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Inside the Mind of Misogyny: A Conversation with Lundy Bancroft on Toxic Masculinity
115 Plays6 months ago
The Queens are once again joined by renowned author and domestic abuse expert, Lundy Bancroft, whose groundbreaking work Why Does He Do That? has helped millions of women recognize the patterns of coercive control and emotional abuse in intimate relationships, to discuss toxic masculinity.
Lundy Bancroft's first FDS appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7Y0rJ8Kkw
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Feature
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Female Dating Strategy, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:00:05
Speaker
I'm your host, Diana.
00:00:06
Speaker
And I'm Rose.
00:00:07
Speaker
And today, I could not be more delighted, Diana.
00:00:09
Speaker
Who is our illustrious guest of the hour?
00:00:12
Speaker
We have the, drumroll, Lundy Bancroft.
00:00:18
Speaker
Oh, Lundy Bancroft, welcome.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:21
Speaker
Thanks for all the fuss.
00:00:24
Speaker
Are you unaccustomed to all the fuss when you're on a show?
00:00:28
Speaker
I can't really claim to be unaccustomed to all the fuss, no.
00:00:32
Speaker
Well, you are not only the one-time male exception we make to this podcast, you are now the two-time male exception because this is the second time we're having you on and we're so excited.
00:00:43
Speaker
We wanted to make sure that today we have something new for all of you because we've been seeing a lot of really disturbing things happening in the press, in the media, and in the world in general.
00:00:53
Speaker
And it seems like it's a
00:00:55
Speaker
sad, scary place out there.
00:00:56
Speaker
And so we thought, you know, now is the time to hear from Lundy and for him to give us some solid advice as he usually does.
00:01:03
Speaker
And so, yeah, let's just
Understanding Abuse: Mentality Over Psychology
00:01:04
Speaker
jump right into it.
00:01:04
Speaker
One thing I wanted to ask Lundy, do you remember the last time you were on the show with Savannah and Ro?
00:01:11
Speaker
I do, but I have to admit it's a fairly dim memory at this many years out.
00:01:16
Speaker
True.
00:01:16
Speaker
This is why we wanted to host you again, because I don't know if our current listeners have even know that you once recorded an episode with the prior host.
00:01:24
Speaker
And so we wanted to make sure that, you know, another generation of women are being introduced to the really important work that you do.
00:01:30
Speaker
One way that I found you before, I think even FDS was I love to go coast along on the world of Reddit.
00:01:38
Speaker
and see what's happening, especially in the subreddits of women dating.
00:01:42
Speaker
And your name appears again and again and again.
00:01:46
Speaker
Why do you think that is?
00:01:47
Speaker
Well, there's a few things that I think are the outstanding points.
00:01:50
Speaker
One is that the whole world tends to assume that an abuser's got something psychologically wrong with him, a man that abuses women.
00:02:01
Speaker
And so the assumption is that
00:02:03
Speaker
The problem is somewhere in his heart, and we have to figure out what's bothering him and help him work out his issues and figure out what happened in the family he grew up in and try to fix him psychologically.
00:02:14
Speaker
And it's very misleading because that turns out to have almost nothing to do with why a man who abuses women is doing what he does.
00:02:23
Speaker
And the problem turns out to be almost entirely in his mentality and very little in his psychology.
00:02:30
Speaker
By the way, I'm not saying that this is true of all destructive behaviors.
00:02:33
Speaker
I think there are some destructive behaviors in the world that are very much driven by psychological problems.
00:02:39
Speaker
This just turns out not to be one of them.
Therapy vs. Batterer Intervention: Effective Approaches
00:02:41
Speaker
And I was reluctant myself when I first came into the field to accept the extent to which this is a problem of learned values and attitudes.
00:02:50
Speaker
It's a belief system problem that's rooted in a whole set of entitlements that this man started learning usually quite early in life.
00:03:00
Speaker
that say that he has the right to simply require certain things of his female partners, and he has a right to punish, to enforce those demands when he feels she's not meeting them adequately.
00:03:13
Speaker
So I talk a lot about how much abuse is really about enforcement.
00:03:18
Speaker
of his will, like his feelings don't have much to do with it.
00:03:20
Speaker
He's got the same feelings almost everybody has.
00:03:23
Speaker
Almost everybody has insecurities.
00:03:25
Speaker
Almost everybody has times of feeling bad about themselves.
00:03:28
Speaker
Almost everybody gets, everybody actually does get angry.
00:03:31
Speaker
So it has very little to do with that.
00:03:32
Speaker
It has to do with his sense that he gets to enforce what he wants and require things to happen in his way.
00:03:40
Speaker
So that's unusual enough that I think that's part of why there's quite a bit of attention to my work.
00:03:46
Speaker
There's the fact that I'm a man, which gives me a certain kind of credibility when I'm speaking very critically about the behavior of some men, because women tend to get silenced a lot and shut down and ridiculed when they talk frankly about male behavior.
00:04:00
Speaker
I agree.
00:04:01
Speaker
I just have to say, I really want to thank you for the book to begin with, because not that I've personally been a victim of any sort of abuse, but I've had a lot of friends who've been in really abusive dynamics with their boyfriends or their husbands.
00:04:12
Speaker
And sometimes, like, no matter how much advice I gave them that I thought was sound, I felt like they wouldn't listen to me.
00:04:18
Speaker
I feel like many times you've been the neutral third party in my friend group where I'm like, well, just listen to Lundy and just read his book.
00:04:25
Speaker
And it's just been like an easy way for me to give them the information without it coming from me, because I do agree that for some reason, for a lot of women, it carries a lot more weight when it comes from a man.
00:04:35
Speaker
I just wanted to ask you a question about I have a lot of pushback from friends who think that abuse is something that can be like therapized away.
00:04:41
Speaker
A lot of people will say, you know, he just needs to go to therapy.
00:04:45
Speaker
Or like, you know, a man will do anything but go to therapy.
00:04:47
Speaker
And they seem to think that, you know, when they're in an emotionally abusive relationship with their partner, like just going to therapy will be like a bandaid solution to fix it.
