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