Guest first of all, i appreciate that. I want sometimes to be out and about. I want to be out in talking to people and not sit and manipulate numbers, and i found these kinds of interviews to be really revealing, particularly with people that i dont particularly understand or i dont really get their world view. I mean, i actually didnt start this book thinking i was going to go do a lot of interviews with different groups. My first the work, for example, the chapter thats on the extreme right wing, the neonazis and white supremists, they are so wired and so many welcomeses and chat rooms, i figured most could be done on the internet, and so i went to chat rooms, and, you know, listen to people talking, but it occurred to me as i was on the chat rooms that they would be like eight people saying horrible things, and it dawned on me that theres eight people here, four are graduate students of anthropology, and one is, like, a High School Kid who is goofing around, and two are real white supremists, and the other one is like me. I thought, well, you know, and i cant tell whos who. Host cant trust and verify. How do you verify; right . Exactly. Guest as a journalist, you need sources you can trust, at least see them, so i decided to go, you know, talk to them, and as i began to do that research, as i was working on guyland as well, i began to realize that i was going to want to talk to people for all of the other chapters as much as i could. Host talk about your relationship with rick, who you start the book with, the gun show, to give watchers a sense of who we are talking about, where are we in america, and also a little bit about your relationship with the people you interview. Who is rick . Guest well, hes a guy that i met at one of the very first places that i went to interview white supremists and neonazis. Host where are we . Guest this is interesting. When i told friends i was going to be doing work on the extreme right, they said, oh, youre going to have to go to the deep south, the home of the clan, and along masondixon line, theres extreme right wing strongholds, and it turns out in a lot of suburban schools along the western new jersey, southern pennsylvania, you know, a lot of Public Schools are so starved for cash, some represent out their auditorium, their gym, for gun shows on weekends, so i walked into basically what is a high school, and theres, you know, inside the gym, theres a, you know, tables and tables and tables of guns, and but host also like a middle School Basketball game going on at the same time . Guest not at at the same time, but access as you walk in, theres tables out in front with lots of pamphlets; right . Not prior to answering the gun show, and the pamphlets is how the government is trying to take your guns, goes iepg doing this, obamas doing that, obamacares terrible. I wanted to talk to them. They are the guys with the ideas, the leaflets, and so i went up to the one table, and i just sort of said, you know, if i pick up a pamphlet, its yours, and, you know, but four guys around at the table talking, and, you know, they looked at me suspiciously, and they said, who are you . Host you sound like way you are. You sound like a new yorker; right . Its hard to hide. Guest right. Im a new york im a brooklyn, you know, jewish sociologist; right . Host right. Grg so, you know host feminist. Guest pick two. Host exactly. Caller im not going to, like, take fake a accent and be one of them. Host could you do it if you tried . Guest i doubt it, actually, but i dont think i would try, but i so i said to them, who are you, and i said, well, actually, im an academic, im a researcher doing research on these organizations, these ideas, and trying to understand the guys about it, and i am studying men who believe this stuff, and they, you know, looked at me suspiciously and said asked me questions, and i said, look, look, heres what i am, you know, i dont get it, so but heres by job. I want to understand how you guys see the world. I want to understand that your world view. You will not convince you, and i will not convince you. Thats offer the table. Whats on the table is i want to understand why you think the way you do. Now, heres the thing that was interesting. Now, i would say roughly half of the guys i approached would not talk to me, so they are biasedded in the research, an i acknowledge those. Host what did they say . Just say guest i dont want to talk to you. Basically, i dont want to talk to you, you never understand, you know, one or two said something antisemitic, but it was vague and rather thin in surface. Host right. Guest basically, i dont want to talk to you, and im fine with that, but the guys who did, heres my pitch. Your complaint, as i understand it, is you are the forgotten americans. You are the americans on whose back this country was built. You fought its wars. You built its bridges. You built the country. No ones listening to you. I will. I will host thats good. Guest i will not agree with you. Thats not why im here, but ill listen, promise. My job is to safely as i can represent the world as you see it. Thats what i want to do. Host who is the guy . Before we get to the views are, sort of age, race, you know, socioclass. Who are we talking about just for this part . Guest i want to say that this is only one chapter of the in which i try to pick up the pulse of a lot of groups, but ill describe to you a little bit because he was funny when we met for the first time privately. We had breakfast the next morning in a coffee shop, and so hes about mid 30s. He does have a job. He was working in a construction crew, but heres the thing thats interesting about him, and all of the guys who are on the extreme right of whom i