00:04:54
Speaker
In your experience working with men like this, like, do you feel like that's effective or no?
00:04:59
Speaker
It has zero effectiveness.
00:05:01
Speaker
And that's one of the ways that we started to catch on to the fact that this was not a psychological problem, was noticing that there was never any gains made from a guy going to therapy and all different kinds of therapists using all different kinds of approaches zip.
00:05:15
Speaker
So that was one of the things that tipped us off.
00:05:17
Speaker
There also started to be some research.
00:05:20
Speaker
showing that this is not rooted in the man's psychology.
00:05:23
Speaker
And at the same time, I understand when you're living with someone that's being really mean to you that you care about, and so you're starting to feel trapped there, you want to put your hopes on something.
00:05:33
Speaker
And so it's very tempting to think, well, if I could just get him to therapy...
00:05:36
Speaker
So he'd work on his issues.
00:05:38
Speaker
That would help.
00:05:39
Speaker
An abuser program, what's typically called a batterer intervention program, is completely different from therapy.
00:05:45
Speaker
It's not actually trying to address his emotional world much at all.
00:05:48
Speaker
It's almost entirely working on changing his attitudes and getting him to develop some empathy for the harm that he's doing.
00:05:55
Speaker
So it's a completely different kind of program.
00:05:57
Speaker
And Lundy, isn't this the program where in order to ensure success, you also would have check-ins with the spouse or the partner who was the battered victim?
Rise of Abusive Behavior Among Boys
00:06:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:07
Speaker
And any program that's being properly run is either contacting the woman or making sure that an advocate that they're working with is contacting the woman.
00:06:16
Speaker
For one thing, abusers are completely unreliable in their own descriptions of what's happened.
00:06:22
Speaker
So working with him is meaningless if you're not
00:06:24
Speaker
finding out what's really going on.
00:06:26
Speaker
Not that you tell him, I mean, what she says.
00:06:28
Speaker
You shouldn't tell him what she says.
00:06:30
Speaker
That would blow up in her face.
00:06:32
Speaker
But it still keeps you awake and guides you in how you work with him and how you aim discussions with him and gets you not to start buying in to his very twisted way of characterizing what's going on.
00:06:46
Speaker
So you can't do this work safely or productively if you're not hearing the woman's story of what's actually happened.
00:06:53
Speaker
The other thing is that he will lie to her about the program itself if the program's not in touch with her.
00:07:00
Speaker
He'll say things like, oh, I learned from the program that when you yell at me, that's what really sets me off, so you can't yell at me anymore, and things like that.
00:07:07
Speaker
He'll figure out ways to use the program against her because that's part of what abusers do is they figure out how to use everything against her.
00:07:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:07:15
Speaker
We're also seeing really disturbing trends of younger boys exhibiting really abusive behavior.
00:07:20
Speaker
Do you feel like there's been a rise in that in the last 30 years or so?
00:07:25
Speaker
I do, although I should say it has always been a problem because the boys who grow up with being exposed in the home to a man who's abusing their mother, maybe their father, maybe their stepfather, maybe a mom's boyfriend, whoever it might be, they will start mimicking those behaviors from a really early age.
00:07:44
Speaker
especially if the abusers of the style that kind of tries to draw the boys into it and tries to get them imitating his style.
00:07:51
Speaker
But even if he doesn't, kids will start to imitate it just because kids imitate adult behavior that they see around them.
00:07:56
Speaker
That's part of what they do.
00:07:57
Speaker
So it was already a problem.
00:07:59
Speaker
And it's already one of the huge warning signs that a woman is being abused when you're seeing, you know, abusive or very anti-female behaviors or statements from her sons.
00:08:10
Speaker
But yes, I also do believe it's escalated.
00:08:13
Speaker
The internet, unfortunately, the level of discourse on the internet is rock bottom.
00:08:17
Speaker
This is like not humanity at its best.
00:08:20
Speaker
This is humanity at its worst in how comment threads go on the internet and how people post stuff because they're not accountable.
00:08:27
Speaker
They don't even have to use their real names and faces.
00:08:30
Speaker
They're not going to be answerable for how they behave.
00:08:32
Speaker
So it brings out the worst in people.
00:08:34
Speaker
And kids at younger and younger ages have access to social media and the internet.
00:08:40
Speaker
And so we're getting such young access to pornography.
00:08:43
Speaker
We're getting such young access to young boys being able to listen to adult men talking trash about women.
00:08:49
Speaker
And so, yeah, the influence is getting more pervasive and getting down to younger and younger ages.
Media Influence on Youth and Abusive Behaviors
00:08:54
Speaker
Lundy, just last week, we had Dr. Gail Dines on the podcast.
00:08:58
Speaker
Are you familiar with her work?
00:09:00
Speaker
Oh, yes, very much so.
00:09:01
Speaker
We had a wonderful interview with her.
00:09:03
Speaker
And in that interview, we were discussing there was a recent show that was popular on Netflix.
00:09:08
Speaker
In the pre-interview, you mentioned you hadn't seen it.
00:09:10
Speaker
To be honest, I hadn't either because I knew what it was about.
00:09:13
Speaker
I know my limits when it comes to what I can actually watch on media.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:17
Speaker
But the show is called Adolescence.
00:09:19
Speaker
It's about a young boy.
00:09:20
Speaker
I believe he's 12 years old.
00:09:22
Speaker
And it talks about it shows sort of the environment around him and what led him to murder a classmate of his for rejecting him.
00:09:33
Speaker
And this is something that I thought was so interesting because it really showed the perspective of how the women in his life were, you know, sort of negligible.
00:09:42
Speaker
His mother, his sister, the school teacher who noticed something was wrong, but nobody really wanted to listen to her.
00:09:47
Speaker
Even the female police officer who was doing a lot of the detecting work.
00:09:51
Speaker
It showed all the ways in which their perspectives were sort of slighted or pushed aside.
00:09:55
Speaker
And it showed how his own father had anger issues and the inability to sort of have an intimate, healthy relationship with his son.
00:10:04
Speaker
And ultimately how this fails our young boys in teaching them how to be, you know, whole and healthy human beings first and foremost before it even delves into what it means to be a man.
