The way that we turn boys into men in this culture, quote unquote, is through trauma, through disconnection. What it means to be a man in our culture is to be disconnected from your feelings, from your real wants and desires, your deep relational wants and desires, and from others. And the cost of that disconnection in boyhood is disconnection as an adult. And so I believe that when you're working with girls and women, the move is often a move of empowerment, moving them more deeply into the relationship by helping them, in Carol Gilligan's famous phrase, find their voice. The healing move for boys and men is not so much empowerment.
The deep wound for boys and men is not disempowerment, it's disconnection. Boys are cut off from their emotions, from their sensibilities, from their wants and needs, and most importantly, from vulnerability. By the time boys have reached kindergarten, there are already statistically measurable diminutions in their willingness to express feelings. They still feel feelings, but they won't let you know it because they already know the politics of masculinity.
It's already been internalized. Three, four, five. Now the wound to girls and women, if you read Carol Gilligan's work and those who follow.
It happens around the edge of adolescence. This is the famous loss of voice around 12, 13 years old when girls fall under what Carol calls the tyranny of the kind and nice, and they stop telling the truth. Who do they stop telling the truth to? They stop telling the truth to boys and men. They stop telling the truth of what they see.
The first big picture item I want to say is that masculinity is not a natural state. We don't talk about turning girls into women. We just assume that nature is going to take care of it, but it's a big deal for boys and men, supposedly. This is not about development.
This is about the imposition of a code on vulnerable boys, whether they want that imposition or not. The second point I want to make is that women have had a revolution. The feminist movement has been around for 50 years and it's had mixed results, we used to think, before the latest political turn. That feminism was being very effective, but it turns out that it's not. It's mixed.
And there are many people who want to break out of the old patriarchal roles, and there are many people who do not want to break out of the old patriarchal roles. But by and large, women have, across the West, liberated themselves from the traditional female role of the nice and the kind and the emotional and the ineffective and all of those female stereotypes. Women have reclaimed their wholeness.
So that we now want our daughters to be both sexy and attractive and good math students and smart. We want them to be whole people. This is what I want for boys and men. I want boys and men to become whole people. I want us to be strong.
I don't want, you know, one of the complaints that gender conservatives level against gender progressives or feminists is that we want to feminize men. that we want to demasculinize people. We're trying to turn men into more like women. You know, that just makes me ill.
I'm not interested in feminizing men, nor am I interested in masculinizing women. I'm interested in each sex claiming their wholeness. So I want smart, sexy women, and I want strong, big-hearted men. Strong, tender men. So that when the moment calls, for sweetness and tenderness, a whole man can be kind and compassionate and vulnerable and open.
When the moment calls for ferocity and toughness, a whole man knows how to be fierce and tough, just like a whole woman does. So I'm not interested in half people. I'm interested in whole people, both men and women.
The third big picture item I want to point to is that the type of man that we're describing, i.e. How much they cleave to the patriarchal norm, how traditional they are, has a lot to do with their subculture, where they are geographically, for example, are they in Texas or are they in New York? But it has mostly to do with their age. Millennial men are, by and large, I'm a great fan of millennial men, and by and large, they are the most gender progressive generation that has ever been on the planet.
Millennial men expect. dual career families. Millennial men expect to share decisions. Millennial men universally support gay rights.
They're doing better in their marriages. And one of the things that I write about in the article, Patriarchy Under the Age of Trump, is the research is really clear that egalitarian marriages where people jointly decide things and where it's more democratic and less hierarchical breeds happier people. happier, less depressed individuals, and more satisfied marital partners. So women have undergone a revolution, and now it's men's turn to deal with it. The largest cultural response to women's empowerment has been a backlash.
If only women would back off and go back to the 50s, all would be well. And what I want to tell you is the toothpaste is not going back in the toothpaste jar. Women are not going back to the 50s.
I don't want women to stand off of their... demands, I want men to stand up and meet them. What are these demands?
Women want more emotional intimacy from men than most men have been able to deliver. Women want more emotional intimacy from men than most men have been raised to deliver or even want in many cases. And this asymmetry between the dissatisfaction of women and the bewilderment of many men is not addressed in therapy.
In the therapy that I do, RLT, we put all of this on the table. We don't try and soft pedal the gender issues. Women come into therapy suspecting that it's a female endeavor, often dragged by their women.
They don't drag their women to see us. Women drag their men in to see us. And they think it's going to be hostile territory.
And what we taught as therapists is, well, you know, hey, listen, we're equally gender friendly to both of you. We love you both. And this is as much about masculinity as about femininity. Now, open your hearts, articulate your feelings, and share your vulnerabilities. What man is going to think that that's masculine?
It isn't. It's a feminine endeavor. That's okay.
We name it. We put it on the table. So what, Harry?
Your wife is insisting that you learn about intimacy. Good for her and good for you. Intimacy is good for you. It'll keep your heart ticking. longer.
It's good for your physical health. It's good for your mental health. And Harry, it's good for your children.
Your children want an open-hearted father. Times have changed. And so I very much support the revolution that women have involved in over the last 50 years. And I want a commensurate revolution for men.
The bottom line is that traditional gender roles under patriarchy are a bad deal for both. sexes, not just women, but also men. It's what I call poison privilege. Yes, you have the privilege to exert yourself in a number of ways, but you have to lose your heart in order to fully do that.
Not a deal that I'm particularly fond of.