Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham, the great American.
Speaker 2: Of course, masculinity more or less's on the ballot this November.
Speaker 2: I can't think of masculinity being on the ballot. And
Speaker 2: of course Nikki Haley and others are advising the Trumpster
Speaker 2: to tone down that bro stuff and talk about women's
Speaker 2: problems and men's problems. Normally in our society we focus
Speaker 2: upon women one way or another. But there's a great
Speaker 2: book up by doctor Ronald Levant, Professor Emeritis of Psychology,
Speaker 2: University of akronym More, former President about this of the
Speaker 2: American Psychological Association. Devoted forty years of his life to
Speaker 2: studying masculinity, and doctor Ronald Levant, welcome, I think for
Speaker 2: the first time to the Bill Cunningham Show. And let
Speaker 2: me begin by saying, it's fascinating you studied masculinity. Why
Speaker 2: did you begin this line of work about forty years ago?
Speaker 2: And secondly, what have you found if anything?
Speaker 3: Wow? Well, okay. I got into the study of masculinity
Speaker 3: through the study of fathering, and as we say in psychology,
Speaker 3: most research is research. I got into fathering because I
Speaker 3: was struggling with the role of being a divorced partially
Speaker 3: custodial father.
Speaker 4: Of a tween age daughter at that time, and as
Speaker 4: I kind of started working with fathers and what I
Speaker 4: tried to do, I was on the faculty at Boston
Speaker 4: University at the time, was trying to provide fathers with
Speaker 4: parent education skills because at that time, in the early eighties,
Speaker 4: men were.
Speaker 3: Just beginning to be visibly involved with children. You could
Speaker 3: see men carrying infants in chess packs or pushing rollers
Speaker 3: in Harvard Square. And as a result of, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of doing that work, I discovered that many men
Speaker 3: have difficulty expressing their remote except for one, which is anger.
Speaker 3: And that is kind of what led me into this
Speaker 3: particular study. But what really fueled it with my childhood
Speaker 3: and I had a emotionally and physically abusive father who
Speaker 3: did not need to be so mean and bad, but
Speaker 3: he was. And you know, it kind of got me
Speaker 3: curious as to what makes men become so violent, and
Speaker 3: that was really I.
Speaker 1: Read their stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, a girl, dad is a problem today, And
Speaker 2: you say, why are so many men problematically unable to
Speaker 2: describe how they feel? I have difficulty explaining how I feel.
Speaker 2: I'm not supposed I got the shields up. You then say,
Speaker 2: neglecting their health. If my wife did not insist that
Speaker 2: I go to like seven or eight doctors every year
Speaker 2: or two, I would never go at all. I don't
Speaker 2: explode in rage except maybe on the golf course and
Speaker 2: then resorting to violences something as an attorney, I don't
Speaker 2: think I've ever done. But men are programmed to be
Speaker 2: like their father. Is it nurture or is it genetics?
Speaker 2: Is it the fact that we spent millions of years
Speaker 2: defending the cave or defending our heart and health? And
Speaker 2: I see myself as a protector and this bleeds over
Speaker 2: to my personal behavior, and that men often die alone,
Speaker 2: and that they refer why are why? Why is that
Speaker 2: the case? Is it genetic or is it nurture or both?
Speaker 3: Well, it's both. But we can't do much about the genetics,
Speaker 3: but we can do a lot about the nurture. And
Speaker 3: as a psychologist, I have tools to deal with the nurture.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of why I focused on it.
Speaker 3: And it has to do with it, starting with how
Speaker 3: we raise our boys to conform to these rigid masculine norms,
Speaker 3: particularly about playing. You know, big boys don't cry or
Speaker 3: no or worse, you get threatened if you don't stop crying.
Speaker 3: I'll give you something to really cry about.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and so you know, obviously it's both.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't know how to change genes, but
Speaker 3: we do know how to change behavior. And let's talk
Speaker 3: about health. Men die now, and this has gotten worse
Speaker 3: six point three And this is us six point three
Speaker 3: years sooner than women. Okay, it used to be in
Speaker 3: the fives. And men have more diseases in every major
Speaker 3: category of illness. And while there are some small genetic
Speaker 3: factors associated with female sex hormones that give them a
Speaker 3: slight advantage, the bulk of the evidence suggests it men's behavior.
