DOD8: What's a Healthy Masculinity? or Do We Even Need the Concept?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's sure to remind you to oil the blades on the lawnmower every time you use it.

0:00:36 Eli: Hehehehehehehehe.

0:00:37 Tom: I'm joined by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick, and I'm Tom Curry. Gentlemen, good afternoon.

0:00:43 Thomas: That instantly made me want to launch into a different angle on this show.

0:00:46 Eli: Hahahaha!

0:00:46 Thomas: So, uh, the lawnmower, okay, it, it's

0:00:51 Eli: Yeah.

0:00:48 Tom: Is it an angle at like about 30 degrees in in alternating to get the lines exactly right.

0:00:55 Thomas: Related to the, what we're going to talk about, because I feel like part of the, the of the world, this is a broad, I can fucking get out the board with all the thumbtacks and the yarn, but like part, part of it is, part, but part toxic masculinity that's, you know, Trump's, Trumpism is a form of that and the kind of fascist leanings and all that. And I swear to God, it's related. The refusing to use electric powered stuff, it's not as cool and manly as the gas powered bullshit. Is that anything? You, oh, well, you don't, you guys don't really have conservative family, but that's, that's a very conservative thing. So, like, growing up I had to do all that shit. I had, you, the, you know, chainsaw with a two-stroke engine and the oil and the gasoline and all that, and the weed whacker, whatever. And it's great because nowadays that shit's all electronic and I bought one that you can plug in and it's just better in every

0:01:01 Tom: Wait,

0:01:49 Thomas: Single possible way.

0:01:50 Eli: It just does it.

0:01:50 Thomas: Yeah. But no,

0:01:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:01:51 Tom: You plug your lawnmower in. I haven't mowed a lawn in years.

0:01:52 Eli: Yep.

0:01:53 Thomas: Not, not the lawnmower. Well, they might have a plug in lawnmow. I have a battery one, but the, uh, it was a funny story. Uh, well, I'm getting that and we can decide if this is any good.

0:02:03 Thomas: But think it's viewed as like a, I don't know what it is. Is it, is it because the fossil fuel industry had already hijacked Republicans? Is that what it ist? Or do maybe it just feels manlier to have an engine that goes like, you know, and like the smoke comes out of it.

0:02:19 Eli: I think that's a part of it. I also think that, like, that's all you can do. Like, you can't participate in art, or culture, or beauty, or time, or space, or love, so literally all you can is, like drown out the moment with the roar of an engine. Just like, meh! Meh! I can't feel. I can feel that I'm not feeling.

0:02:43 Thomas: The other day I did need to procure a whacker. We call them weed eater. I don't know what the actual term is, but anyway, the thingy with the spinny things that chops the things. And the new place we moved into that actually has a yard, and I bought a little battery one, and I, for a moment, I was like, okay, I am now a conservative because I bought this thing and it is a piece of shit, a dinky little nothing. It, it was nothing.

It was capable of nothing. And I was just about to be like, damn it, maybe he's, fucking conservatives are right about the gas power, whatever. But then I ordered another one, which was a plug -in weed eater. And I plugged that shit in. I got like a hundred foot extension cord, which is, you know, it's real, real manly stuff. I love that. I'd love having that. And I plug it in and the thing, I weed -eated the house.

It actually, the whole house, house chopped it in half, fucking it unbelievable power. Like more power than any weed eater I've, and I've weeded, and you did a lot, of we have eaten a lot. I used

0:03:44 Thomas: To do it for other people too in the country town. I had to fucking, just, God damn, the weed eating, I've done. Yes, yeah.

0:03:44 Eli: Oh, God. You were like the shovel kids, but with weeds. Like, hey, can you have $20? But I bet they didn't pay you. You were just like, hey. Okay, good.

0:03:56 Thomas: They paid me. They paid me a modest amount, and I would just be covered in green bullshit, like, because it just, just chomps the weeds all over you. I'd have to wear, you, full, know, jeans and like the, the of the California summer, you want to be like a hundred and fucking 20. And I just become covered in green. But anyway, none of that holds a candle to this plug-in thing I got that is so powerful. I could, I was scared of it. Like, it was unbelievably powerful. And all I have to say is to those of you out there who are like a Tim Allen type, need to be gasoline rather than the electric whatever bullshit. Like, electric motors are fucking great, they're better, they're badder. I love the fact that my lowest possible quality Tesla, cheapest one they had, with the rebates, that's the lowest model there is, with no add-ons, could outrace anybody's bullshit souped up gasoline power car in a heartbeat, it's not even close.

0:04:48 Tom: Yep. Yeah. But it won't Yeah, Actually, I think, as stupid as it might be, I think like you've actually hit on something because there's a, it's that idea of power. Like, there's this, like, there's an equal sign between like masculinity and power, but not actual power, but like masculinity and the performance of power, and I think, like, the difference is, like, your Tesla actually is faster than, like, the fucking Tesla model 3, like, you said that, you just buy just a regular, like, off the, the fucking showroom floor, and drive it away, it's faster than, like, Porsche, but the Porsche performs power, the Porsche like has this performative element, they actually tune for supercars, they tune the sound, the engines make so that performance of power

0:04:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:08 Thomas: A million times yeah, I was beyond that, they actually play engine sounds through the speakers, slightly, they actually it, it's yep, artificial.

0:05:39 Tom: Fucking shit, are you serious? Yeah.

0:05:41 Thomas: I swear to God, there's a whole, um, I listened to a sound podcast, 20,000 Hertz, they did a whole episode on it, and have, it won't sound right to people if they don't do that. Like, they, they want a certain sound, sort of like how in movies they do that, like, you know, explosion sounds or different sounds are completely exaggerated. It would never be what it is in real life. But because we're all expecting that, it would seem unrealistic if we didn't have that totally unrealistic thing. It's interesting.

0:06:07 Tom: That That whole idea that like masculinity is, is, is like this grand, like, of, of power as a show, is, is a huge, I think that is true, like, I think that's a huge part of the problem. It's like, if you don't have anything that actually underlies who you are and makes you genuinely powerful, that a lot of people don't, like, a lot, men aren't powerful, a lot of men don't actually have, or they don't understand really from whence power comes, so they're just like, well, I don't know, I, like, I'm not actually right, so, like, I don't know, look, I can rev an engine, though, I can have power by proxy, I can purchase loudly powerful items to sort of like hide behind. What the fuck else explains any of that, what explains a motorcycle? There's literally nothing, nothing else that could explain a single fucking motorcycle.

0:06:36 Eli: Loud noises. Mm -hmm, yeah,

0:06:53 Thomas: And Oh, God. Do you guys know it's The Fucking Downfall of Our Civilization? Not to get all too. But like genuinely, there are so many ways that this very dedication to this fake stuff that seems more powerful, but actually isn't, is creating, you horrible environmental consequences. You know that trucks, you Know the whole thing with the fucking Ford F1 Fit, all those trucks, You know, that people drive that they are terrible for hauling things. They're actually the, like, if you actually want to haul stuff, you buy a totally different looking thing that doesn't look manly at all, the, it has more dedicated. No, you know those ones? Uh, it's not a Subaru, there's like those, those, uh, like Honda or Toyota trucks that look, they don't look manly basically, but they're better for hauling, so they're just a flatbed basically, all the, the, all power is dedicated to that, whereas with, with these American trucks that we make, the actual capacity of, of the bed is nothing. And it can't even, uh, very much because it's so overweighted down with the bulky largeness that it wants to have. It's really interesting.

0:06:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:07:02 Eli: Sure.

