don't think I'll be able to speak.
I'd just do the Buffalo stands for that matter, and then die
inside because. But no, seriously, serious
question. Big question.
Yeah, I've seen this too. And I think there's a couple of
reasons. The first one I think is quite
easy to talk about, and the second one isn't easy to talk
about. So let's start with the first.
I think for a lot of men, as we're going to explore through
this podcast, don't necessarily know how to.
I was doing a webinar a couple of years ago now and I was
asking people around men's mental health, why don't men
speak about their mental health as much as they could and and
should. And one man said, I've never
done, I've never done it before. I wouldn't know where to start.
And he explained that he's never ever had a conversation about
his well-being with anyone really.
He wouldn't know how to begin that conversation.
And he was a big man, right? So I think there is this, this
idea that we haven't necessarily practiced how to do it.
We haven't been in spaces and friendship groups that have
encouraged us to do so. And it's, you know, underpinning
that is all the kind of ideas about gender norms, right?
That men don't show their emotions, boys don't show their
emotions. And sometimes we say to boys
don't cry. And then we get surprised when
they're 3040 year olds and don't know how to express themselves.
So I think that's probably a big part of the reason.
Is that what you think as well? I definitely think there is an
issue with men talking about their feelings, and the men that
I am thinking about would not be very good at expressing their
emotions and how they felt. So I actually asked Snenny, my
wife, yesterday. I said, do you think I'm open
about my emotions? She said yeah.
I think so, but it's taken me a while.
To be honest. I think when we first met, I
wasn't as open. I wouldn't admit so many
vulnerabilities. Now I think I'm more comfortable
and secure in who I am. And I have noticed for a lot of
men, when they feel that they're accomplished, it's then OK to be
vulnerable. There's kind of a shield around
you. I can talk about my mental
health challenges because I feel like I'm successful.
So within my vulnerability, there's a shield there, whereas
I don't know if I would be so open about some of my challenges
if I didn't feel secure in where I was in my life right now.
And so you do feel like sometimes men will talk up after
the fact, you know, when they've been through something and
they've come out the other end and it's all good.
But talking about it as you're going through it and really
showing that vulnerability, I think that's quite difficult.
The second reason, I think some men don't talk and this is
uncomfortable and this is a challenging conversation.
I do hear some men say that they have tried to be vulnerable with
their partner and that hasn't been received very well.
And this is tricky because I think when we think about some
men who have potentially been stoic in their relationship,
they've been the rock. They've never shown any
vulnerability ever. And maybe their partners
appreciated that trait in them for that person to turn around
and say they're upset or say they're struggling or say
they're finding something difficult and they can't lead in
this moment or they don't know what to do.
That can be uncomfortable for the man, but can also be
uncomfortable for the woman as well.
And I think when we look at patriarchy and the gender norms
where all the products of that and where it's uncomfortable for
some men to speak up, I think it's also uncomfortable for some
women to hear their partner in that vulnerable state as well.
I. Think some women also perpetuate
the patriarchy as much as men do in many ways and that we've, we
try and fulfill those stereotypes.
Many of us as much as you know, men do.
So we we feel able to be vulnerable and when a man is
vulnerable, it messes with those stereotypes.
And so we we find it challenging.
I can imagine that that is the case, that in relationships
there will be situations by men show vulnerability and women are
like, oh, what is this? I didn't want that from you.
And that will create new barriers for men.
It does southbound kind of workshops where we ask everyone
how they can be allies to men. And often I ask the question and
a lot of it that comes back is create open spaces for
conversation, like facilitate those conversations, learn how
to be really good listeners, understand our own emotional
response when someone cries in front of us.
And that can be deep work and really difficult because we've
got to unpack like how we feel about how that person should
show up and when they don't necessarily show up in a way
that we're used to, not a wrong way, but a way that we come
haven't come accustomed to. That can be quite challenging.
And sometimes, you know, we can get a bit hot and blood pressure
goes up. We don't know how to respond.
And then that person can feel that and then they think,
actually, I'm not going to do that again because that wasn't
received well. And so the kind of cycle
continues. So I think it's a conversation
to be had. And you know, I hope that's
received with love from everybody because it is it's
sensitive. And I'm definitely not saying
that women are to blame for men not opening up.
I think it is 100% the responsibility of men to like
lead and own their emotions and do the work.
But I think at the same time we can also understand the system
and the environment that we're living in and understand it's
not about blame, it's the reality that not everyone is
comfortable with men showing vulnerability.
Philippe, so listen, we we've got we've got a cracking episode
coming up, haven't we? And we're going to start, it's
Ruth Whitman who wrote the book Boy, Mom.
We are going to start at Ruth Whitman Fan Club because my God,
this woman is brilliant that are you going to love this episode?
And we'd also really like to thank our sponsors, Bubble and
Movember, who are giving us support and we couldn't do this
podcast without them. So thank you, Bubble and
November. You are a massive roof fan.
I mean is that a roof poster you have on your wardrobe?
Behind you I can see. I've got a head tattoo, a face
tattooed on my chest. I've just, I've just gone the
whole way, Elliot, because I love that woman.
I have. I haven't had a full woman crush
for a long time. But Ruth, you, you've got me.
She was great and I think it's a great 1st guest to have actually
because of all what, what she says really sets the tone for
the whole podcast. So it's it's an amazing 1st
guest and thank you, Ruth. There's so many Nuggets, so many
gems, so much wisdom that she brought to the conversation.
So enjoy everybody. Great.
Today we are joined by Ruth Whitman who is the author of Boy
Mum, Raising Boys in the Age of Toxic Masculinity.
She is British and lives in the United States with her husband
and three sons. Boy Mum is an exploration of the
specific challenges experienced by boys and how feminist mums
might navigate their conflicting and complex feelings.