Speaker 3: Men put their health at risk through not wearing seatbelts,
Speaker 3: not using sunblock, not visiting their positions when they're sick. Well,
Speaker 3: you're laughing, you know what I'm.
Speaker 2: Talking absolutely absolutely, And you talk about cigars. The guys
Speaker 2: that I play golf with, cigars are in their mouths constantly.
Speaker 2: They have health problems that they want to hold inside
Speaker 2: themselves and not express. Wearing a seatbelt of something I
Speaker 2: resisted for decades because it wasn't a macho image of
Speaker 2: Steve McQueen. Sunblock. I used to play get outside, work,
Speaker 2: play golf, never wore copper tone. You didn't think about it? Well,
Speaker 2: women are just different. So well, I guess. Getting getting
Speaker 2: back to the election, you say that supposedly the country
Speaker 2: is ready to elect the first female president, Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: But does she possess enough masculine traits in her personality
Speaker 2: to persuade those undecided that she can lead a divided nation?
Speaker 2: And I ask you the question. According to the polling,
Speaker 2: trumpsters up about ten points with men and down about
Speaker 2: ten points with women, just the opposite of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: And so is America ready for a female?
Speaker 1: Isn't it?
Speaker 2: Especially one may I use the term minority? Are we
Speaker 2: men ready for that commander in chief?
Speaker 3: Well? I hope so. But let's look at sort of
Speaker 3: a term that's kind of been bandied about in this election,
Speaker 3: which is the alpha male. Now, the primatologists dual who
Speaker 3: recently passed away that there really are two versions of
Speaker 3: the alpha male. Now, remember he studied chimpanzees, not humans.
Speaker 3: But in the chimpanzee troops, there are two versions of
Speaker 3: the alpha male. There's the dominant alpha who achieves this
Speaker 3: power by force, right, and who tends to be have
Speaker 3: a short tenure because all it takes is a coalition
Speaker 3: of threer for other chimpanzees to overthrow them, okay, and
Speaker 3: that happens frequently. And then there's the populate what du
Speaker 3: All called the populist alpha, which again we're talking about chimpanzees,
Speaker 3: so that populist has to have a little quotation marks
Speaker 3: on it. But what he's referring to are chimpanzees, the
Speaker 3: male chimpanzees, who achieved their power by taking care of
Speaker 3: the troop, by providing resources like food and shelter, by
Speaker 3: carrying for sick or injured members of the troop, And
Speaker 3: that particular alpha has a long tenure and is actually
Speaker 3: thought to be loved by the other chimps. If you
Speaker 3: look at the current election, the contrast is very similar.
Speaker 3: Although Harris is obviously not a man, but she represents
Speaker 3: that populous alpha. She leads by taking care. He has
Speaker 3: recently said, she's if she wins, she's going to be
Speaker 3: a president of all the people, right right, and doesn't
Speaker 3: she doesn't care what you're whether Republican, Democrat, independent, He's
Speaker 3: going to do for you, whereas Tom Trump clearly is,
Speaker 3: you know, the dominant alpha.
Speaker 2: He's in a garbage truck. And the other thing that
Speaker 2: you never see Kamala Harrison a draft yes or something feminine.