0:07:32 Tom: Like, what, like a Subaru Outback, like, what, okay, so It's like the fucking truck nuts and lug nuts and like mud flaps of fucking silhouette chicks, is not, that's not the same thing, it's not valuable power, it doesn't doesn't

0:08:07 Thomas: Yeah. Should put those on the like dinky looking, you Toyota truck just to, that would be funny. She'd be like, look, I'm practical. I want to be able to haul better, But also truck nuts and whatever.

0:08:18 Eli: I would also like truck nuts on my Toyota Prius, please. I

0:08:26 Tom: Are Any concessions? I'm just curious, now that, now that we're talking about it, like, there any confessions that either of you or unknowingly make to that kind of, cause all that's built in, like all that, like, socially, like, constructed, we're all product of that. So we can't, it's, I wonder if, are, are there elements of that you think that are like baked into your decision-making? Are there of that you may have bought into

0:08:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:50 Eli: Mean, it was a huge part of my life growing up, I'm really, I'm really glad we're talking about this because my dad is a classic example of a man's man, right? He was a football player and then he was a rugby player, and he was was big and strong and muscular, and I was like, daddy, I must have vegan food before the musical, And like, like that, that societally always existed, and it was really really difficult for me growing up. It's not difficult for Michael because I'm insane, but genuinely, like growing up, it was hard not to be big, it was not to strong. I went through a whole phase where I wanted to be be good at fighting the way my dad was, so I went through, I think, like all chubby white boys from upstate New York, I went through a marsh taking martial arts really seriously phase.

Um, like I, I came out with better more positive ideas of masculinity, but part of what fascinates me so much is like my father was never ashamed of me, never was like, you know, know, never brought any of that grossness home, but it just hung in the air, right.

In fact, he went out of his way to show how proud he was of me, and I think I've talked before about him, like, sports cheering at my musicals and all that kind of stuff, but like it still hung in the air and still largely largely formed a picture of what I thought of myself as a man and ended up greatly affecting how I thought of myself around women, right.

Greatly affected my relationships because I such a young age I didn't think of myself as masculine or worthy, so the way I went about courting women was totally different, right. Never thought that I could like cruise bars and pick up girls, right.

So that a lot of that, like that's built into masculinity that I carried from my father, again, against his will, greatly informs like who I am as a man and what I'm passing along to my son, right, because the truth of the matter is, like, he will not see the were many wonderful things about having like a very typically masculine big strong guy as a dad and my son, write, like if anyone asks my son, hey, how did driveways get shoveled, he's going to be be like, well, the same guy who mows your lawn comes to the door, and then your dad is in his penguin pants and his Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt, and he gives him money on Venmo, and then he sits down and watches

0:09:09 Tom: What about

0:11:15 Eli: YouTube videos about how video games are designed.

0:11:19 Thomas: So true. One of these days, I know I've said it before and I have it written down, I need to tell my inverse of your theater story, but it will, I think it's better. It'll be better on a bad dad episode or something. 'Cause it's, it's a lot, but noting that for later. But

0:11:35 Tom: Like aesthetically, I'm curious, Eli, I just want to like go back to that idea about like the performance of power. I'm just curious about it, like, about aesthetically, did you gravitate toward like primarily male aesthetics?

0:11:46 Eli: The opposite, The right? Way that I compensated for feeling insufficiently masculine is that I stopped stopped participating in culture just about like middle high school. Right. The joke is my mom said it famously, I was wearing a Christmas sweater in the middle of January with her, and someone was like, "Oh, I like, like your Christmas sweater." And she goes, "Yes, my son's not participating in culture," and so I, I Use that as a joke all the time, but like literally starting it around like mid middle school, early high school, I wore sweatpants, funny sweatpants, like zoot suit sweatpants and a sassy t-shirt all the way through college, right.

So I went hard against all concepts of masculinity. Right, my hair was always unkempt, I never did did anything with my hair, I never attempted to do anything with my hair, my beard is now unkempt, I never do anything with my beard, I never attempt to do nothing with my beard. I drive a Prius and the bumper sticker says "Why am I like this," so like there's I, I have gone in the opposite direction, and it is, it part is of the culture of masculinity to be like, I'm not playing, you know, uh

0:12:09 Tom: Right Yeah Much is right, because like, like, as a man, that you like, have an option because you don't derive a significant amount of your social power from your looks or sexual attractiveness or social elements that that sort of surround that, as a man you have the option to opt out, so like, impossible to escape the, the masculinity masculinity, even in the escape of like trappings of it

0:13:17 Thomas: This is funny, I, I was watching a show actually for Philosophers in Space, and I wanted to bring this up to you guys because I find it so funny, as we've kind of made fun at the like paleo guys and the, you, the appealing to like old timey stuff, there's a show that, uh, watched for Philosophers and Space called Before Owners, have you guys heard of that, by chance? No?

0:13:35 Tom: No. No.

0:13:35 Eli: No.

0:13:36 Thomas: I'll tell you why you haven't heard of it, it's on HBO, and HBO, the primary primary purpose of the HBO app is to hide good shows from you. It tries to not show you what would be good. It's on HBO. Everybody should check it out, but it's a foreign show. To, and give it, the quick premise is all of a sudden people start arriving, it migration, and that what it is meant to do is critique a lot of that stuff going on. But the way they do it is with a fun premise that there are people arriving from different times all of a sudden.

So, like, there three distinct times, like 1800s, you, Viking times, and then Stone Age times. And so it's this really funny, interesting show of like the people from those times integrating into society. It's a delight. I highly recommend the show. Here's why I bring it up.

Of the characters is basically an 1850s or 60s guy, I cannot help it, just, I want to pose the question why do I love this fucking guy so much, like, it's, there's something about old-timey handlebar mustache guy, you know, with the hats and the clothing, and he's just, and they, they write him so well, I really love the character, because you, you actually expect that he's going to be like the stuck in his ways, you know, old -imey guy that can't adapt, but then it turns out he does adapt really well, and an interesting critique, because I think it says, as what's really manly, like the best positive masculine thing to do is to adapt to the best knowledge of the time.

It's really interesting. But like, why is that guy so fucking, why? I just, I want to be like that guy. I watched that and I'm like, God damn it, should I do it? Should I grow the mustache? Should I start smoking a pipe? Should put on the hat? You know, like it's just it just, me, me, guys not have any of that drive when you see a cool old timey guy?

0:13:43 Tom: I I actually, I totally relate to that, I remember either this idea that I've had in my head for a long, long time, so, like, I grew up like grew up with my brother and my dad, so we had no female influences in our house of any significance, and so I remember, like, like, of, of the thoughts that I've had for a long time is, I can't imagine anything less. I can imagine anything more emasculating than like pretending, I don't know how to do something because it's not the right kind of work, or not the right type of work. It's not the kind of competency. Um, like when you grow up in a house, like without, it's just my, everything is like, it doesn't matter if it's laundry or cooking or cleaning or woodworking or mowing the lawn, like it's all your job.

Like everything, there's no such thing as a gender Distinction, around work or labor. And that includes emotional labor, like all the labor of a home. If you grow up in a house full of men, has to be done by men. And so it, like, I remember from a very young age when I started to sort of toy with these ideas, thinking like, fucking, the idea of being like, I don't know how to cook, seems fucking emasculating. The idea I don't know how to or won't learn how to, all of of that is like, that to me is deeply emasculating. When I think of like really like non -toxic masculinity, like the things that I drive toward personally revolve around the idea of competence, like,

0:15:46 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. I love this.

0:16:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:41 Tom: I think of competency is like this synonymous in some ways with my own personal ideals around masculinity, um,

0:16:48 Thomas: Know, I think it's worth saying, and I hope, apologies if I'm getting all social justice -y for a second, but I think It's worth Saying that anybody can perform these roles. That in reclaiming like the toxic masculinity and turning it into a positive masculinity, I noticed that a lot of what we're doing is just describing being a good human.