I certainly nodded along to every single word in this book
whilst being astounded by some of the data and stories that
Ruth shares. Ruth starts the book by talking
about the pitiful looks and comments she would get when she
said she was having a third son, and how since Me Too and Donald
Trump and Harvey Weinstein, it has felt like everywhere she
turned there was another example of a bad man.
From in cells to masculinity influencers to men's rights
activists to Greg Wallace, the list goes on.
She understood, of course, why there was so much anger directed
at men, but as a mother of three sweet boys, it was impossible to
see men as the enemy. She sets out to ask a question.
Is there a way to offer real empathy to boys, to give them a
more expansive story about their own possibilities without
betraying any feminist principles?
Ruth, welcome to To Be a Boy. It's such a pleasure to have you
here. It's so great to be talking to
you. Thank you.
I, I mean, firstly, I've got it here and I have, I mean it is
dog eared. I have highlighted, I have
folded things over. I absolutely loved this book so
much. And honestly, I, I, I've thought
about, I've wanted this book for a really long time and I've
thought about that. I'm sure you feel the same,
which is why you wrote it. And I did think to myself, maybe
one day, you know, I'll do bit research and I'll write a book
about that. But thank God you did because
it's so much better than anything I could have written.
It's honestly, I mean, it's funny, it's hacked full of facts
and data. You look at the all the
different angles from every different angle that you could
possibly look at it. And I just, I mean, I found it
completely captivating. So thank you for writing it.
Well, that's really lovely to hear.
Thank you so much. So we want to get right into it
because as I said to you earlier, we could do 24 podcasts
based just on this work. And so we want to maximize our
time. While we've got you do in the
book, you say some stuff about boys, which I found tremendously
validating. And one of those being that baby
boys actually may need more nurture than baby girls and that
their their brains are behind baby girls when they're born and
they develop it in a different order to baby girls.
Parts of their brain that are responsible for emotional and
self regulation and impulse control develop up to two years
later in boys compared to girls, which I found absolutely
fascinating. So can you tell us a bit more
about that research you uncovered in relation to
hormones as well and the impact they have on boys?
Yeah. So all this nature nurture stuff
is really interesting. And it's also, it's kind of
quite fraught because, you know, sometimes when you sort of talk
about how much is innate and how much is socialized, it can feel
like you're making some kind of political statement.
And so I went into that research with a lot of trepidation.
And, you know, there's this whole story about, you know,
boys will be boys. And it's like the idea, you
know, when you hear that, you kind of imagine that boys are
like sort of innately aggressive or destructive or really sturdy
and tough and, you know, not very vulnerable.
But what I found when I looked at the research was actually
almost the complete opposite, that a baby boy is actually more
emotionally sensitive and fragile and vulnerable than a
baby girl at birth. And the reason for that is that
the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the part, you
know, it's very easy to oversimplify, but broadly
speaking, the right part of the brain is the part that deals
with emotions, emotional self regulation.
So like calming down if you're upset and forming attachments
and relationships. So it's like your emotional
center in a baby boy that's about a month to six weeks
behind a baby girl in development at birth.
And if you know newborns, you know that a month to six weeks
is really quite a lot like if you think about premature babies
or whatever. And so when a boy is born, he's
like a little bit more, you know, the boys tend to cry more
often. They find it harder to calm
down. They're more kind of upset by
traumatic or, you know, or difficult events.
So if they're separated from their caregiver or, you know, if
something goes wrong, you can see that a baby boy takes
slightly longer to calm down. Obviously we're talking about
averages here, you know, group averages, Every individual is
different but and a baby girl is slightly, generally slightly
more independent, slightly more resilient.
So you can see that in the data that pretty much every bad thing
that can happen to a baby. So whether that's like abuse or
neglect or poverty or post nasal depression from the mum, all of
these things have a bigger impact on boys than they do on
girls. And you can see data on that
that carries all the way through life.
You know that boys are more vulnerable to disruption and
that kind of brain vulnerability, you know, it's
brain immaturity and brain vulnerability carries on
throughout childhood. So boys brains just develop more
slowly. And I think we tend to, you
know, our stories about gender make us sort of see boys as much
tougher and steadier and that they may be not as emotionally
complex as girls and that kind of thing.
But actually, if anything, they're more, they're more in
need of that extra support, that extra nurture.
And because of our ideas about gender, we actually end up
treating baby boys a little differently than baby girls.
You know, we think they're tougher, we think they're
sturdier. We throw them around more.
We don't give them quite such nurturing care as we give baby
girls. So they need a little more and
they get a little less. And that ends up adding up to
quite a big difference over time.
I just wanted to clarify on one of the points that you said,
because I can imagine some boys or men that might be listening
will be thinking, hold on, our brains are not behind girls.
But it's not about intelligence, is it?
Right. It's about order.
Yeah, yes. It's not about intelligence at
all. So like cognitive skills.
And this is I think why this issue becomes really
controversial because people get hung up on these like who can
read maps and who can do maths and who can do, you know,
reading and everything. Actually cognitively in terms of
like intelligence, boys and girls bones are really similar.
They have very similar I QS, but it's the emotional development.
There's sort of emotional and attachment development.
That's the bit that is a little bit behind and the parts that
deal with that self regulation. So calming down impulse control,
that sort of thing. It's those things which are
different. And I know that you said the
baby boys are they're bathed in testosterone when they're in the
womb as well. How do hormones play a role as
well in their behavior? Yeah.
So it's interesting this because again, this is quite
controversial because when they're kids, boys and girls,
like pre puberty boys and girls actually have similar levels of
testosterone when you measure them.
But when baby boys are in utero in the womb, they get this kind
of testosterone influx and that has been connected to more like
what they call rough and tumble kind of play later in life.