00:10:14
Speaker
With this rise of sort of, you know, media that shows more and more what's happening behind the scenes, like how would you talk to parents about what they need to do in order to help their children confront this really crazy wild west world of social media that we live in today?
Promoting Empathy and Respect Early
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, and before I answer that question, I want to say that I've been very, very heavily influenced by Gail Dine's work and by Jackson Katz's work.
00:10:38
Speaker
And I think they both really help us understand that boys, young boys are not just learning a kind of toxic masculinity of being sort of unemotional and overly violent and overly focused on courage and, you know, having to be never afraid and that kind of stuff, but that they're also being specifically socialized from a very young age to feel superior to females, to feel...
00:10:59
Speaker
superior to girls and women and to look down on them from a very young age, and it's shaping what happens.
00:11:05
Speaker
You know, parents can't magically fix these huge influences coming from so many different places, but there are a few things that they can do.
00:11:14
Speaker
And one thing they can do is, first of all, make sure that their boys are growing up being encouraged to feel feelings and not to be unfeeling, not to be brave all the time.
00:11:23
Speaker
You've got to let your boys cry.
00:11:25
Speaker
Stop telling your boys not to cry so that they have room from the beginning to have a normal range of feelings and to not be shut down.
00:11:32
Speaker
And at the same time, they have to be taught from very young ages, starting as young as age three, about respect for females.
00:11:41
Speaker
Honestly, three years old is not too young.
00:11:44
Speaker
to start talking, you know, girls are like equal to you and you're going to treat them with respect and you're going to treat women with respect.
00:11:50
Speaker
And boys have to be kept on a very tight leash about how they talk to their mothers.
00:11:55
Speaker
Not that they can't be angry or complain or have grievances, they should be allowed to do that, but that they can't be insulting, that they can't be demeaning, that they can't give orders to their moms.
00:12:05
Speaker
And mothers are very heavily socialized to believe that they need to put up with this stuff from boys and that boys will be boys.
00:12:12
Speaker
And that's not true.
00:12:13
Speaker
If she doesn't like how she's being spoken to, she needs to listen to that gut reaction.
00:12:18
Speaker
And
00:12:19
Speaker
You know, I watch these interactions a lot, for example, where a mom is telling a boy, well, you have to say you're sorry.
00:12:25
Speaker
And finally, he'll say he's sorry, except he'll say it in a way where he still obviously didn't mean it.
00:12:29
Speaker
He'll just go, OK, I'm sorry.
00:12:30
Speaker
And that has to not fly.
00:12:32
Speaker
It has to be like, no, we're not moving forward from here until there's actually a change in how you're being towards me.
00:12:37
Speaker
And if he says, where's my orange juice?
00:12:39
Speaker
Rather than saying, oh, sorry, honey, I'm really busy, she needs to say, there's not going to be any orange juice this morning after you talk to me like that.
00:12:45
Speaker
No, orange juice is waiting until tomorrow morning.
00:12:47
Speaker
Now, you can't talk to me like that.
00:12:49
Speaker
But the thing is, if she has a male partner, her partner's got to back her up on that.
00:12:55
Speaker
dad or stepdad or whatever, because it doesn't work if she is the one setting limits on the boy and he's not supporting that and he's not doing it himself or he's actively undermining her.
00:13:08
Speaker
There's going to be great limitations to what she can do.
00:13:11
Speaker
So those two things have to happen at the same time, the overall raising sensitive boys and the messages like we treat everybody equally.
00:13:20
Speaker
which means it's best to pair that with teaching boys from three years old about not being racist, about not being homophobic.
00:13:27
Speaker
In other words, they've got to have just a general sense from very early in life that mistreating or looking down on females is part of prejudice in general.
00:13:35
Speaker
And we all agree that prejudice is bad.
00:13:38
Speaker
And the reason I'm underlining that point is because there are a lot of families where prejudice is not okay, except if you're talking about females, then it is okay.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that's got to stop.
Positive Role Models for Single Mothers
00:13:46
Speaker
Well, I have two questions here.
00:13:48
Speaker
One is, you know, how would you advise single mothers to handle this if they didn't have a male figure to back them up?
00:13:54
Speaker
And the second is, you mentioned that a lot of the boys learn this from the male figures in their household.
00:13:59
Speaker
But I feel like what I'm noticing is that we live in this culture of hostility now where a lot of the prominent men in the world are, for lack of a better word, assholes.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so they have a cultural environment that is reinforcing them to be terrible people.
00:14:14
Speaker
And so, you know, how would you advise both single mothers, but also just people who might have a great family setup, but then the boy is still getting corrupted by other forces?
00:14:23
Speaker
Like, how do you advise them?
00:14:25
Speaker
Well, first of all, I don't think she needs a male partner.
00:14:27
Speaker
I really just think that if she does have a female partner, he needs to be on board or there's going to be a real problem.
00:14:32
Speaker
Right.
00:14:33
Speaker
A single mother can raise boys in ways that really respect females if she's not being undermined by the rest of the world.
00:14:40
Speaker
But as you're pointing out, the rest of the world is also working against her.
00:14:43
Speaker
And nowadays, when you try to restrict your kids' access to social media,
00:14:48
Speaker
they're really upset with you about it.
00:14:51
Speaker
And you have to deal with a lot of anger and resentment from kids because they start to feel cut off from their friends.
00:14:56
Speaker
And that's something parents, to some extent, just have to sweat out, in my opinion.
00:15:00
Speaker
Like, your kids are going to be angry at you, and we're still going to say, sorry, you can't be on your phone.
00:15:04
Speaker
Sorry, you can't be on social media until you're quite a bit older.
00:15:07
Speaker
We're just not doing that.
00:15:09
Speaker
Or you can talk to your friends on the phone, but let's focus on getting you and your friends together in person.
00:15:14
Speaker
Because also the social trend of kids simply getting together a lot less than they used to and hang around on social media instead of physically getting together.
00:15:22
Speaker
But then we really need to look for ways to connect boys to good men.
00:15:27
Speaker
And there are good men out there.