Speaker 2: Same way with Hillary Clinton. It was always in a
Speaker 2: pantsuit with their chest out and looking upwards because she
Speaker 2: they figured they got the female vote already. But let's
Speaker 2: go after the alpha male. One thing you bring up
Speaker 2: about the alpha male, I think a Planet of the
Speaker 2: Apes in all those series, Caesar what was ahead of
Speaker 2: the Planet of the Apes at one point, and he
Speaker 2: was smaller than the orangutangs, but he had a little
Speaker 2: bit of strength, but he had had the wiles of
Speaker 2: a male to manipulate the group. And in the business
Speaker 2: setting or in life, if you have a Caesar type chimpanzee,
Speaker 2: and this guy isn't the biggest, the strongest, the bravest,
Speaker 2: the best looking, but the personality as such like a
Speaker 2: Napoleon for example, a smaller guy who can actually dominate,
Speaker 2: that's important. So when it comes down to politics, isn't
Speaker 2: it important for female candidates not to have a feminine
Speaker 2: side in a sense because they want to communicate to
Speaker 2: the tony benders of the world, the alpha males of
Speaker 2: the world, that I'm like you I'm tough and I'm mean,
Speaker 2: and I can curse. I can say at a bar
Speaker 2: with Governor Whitmer and use the F word. In fact,
Speaker 2: I said this recently in a mating here at iHeartMedia
Speaker 2: that basically women use the F word and aggressive language
Speaker 2: much more than males. If a male in that setting
Speaker 2: with a lot of professional females which dropped the F
Speaker 2: bomb here and there, people look at them. But if
Speaker 2: a woman does it, you get patted on the back. Man,
Speaker 2: you're one of us. Is that part of the diet,
Speaker 2: part of the mechanism.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There have been a number of studies of successful
Speaker 3: women in a variety of settings, in the military and
Speaker 3: the corporate world and in politics, and clearly, you know,
Speaker 3: they have to demonstrate what are called stereotypically called masculine characteristics.
Speaker 3: But these are easy to attain. You know, when I
Speaker 3: was a college I went to college at Berkeley, the
Speaker 3: University of California, Berkeley in the sixties. I'm an old guy,
Speaker 3: but the women that I knew it at Berkeley we're
Speaker 3: taking assertiveness training classes to overcome the effects of their
Speaker 3: gender role, socialization to be dependent on and different to men.
Speaker 3: And I think women who succeed in the political world
Speaker 3: and the corporate world obviously have to take on masculine
Speaker 3: characteristics because these worlds are male dominated, and to succeed,
Speaker 3: you know, you've got to play by the guy's rules.
Speaker 1: Right, Are you ready for the big question?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: I look at society and it's less and less and
Speaker 2: less likely that a poor Wide or a poor Black
Speaker 2: male is going to grow up with a father figure
Speaker 2: in the home. Very unlikely if you live in a
Speaker 2: poor Hispanic area or a poor White or a poor
Speaker 2: Black area. Males tend to get what's important what is
Speaker 2: not important from the street and the breakdown of the
Speaker 2: family and faith the last thirty to forty years is
Speaker 2: exhibited by the crime rate and by drugs and carcer failing.
Speaker 2: Most of the human beings in college are female, and
Speaker 2: when my wife attend at the University of Cincinnati in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties in law school, hers was the first
Speaker 2: class with the dominant female students. Women succeed in our
Speaker 2: society much more than men succeed. We're more likely to
Speaker 2: be on drugs, more likely to be in jail, more
Speaker 2: likely to have drinking problems, more likely to have health progs,
Speaker 2: more likely not to live as long, but all of
Speaker 2: society is structured to build up the female and tear
Speaker 2: down the male as part of the debaucherous behavior we
Speaker 2: see in our society today caused by lack of male
Speaker 2: figures growing up as a little boy proper.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. I don't think that.
Speaker 1: Give me.
Speaker 3: Uri Bronson Brenner, who is a world famous developmental psychologists,
Speaker 3: after studying multiple families over dozens of years, concluded that
Speaker 3: every child needs at least one adult who is absolutely
Speaker 3: crazy about them, and it doesn't matter what their gender is.
Speaker 3: You know, it can be a mother, it can be
Speaker 3: a father. You know what I think. I mean, I
Speaker 3: agree with the facts that you presented, But what I
Speaker 3: think has happened is that if you go back to
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, where women couldn't even get a credit
Speaker 3: card with a male signing for them, is that, you know,
Speaker 3: the what's called the second wave feminist movement that began
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty seven, that women have dramatically changed their
Speaker 3: gender role, you know, from the sixties to the present,
Speaker 3: and as a result, have achieved the kind of success
Speaker 3: you've talked about. But sadly, men have remained duck and
Speaker 3: attached to this outmoded model of masculinity that was prevalent
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties. Men have not changed, you know,
Speaker 3: they've changed some, like the men's participation in parenting has
Speaker 3: actually changed rather dramatically for the most part, taking care
Speaker 3: of their health, being able to express their emotions. Men
Speaker 3: have really as a whole, not changed. And part of
Speaker 3: what I try to do as a psychologist is trying
Speaker 3: to encourage men to recognize that what is so called
Speaker 3: they're so called feminine side, their emotional intelligence, their compassion,
Speaker 3: their empathy are not feminine but human, and they're you know,
Speaker 3: like very valuable traits to have and every human it
Speaker 3: has the capacity for them. Now.