And you can see it in other species as well.
So in rats and in primates and everything that male infants to
male children tend to play in a more physical in a more
rambunctious way than female infants.
And again, group level differences there will, you
know, everyone's going to know a really, really active girl and a
really, really quiet and sedate boy.
So there are there is a lot of variation, but at a group level,
boys tend to play in a more physical and more rambunctious
way. All my two boys do is punch each
other in the face and play with their own penises.
That has been my life for the last 11 years and I know reading
your book you said you seem we you were living my life and with
every page I was like, yes. Well, you know, because I grew
up with that version of feminism that's like, you know, boys and
girls are only different because we socialize them differently.
And, you know, it was almost like a point of principle that
it's all about socialization. So I went into parenting.
I was so like, full of, you know, kind of full of myself,
honestly. Like my boys are going to be
different. They're not going to be badly
behaved. You know, I'm not going to let
them get away with all this, like behavior and all of this.
And then of course, I was like blindsided.
My boys were the most like rough and tumble, the most wrestling,
the most penis grabbing, the most like all of the things they
like the nerf guns the most, you know.
And it felt like reading this research actually felt quite
validating for me as a mum because we have this idea that
we have so much control over how our children turn out and that
every decision we make is going to have this huge impact down
the line and all the rest of it. And I think there was something
about knowing that, you know, when I saw my neighbors, little
girls who were like colouring in nicely and, you know, and
sitting at a restaurant and being all sweet and playing
nicely with adults, you know, there was, it was a little bit
validating to say, look, it's not all you.
It's you can't, you know, there are things you can do.
And there's a lot of that parenting matters in a big way.
But it's not like, oh, you, you don't have so much control.
I found with my daughter so my eldest is 9 and interesting.
When she's playing with my wife, she's happy to sit down and
color and read. When it's Daddy, she wants to
like, beat me up and come in my head and it's nice.
But sometimes I want to chill and read a book as well.
What do you think about that? Yeah, I just want to relax.
Sometimes I can't. So what do you is it?
Is it because have I modelled that to her?
Maybe I've been more physical and I probably was when she was
younger, so she's picked that up from me.
Yeah, I think kids in general, like, live to their parents for
different things. And yeah, there's all this
research that shows that dads behave really differently than
mums. Like the way that dads interact
with kids is really different and they are more physical with
them. Dads tend to rough hairs and
like, play in that more physical way.
And so she probably is taking cues at some level.
She's like, oh, daddy's the one who's going to be the, like, fun
and bucks as well. And I know as a mum, I see it
the other way around, which is like, that's always the fun one.
You know, it's like he gets labeled the fun one.
And I'm always like the boring chores, you know, nurture one.
But you know, so it kind of cuts both ways.
But I like hearing it from a daddy's point of view that
you're just like, let me just be the one.
I want to be the boring parent sometimes, but on a Sunday when
I'm knackered. Yeah, I see them.
I see them having a great time sitting down on a sofa and then
when we take we take turns. So it's my turn now and I don't
get to sit down on the sofa. So I wanna be more boring.
I'm gonna welcome being more of a boring parent.
I think that's that's my future. That's my love.
That be more boring. I love that be more boring.
My kids have been loving watching Flash recently, the
series, and I get really excited when I see the women in Flash go
in for a fight and they'll like take on the bad day and they'll
be really bad ass and you know, kick them to the ground.
And then totally, I'm like, you can do it.
But what I found, what I really took away from your book, which
I found really interesting, was that the overall message, one of
the overall messages, because there is a number, was that
where mate, we're asking girls to be more like boys in the
strive for gender equality, but we're not asking boys to be more
like girls. We're asking boys to be boys and
girls to be more like boys. Could you talk a bit about that?
Yeah. I mean, like if you go into the
bookshop, you know, every book that has the word girl in the
title will somehow have the word like mighty or superhero or like
Supreme Court Justice here in America or scientist or whatever
it is. But you don't see so much of A
push to get boys to embrace more feminine coded things.
So like, you know, nurturing or nursing or caregiving or
relationships or whatever. And you know, especially when it
comes to friendships, there's all these stories for girls
about friendships and relationships.
And you really don't see any push to have more stories like
that for boys or barely. And the reason is I think it
comes down to, you know, it's sexism.
It's like we value masculine things higher.
We value things associated with boys and men more highly than we
do value things associated with girls and women.
So if a girl is going to act more like a boy, we see it as
this like aspiration. It's like a promotion for her.
It's like you've achieved something well done.
You're more like a boy, you know, be anything a boy can be.
But for a boy to behave more like a girl, it's still seen as
like this, like humiliation, humiliating, like demotion.
It's like a step down for him. And we still have internalized
that, you know, run like a girl, throw like a girl, act like a
girl. You know, it's a bad thing.
And so I think we have to ask ourselves as a culture, what do
we really value? And I think those sort of
feminine coded things are actually things that are really
important for boys and girls. You know, relationships,
nurturing, empathy, caregiving, they're things that are so
important to living a good, healthy, valuable life.
And if we don't value those, and if we tell boys that these
things are worthless and stupid and girly and all the rest of
it, then we're not just devaluing girls and women, we're
devaluing these like racial values and skills.
And so we need to think about what we really value, I think.
And that goes into the workplace as well.
You know, I think for ages we've done women development programs
and part of that has been to display what you'd call more
masculine traits rather than also working with the men to
help them to be caregivers, to have more empathy and, and, and
better listeners and those kind of things too.
And a lot of my work is trying to work with men to introduce
those, those aspects of life and understand how that's important
for the workplace, but just themselves as human beings,
their own longevity and well-being.
When I was looking at the research for this, I was
thinking about romantic conquests.