00:15:29
Speaker
And I actually think there are just as many good men out there as there have ever been.
00:15:31
Speaker
I just think that the bad men are getting worse.
00:15:35
Speaker
Including, there's a lot of great young guys.
00:15:38
Speaker
I mean, I see so many like high school and college age boys now who are so cool.
00:15:44
Speaker
Like they're hyped up on women's rights and stuff.
00:15:46
Speaker
And
00:15:47
Speaker
They're pushing gender stereotypes.
00:15:50
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of things to be really disturbed by.
00:15:53
Speaker
There's also a lot of things to be really encouraged about, but we have to figure out, well, how do we connect to those things?
00:15:58
Speaker
Like how do we get our boys connected to these other kids and how do we get boys connected to different kind of men in their adult context?
00:16:07
Speaker
It can be hard to find these people.
00:16:09
Speaker
And you can sometimes find them through a faith community, and sometimes other faith communities are just riddled with these real patriarchal attitudes.
00:16:15
Speaker
Sometimes you can find them through a boys and girls club.
00:16:18
Speaker
Sometimes there's big problems at the boys and girls club.
00:16:20
Speaker
It really takes a lot of digging around.
00:16:23
Speaker
And a single mom has only got so much time.
00:16:25
Speaker
Like, she can't be an endless researcher.
00:16:27
Speaker
It's very, very challenging.
Dating Apps: Safety and Realism
00:16:29
Speaker
Right.
00:16:29
Speaker
Well, the other thing I wanted to ask about as well is that, is there anything new that you've been observing?
00:16:35
Speaker
Just because I think these days, you know, almost everything is online.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I think that the usual tools that women had, you know, where they met a guy at a bar or an event or a hobby has kind of been like, it used to be the norm, but now it's really not.
00:16:49
Speaker
And I feel like almost everyone I speak to is dating someone off an app.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I mean, in general, we feel like that doesn't really promote safety for women because there isn't
00:16:58
Speaker
really an element of any kind of vetting.
00:17:00
Speaker
A lot of these apps are essentially selling your data.
00:17:02
Speaker
And so they don't really care about the kinds of people you're meeting.
00:17:05
Speaker
So is there anything that you would advise women who are, you know, using apps or who are meeting men that they don't know to watch out for that could be a potential sign of abuse?
00:17:15
Speaker
Well, I mean, the obvious thing is meet several times in very public settings before spending any time alone together.
00:17:23
Speaker
And as you're saying now, the dating app is all about presentation, right?
00:17:27
Speaker
It's all you're putting forward an image of what you wish you were or not even that of just how you want other people to think you are.
00:17:35
Speaker
And so it's tremendous artifice, and that's a huge, huge problem.
00:17:39
Speaker
But there are a couple of other things.
00:17:41
Speaker
Because you don't tend to find tons of people even on a dating app that you want to meet, it's very tempting to just start saying, well, you know, this guy's wrong in three different ways, but there's a couple ways that he's...
00:17:52
Speaker
Right.
00:17:53
Speaker
And he's kind of seems like a nice guy.
00:17:56
Speaker
So let's go forward.
00:17:57
Speaker
And you've got to keep a much shorter list.
00:18:01
Speaker
You've got to just routinely say, nope, nope, nope, nope.
00:18:04
Speaker
And it's discouraging, but you really need to do it.
00:18:07
Speaker
Otherwise you spend so much time on people who end up really not being ready to give anything significant to a woman in a relationship.
00:18:16
Speaker
But then the last thing I would say is the trickiest, which is
00:18:19
Speaker
Now, women are up against the fact that you've been socialized from the youngest of ages by heavy social pressure to be attracted to exactly qualities that you should be running 100 miles an hour away from.
Media's Romanticization of Abuse
00:18:33
Speaker
By movies.
00:18:34
Speaker
I'm thinking of Twilight.
00:18:35
Speaker
I'm thinking of Fifty Shades of Grey.
00:18:37
Speaker
And that was just, you know, in the last decade or two.
00:18:40
Speaker
But obviously it far predates that.
00:18:43
Speaker
In the first 20 pages of Fifty Shades of Grey, which is as far as I got, I couldn't stomach any more than that.
00:18:49
Speaker
But he has covered every warning sign in my list of warning signs that I share with women about early dating.
00:18:56
Speaker
Wow.
00:18:56
Speaker
About things you want to watch for from the beginning of a relationship.
00:18:58
Speaker
He covered them all.
00:18:59
Speaker
Like, that guy is batterer extraordinaire, rapist, such, you know, horrible, horrible, horrible guy.
00:19:05
Speaker
And you're being taught that this is sexy, right?
00:19:08
Speaker
And
00:19:08
Speaker
The thing is that that kind of early conditioning is hard to break.
00:19:11
Speaker
Like you can't just wake up in the morning and think, oh, I need to change what I'm attracted to because I'm being attracted to things that aren't good for me.
00:19:17
Speaker
Like attraction runs deep enough that we can't just totally control what we're attracted to.
00:19:21
Speaker
Although over periods of years, you can actually, if you really work at it, you can reorient what you're attracted to.
00:19:27
Speaker
You can't do it overnight.
00:19:29
Speaker
But there's a side issue here about Fifty Shades of Grey, which is that there's because of the whole world of pornography and how awful it is, there's really almost no kind of healthy erotica, like non-pornographic sexual materials out there for women and men.
00:19:47
Speaker
And so something that is presented as being for women is like, oh, my God, erotica for women.
00:19:52
Speaker
That's great.
00:19:54
Speaker
And Fifty Shades of Grey, I would not call erotica.
00:19:56
Speaker
That's pornography.
00:19:57
Speaker
And if you want me to explain what the distinction I make, I'm happy to do that.
00:20:00
Speaker
But it's totally pornographic.
00:20:02
Speaker
But that's a lot of why it gets away with doing that is because there's not a lot out there that's for women so that you can get sucked into that kind of thing.
Influence of Male Relationships on Attitudes Towards Women
00:20:09
Speaker
But yes, that's just warning signs.
00:20:11
Speaker
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick all the boxes.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's so destructive.