Speaker 2: Lastly, when I look at the Muslim world, whether it's
Speaker 2: Afghanistan or Syria or on Iraq Egypt, I could not
Speaker 2: imagine a worse place for a woman or female to
Speaker 2: exist than in the world in which you're literally the
Speaker 2: property of your husband or the property your father married off.
Speaker 2: Platoral eradication. They have terrible circuit. They have not the
Speaker 2: ability to In Afghanistan right now, women cannot be heard
Speaker 2: in public. She's clothed from the top of her head
Speaker 2: at the bottom of her feet. She's beaten on a
Speaker 2: regular basis. She has no rights at all, and that
Speaker 2: has been going on for decades, if not centuries. What
Speaker 2: is the Can you briefly comment, if you can't, about
Speaker 2: what happens in a billion households around the world where
Speaker 2: women literally are beaten marginalized by men and their conditioned
Speaker 2: to do so. Have you studied any of the problems
Speaker 2: of women in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, terrible circumstances
Speaker 2: Their status is ignored in this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. The United Nations publishes the Gender Equality Index, where
Speaker 3: they rank countries based on the extent to which the
Speaker 3: sexes are equal, and the countries you mentioned are down
Speaker 3: at the bottom. The United States is number seventeen, so
Speaker 3: we're not great. The highest countries tend to be Western Europe,
Speaker 3: particularly the Scandinavian countries. And I visited Norway several times
Speaker 3: and to me, the differences palpable. The women that I
Speaker 3: met there are so empowered, although you know, women in
Speaker 3: the US are somewhat empowered, but not like the women
Speaker 3: in Norway. So I think it really depends on kind
Speaker 3: of the society and the ability of women like in
Speaker 3: the United States. Essentially, look, in the nineteen fifties, less
Speaker 3: than the only single digits of mothers of small children
Speaker 3: were in the workforce. By nineteen eighty five, fifty percent
Speaker 3: of the mothers of children under the age of six
Speaker 3: were in the workforce. Okay, that was a dramatic change
Speaker 3: that women took upon themselves. And the next thing that
Speaker 3: happened was what we call the divorce revolution that began
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty five and went to eighty five, where
Speaker 3: two thirds of the divorces were initiated by the wives.
Speaker 3: So look at what happened. Women gained financial independence from men,
Speaker 3: and then they lived left bad marriages and droves and
Speaker 3: the statistics he reported earlier. They then populated, you know,
Speaker 3: colleges and graduate in law schools and medical schools, and
Speaker 3: they're just you know, as we as well known, girls
Speaker 3: and women are doing much better than boys and men
Speaker 3: on every educational, health and social indicator there is. And
Speaker 3: my hope is that we start raising boys differently, that
Speaker 3: we stop forcing them to conform to these outmoded masculine
Speaker 3: norms of being unemotional, tough, and dominant, and recognize we're
Speaker 3: living in a totally different society and they need to
Speaker 3: develop those bills that are labeled feminine, like emotional self
Speaker 3: awareness and compassion and empathy to succeed in today's world.
Speaker 2: Well, we have to go, but we only scratch the surface,
Speaker 2: not even scratch the surface. But the book is the
Speaker 2: problem with men. Insights on overcoming a tramatic childhood from
Speaker 2: a world renowned psychologist, that's you, doctor Ronald Levant. The
Speaker 2: book is everywhere. Once again, thank you for coming on
Speaker 2: the Bill cunning Game Show and doctor you're a great American.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Thank you, God bless you.
Speaker 2: Let's continue with more women dominate the world. Yet they
Speaker 2: convince everyone they're victims. It's a nice psychological ploy, but
Speaker 2: we know what it is. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven
Speaker 2: hundred WLW