And I've found that I think a lot of parents, in my
experience, parents of boys will tend to celebrate their son's
romantic conquests. Now you've got a, you've got a
girlfriend. But yeah, they're really.
I've seen it with my own daughter.
It's quite disturbing and I found that with parents of
girls, they don't do the same thing.
They don't necessarily encourage their young 910 year old girls
to seek a boyfriend. Have you found that in regards
to how parents kind of maybe push their own ideas of the
hunter in a relationship to their children?
Even that word conquest, I mean, you'd never talk about a
conquest of a young girl. Like, oh, you, you've conquered
your boyfriend, you know, you've, you know, it's just that
word. I think everything for boys we
tend to frame in terms of like battles and heroism and winning
and competition. And so like girls, you know,
there's something really icky about that isn't that it's like
a conquest of a girl. It's not really seeing her as a
human being that you're making it like connection with as
person to person and seeing her as a fully developed human.
It's like something that you win as a prize, you know, and the
actual person involved is really incidental.
And I think that's a really sexist, sort of misogynistic
message. And you're right that with
girls, you know, in some ways we kind of over emphasize
relationships for girls. So there's this idea that but
maybe when they're bit older, So it's this idea that you're
nothing without a man, you're nothing without a husband.
You know, you can't be doing it on your own.
You know, that's maybe a sort of slightly older story.
But we do, you know, girls like play bride and they dream about
their weddings and then they meet up with boys who have been
taught to see relationships as this kind of winning and
conquest things. And so, you know, there's a real
like mismatch of expectations when they actually do have
relationships when they're older.
And the other thing is that, you know, when when they're
teenagers, I think we like really overemphasize like sex
for boys in a way. It's like, it's sort of like
they're only interested in one thing they're only interested in
like in sex and like conquests and all the rest of it.
And girls are only really interested in love.
And I think it kind of tends to like underestimate like girls
desire and girls sexual drive. Girls need for pleasure.
And also when it comes to boys, underestimate their very new
real need for love and connection.
You know, every boy I interviewed so many boys for,
for the research for boy mom, you know, from like 16/15/16
through like college age. And I thought they'd be like,
oh, all I care about is sex. And that was not the case at
all. Every single one of them was
like in love with somebody, you know, talking about how much
they love, you know, their crushes and the girls or boys or
whatever that they were in love with, you know, and it was just,
I don't think we give them permission to be fully human in
that way. Did you recall you saying in the
book that there is research that shows that boys and girls want
intimacy equally, that they they both want intimate, meaningful
relationships? But you know, we don't perceive
it that way. Yeah.
And what was really interesting was that it it's both for like
romantic relationships, but also friendships.
Like this was the biggest thing that kept coming across through
all the conversations I had with boys is that they wanted like
deeper, more intimate connections with their male
friends, but they felt like they couldn't have them.
They felt like it was shameful to be vulnerable.
Like one boy described his friendship group as a very
unsupportive support system. So it was like they all had fun.
They hung out. They talked about, you know,
video games and sports and whatever it was, but a memes and
that kind of thing. But they they really felt like
they couldn't share their deeper, more fun, vulnerable
selves. And in a way, they just weren't
modeled that they weren't taught to do it.
So partly it was like this shame around it and partly they just
didn't even know how they were. Like, where would I even start?
Like, how would I even identify it in myself to even start to
tell it to another person? And that's really sad.
That's not what they wanted. They really wanted it to be
different. But they were just like.
I don't know where to where to start with this.
And it's so sad that that continues into adulthood.
You know, a lot of my work with men, one of the big things that
come out of that is lack of friendships is loneliness.
They may have acquaintances, people they go to the football
with, they see the school gates, but they can't go to when she
hits the fan. They haven't got that, that
intimacy. And we talk quite a lot about
the differences in general in some male and female friendship
groups. And there's a great analogy
about a wedding. If you thought about a hen
party, you know that hen is going to know she's loved and
supported because she'll be giving massages and words of
affirmation and all, all the love and she'll know she's loved
100% for me and, and maybe us, we're going to chain you to that
lamppost because I love you so much and they're stupid naked
and chain you exactly. That's because I love you so
much. That's so true.
But, you know, I've heard so much, and we talk a lot about
male privilege and, you know, male power and all of these
great things that men have in our sort of patriarchal system,
but we don't really think about what they lose, you know, what
they lose in that system. And I think I always was like,
sexism was about sort of closing the gap between what men get and
what women want. But when I had boys and when I
started researching this subject, I was like, you know,
boys and men get everything except for the thing that's most
worth having in life, you know, which is really profound human
connection. And, you know, honestly, yes,
they have power. Yes, they have privilege.
All of those things are real, the pay gap, all of that.
But that lack of access to connection and intimacy is so
harmful psychologically and that loneliness that comes with it.
And pretty much every woman I know has lots of close friends,
you know, or maybe not lots, but like a couple of people that you
can really be yourself with. And, you know, it's modeled to
us. We have best friends all the way
from the beginning. We read about friendships,
female friendships in books. We see it in in movies, we see
it in TV programs. We sit in everywhere.
And I think boys are just so taught from an early age to, to
see human interaction as competitive, combative, you
know, who's the best winning. And let's chain that chain our
friend to the lamppost, you know?
Yeah, the statistics around it are quite terrifying.
I think one in four men say they don't really have any friends
any close. Friends.
Yeah. So it's, you know, it's really
concerning, particularly when we know that men's mental health
tends to be worse than women's. And obviously there is a link
there which leads me on to a question about the dredge deaths
word screens. And you know, I mean, I remember
reading in your book and I was thinking about it the night this
happened, that he said something about what girls, I think it's a
friend of yours who had a daughter.
And she said the girls will come over for a sleep over the door,
get into bed with each other and the door, sit and, like, snuggle
up and have and chat together. And.