00:20:14
Speaker
And yet you're being conditioned that that's what's really sexy.
00:20:17
Speaker
And I think that there's like a larger cultural narrative at play to kind of convince women that these kinds of disturbing portrayals of men are romantic.
00:20:25
Speaker
I mean, sexy is one thing, but it's also like this is desirable in a partner, which I think is scarier.
00:20:30
Speaker
Because I feel like we're just having this romanticized at a large scale where a lot of women are finally checking out of relationships all together.
00:20:36
Speaker
And they're like, this is a very scary ecosystem for me in which to date.
00:20:40
Speaker
with all my human rights being stripped away and with men just being a lot angrier than they used to be.
00:20:46
Speaker
And now it's like, you know, you hear all these things about like the male loneliness crisis and like the solution seems to be that women are the ones who have to solve this for men somehow.
00:20:55
Speaker
I don't know if there's any merit specifically for women to socialize men who are antisocial, because from what I understand of even from remembering what I read of your book, it seems like women trying to do that and fixing men, it doesn't go anywhere.
00:21:08
Speaker
It's a disaster.
00:21:09
Speaker
I completely agree with you.
00:21:11
Speaker
Fix the guy.
00:21:12
Speaker
A guy who's really kind, thoughtful man, who's a little bit shut down emotionally, you may be able to bring along.
00:21:17
Speaker
But a guy who's like, doesn't treat women well or has negative attitudes or doesn't respect your opinions, forget it.
00:21:24
Speaker
You're not going to bring him along.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I forget if I explain this in Why Does He Do That, but I've explained it in blog posts that I've written, is that men's attitudes towards women don't come from their experience with women.
00:21:36
Speaker
men's attitudes towards women come from their experience with men.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so there's nothing that, there's very little a woman can do to change a man's attitude towards women.
00:21:47
Speaker
He has to start hanging around with different kinds of guys.
00:21:50
Speaker
And the parallel that I use with people is when you meet a white person who's really racist, you don't think, oh, this person must have had bad experiences with people of color.
00:22:00
Speaker
You think, oh, this person must have grown up and be hanging around the wrong white people.
00:22:04
Speaker
Right.
00:22:04
Speaker
Right.
00:22:05
Speaker
And yet when we see a guy who's really hostile towards females, we think, oh, he must have had bad experience with females.
00:22:11
Speaker
No, it's going to fit that same pattern as a white person who's got bad attitudes towards people of color.
00:22:16
Speaker
It's about the same way that's about the white people that raised him and that he's been hanging around all his life.
00:22:22
Speaker
With a man, it's like about the men who influenced him growing up and the men he's been around in his adult life.
00:22:27
Speaker
You know, I talk about the temptation that a woman has to be like the ambassador for women.
00:22:31
Speaker
I say, you're going to want to be the ambassador for women and prove to him that women aren't so bad.
00:22:35
Speaker
And unfortunately, I understand it's all the best intentions, but it's not going to work because for now you'll be like, he'll say, oh, you're different from other women.
00:22:44
Speaker
And then a year from now, he'll be saying you're just like other women.
00:22:48
Speaker
Right, right.
00:22:49
Speaker
Because the underlying hostility isn't really going anywhere.
00:22:52
Speaker
But that metric, would it be a good suggestion to women to observe his friend group when you're dating him?
00:22:58
Speaker
Because that says a lot about who he is as a person.
00:23:01
Speaker
Because early on in this podcast, I remember telling Rose, I was like, you're the sum total of your five closest friends.
00:23:07
Speaker
And I think this is really true for men as well.
00:23:10
Speaker
I think it says a lot.
00:23:11
Speaker
And unfortunately, a lot of guys are kind of isolated, but women are not responsible for that.
00:23:16
Speaker
However, they can't fix that either.
00:23:18
Speaker
But yes, I think I want to know, for example, does he talk with friends about real stuff or is it always just 100% superficial?
Testing Boundaries in New Relationships
00:23:26
Speaker
But I also want to know one thing that's kind of hard to find out, which is, are his interactions with males largely about bonding against females?
00:23:34
Speaker
Because that's how a lot of guys operate is when they're hanging out with the other guys, they're talking bad about women.
00:23:39
Speaker
Or they're talking in very objectifying, sexual dehumanizing ways about women.
00:23:45
Speaker
And get a glimpse into that?
00:23:46
Speaker
Well, eventually you tend to, I think.
00:23:48
Speaker
If you've gone out with a guy, but you might have to be going out with him for a little while, you start to see.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I always tell people, be very, very careful about anything that he says, like, I'm just joking, or my friend was just joking, or we're just joking.
00:24:01
Speaker
Watch out.
00:24:03
Speaker
Because that stuff tends to be not just joking.
00:24:07
Speaker
I mean, it may have been in the form of a joke, but it tends to be very revealing of really real issues.
00:24:13
Speaker
So don't buy it when he says, oh, we were just kidding around.
00:24:16
Speaker
You got to have a sense of humor.
00:24:18
Speaker
Watch out.
00:24:19
Speaker
This reminds me of how, you know, they say in vino veritas, like when one is in their cups of alcohol, that's when the truth comes out.
00:24:26
Speaker
I always feel like the equivalent of that with men is I'm just joking.
00:24:30
Speaker
If you hear it, I'm just joking.
00:24:32
Speaker
Know that they're not joking whatsoever.
00:24:34
Speaker
Like that's actually typically what they believe.
00:24:36
Speaker
And they're sort of testing the waters to see what they can get away with.
00:24:39
Speaker
Because it's a gradual erosion and broaching of boundaries and respect.
00:24:44
Speaker
Would you not agree?
00:24:44
Speaker
It's not like it comes overnight.
00:24:46
Speaker
But it's something that happens, I think, gradually over time.
00:24:49
Speaker
And so this is another way in which women tend to be bamboozled because they think, well, it was so good in the beginning and he was so respectful and I must not be communicating properly.
00:24:59
Speaker
You know, to those women who are just so unsure about how it could have gotten to how bad it is, like, what would you say to them?