0:17:06 Tom: Yes.

0:17:06 Thomas: And I think it's worth just saying, but, but it's also very valuable because we are in a world of a bunch of kind emotionally stunted, toxic men. Like, I think, it is valuable to reclaim masculinity in a positive way. And to say like, I, Tom, I could not be more in line with your thinking on this. And it, it's weird because it comes from a different place. I come from the opposite place. Like I noticed and what I've learned about is how much shitty men use use toxic, incompetence to just, just slave labor essentially from their, from their wives.

0:17:33 Tom: Yep. Yeah.

0:17:33 Eli: Yes. Right. I don't change no diapers, right, is the whole thing.

0:17:38 Thomas: Yeah. Or like, ah, you, I wouldn't, I would mess it up. You'd be much. And like, there's absolutely a healthy version of this where it's like, you know, you can specialize. It's, it's always more efficient no matter if you're talking about in the economy or anything for people to specialize in stuff. And so it's fine if it's, like, all right, right. Between amongst you and your partner, like you're better at this kind of thing. I'm better at the unhealthy toxic male version of it is just like using strategic incompetence. And then what, what is also so sinister about it is that I think men use the fact that women, in speaking in generalities, like moms will be shamed more and therefore cannot tolerate any, like, in certain things. And so they end up just picking up the slack, you know, like they can't, who will be judged if a kid isn't dressed or if a kids, you don't like the mom will be judge more than anything. And so exactly.

0:18:22 Eli: Right. If dinner's not made, society blames mom.

0:18:27 Tom: Well, Bar for being a good dad is a very, very low social bar. The bar for being a good mom is literally an impossibly high bar because it is constantly shifting depending on which moms are, and often it's moms, doing the judging of the other moms. We've made it real easy to be a good dad. Like, oh, you don't hit the kids and you occasionally give them a hug? Like, you'll hold your kid's hand when you cross the street? You're You're occasionally out on your own, like, with a kid like, whoa, you must be fucking father of the year. And it's like, holy shit. No, it's just it's not incompetent. Incompetency should be something that everybody feels uncomfortable with and seeks to remedy in their life. Like, if you realize that you're incompetent at something that is a necessary part of parenthood or relationships, like, that should be something you're like, ah, ought to fix that.

0:18:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:00 Eli: The kid.

0:19:26 Eli: Right.

0:19:26 Tom: Not like, hmm, I can probably leverage that for my personal fucking benefit.

0:19:32 Eli: Sure.

0:19:32 Thomas: But there is a fake masculinity that appeals to way more people, unfortunately, that I think I brought up before, which is no, I'm a man and a man doesn't have to fucking change for anybody. Man doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do want to do man, you know, it's just like it's really just means being an asshole, like really, when it comes down to it, if you speak in real terms, it's not about being masculine or not, mask, it's like, are you a fucking asshole, are you good person, but because of our society it's kind of those are the terms we're working with. And I'm so with you, Tom, I had the same kind of approach to life, and now ultimately I've settled on some stuff. Like Lydia is just better at some stuff, and I am better her at some stuff that she can't do.

And we, you know, we, we divide out our work and, and some of it, though, definitely not all of it, is pretty gender normie. Like we found that we've settled into certain things, but I'm constantly trying to check myself and not, and into that. Like, oh, am I just avoiding doing something because I don't like to, and then like, she has to do it. And it's hard. It's really, it's actually really hard.

Maybe not for Tom, because of the way you are, but like, I think it, it can be hard for even the most well-meaning, trying to be a good dad and partner. It can be to not accidentally do, to fall into like just incompetence, or if not that, like accidental incompetence, and then your wife picks up the slack kind of thing. I think it's difficult.

0:19:44 Tom: Right. Yes.

0:20:50 Eli: Absolutely. That's a huge, huge part of it because, because the expectations are set out for mom, the minute you let your guard down, you don't feel bad falling into those habits, right? You don't feel bad following into those clicks. Okay, I'll give a great example. Um, wife, up until like last year, did all the cooking, right? Because Anna is a way, way, way better cook than I am. Still today, um, when she started to, um, pump, my son, her pumping and cooking also meant, meant, meant now that she had literally zero time for herself, um, and I saw this and I was like, okay, like, what can I do to help? And so I started to cook, we got, uh, like Blue Apron or Green Chef or one of those fucking things, and I started to make those for dinner every night, and then slowly learned to make, you know, look, I'm still a way, way worse chef than she is. You would never want to, no one will ever order pizza muffins at a restaurant, but I can make them, right?

No one ever wants my beans and rice at a restaurant, but like, I, it exists every afternoon at 10 and it frees up the time for her. Um, it is, wasn't, I didn't sit down and think to myself, yes, Anna's doing all the cooking, 'cause she's the woman, right? It

0:21:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

0:22:01 Eli: Just didn't occur to me that that was a household task I needed to take on until she was running out of her time, right? And I think one of the toxic masculinity habits that I'm constantly fighting against is that as men, we are often told to wait until women are exhausted, um, and I'll say this specifically, this is like the mothers of our children, we're often educated to wait until our partner is exhausted or overwhelmed before we help, right?

0:22:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:29 Eli: Like, oh man, I can tell hell, you're really overwhelmed. Fine, fine, let me get up from the lazy boy and finally do something. And doing something first is hard, right? And one of the reasons why it's hard, and obviously we have three different work situations, is like, very easy to say, I deserve rest. It's very hard to say let me cut my rest so that another person can preemptively have some.

0:22:33 Thomas: Yeah, totally. Yep.

0:22:53 Thomas: Well, and all of society and social teaching tells us that our time is more valuable, like men's time to pursue their things, like the whole, you great men, quote unquote, in history, the reason they can do that and they could do that is because tremendous amounts of unpaid labor that, you know, they were relying on from their partners. And I feel like the message from society is, yeah, like the things men are doing are the important things and our time is more important. And we have to fight actively against that message, I think, as a society and as as men, in

0:23:25 Eli: Mm -huh. It's it's hard because on the one hand, many of the messages that are being sent to our children, especially those of us that have male children, which is all of us at this point, is like you should do great things. You should, you know, create and discover and, you buildings or whatever the fuck masculinity wants. I don't know. Make a loud engine that goes ram, ram, Ram, Ram. And Like you want your kid to take that message, you also want your kid to take the message that, like, the work of loving and caring and creating communities is as important, um, and often those are at cross purposes. And often you're having to communicate those values to a child, no, you have have to simplify these concepts, which by their very nature cannot be simplified because they're very, very complex topics, right?

0:23:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:15 Thomas: Well, I think you can be conscious and it's a little different, maybe, coming from, you know, you have one child. I think that in my situation, and I imagine Tom somewhat, when you have two children and one's a boy and one is a girl, there's like very, there is a lot of chances for some either accidental or some like explicit messaging that you do, you know. Really tough.

And, you know, one thing I battle against with Arlo and Phoebe is, and I just genuinely don't know the solution for this, but, because Arlo older and Arlo is younger, and also Phoebe is precocious in beyond belief, you, she can emotionally understand, understand and handle things on a hundred times better than Arlo. And that puts the burden, like, often when there's trouble, I put the burden on her, because naturally I'm like, well, this is the person who I can talk to who's old enough to understand.

I can be like, "Phoebe, what's going on?" You know, like put that kind of that burden of whatever, if they're fighting, if they're, something you wrong, I put it on her. And I have to actively be like that. I don't know. I don't know what the perfect solution is, because I think if the roles were reversed and Arlo were older, I think it would mainly just be that they're older.