And I had a sleepover for one of my sons.
And they all just sat and stared at a screen and played video
games and didn't speak to each other.
And then they were like, OK, it's bedtime.
And I was like, do you not want a midnight feast?
Do you not want to, like, run around and scream or like, you
know, all the things that I'm doing?
Yeah. What do you think?
What role do you think screens plays in this I?
Think being a boy in this particular moment, there's so
many different cultural forces. So it's like there's all the old
problems which, you know, toughen up, man up, don't
express your emotions. And then there's a bunch of new
problems both sort of politically and also then we add
screens into the mix. And it's just, I think boys,
there's so many sort of natural problems with boys friendships
anyway that make it sort of harder for boys to connect with
one another in that deep way. And then screams come into the
mix. And it's just such an easy way
to kind of avoid that kind of connection that's already really
like a little for a little hard. They don't really have the
skills. And then, you know, the screens
come in, especially video games. And it's like just a very easy
alternative. So they're not building those
social muscles in a way to like, just hang out in person, you
know, to get through that social awkwardness, to get through that
anxiety, to get through like, what do we talk about?
What do we do? And I think, you know, sports is
another way, probably a healthier way that boys connect.
But again, it's not really about talking or being face to face.
And they're just like, not given a chance to build those skills.
But I know it's the same with my boys.
Their friends will come over and they're just a bit like, oh,
what do we do, You know? And if I say no screens, they're
like looking at each other. And you don't want to be that
mum who's like the weird house where there's no screens
allowed. You know, you don't want to,
like, put your kids at a social disadvantage.
But then they just don't develop those skills.
And, you know, sometimes I'll say like, OK, no screens until
whatever time. And they're just like, you know,
and I found for myself actually, it's sometimes about managing
the discomfort in B as much as anything, it's about like
managing my own feelings around it.
And if I can get through it and just be like, it's OK, they're
going to be OK. I have faith in them.
They'll figure it out, you know, give them a few suggestions, but
just sort of have faith that they can do it.
Then eventually they do. But it it's a real barrier and
it's really hard. So Elliot, you very luckily have
your parents close by and they do quite a bit childcare for
you, but they go to Grenada for three months every year.
What do you do when they're gone?
How do you look after yourself and your relationship?
Well, I feel very sorry for myself.
Going to Grenada is amazing for them, but it's not so great for
us. Luckily, we have Bubble.
Bubble provides us with emergency childcare, backup
childcare and ultimately the opportunity for us to have date
nights and also go to the spa every now and again.
Because as parents we need to maintain our identity.
We need to maintain our self-care and our relationships.
So Bubble is incredible for where my parents jet off to
Grenada. Find and book background checked
nannies and sitters. They can be with you in as
little as an hour, twisted by parents you know Lycos search
bubble childcare in the App Store or Google Play store.
So I was reading about a parent who has a son and their son was
playing with their friend. Down the road they'll play
online games together, Call of Duty, FIFA, whatever.
And the parent was really trying to encourage their son to like
socialize more and get out. So he said to him, why don't you
go to your friend's house and spend time together?
And his son said, well, if I did that, we wouldn't be able to.
Play. It's because the.
Whole world, yeah, existed online.
They played together through online gaming.
And the idea of them spending time together in a room, yeah,
it's like, what do we do then? Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's
so I've heard like a variation of that story so many times from
different parents. And it's like it looks slightly
different depending on the age group or whatever, but it's the
same thing because like male social life is migrating online
and these sort of big multiplayer video games and
places like Discord have just become the new male social
spaces. And it's just sort of drifted
that way. And I think, you know, it's
really worrying and there's lots of data that supports this idea
that actually boys are spending around 5 hours more per week on
screens than girls are and about 5 hours less socializing in the
real world than same age girls are, which is really scary.
That's a really big difference. And so obviously the screen time
debate effects everybody and all teenagers and all the rest of
it. But I think we're missing out
that this is quite a gendered problem.
And in a way, many of their sort of, you know, the hot takes and
a lot of their like, discussion around screen time has focused
on girls and things like social media and social comparison and
online bullying. And we haven't really talked
that much about what's happening with boys and the way that
they're replacing real life socializing with screen based
socializing. And the more it becomes like
this self fulfilling prophecy, I think a lot of boys and a lot of
the boys that I spoke to are developing almost like social
anxiety around real world interactions.
They just don't know how to do it.
And so and it becomes scarier and scarier and the more scary
it becomes, the more they avoid it.
And the more, you know, the more they avoid it, the less they're
able to do it. And it just becomes like a
vicious circle. And similarly with sex, real
world sex and dating. And, you know, now you've got
porn, you know, it's just this very easy way to just avoid all
of their like, like challenges and fears and anxieties and
rejections and all of the stuff that you get around, you know,
real world dating. And it's quite a lot of harmful
content as well, I find for for young, for young men as well, in
terms of ideas around dating, ideas around what you should be
and what success looks like. And sometimes I listen to this
because interesting for my work, so I can see what's going on.
And I feel like a lot of those ideas from like the red pill
space, is this not true in real life?
They are not true in real life, yes.
And, but I think it's very easy for a 1314 year old boy to see
this content from someone who looks successful and believe you
need to earn 6 figures before you approach a, a girl and ask
them out for a date. And I think it's, it's
ridiculous that yeah, that that's happening.
But I can see how a 1314 year old young boy would believe that
that's that's true. Yes, and I think these these
kinds of masculinity influences and all the rest of it does have
such a huge sway on. Boys now, and especially because
it's again, it's a sort of vicious circle because if
they're not going out and meeting people in the real world
and seeing what real life is like and that all kinds of men
get dates and all kinds of boys are successful socially and all
the rest of it, you know, they're getting these ideas
online. And then that becomes, you know,
their world is narrowing, and that becomes the truth, you
know, and they feel they have to live up to that.
