Apparently podcaster Chris Williamson and I are part of the “Gentlemanosphere”. In an article for The Dispatch on this group (which also includes Scott Galloway and Arthur Brooks) by Ari Blaff, I’m described as a “polite Brit unfailingly open to conversation and bipartisanship”.
I’ll take it! Except I would have to add that since 2016 I have been a very patriotic U.S. citizen too (and was born on the Fourth of July…)
I just sat down with Chris for his podcast Modern Wisdom. It was our third conversation, and my enjoyment in them has risen each time. Chris is intellectually curious, open-minded and truth-seeking. That’s why he broke into the Top 10 Spotify podcast bracket last year. People are hungry for this stuff, not least young men.
As always, it was a wide-ranging conversation. Some of the highlights for me were our discussions on the following topics:
What’s changed in the debate over boys and men over the last couple of years. My main point here was that there is now a real appetite among policymakers to make some progress here, especially at the the state level. These efforts may not get national headlines or produce vital clips for social media. But I think that’s a good thing: it’s too serious for that. We talked a good deal about Gavin Newsom’s initiatives in California for example.
Chris suggested a “good news about boys and men” newsletter so that more is known about this kind of work. To some extent, I hope that’s what I’m doing here and that AIBM is also doing through its newsletter (to which I hope you are already subscribed, if not do it now!) and social channels. But it was a reminder that it’s very hard to break through the culture war noise, especially if what you have to say goes against the grain. But I’m in my happy place when we get into the policy substance.
I took issue with the takes of some of Chris’s previous guests on whether female employment is really impacting fertility rates. I just don’t see any good evidence for that, and it makes me worry, as I’ve written elsewhere, that two conservative concerns are being jammed together here.
We talked of course about the “manosphere” (and gentelmanosphere), and some broader cultural trends around gender roles, regret, country music etc. We got into looksmaxxing, and I tried mewing. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, lucky you.)
I had a bit of a rant about the importance of the role of fathers in family life, taking issue with good friends who doubt the value of Dads as carers, and with those who reduce the argument for fatherhood to a narrow gender equity issue. Dads matter not because they are trainee Moms or good feminist allies. Dads matter because Dads matter.
That sent me off on a whole bit about fathers and childbirth, and why I needed a Phillips screwdriver, swimming trunks and a large pair of scissors at the births of my own sons. Here’s that clip in case you’re wondering:
I also made my pitch for optimism as a civic virtue. I’m kind of bored of the glass half-empty instinct on all sides, and the failure, as I put it here, of “anyone to take a win”. I quoted Rabbi David Wolpe on the “psychological reluctance to succeed” among activists. It’s a lesson I try to keep in mind in my own work. I used to say that policymakers, especially on the political left, were neglecting the issues of boys and men. I simply can’t say that today.
Slowly but surely, the issues of boys and men are becoming more mainstream. That is in no small part thanks to the willingness of public figures like Chris to keep shining a light on them.
Plus, man was it fun! Watch the full conversation:
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