It's not necessarily, you, like a gender thing, but I don't, I don't, I think it is somewhat like, I, and I'm worried about it being accidentally a gendered thing of like, I am making Phoebe take on the emotional labor because she's responsive to it. You know, it's, it's amazing. And it's a feedback loop, because when they're responsive to something, then that's where you're like, okay, this is how I can communicate, communicate, it's

0:25:48 Eli: Right.

0:25:48 Thomas: You know, and like Phoebe is so sensitive to our, you, disapproval, and Arlo is just not. And worry how I'm going to manage that going forward. I want to set two different standards, and worse than that, very gender-based standards where it's like, I expect her to be like behaving really nicely, and then if Arlo doesn't, it's like, well, I can't, what can you do? You know, he's kind of an asshole.

0:26:10 Eli: Oh.

0:26:12 Tom: Well, I I would poke at a little bit of that and you just touched on something that I think about a lot, is that it's okay to have different standards for different kids as long as the reason for the standard isn't gender related. So we to hold people, all people, whether they're kids or not, accountable to their level of ability and competence, not just accountable to whatever the standard is, because that's some arbitrary middle ground standard, standard. I mean, my kids are wildly different in terms of their ages, their competency levels, their maturity levels, and not just because of their edges, but just, I mean, like you, like you mentioned, we've, I've got people in my house that are very emotionally precocious, other people that are not. I've got people in my home that are very intellectually precocious, others that are very much not. Not all be held to the same standard. Not actually what fairness is, what's

0:26:34 Thomas: Yeah, I but I think it's really tough, fine line to walk because

0:27:08 Tom: It is. No, no, and I

0:27:08 Thomas: It can border on the thing I just talked about, which is, ah, I'm not good at this thing. You do it. You can border on that a little bit. If that maybe they might have different competencies or different whatevers are social expectations based on gender, you know? So it's, I do think both sides of that are totally true.

0:27:09 Tom: Yeah Right. Yes. With you, I just, I just wanted to poke at that little aside a little bit because I, yeah, gender related, absolutely, absolutely. You've got to, I, thing that occurs to me is, and I want to just kind of poke at this with you guys because I'm curious, you know, there's all this idea of like, what, and Thomas, you, you made a point of sort of assigning of this a moment ago, so we've got this idea, I think, of what toxic masculinity is, is, is there masculinity, is that really, is that a concept that's real or important as far as you guys are concerned? Yeah.

0:27:28 Thomas: Oh, for sure.

0:27:56 Eli: Are you guys ready for me to get weird, you want me to get super fucking weird? So I think the concept of gender is, um, the I

0:27:58 Thomas: Yes.

0:28:00 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, so Wait a minute. Is gender the same thing as masculinity, though? Like, and I'm not trying to definition of is is, but I, I Don't, I Think That's a different question.

0:28:09 Eli: Think Yeah. I I think Masculinity is A is

0:28:15 Tom: What

0:28:15 Eli: A presentation of gender, traditionally.

0:28:17 Thomas: I don't think you can have masculinity without gender. Can you? I don'T know. We're getting into philosophy, but yeah.

0:28:22 Tom: I know. Boy,

0:28:20 Eli: Yeah. I Think masculinity is a representation of gender, and I think gender is ceasing to exist the way that race, um, blurred, uh, and the example that I use all the, the time is like, um, olden times, like what it meant to be white. Right, so, like, Italians weren't white for a really long time, and Greeks weren't light for a long time, Irish weren't right for a very long time. White had a very specific meaning, and our grandparents, right, our grandparents, and and especially our great parents, were very, very aware of how white they were. That had a much more significant meaning to them than it has to us, right?

Like, we're all aware that we're white, but I honestly don't know, I assume Tom's Irish because I've seen him, but, like, I have no idea where you guys are from. That would not have been the case 50 years ago.

And my crazy out there theory is that that's what's happening to gender right now, is that gender will always exist in some form, like people will be aware of their gender and their gender presentation, but it will matter in the same way as, we'll be like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I guess I'm a guy, right? I think it will just become a blurred line.

So, I think what we're watching, the reason why masculinity feels shaky, and Tom, correct me if, I, this doesn't, if I'm repeating back, but, like, for me, the lines of gender are blurring more and more every day, and I think it's because it's it is going to cease to exist. Our grandchildren's concept of gender will be far removed from our

0:28:35 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:29:52 Eli: Own. Yeah.

0:29:52 Thomas: Well, okay. I think so. However, to whom though? Like I think gender may be disappearing to our social kind of but you I think if you watch, you minute of the highest rated television show on cable, you know, Tucker Carlson or whatever, like you can see that half of the the country is nowhere near us and is in fact the exact opposite. And even indeed, I think a significant chunk of the left half of this country is also not really there on those gender issues. So I agree with you, Eli, but I think that that progress happens on like this vanguard of, like you social justice thought more that doesn't necessarily mean the broader country is anywhere near us on that.

0:30:38 Eli: Not, not to dismiss, um, normies in the middle of the country, um, the reason I always talk about it in terms of like the vanguard is because we don't culturally think about those people, right? So, like, the Vietnam War protests, for example, were an incredibly small percentage of the population with an incredibly bad approval rating, right? But when we think of the 60s and 70s, we think the vanguard of culture, so I don't get me wrong, I am sure that our grandchildren will still have their Tucker Carlson's, right? Just like we have our Tucker Carlsen's, who are like, tan your balls and you'll be a man, and it'll be real, they're coming for you, your sperm count, but, like, they, counterculture is so definitively a reaction to culture that it's almost not worth noting in, it's only worth noting in that it is dangerous to cultural progression, is

0:30:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:30 Thomas: Don't know. I think where I'm coming from is this is why ultimately, in theory, agree that on the grand arc of time, it's possible that gender is disappearing and will kind of disappear. But for the here and now, this is what I do. I would love for us on this show to try to reclaim a positive masculinity, Because I

0:31:49 Tom: Yeah. I couldn't disagree with Eli more. So, like, Think

0:31:52 Thomas: So many millions and millions of people who are very firmly in the 50s on this.

0:31:57 Eli: Tom, speak on, speak on that.

0:31:58 Tom: Yeah. I just think that that's what you're sort tapping into is a tiny subset of a subset of the world of America, and then, I mean, not even, it's, I think that's, that's kind of a pipe dream that not everybody even wants to have happen, um, I think masculinity and gender are different. I think you can be, I think a decoupling of, of masculinity and femininity from gender are probably part and parcel of this sort of world that you're describing. But it's many generations hence, in my view, that I think it's not really... If it's even possible, I think it's light years away from happening.

I think the better strive for, at least initially, if we're talking about what we would want to accomplish, and then I'll come back to your point, Thomas, because I agree with you that I think defining masculinity in ways that are non-toxic and attainable are important. But I decoupling gender from masculinity would be a wonderful goal.

I think being able to identify fully as male without having to identify also as masculine, and being able, able to identify fully as female without having to identify with stereotypically feminine pursuits or, you, aesthetics, would be a more attainable, more realistic idea than sort of erasing gender. I was

0:32:15 Eli: I think we are very interesting reflections of this ideology, um, and I mean us as people, right? Because, like, Tom, you're a very like masculine male presenting person, right? You like to CrossFit, and even your voice, your voice is, and you drink old-fashioned, give me a one, big fucking ice cube in the middle of my, just one fat fucking I I want 90 right I want, want 90% of this glass to be iced, and then there's just, a ran a tiny little orange peel, like a drowning, like a drowning cat. And then, and Thomas, you represent this sort of like nouveau cool masculinity, right?

0:33:44 Tom: Wondering

0:33:49 Thomas: It's the truck nuts of cocktails. I'm very curious to see what you are seeing. This is going to be interesting.

0:34:09 Eli: Because well well

0:34:10 Tom: Where we were heading here.