There's, there is quite a bit in the book which I found really
terrifying from one. It's about sex and porn consent.
And obviously we've talked a bit about the influence that porn is
having on men's relationships with women.
I know that you talk a bit in the book about strangulation,
asphyxiation and the number of boys and girls that are
participating in that. But I again, I was really
surprised by some of the data that you found out that actually
it tends to be more women doing this to boys than the other way
around. Well, it's not so much that
it's, well, it's both. So it's, it's that.
So I think they're kind of, there's this whole conversation
about strangulation and choking, and often there's a lot of
shaming or most of boys and men in this conversation.
So there's this sort of idea floating around that all these
boys are like desperate to strangle and choke their
girlfriends and girls and don't want to and that they're doing
that without their consent. And that does happen for sure.
And it's, you know, and it's utterly wrong that that should
ever happen. I'm not condoning that in any
way, but the reality of the data is a lot more complex, I think.
I think there are a lot of boys that really don't want to do
that stuff either that either don't want it done to them or
don't want to do it to anybody else.
But they feel pressure to be a masculine and they feel that
that's what girls want and expect.
There's lots of, there was actually data that showed that
there were more girls who were doing it to boys than the other
way around without asking for consent.
And maybe that's because of our narratives of consent, this idea
that boys are always up for everything.
They always want everything. They always want everything
sexual and that only girls can be assaulted.
And I think that's, you know, that narrative is developed for
a reason. And obviously get boys are
physically stronger than girls and it is really different a boy
strangling a girl without her consent, then the other way
around. But I think that we're not
really giving boys a good narrative when they can where
they can say that I don't want this, this doesn't feel good to
me. I don't want to either do it to
somebody else or have it done to me.
You know, I feel like that consent conversation has really
only gone in One Direction, and it's the most important
direction, but the other direction is also important, you
know, And I think there are a lot of girls who are almost like
policing boys masculinity and expecting them to act that way
and saying, well, if he doesn't do that, he's not very
masculine. He's not a real man.
He's not, you know, he's not aggressive or dominant enough.
And I think boys in this moment are just so paralyzed in how to
act. You know, on the one hand,
they're held to the standards of masculinity, which is like, be
tough, be dominant, be aggressive, be assertive, be a
real man. And, you know, everybody's
policing that. You know, girls are policing it,
society's policing it. But on the other hand, there's
this like other narrative post me too about consent and never
overstep, never go too far. You know, boys are sort of
predators. They're rapists.
And so they're just like, oh, I can't do that.
And they just almost, they don't know how to act at all.
So it's almost like easier to just watch porn than it is to
try to have a real relationship or real sexual life with an
actual human. Boys are having less sex than
than they ever have been, is that right?
Yeah. So boys, so you see that the
trends that are happening with like socializing and friendship
in terms of like boys are spending less time friends.
They're also having less sexual and romantic contact than they
ever have before or ever since researchers like started
tracking back in the 70s or whatever it was.
So it's this boys are becoming more and more and more isolated
and this isn't healthy. I think boys are very scared of
the consent me to conversation and, you know, getting accused
of something or hurting somebody, you know, doing
something wrong. I think that this generation of
boys in particular have grown up, you know, the boys who were
going through puberty when the me Too movement kind of exploded
online and now voting age, university age.
And they have spent their whole adolescence in the shadow of
this conversation telling them they're toxic, they're bad,
they're predators, they're rape it, you know, And those
conversations were really important.
And of course, it's important for boys to know about consent.
But I think there's a generation of boys who are scared stiff.
Yeah. Yeah, And at your chapter Rape
Con, I felt, I reading it, I felt conflicted like you did.
I could feel the conflict as you were talking about the research
that you were doing and as you were talking to mothers of boys
who've been accused of sexual assault, who were convinced that
their sons hadn't done anything wrong.
And you know, as you know, many mothers listening to this, like
me, will have experienced sexual assault, will have experienced
not being believed when you say a man has done something to you
that was inappropriate. And so you, you bring that
baggage to that conversation inevitably as a woman.
But I'd, I'd love you to talk a little bit about those those
experiences you had while researching this, particularly
that conference you went to, which all of that was
fascinating. Yeah.
I mean this was. Far and away the hardest part of
this book to write because like you, I'm a feminist.
I really want to get across the belief women message.
You know, I've had my own experiences and most girls that
I know are women that I know have had some level of
experience with like sexual harassment or sexual violence or
not being believed. And this was, you know, so true
this, this thing. And it still is true that women
will report these things and not be believed.
So it's like, but there's also this new situation in which boys
are being accused of things that didn't happen.
Or maybe, you know, there are two very legitimate perspectives
on the same event. And I was so because it's almost
feels like in this moment, this issue is so fraught that there's
only room for one story. It's either, you know, girls are
liars and they're trying to ruin men's lives, or boys are these
poor victims and these terrible lion girls are saying that
they're, you know, they're resulting them when they're not.
And actually, human relationships are so much more
complicated than that. There are of course stories
where like a boy will force a girl to do something and it's
terrible and all the rest of it. But there are also many, many
times when boys and girls can be in an encounter and people are
not reading signals correctly. And one person will have one
perspective, another person will have another perspective.
Something can feel really, really bad to a girl and feel
really icky and unpleasant, but still not be assault, that it's
not criminal. And so I went to this
conference. It was a conference for boys
who'd been accused of campus sexual assault.
I live in the States and this was in America, and campus
sexual assault is a big problem here.
And I went into this conference being like, you know, these
rapist boys, they're terrible. Why are their mothers or parents
defending them? You know, they should go to the
dogs that, you know, no punishment is too, too bad for
them. And the more I listened to these
stories, the more I realized that these are just, these cases
are just so sad. And there was no due process.