00:25:05
Speaker
And you just described perfectly, by the way, exactly the kinds of things that go on where he's on much better behavior in the early stages because on some level, consciously or subconsciously, he knows that he's not going to have a relationship unless for at least a while at the beginning he makes things look better than that.
00:25:22
Speaker
Then, yeah, then the slide begins into starting to more and more feel comfortable enough to show his true self.
00:25:29
Speaker
And we don't want to see his true self.
00:25:31
Speaker
And by that time you're dating him, you have investment.
00:25:34
Speaker
Your emotions are starting to be involved in it.
00:25:37
Speaker
You're starting to have hope.
00:25:38
Speaker
And some things that you're really craving and longing for, you're starting to think maybe you're going to get met.
00:25:42
Speaker
So it's very tempting then to start to make excuses or let things go by.
00:25:49
Speaker
Then combined with all those messages, which you also just pointed to, that women get that say you're overreacting, you got to just stick with him, love heals all, and all this.
00:25:59
Speaker
I'm sorry to say, but it's crap.
00:26:03
Speaker
It is.
00:26:03
Speaker
It is.
00:26:04
Speaker
It is crap.
00:26:05
Speaker
So then you hit up against this stuff.
00:26:07
Speaker
And I think the way you just articulated it is perfect that you have to go on the assumption that actually this is when you're seeing the real stuff.
Charm as a Power Tactic
00:26:15
Speaker
It's not the early stuff that was the real stuff.
00:26:18
Speaker
And don't discount anything.
00:26:19
Speaker
And with respect to your Latin phrase there, take it seriously what he does when he's drinking too.
00:26:24
Speaker
And I know you meant it more analogous to other situations, but it was also true literally of when he's drinking because it's, oh, I was drinking.
00:26:32
Speaker
It's like, oh God, what people do when they're drunk
00:26:35
Speaker
reveal so much of what's really true about it.
00:26:39
Speaker
I always assume I'm meeting the representative the first few months.
00:26:41
Speaker
I'm like, this is his representative.
00:26:42
Speaker
This isn't him just yet.
00:26:44
Speaker
You know?
00:26:45
Speaker
That's right.
00:26:45
Speaker
No, his agent.
00:26:46
Speaker
That's great.
00:26:47
Speaker
That's good.
00:26:47
Speaker
I like that a lot.
00:26:49
Speaker
Right.
00:26:49
Speaker
I think that that's the best way to see it, because I think this was your book.
00:26:52
Speaker
I don't remember, but I remember somewhere reading that, you know, when someone is trying to charm you instead of saying, oh, this person is charming, ask yourself, you know, why are they charming me specifically?
00:27:02
Speaker
Because I think a lot of women aren't able to discern between a man being emotionally vulnerable versus weaponizing that emotion, because a lot of women think that, oh, you know, he opened up to me so fast.
00:27:14
Speaker
And like, I could have a heart to heart with him like right away.
00:27:17
Speaker
And they see this as like a green flag.
00:27:18
Speaker
And I have to let them know that actually, it's not really a good thing that he's opening up to you quite this quickly, because you've just known him like, what, 20 days less than that.
00:27:27
Speaker
And in most cases, he's just a stranger to you.
00:27:30
Speaker
And it's really hard to like impress upon them because they really want to believe in like this goodness of men narrative.
00:27:36
Speaker
that he's just trying to be honest with them and it's not like a ploy or a game or like love bombing or something.
00:27:41
Speaker
And that's the thing.
00:27:42
Speaker
How do you differentiate between what is vulnerability and what is him just putting on a mask or a role to try to convince you to, you know, give him material to use?
00:27:54
Speaker
Well, the first thing I guess I would say is keep watching what his orientation is towards you, because so far this is just about what his orientation is towards himself.
00:28:04
Speaker
you know, what his relationship is to his own feelings.
00:28:07
Speaker
But is he interested in your feelings?
00:28:09
Speaker
Is he actually thoughtful?
00:28:11
Speaker
Is he actually show signs of he's thinking about you?
00:28:15
Speaker
And like, is there any sense of balance there?
00:28:18
Speaker
So that's one issue.
00:28:19
Speaker
Another issue is, which you already pointed to, is the things just feel like they're happening too fast and you have to trust your gut about that.
00:28:27
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's great that he's opening up, but if he's opening up at this really odd rate, to be on guard about that.
00:28:33
Speaker
But a lot of what I end up saying about a number of things that are kind of in the gray area, because as you're saying, it's kind of a gray area.
00:28:39
Speaker
It could be that he's actually a feeling guy, which would be a lovely thing, is keep just...
00:28:44
Speaker
don't decide yet.
00:28:46
Speaker
Keep your eyes open.
00:28:47
Speaker
And I have a similar thing that I say about charm in a different sense, about charm in the sense of the guy who's very smooth and knows what he wants to do that evening and has a plan for you and says, oh, let's go do this and then let's go do this.
00:28:59
Speaker
And he's poised and self-confident.
00:29:01
Speaker
And we tend to take the attitude of somebody who's very charming of, oh, that's like two points in his favor and it's going to take me extra bad stuff to convince me that he's bad.
00:29:11
Speaker
And I encourage people to put charm in the opposite category.
00:29:14
Speaker
Say, no, no, that's two points against him.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's going to take extra good things to convince me that he's bad.
00:29:20
Speaker
And there are some charming people that are good people, but charming people generally are bad.
00:29:24
Speaker
You know, more than half the time, in my experience, charming people are bad news.
00:29:28
Speaker
Actually, well more than half the time.
00:29:30
Speaker
Charming people are bad news.
00:29:31
Speaker
Why?
00:29:32
Speaker
Because developing charm is a lot of work.
00:29:36
Speaker
That doesn't come naturally to someone.
00:29:37
Speaker
They did that over a period of years by working hard to develop it.
00:29:41
Speaker
And so then you have to say, well, why?
00:29:44
Speaker
Why did they want to put so much energy into developing charm?
00:29:48
Speaker
Well, when a man is putting that much energy into developing charm, it's usually because he's into power over women.
00:29:54
Speaker
And he's figured out that that's how you get power over women.