0:34:10 Thomas: Yeah,

0:34:10 Eli: Because here's the interesting thing, Thomas is good, good looking for a person who works in radio, kind of shitty honestly, like, get a wart, dude. But anyways, but you wouldn't describe anything Thomas does as like typically man, like he's not doing clap push-ups, right? He's like playing the guitar see

0:34:27 Tom: No, Thomas is more classically masculine than I am.

0:34:30 Eli: I completely disagree.

0:34:31 Tom: Yeah, and it's a hundred percent true.

0:34:33 Thomas: Actually true because doesn't do sports. It's all sports.

0:34:35 Tom: Yes, That's actually a big deal, no, no, that's a big steal throw me a ball. If you throw me a ball, I am absolutely in a panic and I hate you, I literally hate you. If you throw me ball, like, we aren't friends anymore. If you, if you like toss me your keys, I won't even move my arms to try to catch them, because there's one, no way I'm gonna do it, and two, I now hate you. I fucking hate you. I I don't play sports.

0:34:40 Thomas: I'm serious, yeah, no, you're protesting you're putting your body on the line for the cause of not catching things civil disobedience.

0:35:00 Tom: Absolutely absolutely, like I Thomas Smith plays sports, Thomas Mith plays fucking guitar. Thomas new masculinity, what are you, what are drinking no but

0:35:07 Thomas: God,

0:35:11 Eli: Is guitar, traditionally masculine, I feel like that's the new vote, I feel like that new masculinity, that's that's crystal masculinity.

0:35:22 Thomas: There's so many interesting conversations here, because I say guitar is masculine, but weirdly, if you think of the people we idolize through guitar, they're always really, uh, like gender bendy, you know, like they're all, our, our favorite, like, artists are almost always very, uh, bordering on non-binary in a lot of ways. Like they could, like the way Jimmy Hendrix dressed, like, fucking Jimny Hendricks, that guy ruled, but like, he dressed very interesting. Anyways, that's a separate point though, sorry.

0:35:25 Tom: Yeah,

0:35:40 Eli: Sure but

0:35:48 Thomas: Go ahead

0:35:48 Eli: Like if I pulled up at Tom's house and Tom was working on a motorcycle, I'd be like, got it. If Thomas was working on a bicycle, but

0:35:48 Thomas: Yeah interesting

0:35:53 Tom: But that's fucking insane. I am I am the least mechanically inclined person on this show. It's just because I'm muscular, you just, you have a, you have an idea of me because I am muscular. And I have a deep voice, but I hate sports, I write love poems to my wife, like what, what masculinity do you live?

0:35:58 Eli: A personality wise, right? That

0:36:01 Thomas: Interesting I

0:36:10 Eli: But see, that to me is very traditionally masculine, you write odes, you're like, you are the sun.

0:36:18 Tom: Like look at six. Thomas, no,

0:36:18 Eli: I'm spelling it

0:36:19 Thomas: See both points of view, right here, I see both points of view, I love it, I love it, yeah.

0:36:20 Eli: Out. Thank you, thank you.

0:36:23 Tom: It's it's traditionally masculine for a hyper liberal, liberal worldview. If I were to go out in Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio, Indiana, I can tell you with absolute lived certainty that the majority of the men that I meet expect me to play sports. They expect me to want to catch a ball. They expect me to know who won the volleyball grand open or fucking whatever it is. They like, you just, you have a perception of me because I'm muscular. It really, Eli, it's funny, if you, if you stop and peel back, like if you take away whiskey and that I'm muscular, like a guy who writes a, a blog to his children.

0:36:49 Eli: Let

0:36:50 Thomas: Just with that one hypothetical example I hope you've proven Eli's point that you're, I love

0:37:06 Eli: Me, me put it this way, I think here's hear me out, hear me out. I have a theory, I think Tom represents all the positive traits that I think of when I think of traditional positive masculinity, Thomas represents all like new mass positive new masculinity, right? Like he, he plays the guitar and he loves his kids and he cries at movies, and I am option C, which is like, hey, if you don't want to be a negative masculinity, but you can't play the guitar and CrossFit seems hard, you can wear a Dnd shirt and a Christmas sweater to Starbucks and your order can take 20 minutes, and we'll just fucking check you off. The, you know, how the crazy libertarians think like, you don't have to have a driver's license, that's what I'm doing with gender, is I'm like,

0:37:07 Tom: Yeah yeah yeah

0:37:09 Thomas: This I love this so much

0:37:58 Eli: The fringe on the flag means means I don't have to be a penised one. Oh,

0:37:58 Thomas: Just not participating yeah yeah

0:38:03 Tom: Is fascinating. I, I love you buddy, but I think you've got me, me pegged kind of wrong. I really do. I have such a hard time connecting with other men are, you're sort of like, like you said, like, I don't know how to fix anything. I don't know how to change my own oil.

0:38:09 Eli: Absolute, I'm, I'm exaggerating for comic effect of course.

0:38:21 Tom: I DON'T know how To like sports. I don't, the guys who stand around in the driveway, in the neighborhood, I can't talk to those men, literally don't know how to do that.

0:38:20 Thomas: But there oh, man, I think that what's happening here is, I, because I see, I see both points of view on this. Exactly. Like I think, I think this is, you, Tom, you are like the fucking, you know, the picture that's the shadow, like one's an old woman and one's a young woman, whatever that is. You're that, yeah, that's, yeah. That, that with masculinity. And I think it's because, A, there's different definitions of masculinity. I think you can come up with different ones that are actually quite distinct. But if you presented them to two people individually, I think they would agree with both of them, even though they're quite contradictory. I think that's one component of it here. Another component is there's a lot of performing masculinity. That's just like talking about sports for a lot of guys can be performing masculinity. Now, to defend for a moment, not for me and for a while, I just genuinely fucking love sports.

And if anybody wants to talk about hockey, I just love it. Me, like it's not like, oh, I'm a man. It's like, no, I fucking love watching it, every second of it. But there's a lot of performative stuff that Tom doesn't have at all and wouldn't get along with dudes who are just doing performative masculinity.

However, I think Tom has so many components that Eli's hitting on of a real masculine and maybe a healthy masculinity and one that I think people would relate to on some level. I think that Tom's overall just pure your competence that you already alluded to here, Tom, that to me is a very, like, that's aspirational masculinity, to be able to, to say, here's what needs doing in the house, and I'm doing it no matter what.

To me, that's the positive masculinity that I wish we could all build and recognize that, as you say, work doesn't have a gender. There's just things that need to be done. And you have a lot of that. And I think Eli is sensing some of that, and it's also because you drink whiskey and have muscles, actually. It

0:38:43 Tom: Right right yeah

0:38:45 Eli: One's a duck, and one's, you're a duck ant a rabbit, it's

0:40:16 Thomas: Is, it is a lot of that too.

0:40:17 Eli: Also that too, it's awesome. But I think, I think it's actually really interesting because, like, as much as I was joking around, I think I hit on a point which is that like the ways in which we don't feel masculine are still incredibly, incredibly raw and painful For us. Right. Like as, as much as Tom was joking around and obviously we're having a good time, like Tom did feel the need to be like, no, no. No, you don't understand. This is fucking sucked.

0:40:17 Thomas: Oh, interesting yeah

0:40:41 Eli: Right? Like I cannot talk to them about my poetry. I have to walk across the street and be like hey man, you ever write in a poem for your wife and you find a really good metaphor for the ocean? No. No. You're, you just.

0:40:53 Thomas: And they're like who won the volleyball championship. Volleyball is the best example for you to use, it's so good. No one's ever talked about who won the volleyball championship ever in the history of time, so perfect.

0:40:59 Tom: This is I don't know. It's the only, it was the first sport that occurred to me, I don't know why.