spoke. All of them have the same class background. They are downwardly mobile, lower middle class. Some of the guys you talk to have the same, you know, their fathers were independent farmers, small shopkeepers, ma and pa grocers. They closed the store when walmart moved in, independent farmers fore closed. Highways, Union Factory workers, and the factory closed; right . They are downwardly mobile and will not have the wages nor the kind of job protection that their fathers had, and, in fact, many of them, you know, they were like, you know, smith and son, they were the son; right . Host right. Guest or a lot of the guys i talk to were independent nonunion contract workers, plumbers, electricians, but not union. Off the books. They were all downwardly mobile. That was their background. Rick shows up, you know, and he decides hes going to be hes going to be playful with me, and thats one of the reasons i chose him to introduce the book. So he wears an old flannel shirt and weathered Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat because were in now, you know, sort of intentional pennsylvania, but he also wears a Confederate Flag on it, and so he opens as he sits down, he opens the flannel shirt and goes like this and says, i wore this just for you. Host thats good, just to hit all the stereotypes. Guest give it to me. You know, so i dont have to make him up. Host right, exactly. Right. Right. Guest so and the thing is, hes also so hes he and his wife are trying to make it on far less host hes married . Guest married, two kids, five and seven i think at the time i interviewed him, really unhappy with the quality of schools, and the conversations would not be about Free Health Care or reasonable cost of health care. We didnt have those conversations. We had a conversation about what he expected growing up, what he thought was going to be his and what he didnt get and how he feels, you know, somewhat baseically screwed by the system. Host like things were taken from him that were rightfully his . Guest and that in a sense, thats the line, thats the kind of connective tissue among all of the different chapters, so my book has resonance with yours, for example, with end of men, theres a lot of reference to the books, which is the subtitle of that is the betrayal of the american men. Host right. Guest these guys definitely feel like they have been portrayed. Host yeah, i thought about that book as i read yours, visiting parts of america, and different ages of people and the true line is a similar line so what was promised to me, you know, when i was growing up, the fathers in the 50s, down to the sons who really had no models for manhood and who have no, you know, no easy thing to grasp on to as a model for success. Before we get to the entitlement question, central to the book, since the book in many ways, i mean, whats uncomfortable about reading the book is its like rippling with racism, sexism, and anger that you see across chapters in a way thats frightening when you read it all, all encompassed between two covers, so we just talked about rick, use him as a bridge, how quickly before you get to the race. And sexism . How does that kind of come up in the different conversations . Guest it comes up in two ways. The racism coming up selfconsciously. Either its right there in the front because they want to shock me. Host always about obama or just like any guest a lot about obama. A lot about obama. Its not obama specifically. Its a generalized them, like how they are invading, how they are taking whats ours, that sort of thing. Host interesting. My brother was a in a working class neighborhood, and visiting him, i feel like belasio has exploded. I have not heard it, but at the barbecues, its i like, wow, where did this come from . Guest, wow, interesting. Interesting. Host yeah. Guest from the other side of, you know, for guyland, i hung out in a firefighter bar not far from my mouse and new York City Fire department, white as it gets, and so and i heard that i heard a little bit of that, but i have not gone back to listen to it around the mixed race marriage, sons afro. Host really, were going to talk about this for how long . So anyway, yes. Guest sometimes its out front. Remember the guys know im not one of them. I make it clear im not going to try to portend and pass host are they selfconscious about racism or not even . Guest well, see, thats the thing. The sexism is unselfconscious. Host interesting. Guest theres the occasional wife pillary, but theres never aceps of sexism because they are also proclaiming Michele Bachmann or palin. Host isnt it that the rage is channeled through probably a person, like an exwife or, you know, what i mean . Its a familiar guest for other guys. Host not him necessarily, but you own sexism more because you have personal experience of a woman who was whatever. Guest you know, in our culture, i actually think that sexism is far more permissible than racism. Host it seems like that, yeah. Guest i have an excellent example how to think of it. If you remember the primary season in 2008 when clinton was running against obama for the democratic nomination, and there was a guy who, at one of clintons rallies host Hillary Clintons rally. Guest yes, held up a sign that said iron my shirt, remember that . Host yes. Guest i asked the students, i teach a large lecture class, and how many remembered that . By the way, in 2009, i asked the question, not five years later. I asked students here, how many of you remember that . I had, like, 10 , 20 hands. I said, yeah, because it really didnt pass on to the media radar. Few of us knew it, people who knoll these sorts of things knew it. Imagine if at an obama rally some guy held up a sign that