They were just being expelled from university.
Things were decided. And then eventually I only focus
in that chapter. I only focused on cases which
had already been settled through official procedures.
So I didn't, it wasn't for me as a journalist to like try and
adjudicate an assault case, you know, but these were cases where
a boy had been suspended from college.
His life had basically been ruined.
His friends wouldn't talk to him anymore.
He'd been cancelled. His, he was usually in the
terrible, terrible depression. He would appeal the case and it
would go through several rounds. And then often there would be a
lawsuit and like, a legal case, and it would find, it would
find, you know, after surveying all the evidence that he had not
been treated fairly, that there was no due process, that he
hadn't really done anything wrong.
And then it was settled. And he'd get a payout, usually
from the university at the end. But it was just like the payout,
his legal cost was so high it would barely even cover that.
His life has been ruined. He's like, tarnished as a
rapist. And, you know, but as a
feminist, it was so hard to report on those stories.
I felt like I was almost betraying women, betraying
feminism by saying this is even possible, that you're sort of
saying, well, don't believe women.
And that's absolutely not what I want to say at all, because
that's still a really serious problem.
And I think it's so good that you've had this conversation and
you are becoming part of the reason we haven't addressed
these issues. Now, we were talking earlier
about the fact that there aren't many kind of podcasts around
this. There isn't much conversation
around this, just globally. And I think it is so sensitive,
it is so conflicting. And it's difficult to address.
But I think, you know, thank you first and foremost.
It's really good that you're bringing this to the forefront
because they are important conversations to have.
And I think from my perspective, when I'm working, you know, with
men, with dads to improve their lives and help them to see the
world differently together, whatever that means for them.
I always have to say it's not just for the dads and the men,
it's for everybody. It's because if we support dads
to be more equal caregivers, that's better for workplace
gender equality for women in them, uphead penalty.
And kind of, you know, always have to preface it with that.
I guess I think it's part of the tricky conversation is talking
about some of the negative experiences that men face when
we have so much privilege. Yes, it's just difficult to
bring to the forefront. But we have to, and we have to
be brave. Yeah.
And we have to put it on the table and we have to consider
and discuss. And I think also we shouldn't
see it as. A 0 sum game.
I think in our culture at the moment, it's like if we talk
about men, then we're sort of doing something terrible to
women or that we're like taking away from the feminist fight and
or vice versa, You know, men are feeling it the other way around
that like women's gain is their loss.
But actually this system, you know, this idea that there's
this stereotype gender roles, that these expectations, this
like patriarchal system is really harming both men and
women in different ways. And I think we need to be able
to have a very honest and fair conversation.
And I think boys especially, you know, it's so new this this
conversation in a way. And I think boys feel really
shut down and really like, you know, at the moment, it feels
like people are only listening to girls and women.
And, you know, obviously that's to be set in the context of the
entire history of oppression of women.
But you can see if you're a 15 year old boy, you didn't do any
of those bad things. You're not Harvey Weinstein.
You're just like trying to live your life and it feels like boys
need to be able to have a voice to be able to talk about the
issues for them as well. Beautifully put.
I'm going to just bring it back a little bit to education just
because I don't want to miss this brilliant chapter that
you've written on the education system.
And we know that boys are doing worse in the education system
than girls are. They are in the UK, they are in
the US. We know that boys are much more
likely to be excluded. We know that if they go into
higher education, they're much, much more likely to drop out.
Could you, I found some of the stuff you said in there that I,
the way I had interpreted what was happening in schools.
You, you talk, you talked a bit about some of the theories and
that people have and why they're not necessarily true, which I
found really interesting because you actually dispelled some of
the things, the myths that were floating around in my head.
Yeah. Could you talk a little bit
about what you think's going on? I think there's lots of
different things. Going on but one of the is the
boys are underachieving in school compared with girls.
So girls have been doing better and better and better.
So it used to be that girls were held back, but as soon as those
barriers to girls achievement were taken away, you know, since
around the 80s, girls have been, you know, gaining on boys,
gaining on boys and now they've overtaken boys and pretty much
everything from every every level of schooling from like
reception through to university postgraduate degrees beyond.
And there are lots of reasons for this.
It's a really complex topic, so I don't want to oversimplify.
But one of the big sort of pushes in the way that people
talk about this is this, that the reason why boys are
underachieving is because we've kind of like feminized the
classroom. Like we've made school like
suitable for girls, but not suitable for boys.
And there's this real push to sort of go back to let boys be
boys and let them be, you know, more masculine and you know,
that their sort of natural interests are being squashed and
all the rest of it. Now, I took issue with this idea
in the chapter by saying that actually it's a lot of the times
it's really the opposite thing that's going on, that the kind
of masculine norms that are like, be tough, be strong, you
know, other things, the very things that are holding boys
back in the classroom. And these stories that like that
studying is kind of girly and that it's feminized and that
it's is actually the thing that's keeping boys from
achieving. And also when you talk about
sort of feminine coded things, things like social emotional
learning and like building really strong relationships in
the classroom are sort of, you know, not that those things
should be feminine or masculine, they should just be human, but
they're kind of coded as feminine.
Those are actually the things that would probably help boys
the most in the classroom rather than going back to some like,
we're all at war and what we need is more competition and
what we need is more violence. Boys need, you know, it goes
back to what we were talking about at the beginning, which is
boys need more nurturing. They need more emphasis on
social emotional learning. They need more relationship
stuff. They need more nurture.
And that kind of nurturing environment, which we've coded
as feminine, you know, actually would benefit boys.
And there's lots of data on this that shows that boys really
benefit from, you know, having more social emotional input.
Fascinating. I I really.