0:41:05 Thomas: Wow,

0:41:06 Eli: I had, I had such a great, like, not knowing sports moment. The, like, three years ago I went across the street to borrow some sugar from my neighbor, I was out of sugar, and I walk over and I was like, hey, because I get along with my neighbor, I was, okay, I know this is crazy, and this is such a stereotypical thing, do you have sugar? And I noticed he had a bunch of people over, and I was like, oh, you're having a party, what's going on? He, he was like, it's the Super Bowl. And I was like, is that today? Fun, oh,

0:41:32 Tom: My wife and I go to Ikea during the Super Bowl because there's never anyone there, it's great. It's awesome, you can also get dinner reservations anywhere that you want on Super Bowl Sunday.

0:41:42 Eli: Boxing

0:41:40 Thomas: Oh, that's a good idea, gosh. I want to Talk about sports, I know it sucks because you guys don't like sports. So I'll never, but, but I think I can make this interesting to you guys, because yeah, I am the sportsman of us and I love sports and I'm deeply competitive and I're good at sports. And, don't feel like, so I'm trying to, in my life though, I to separate sports from like this macho bullshit thing, but it's hard to do because I'll be out there playing hockey, which is, it's a bit of a, it's a violence, but there are sports that are more and less like violent kind of thing. Yeah, exactly.

0:42:19 Eli: For example, very hard to do non-violently not

0:42:21 Thomas: Yeah. If we're playing volleyball, there's not a lot of chest puffing in volleyball, I don't think, even though I actually love playing volleyball. It's a great sport.

0:42:29 Eli: The way I picture it

0:42:30 Tom: Yeah.

0:42:31 Thomas: But there're not a whole lot of fun. But in hockey, every week there's... there's an opportunity in a, in almost a personal challenge for me to not get sucked into masculinity and, guess toxic masculinity because it is so easy to there there's a verbal argument bordering on a fight almost every game, you between some guy, because hockey is a rough sports, a dangerous sport. And we all, we know we're out there at a rec level, you're fallen, you'RE hitting people that you accidentally or whatever. Whatever.

And so there's all these opportunities for dudes to like do the thing where, and you guys, I'm sure, even though you're not sports people, I am sure every male presenting person in our society at some point has had to deal with this dynamic of, do I need to prove myself? Like is, is, are we, you know, like there's a conflict with another man and it's like, it's like this weird dominance thing that, that you're, especially when you're kids, you you know, where it's like really feels more important in like life or death. Like if this, you know school yard bully or whatever is going to assert dominance over me, whatever and that happens all the time in hockey and you see grown adults, grown adult men who I know, you know, have probably a wife and a kid in a family and are perfectly, you fine at work and every day to day or whatever turn into just the worst stereotypes Stereotypes of men, like hurling stupid obscenities and insults at each other and like trying to like emasculate the other one.

0:42:31 Eli: Sure.

0:43:18 Tom: Right. Oh.

0:43:54 Tom: Man,

0:43:55 Thomas: It's so fascinating to me.

0:43:55 Tom: I got yeah, so Thing that occurs to me with that is that those demonstrations of power, like when we're younger, when we're all younger and we're broke, the demonstrations of masculinity are part and parcel with these demonstrations of power. They often manifest as that sort of chest -thumping physicality. Fighting outside the bar. It's wrestling with your buddy.

0:44:20 Thomas: Right.

0:44:20 Tom: It's it's, you know, but then as we get older, our demonstrations of masculinity through demonstrations of power take the form of a nice suit, a fast car, a big house. You know what I mean? We're demonstrating power. We're still doing the same thing. We're Still having this performative demonstration to the world of our power in order to assert masculinity. And I would say that, and again, to counter your point previously, Eli, a big part of the reason that we do that is it enhances our sexual social status. And it still does. Does. As long as those are the sorts of things, and I'll relay a quick story, as long as those Are the sorts Of things that still gain us sexual social traction, those things don't go away.

0:44:57 Thomas: We think it does. Yeah.

0:45:13 Thomas: We think they do. I'm not. It's not clear to me that they always do.

0:45:14 Tom: Well, I don't know, man, Like, oh, that's why I'll offer a story. And I recognize that this is only an anecdote. But like, when I was single, which wasn't that long ago, like five, six, six years ago or so, one thing women wanted to know, like on your, like, they just wanted to know was what do you do for a living, where, where do you work. There's a demonstration of power that was very easy to perform you and built into, if you, if you look at some of the cultural assumptions that like, and some of the jokes that we make, you, we'll make jokes like if he's not attractive, he's got plenty of money, that's still OK. Like you can demonstrate power in order to in achieve order a certain masculinity that provides you with social sexual status. Don't think those things are imaginary. A lot of sort of language that belies that reality. There's a lot stuff that that sort of reinforces that. And I think as long as that is reinforced, it's not going anywhere.

0:45:51 Eli: Yeah I mean, I, I think that's a huge part of it, right, is that like so much of masculinity is about, you put it, uh, grossly, getting laid, right, gets you laid, right. And it's interesting because the, the masculinity, quote-unquote, gets you late, the new masculinity that I'm picturing gets you laid, and the third option I have found also gets you later, like a lot.

0:46:42 Tom: Yeah, I'm

0:46:43 Thomas: So it all just works.

0:46:43 Eli: Yeah

0:46:44 Tom: I'm not saying that one is, I'm not even trying to suggest that one of them is better, or I'm just saying that there is an intractability to anything that That

0:46:52 Eli: When That's the Stakes, right, when that's What's on the line, right, maybe part of the reason why my thing about gender dissolving is because it's so integral to this thing that's so important to so many people. Yeah.

0:46:53 Tom: Right One It's, it's not even so much getting, I mean, like getting laid is at the root of it, but like, at like if you, if you want want to find a, like, is funny, and I'll go back my, to my own personal anecdote, but when, like, somebody talks about the new girl they met, people don't say, well, the first question out of their mouth, their first two questions out of their mouth, is not usually what does she do for a living, right?

0:47:24 Eli: Certainly not in traditionally masculine environments right Let me see a picture Right And in fact, one of the only times when women's jobs are mentioned is when it, it puts her up in the attractiveness scale, right? She's a model.

0:47:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:27 Tom: And It Absolutely is about men, right.

0:47:39 Eli: She's, uh, mm

0:47:39 Tom: Uh

0:47:39 Thomas: Right. Right. Right. So It's interesting to me, Tom, that you cast that in terms of power, because I don't see it that, I think it can be that way, but I, I see it as just settling into that traditional gender roles thing, where the man is going to provide and the woman's going to look nice. And like, that's a lot of our society is just very comfortable with those rules. Like there's still to, to, uh, to argue for Tom and my, side of that argument. So much of our country is just to speak about our country. I don't know the world or whatever, let alone the world. So much of our country is deeply rooted in those gender roles and invested in them. Like, for example, Eli, you're talking about how gender is going to disappear. In And the same episode, we're talking about how when it's Super Bowl day, literally the Ikea is empty because, you know, like everybody participates in that. Like so much of our society is just men, by that kind of male interest and stereotype.

0:47:41 Tom: -huh, right. Yeah

0:48:01 Eli: -hmm. Ooh.

0:48:15 Tom: But

0:48:34 Eli: See, here's The thing, though, I absolutely think that, like, everybody's super uncomfortable and hates it, and they're just waiting for permission. Like, remember when everyone was like, where did all these gay people come from? It just got safe to be gay. And right, where are all these trans people? It just gets safe to me. Like, I look into my neighbor's eyes, I see dudes sometimes, and I just know, I just look at him, and maybe it's, I just look at him, and I'm like, come on, man, give me a little smooch, give me a smooche. It feels like flying, brother. It was like, like,

0:49:03 Tom: Yeah

0:49:06 Thomas: I agree. Think I a lot of people are just unwilling participants in the masculine for sure.