00:29:57
Speaker
This is one of the things that I most say is that the abusive man's problem is that his attitude about an intimate relationship is not really about intimacy and connection.
00:30:06
Speaker
It's about power.
00:30:08
Speaker
It's about what can put him in a more powerful position.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so you want to have big radar out for, well, is this starting to look like a power maneuver?
00:30:18
Speaker
And that reminds me of another point that I think is important with all these different styles, the charmer, the rapidly emotional guy, the guy who, you know, you're a little concerned about how he is with his friends or you're concerned about his lack of friends because either of those can be a concern, is you have to be challenging early in a relationship.
Assessing True Respect in Conversations About Women
00:30:38
Speaker
And I don't mean be deliberately a jerk, but I mean, you have to be challenging.
00:30:42
Speaker
You have to be deliberately uncooperative at times.
00:30:45
Speaker
Because early in a relationship, when things are easy, it's very tempting to think that everything is great because it's so easy.
00:30:52
Speaker
But the thing is, you can't see what a guy is like until things are not easy.
00:30:57
Speaker
So you have to like deliberately do things like when he has a plan, say, actually, that's not what I feel like doing tonight and see how he reacts to that.
00:31:05
Speaker
You have to deliberately say like, oh, you know, thanks for taking me somewhere, but I actually didn't like the food that much.
00:31:11
Speaker
You've got to deliberately be difficult.
00:31:14
Speaker
That's not being a jerk.
00:31:14
Speaker
Those are things if someone has every right to say like, no, that's not what I feel like doing tonight, or I didn't really like that food.
00:31:20
Speaker
Or no, I need a night off tonight to hang with my women friends.
00:31:23
Speaker
Like do this stuff, not just in a natural way, but actually do it in an extra way.
00:31:28
Speaker
Do it on purpose.
00:31:30
Speaker
We call it aim to be a problem once a month.
00:31:33
Speaker
Good.
00:31:34
Speaker
That's great.
00:31:34
Speaker
I like that because that's one of the only times you're going to find out what's really going on is his reactions to being thwarted.
00:31:41
Speaker
That's what tends to most reveal where his issues are.
00:31:45
Speaker
You know, Lundy, this makes me think about the, I don't know if it was Gloria Steinem, but somebody had the expression, they said, everything is about sex except sex.
00:31:53
Speaker
Sex is about Paulo, right?
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
Have you heard this before?
00:31:57
Speaker
I hadn't heard that saying, no.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, everything is about sex except sex.
00:32:01
Speaker
Sex is about power.
00:32:02
Speaker
And so I think I like when you were talking about how charm is often cultivated in order for a certain power to be held, a power differential.
00:32:12
Speaker
to be implemented.
00:32:12
Speaker
Right.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I think that's what I think our listeners and myself as well really need to understand is that for a lot of men, it's not about the possibility of a fulfilling relationship and a partnership, you know, and a lifetime of intimacy with someone.
00:32:27
Speaker
It's about the chance to hold power over another person.
00:32:31
Speaker
So what if instead of looking for charm, you were looking for things like, is he fun?
00:32:37
Speaker
Does he seem free of ego?
00:32:39
Speaker
You know, not big ego.
00:32:41
Speaker
Does he have people in his life that he cares about and where you like how he talks about
Consistent Boundary Setting
00:32:46
Speaker
them?
00:32:46
Speaker
Like you like what he has to say about his brothers and sisters, or you like what he has to say about his friends.
00:32:52
Speaker
Does he talk respectfully about his exes?
00:32:54
Speaker
And I don't mean he has to have great feelings towards them.
00:32:57
Speaker
We often don't have the best feelings towards our exes.
00:33:00
Speaker
But talk about them in a way that sounds like he's talking about a human being that he had some difficulties with or couldn't get along with rather than talking about exes like they were pieces of dirt.
00:33:09
Speaker
I think you can tell a lot how a guy talks about his exes.
00:33:13
Speaker
And to really listen for what is his orientation towards people and particularly towards women is
00:33:21
Speaker
And I'm not talking about the idealism because some abusers do like we'll talk about their mother like she's the greatest thing ever.
00:33:27
Speaker
But I'm not talking about idealizing.
00:33:28
Speaker
I'm talking about really talking about people so that it sounds like he's talking about people, human beings.
00:33:34
Speaker
This is something you actually mentioned in one of your quotes where you talk about how the idealization, sort of the pedestalization of women is also another warning sign.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, because he's still not seeing her.
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:45
Speaker
When he's telling you you're perfect and when he's telling you you're awful, either way, it shows he's not seeing you because you're not perfect and you're not awful.
00:33:54
Speaker
So that's one of the things you can just keep asking yourself is, do I feel like he sees me?
00:33:59
Speaker
The crazy thing is I've seen this dichotomy play out in real life, like in South Asia, where there's like this massive goddess culture.
00:34:05
Speaker
So people think that they're in the clear because they're like, well, we worship goddesses.
00:34:09
Speaker
But at the same time, their intimate relationships with women in their lives is terrible.
00:34:13
Speaker
But somehow it doesn't occur to them.
00:34:15
Speaker
They have this compartmentalizing way of looking at life where they're like, well, OK, fine.
00:34:20
Speaker
These women are different, but we worship goddesses.
00:34:23
Speaker
So somehow that's better.
00:34:25
Speaker
That means we respect women in general.
00:34:27
Speaker
And I think like, you know, in a lot of these cultures, women are socialized, even in the US, I think women are socialized to be really agreeable and just downright people pleasers.
00:34:37
Speaker
So I think for a lot of them, it's really hard to admit that they're being emotionally manipulated because they want to believe that the men in their lives aren't trying to intentionally do something to them, especially when it comes to sex, right?
00:34:49
Speaker
Because a lot of men will say whatever they need to if they're not that serious about you in order to get you into bed.
00:34:54
Speaker
And I think a lot of women want to feel like they're the exception and not the rule.
00:34:58
Speaker
So I mean, one of the things I'm curious to know about is what is your advice to women who have a hard time having boundaries with men?
