Sep 7, 2022 • 31M

Stepping back and stepping up: A conversation about evolving masculinity with Marsha, Mischa, and Revaz

Sep 7, 2022

1×

0:00

-30:44

Open in playerListen on

Appears in this episode

The Twelve Inquiries

Welcome to The 12 Inquiries, a year-long conversation between two friends about 12 topics that interest us. You could call it a monthly salon, though that sounds a little grandiose. We hope you’ll join us in the conversation. Who knows, maybe we’ll become friends. Each conversation will take place over a month. We’ll publish an introductory newsletter and podcast episode the first week of each month. During the second week, we’ll host a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with guests. On the third week, we’ll publish a short recap of what we learned, and respond to questions and comments we receive. During the fourth week, we rest. Well, really, we prepare for the next month’s inquiry. https://www.thetwelveinquiries.com

Episode details

1 comment

We had a fun and thought-provoking conversation with Mischa Byruck, Marsha Olson, and Revaz Ardesher about the current, confused state of masculinity and where it can go from here. We talked about dating and sex, friendships and mental health, conflict and confrontation … and so much more. Some excerpts:

I kind of feel like we're at a bit of an inflection point. Women are now unwilling to settle for less than all of the things that we were forced to become in our own upbringings, which is being emotionally available, being able to name your feelings and communicate them.
I sent around an article to the group that was in psychology today about the rise of single, lonely men. And part of it is just about how women aren't gonna date down anymore.
And I think we really do a disservice in the way that we have raised men and now they're just starting to figure out that they have to do something a little bit differently because it's not gonna work the same and women don't have the same reasons to partner anymore. You know, we're, more able to be alone if that's easier, as I think it is in many cases.

I mean, I didn't see my dad cry until my grandmother's funeral, which was just like five years ago. I grew up in a household where you're waiting for your dad to come home and you don't know what kind of mood he's gonna be in and he’s just silently repressing all of his feelings: the anger, the sadness.

One of the biggest themes that I've seen is that we have intellectually gotten past sexism like, of course, women are equal, got it. But that will betray all kinds of really harmful things that we still do. We don't have a lot of men, certainly not in our political field, for instance, speaking about what it really is to be a man of integrity.

I do feel like there are these masculine traits and then there are these “toxic masculine” traits. And sometimes things get lost in the shuffle. I think being “strong” is a masculine trait and I think that it's a positive trait. When I think of “being strong,” I think about how I would've wanted the men in my life to be strong for me. And what that would've looked like is: more stepping up, more functioning. I have had to be highly functioning or over-functioning because, you know, the men in my life have not functioned at all.

1 Comment

Poncho

May 17

I find it quite telling that the woman in the conversation glibly states: "In my family, my mom did everything. My dad worked, and when he came home from work....". As if paying the majority of the bills and allowing her mother the luxury (and yes, in todays society it is a luxury) of being a stay at home mom is "nothing". In todays society, we can completely devalue the role men have played in family formation, but if a male would have said the dad did "everything" and devalued the role of a stay at home mom, then this, oh yes, is an example of the patriarchy!

Or take the assumption that men being more in touch with their feelings is the truer more "masculine" baseline. Has it ever occurred to the participants that a more feeling centric focus is the female way of addressing emotions, and maybe men are more "activity" focused? Or even (gasp!) do better holding it in? It's no wonder that the counseling profession is almost all females now, and attracts very little attention from males, except of course the nerdy, feminized males that tend to create podcasts like this.

It would be like listening to a podcast run by truly sexists men, and listening to them wine about how if their female partners would just stop wanting to talk about everything and instead, when angry or frustrated or sad, would just go outside and work on the car with them to help calm their nerves. It just assumes the male baseline as the default.

This is the problem with many podcasts like this. There is no baseline. The assumed baseline is the utopian feminist vision that has never existed and experience has shown the closer we get to it, the less happy women are. What is needed in these discussions is an evolutionary baseline. What are men's general strengths? What are women's general strengths? What has evolution adapted us towards? Given this background, what is a reasonable baseline for each sex to strive towards and how far are we from that. Maybe then can we have a reasonable conversation.

Expand full comment