said polish my shoes. Dont you think that every media outlet would have been front page, john mccain, every republican would have said, wait, stop everything. Thats wrong. Host is it because they dont think its dangerous . You know, after all, youre talking to a woman running, i dont know. Guest i think its just because it just seems more acceptable. Host right, right. Guest i mean racism, overt racism well, prior to 2008, you know, right after 2008, we were celebrating, like, over racism, thats going to go away, boy, were we wrong about that, but i think that, in fact, in some ways obama has become just a lightning rod for the resurgence ever overt racism. Host overt . Guest yes, wellings still coded. Host its coded. We hate obama, your president , that kind of thing. I hear that a lot. Guest part of what was behind the birther thing, hes not one of us. Hes one of them. Right . Host right. Guest and so part of this that is startling, i mean, after all, obama is not a black president , but a mixed race. Hes africanamerican, a black and a white parent. This is like the win drop rule. Host right, right, right. Guest it is really, i think, interesting that sexism is far more casual, partly because its the intercertainly, you know, these guys that i was talking with actually host have a wife. Guest exwives they hate, exwifes lawyers that they hate more, and they have also, you know, women in their lives who they see as getting ahead of them. Host like a lot more women you can see as taking your job or, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we are going to return to that subject talking about the specific groups, but i think its important now to define this central concept of the book, the idea of a grieved entitlement. I have questions about it, and so just tell the viewers what is that . Whats a grieved entitlement . Guest its a phrase i came up with. All the groups i talk about the the mens rights group, fathers rights group, the guys who beat up their wifings, partners, or kill them in some cases, to guys who go postal or open fire in the workplace, to the men on the extreme right, what i think the thread that binds all of them is the notion of aggrieved entitlement. Theres one story where i first sort of encountered it, and i was on a tv talk show, opposite four of these men who were angry white men, and they all believed they were the victims of reverse discrimination of the workplace. Its a workplace show in which they were talking about how affirmative action was actually reverse discrimination against white men. They were qualified for jobs, promotions, didnt get them, and, boy, were they angry about it. Host uhhuh. Guest so i was there opposite them, alongside phil nelson, the journalist who had written volunteer slavery, and so the two of us were there sort of opposite them to respond to them, and my the reason im telling this story is because my first inkling of it was a quote from one of the men which was the title of the show. The title of the show is a black woman stole my job. Host yeah, i saw that in your pook, right. Guest i have one question for you guys, about the title of the show a black woman stole my job, actually, its about one word in the title. I want to know about the word my, and where did you get the idea its your job . Why is it the job or a job, because without confronting mens sense of entitlement, we wont grasp why men dont have gender equality. Theres a policy a little bit, and you think, oh, my god, its reverse discrimination against us. This is the aggrieved entight 8ment, i think, sounds like. It is these were our jobs. These were our positions. These are the ones we were told when we were little, this is what is waiting for you. This is the theme, you know, the funniest scene of this entitlement seen is in monte python going to the castle walls in the holy grail and goes to the castle with the son and says, son, one day this will be yours, and the son says, what, the curtain . One day, this will be yours. That is what fathers have said to sons. Guest right, right. Host they expected this. They were entitled to it, and now youre telling them they are not going to get it . Now you tell them after all these years you have to play fair . Guest right, right. Host my feeling was that i felt like when i heard this, i it registered for me. I began, as i was doing the research for the book, i began to hear it in a lot of different venues, and so i tried to use that as a framing device on what because my argument in the book or in a way, the way that our book kind of runs parallel to each other is i think this is not the end of men, but it is the end of an era of the assumed entitlement. Host rights, right. Guest of the end of the era host end of male privilege. Guest thats what i so thats what i kept hearing from these guys. It was not so, and they were kind of blind sided by it. You know, its now a lifetime that the rules have completely changes from the office space in madmen, and the women are corralled in the center and you have your pick, its an office pick, sexual harassment, i mean, its the pace of this change, and i think you point this out host its been fast and alarming, yes. Guest its dizzying, guys sitting here saying, what happened . Host right, right. One thing i did in reading the book is to imagine one of the guys reading your book, and the you know, aggrieved entitlement makes absolute sense, but i found it hard to accept them as entitled anymore, so, like, you know, you have a phrase that sticks in my head that makes sense when you read it, especially to me and you. Its like men have had the wind at their back for all of this time; right . Its just you had tens of thousands of years. It was never a level