00:35:05
Speaker
Because I think in general, we always advocate that like prevention is better than cure.
00:35:10
Speaker
It's better to just
00:35:11
Speaker
veto the kinds of men who are not good.
00:35:13
Speaker
But then obviously, there are some that are go through and that you date for a few days, a few months, etc.
00:35:18
Speaker
And it's much harder to say no to people once you actually have a bond or relationship with them.
00:35:23
Speaker
So how do you cultivate this mentality of being able to push back and say no?
00:35:28
Speaker
Let me say first that that was really interesting what you said about goddess worship and how it doesn't necessarily translate into treating women any differently.
00:35:36
Speaker
That was really interesting.
00:35:38
Speaker
And it clicks for me because it's saying, well, I'll respect a woman as long as she's a goddess.
00:35:43
Speaker
And that as soon as she's like a person, then she's not worthy of my respect anymore.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
00:35:49
Speaker
What I would say about boundaries, which is something I think about a lot, but I'm far from incredibly knowledgeable about, is that the developing of strong boundaries, if you really haven't had them, takes time.
00:36:00
Speaker
And what I would most recommend is getting hold of one of the best books.
00:36:04
Speaker
And I'd be happy to tell you a couple of ones that I particularly recommend, and we can put them in the notes for the show, that take it step by step through how to practice establishing boundaries on every front in your life, not just with people you're dating or in an intimate relationship with.
00:36:20
Speaker
And I've read a couple books that are just terrific in how thoroughly they break it down, which is if you've had no control over your boundaries or little control over your boundaries for a lot of your life, then it's incredibly helpful to have a book like that that breaks it down into very small pieces.
00:36:36
Speaker
and helps you work on it a piece at a time.
00:36:39
Speaker
Your boundaries with your friends, your boundaries with your own kids, boundaries with your employers.
00:36:45
Speaker
If you have housemates, it really breaks it down, including how to deal with your family of origin, which sometimes is where the roots are of having some real boundary problems.
00:36:55
Speaker
And so I'll give you a couple of good recommendations to pass on because that's what I would most recommend.
Reviving Women's Movements for Change
00:37:01
Speaker
One other thing that it sounds like a lot of women now are already doing, which I do think is really good, which is some time of not being involved with anyone and focus on your relationship with yourself and with your relationship with your friends.
00:37:14
Speaker
It's such a temptation to always have a man at the center of everything.
00:37:18
Speaker
And it's very hard, I think, to create new patterns unless you really step out of that whole scene for a while and just focus on the development of the things you want to develop.
00:37:30
Speaker
This reminds me of the next question I have for you, Lundy, because I agree with you.
00:37:35
Speaker
And that's something that my therapist has helped me work on as far as like literally giving me a blueprint for how to start to implement boundaries.
00:37:42
Speaker
That was really helpful for me because I come from the opposite of that in my family situation.
00:37:47
Speaker
But the question I have for you then is the fact that it can be very helpful for women to step away from men.
00:37:53
Speaker
But how do we do that when we're in a current political and legal era where more and more we are being confined and sort of carted into like a general tenor of having to have a man and serve a man and be subservient to men if we want to have any hope of sort of personhood in this country and even worldwide?
00:38:13
Speaker
It's a really scary backlash time against oppressed people in general, against women, against people of color, against immigrants.
00:38:20
Speaker
It's a really hostile, a scary hostile time.
00:38:25
Speaker
And the only solution that I know of is bonding together because when things get that hostile, I don't believe you can solve problems individually by changing your attitude or by reading another self-help book or...
00:38:40
Speaker
by doing this or that.
00:38:42
Speaker
I mean, do keep doing those pieces of work that you're doing, but people have got to bond together.
00:38:47
Speaker
And my feeling, I know we can't relive the past.
00:38:50
Speaker
It's a mistake to try to relive the past, but we can learn some things from the past.
00:38:54
Speaker
And one thing that I think we really need now is to be drawing on things from 60, 70 years ago, from the, you know, 60 years ago, from the 1960s, when there were just a lot of women's support groups and there were a lot of women's events and women's rallies and
00:39:11
Speaker
the women really need to get back to bonding with other women.
00:39:17
Speaker
And I know this next one's going to be controversial.
00:39:19
Speaker
Maybe you'll want to edit it out, but I think women really need largely to have those groups be people who grew up female and just otherwise the discussion keeps changing and heading off in other directions.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I believe back in real concrete organizing support groups, women's rights organizations, the grassroots kind of stuff, that stuff has really slipped away.
00:39:43
Speaker
I've been involved in, you know, feminist politics for for more than 30 years since I came into the domestic violence field.
00:39:50
Speaker
And there was much more of a movement, a sense of being part of a women's rights movement when I came into the field.
00:39:57
Speaker
We called it the battered women's movement, and we all considered ourselves part of the battered women's movement.
00:40:02
Speaker
There isn't really any such movement anymore.
00:40:05
Speaker
And so things really have to go back to a lot of in-the-street agitation and not just polite marches.
00:40:12
Speaker
Polite marches are great, but there has to be a lot of stuff that's not so polite.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah, the collective liberation needs to be renewed.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:40:18
Speaker
I call it gender unionization.
00:40:21
Speaker
But I think the point stands.
00:40:23
Speaker
Before we continue on, I wanted to remind our listeners that if they wanted to listen to the rest of this episode, please head on over to the bonus content.
00:40:32
Speaker
We want to make sure that you're able to hear the full extent of this conversation that we're having.
00:40:37
Speaker
But again, Lelby, thank you so much for your time.
00:40:40
Speaker
We know we have to let you go, but we hope we can invite you back again sometime soon and keep fighting the good fight.
00:40:45
Speaker
Thanks so much.
00:40:46
Speaker
Same to you.
00:40:47
Speaker
And this has been a wonderful conversation and good luck to everybody that's listening.
00:40:50
Speaker
Thanks, Lundy.
00:40:52
Speaker
And Diana, to all of our listeners, what do we tell the scrotes?
00:40:55
Speaker
Die mad.
00:40:57
Speaker
Die mad and see you next week.
00:40:59
Speaker
See you next week.