Want to get from. You because there is again,
there's the stuff in this in the book which I found so useful an
idea of what we can do, Ruth. I mean, help us, help me.
What would you say from? All of the.
Brilliant research that you've done.
What are the messages you would have for the parents?
Less parents of boys listening, I think people, really.
When I talk to people about this, what they really want is
me to give them like some script that is like, these are the
exact words to say to you that will fix everything.
And you know, obviously, you know, I wish that were true, but
it's not really true because, you know, every child is
different, every adult is different.
But when I, when I think about what, you know, what solutions
there are, how we can move differently, I tend to split it
up into like 3 areas as just more as like ways to think about
how to interact with your son rather than like very specific
actions. But so they, those three areas
are critical thinking, curiosity and care and connection.
So critical thinking. I think part of this is just
naming the problem. I think that we've done a really
good job with girls and women. Obviously it's not over, but
we've done a really good job of being able to call out when we
see sexism. And most people, most, you know,
even like 11 year old girls can usually spot when something is
sexist and be like, oh, why are all the boys, you know, getting
the top jobs and the girls not or why is the Princess being
rescued by the Prince? You know?
So I think they have a language and vocabulary to talk about it.
And I think we're really behind with that when it comes to boys.
They're not really able to name the problem and it feels
shameful to name it. And like, for instance, you
know, just a really small example.
I don't know if you guys ever saw the film Inside Out, you
know, the Inside Out maybe. So it's this.
I love Inside Out. Yeah.
It's amazing. Inside Out too is even better as
well. Yeah.
So it's like this brilliant film I.
Loved it. I took my boys to, we binge
watched the whole like 1-2 and all the little shorts and it's
this wonderful film and it's all about a girl who's got this
really complex emotional life and she's like all her friends
have a complex emotional life, Her mum has a complex emotional
life. You're tracking each other's
emotions, but like every time a male character comes on screen
in any of those movies, that person is an emotional idiot.
Like you go inside their brain and the emotions have their like
feet up on the on the desk and they're checked out and they're
watching the football and they're like go and they don't
know what anyone else is feeling or thinking.
And it was just like, if that was a stereotype about a girl in
a mainstream Pixar or Disney movie or whatever, you know, if
it was a stereotype about a girl being like ditzy or bad at maths
or whatever, we wouldn't let it pass and we shouldn't let it
pass for boys and men with emotions, you know, So I'm like
watching this with my sons and being like, how, you know, what
message are we giving them that that everyone can have a complex
emotional life except for them that they're not capable of
that, you know? So I think it's just about
hauling these things out in popular culture, seeing them
doing the critical thinking ourselves, having these
discussions about it, talking about it more and more.
And just like making these ideas normal currency in the culture
that so that when people, when boys feel weird about stuff,
they can draw on, you know, on these conversations.
So that's the critical thinking piece.
Curiosity, I think is the is what we were talking about just
before that. I think a lot of boys feel very
shut down in this moment. They feel like girls are allowed
to speak. Girls are allowed to talk about
their pain, that nobody's really interested.
Everyone's saying, you know, you're so privileged, you're so
powerful, you have everything time to be quiet, take up less
space. And actually when I talk to
boys, they're feeling like nobody's really interested in
them and what they feel and what they're going through and what
they think. So, and I think especially it's
like feminist moms, this is real pressure to like, not raise a
toxic son and to like be really strict with him and like not,
you know, make sure that he's not terrible.
And I think it can end up being that we're always judging and
reforming our sons and like trying to make them different or
like imposing an agenda and not really showing this genuine
curiosity about what it's like to be them in this moment.
So I think that and the boys that I interviewed was just
crying out for people to listen to them, to talk to them.
And that doesn't mean accepting every sexist thing they say, but
just be like, what is life like for you?
I'm not trying to change you. I'm not trying to reform you.
I'm just listening to you. And then the caring connection
piece is, you know, as we talked about, boys are kind of slightly
under nurtured in our culture. We tend to touch boys less.
We talk to them about their emotions less.
We give them, you know, we tell them to man up.
We tell them to be tough, you know, and often, like,
especially with teenage boys, we let them kind of go off into
their rooms and just, you know, disassociate a little bit.
And I think the only way we can reach them and the only way that
we can teach them to care about other people is to build the
best possible relationship with them that we can.
So meet them where they are, advocate for the make them feel
loved, give them a lot of hugs and touch and positive care,
make them feel like we're on their side and just build the
very best relationship you can as your authentic self with the
specific child that you have. You know, and it sounds obvious
and it shouldn't. You know, and it should be
obvious, but it kind of isn't, you know, I think, boys.
You know, there's a stereotype of the boy mom being like this,
like over indulging, you know, but actually really kind of the
opposite is true. And I think we just need to
build that very caring, very nurturing relationship with our
son so that we model that and then he can bring that to other
people too. Love.
That, that is brilliant. Thank you.
Look, everybody buy this book, like buy this book.
It's so good. It's so good.
And Ruth, where can people find you besides obviously buying the
book, which everybody should do. Well, thank you.
Yeah. So.
Burke obviously I'm on Instagram.
Ruth Whitman, it's two PS in the middle.
And I write a sub stack called I Blame Society.
So if you're on sub stack, come and find me.
And I ran a monthly discussion group about these issues, about
boys, about men, masculinity. And it's always really
interesting. People have great things to talk
about. And I write about this subject
on there as well. So yeah, on sub stack and
Instagram and Ruf, you said something.
Which is going to stick with me. You said lots of men and boys
have everything apart from the one that's most important,
that's human connection. And I think the way you've said
that is incredible. And I think it sums up a lot of,
like, what we're trying to do with this podcast.
So, yeah, just thank you. Thank you so much.
I've loved this conversation. It's been such a pleasure
talking. With you both.
Thank you. Thank you.