0:49:11 Eli: I I watched, on of man, which God knows we should probably watch at some point, the Tucker Carlson Thing and Like, and look, there is a homophobic thing of like, oh, you just want to fuck a dude, don't you, like, it's like, and it's an insult, but sometimes you really do look at these people and you're like, no, my brother, my brother in Christ, you want to fuck a Dude, I want you to Fuck A dude, my guy, I want, you'll be so happy, it's the, it's The Kids in the Hall, You Want to Take This Outside sketch, it's been done a million different times, but it's just these two tough guys who start a fight in the bar and end up

0:49:11 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah. We're going to.

0:49:32 Tom: Right

0:49:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, totally.

0:49:47 Eli: Married There

0:49:47 Tom: Yeah Well, just real quick, want to come back to what you said about the provider role, I think the way that you demonstrate, like, the reason I associate that with power is that if you are going to demonstrate your attractiveness through showing off that you are a good provider, power, financial power particularly, is one way to demonstrate that, right? Back to the same dynamic. Like the dynamic really isn't any different.

0:50:13 Thomas: I get, yeah. It's just interesting. I guess I just don't think of that as power, but maybe, yeah I don't know. I'll be curious to see see the listener response.

0:50:19 Tom: That's why I think it's Different when you're young and broke. When you're younger and broke, you can't flex financial power. So it takes on more aggressive. I think it takes on more progressive physicality. And then as you move into your adult years and you have financial power, then that is what becomes more attractive. But it's a matter of like, look, I'm strong. I can go work in a factory. I could provide. Or you're 40 and you're like, I got a nice watch. I make good money. I couldn't provide. It comes back to ability to demonstrate the same thing. Right.

0:50:49 Thomas: It's complicated though, because you could think of a very stereotypically, I don't know what the word where I can think of a lot of insulting words, but like the not, uh, successfully performing masculinity type dude who just works in an office and makes good money, but that doesn't transcend nobody. I think people don't usually perceive that as like he's flexing his power by, you know, making a pretty good wage age in a totally bland office job and doesn't at all present masculine. I don't know. I think there's a lot going on there. And I think there's, there's also an interesting like hierarchy. I think these things can Trump each other.

It's like a weird game of like rock, paper, scissors, sometimes like if you take, cause you'll take the super rich dude and in the movie where he, you know, and then he drives into the small town and there's the guy with the wrench and the sweaty shirt and the whatever, that guy's the bigger man in that scenario. Like the guy, the guy who makes a bunch of money. Now he can try to assert his masculinity in other ways. He can try to throw his money around as a way to like, but, but there's still a core appeal to that like rough and tumble fucking working on the car nose, that kind of guy, you

0:50:49 Tom: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:29 Eli: And

0:51:57 Thomas: Know, it's interesting.

0:51:57 Eli: The fact that it's all unspoken and understood is so interesting. Right, like, It never needs to be spelled. We can, we would watch that scene in a movie and be like, oh yeah, of course the ranch guy is more attractive than the money guy, and the money guy's more attractive than the fat best friend, and the fat best friend is more attractive than the Old lady. There's the hierarchy of who she should fuck. The old lady's in last place. The fat guy's just above her. She does eventually get lady. Watch Harold and Maude with

0:52:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:52:02 Tom: Yes. Yep. Yeah.

0:52:22 Thomas: I want to see if she eventually gets to the old lady though. That would be interesting. She's okay. She gets there. Yeah Oh God, think it would be interesting to talk about, it's strategy that guys have to adapt to, you know, their niche, to find their lane to be attractive. You know, it's really interesting to me and nobody talks about it. I

0:52:43 Eli: Very proud of, I crack the, I look like a marshmallow that someone dropped in a barbershop and I managed to cracked get the system. I was very proud of it.

0:52:54 Thomas: Picture in high school, you, you try to position yourself relative to the other males, people around you, know, like there's so much there, I think and

0:53:02 Eli: More masculinity in our relationship to it be talked about for sure.

0:53:04 Thomas: Yeah but

0:53:06 Tom: Think you're absolutely right, we've all seen that movie, we've always seen that, and you do, you're right, you're 100 right, that, you know, um, mean, it's so funny, I'm thinking of Schitt's Creek, Schitt's Creek does a great job of of demoing different masculinities and sort of stacking them against each other. You guys ever watch Schitt's Creek? Oh,

0:53:09 Thomas: -hmm nah I couldn't get into it. Oh, man, you're gonna make me try to get through the first season. I tried, I just, it wasn't boring.

0:53:22 Eli: Yes.

0:53:23 Tom: There's Creek is actually a really interesting exploration of masculinity, it it really truly is yeah

0:53:33 Eli: The problem

0:53:33 Thomas: Yeah

0:53:33 Tom: If it's not for you then

0:53:34 Eli: Is people are talking to you. It's like Steven Universe. Someone's talking to you from the last season about the first season and you got to make it through. You got to watch the episode where he gets in the fight with the Fry Monster before you get to the fucking planet of the diamonds. Those are Steven Universe references,

0:53:42 Thomas: Yeah I

0:53:50 Tom: I've no idea what any of that last

0:53:52 Thomas: Don't know what that is but yeah no that's

0:53:52 Tom: Sentence meant

0:53:52 Eli: Tom. Those Are a children's cartoon that people who look like me enjoy very much. All the option season, our audience like myself very much enjoy Steven universe.

0:53:54 Thomas: Yeah

0:53:58 Tom: I wonder, because exactly right, that there's that hierarchy that's created, and I, but again, I, it's hard for me to to let go of this idea, I think it comes back to, like, Like, which performance of power is most appealing in the moment? That guy with the wrench with the shirt off, I mean, he's not like a skinny pigeon -chested dude with a wrench that he can't pick up. You know what I mean? Like, that's a dude wearing jeans and no shirt, and he's fucking muscular, and he's performing a certain physicality of masculinity. And the guy who drives up in the Porsche and the fucking nice suit, he is performing a different power demonstration relative to masculinity. Yeah.

0:54:19 Eli: What, what matters to

0:54:43 Thomas: Well it's it's a very, as as men, it's it's a very competitive environment, and we all have to find our competitive edge. We can't all be wrench guy with the shirt off, sweaty looking, chiseled, fucking great. You know, like we we have to finde our way to do that. And I think I think as men, we often slip into different strategies at times, you know, like different. Oh, maybe I can be the the wrench guy of this group, or maybe in this situation I can look like wrench Guy for a second, you know?

0:54:49 Tom: Right that's perfect yes yes it's very contextual

0:55:10 Eli: There's a, there's a children's hospital that I visit. Sometimes I'm the rich guy. Oh, let me get that for you. Little Timmy.

0:55:18 Tom: No, that's very Contexual as to who you're competing with. Yeah.

0:55:23 Thomas: So interesting. But it's impossible almost. I have tried to not be competing on any of those levels, but it is hard. There is so much pressure, you know?

0:55:32 Eli: It's built into it's it's, built Into so much history. It'S built in. And the only way to, The only way you get away with it is to actively confront it, right? Like, as someone who has gotten out of right, it, like, right, I am out of, I am not playing that that game all the time, right, in all scenarios, but the way that I do it is that I look and sound insane at all times, and that's that's how I've escaped. You cannot engage in the, you know, you were thinking about like that tough guy moment, right, where like when someone, uh, to like start a fight with you, right, and we've all had that moment, right, we're like, there's all of a sudden this crazy ahistorical challenge of masculinity, um, I was thinking about, I was, was in the grocery store and I pulled into a parking thing

0:55:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:55:35 Tom: I don't know how you don't compete yeah

0:56:13 Eli: And I got out and a guy like stops his truck and he's like, "Hey, asshole, you didn't fucking see me," and I was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, let me get it," and he was like, "Fucking motherfucker," and I just, I grabbed my nipples, I'm gonna, I'm 34, I lifted up my shirt and I grabbed my nipples and I said, let me make it up to you with some sweet milky milky, and I, it, it was like a card to say I'm not playing. And look, here's the thing, I've done that a couple of times and someone's hit me, but if someone hits you and you don't hit them back, you just go like, "Oh, daddy, me likey," they fucking, that fight is over. Let me tell you, let

0:56:14 Thomas: There you go. That is awesome.

0:56:55 Thomas: How was the ending of this story? And I hope it is a real story. How did that work in this instance?

0:56:55 Eli: Me Oh my So he, this is actually fucking incredible and you're gonna think I'm making this up, and I swear to God I'm not, swear to God, I am NOT, I go, "Would you like some milky milky?" And he goes, "Oh," and he zoomed forward and hit the cop car that's directly in front of the grocery store and got in, like, had to do a ticket thing with him, and I went inside and I bought myself some mango nectar cuz I'm NOT playing, no

0:56:59 Thomas: No way. That's incredible. That Is incredible. Well, ultimately, the real game, the deeper one that we're all ought to be grappling with is being comfortable with yourself. That really is it. And in an odd way that can get recast as masculinity. Like you do the thing where like, ah, displaying confidence in himself. What a man, you know? And it like, Like it comes around to, yeah,

0:57:44 Eli: Can I just say no one saw that and was like, "What a man," they were, were like, "Oh, I, I hope they take him to a hospital where he's safe." Yeah

0:57:49 Tom: Yeah, right

0:57:47 Thomas: I don't know. I think that in our new created positive masculinity, that is the ultimate move to avoid. And oh God, I, I'm, this might be depressing, but for me, it all ties into my kids because each, that was the component of the hockey fucking fight that almost breaks out every week that I, I didn't mention, which is each every time now I'm conscious of the fact that I am a dad and I have kids, not only A, that I want to set an example for, but B, that I want to come home to.

And like you're in a, I know it might sound extreme, but like rage fucking shootings happen all the time. You know, like a guy in a truck who's mad at you, Eli, could easily turn into a guy who's in this country armed with like 17 guns, pulls it out. And so the ultimate fucking man move is to disarm it in that, maybe not that exact way, possibly, but to disarm it, completely disarm it. Strategic in the way that you don't challenge back order to guarantee that you're coming home. It sounds extreme, but I kind of think we all

0:58:26 Tom: Right

0:58:28 Eli: Probably not that exact way

0:58:55 Thomas: Do that a little bit, don't we? Yeah.

0:58:55 Tom: You It's not extreme It's It's not extreme. It's funny. This came up. This came up as a joke on our last Citation Needed recording, and I've thought about it ever since. This came up, I made a joke on our Citation Needed recording. I said, I can't remember in real life the last time somebody was rude to me, and I meant it. I, I don't remember the last time somebody was, like, they are online. We're talking about the difference in online interactions versus, like, in-person interactions. And Noah made some comment that that's because of my size, and that he remembers the last time someone was rude to him, and it was like last week or something. Think what you hit on something that is important and, like, really should never be forgotten is that underlying all of this is a real and actual threat of physical violence.

0:59:30 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:59:43 Tom: That is a reason, and I know we were joking about it, but like there is a good reason that, like, do I walk around the world and everybody's nice to me and, like, I was like, yeah, it's just because I'm an adult and adults are just nice to adults, but that's not the case, the reality is, like, I present, I perform masculinity in a way that keeps me safer than somebody who performs their their masculinity, you know

0:59:43 Eli: Yeah Yeah

1:00:02 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Everyone on an animalistic level is conscious of, of, okay, who could I get away with being an asshole too, and who couldn't I, in some way, I, I think we all, even if we're not being an asshole, I think there's an animal part of our brain that just is doing that calculation all the time because of survival, you know, like, yeah, yeah

1:00:07 Tom: Yeah right Right 100 And like I don't think it's crazy to, and, and Eli, you made a comment like this, ahistoric, but it's not ahistoric, it's still, it's very relevant, it's day-to-day relevant, it's so relevant that it actually informs the difference in my experience walking into the grocery store and Noah's experience walking to the grocery store, like reality of the, the physical world and the threat of violence is so pervasive, and it's so actual, it's not, it's theoretical, about any of it, it's super fucking real. I, I do wonder, like, we're talking, like, I made a note to think about, like, do you create, and I don't, I don't have this answer off the top of my head, but it's something I'm gonna think about, how you create a of positive masculinity, or a life of positive masculinity, in an unenlightened society?

1:00:43 Eli: Well

1:01:14 Thomas: Totally that's, I, I keep saying it, that's the hockey issue, because I go in and I play in a game of hockey and all of a sudden there's a caveman trying to start shit, you know and you're like, how do you deal with it I

1:01:18 Tom: Because it. And that's the reason. Yes. Yeah. And Eli's example of grabbing his nipples and being like, "You want some milky milky," like no like that That's great, except for if he does that to the wrong guy at the wrong time, maybe they kill him

1:01:27 Thomas: Could try it, it's a new, no, I can't I can never do that yeah it could be. Well

1:01:35 Eli: It's interesting you were talking about physical violence, one of the things that I think about all the time is like, I don't know a lot of people, I'm, look, I'm sure there are people who have had like really hard lives, but I don't know a lot of people of privilege who've gotten the shit kicked out of them as often as I have, and so, like, there's a part of me that just, like, knows that experience, that I'm just like, all right, you're gonna hit me and I fall down, and then you, maybe you kick me a couple of times, like, I've been beat up so often now that part of milky milky is just like, yeah man, you'll get out of the car and punch me and I'll fall down, like, this is still fun, like, okay, one more story and then we got to wrap up, but absolutely, all right, we're wrapping it up, people who don't pay us, you go fuck yourselves, we're gonna take this over to the patrons, gentlemen before we go, important question, what's the most famous fish?

1:02:00 Tom: Yeah

1:02:11 Thomas: Have this be your story, maybe let's do that, if tuna fish, yeah

1:02:34 Tom: No

1:02:35 Eli: Starfish, and if

1:02:37 Tom: I

1:02:39 Thomas: And that's all the time we have for today's show. Thank you so much for listening. And I'm going to give the usual plugs. If you go to patreon.com/dearolddads, you'll gain access to next week's episode. It's kind of a more of a comedy one. It's just a, a bag of parenting issues that I'm sure you will find relatable and funny, uh, kid friends, um, with other parents, kids, parents dealing with schools, all kinds of fun stuff. You can get that right now.

If you go to patreon.com/dearolddads and you know what, just cause, the uh, patrons usually get all the goodies, I'm going to give you something right now, my the patrons don't get it, which is everybody is going to get a bonus episode this month, and you're the first to know about it based on the timing. I wasn't able to tell the patrons first. Q&A for everybody, that's going to release next Tuesday as you're hearing this, so that's in three or four days.

Was a lot of fun. Just as a game ahead of time, there were about, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 questions. Guess how many we got through in a full episode's time. I would just like you to place a guess and then, you know, you'll find out the answer at the end of the Q&A. So look forward to that. As always, please share the show. Share the show if you can. It's such a tough podcast environment out there nowadays.

There's so many good things to listen to. And think our show is the kind that really needs to thrive on word of mouth. So if you, you can please tell another parent about the show, tell a parenting group, do whatever. We'd really appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening and for sharing the show. And we'll see you next time.

1:04:10 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.