playing field. We have the advantage, and now we dont have the advantage anymore. It was not yours to begin with, but its like we have this push, but they dont feel that way; right . They dont wind at their back . They look at obama, hillary clinton, and they are looking at what the field looks like, and it doesnt look like them. They cant get a job. The only job in my town is to be a walmart hostess, and i dont refer doing that job, thats a girls job. Its not a good job, so i was having a hard time conceiving of why they should accept your argument that they were entitled. Guest okay. Theres two levels of answers. Its a great question. Theres two levels of answers to the question. Does this describe their experience, and the second is why should they then, like, agree with me . Host yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Guest the first part, seems to me, is the mistake, i think, that we made that we being liberal feminists, basically in the 1970s, feminism sort of first began to, you know, permeate the culture in the 1970s. Men have all the power, just look at every single corporate board, every single state and local, national, international legislature, every university backward, you know, men have all the power. Host uhhuh. Guest and individually, and the women dont have the power, and women dont feel powerful. Individually. Feminism said to women, we, as a group, need to redress this imbalance of power at the top, and individually, feminism was about empowering women to have a wide l range of choices, more options about reproduction, around family life, not balancing work and family, those sorts of things, so it basically said there was a semitry between the powerlessness and powerrism. Apply 245 to men. Men have all the poir in the world. Therefore, men must feel powerful. The men go, what are you talking about . Are you out of your mind . My wife boss me around, my kids boss me around, my boss bosses me around. Im powerless. That analysis failed to resinate for men even then because men dont feel powerful. Host never did or just dont now . Guest well, because, we, you know, its only one king of the hill. Most of us feel like we have to be subservient to idiotic bosses. We have to be you know, when i try telling me male students they have the power. They are amazed; right . Im giving them a grade. Host like an Organization Man idea, the idea prevalent in the madmen era, that we are all cobs and we all end up, you know guest all tyke the 737 and we, you know host revolutionary road, exactly. Guest exactly. And as a result, that kind of model didnt really apply to men. Then you have all these groups that sprung up in the 70s or so, that basically said you know how you dont feel powerful . Youre right. Lets go to the woods. Heres the power stick, the power drumming and chaptering. You have wall street yuppies in power tie and power barak fast like it was a fashion accessory. Because the idea was supposed to feel powerful but didnt, thats entitlement. They dont feel this way. Whose fault is that . When you move to whose fault is that, thats why they should agree with me. I think that they have been sold a bill of goods. I think they have been duped, hoodwinked, betrayed, stiffed, all those things, but not by the people they think. Not by the lowers than them host not by l figment black woman; right . Guest no, by the arrogance, cynical elites manipulating them into going after those below them when, in fact, they can make common cause. My argument to them is its tom jones the common cause, recognizes the plight. Host explain who that is. Guest Timothy Mcveigh knows as the bomber, and tom jones is the hero of the grapes of wrath, the John Steinbeck novel about the great depression, displaced a my grant moving to california, buffeted by cynical elites, you know, impossible bureaucratic odds, you know, farmers who ripped them off, and he finally realized that its not the other guys who are trying to make a buck that are the problem. It is the people who are above him. Host right. Guest he then goes off and he says to the mother in the grape scene, i just cant you just see the candle light saying this to his mother, you know, wherever theres a man, you know, looking for a job, thats where ill be. He, tom jones, or as i say at the end, its fascinating to me that both Timothy Mcveigh and Nelson Mandela used the same poem, evictus, as their theme, and White Working Class guy making common cause with those below him rather than, you know, and rather than turning them into the enemy. Yeah, i mean, its the thomas frank, whats the matter with kansas idea that you quote in the book, which is this argument, you know, youre hating the wrong people basically, like, instead of hating corporate powers that shifted overseas and forgot about you and make no amends, you hate the people below you, hate women, black people, hate the people you perceive stole your job. Host thats what thomas frank says as well. I have Great Respect for the argument as well because i think that theres a distraction going on often with these. Host the chapter is about the rampage shooter and what we get wrong about the shooter, and you reconceive who the rampage shooter is. Talk about that a little bit. Guest the rampage shooter the school shooter, i have a chapter on guys who go postal. Host not them, not them. Thats different. The school shooters, young ones like columbine shooters, those guys. Guest im flattered you think you have a new take, an interesting take, what you think it is. Ill tell you what i think is new about it, the sociology of it. All the work on the school shooter, all the research thats been done other than ones booked rampage, first of all, all the ways we approached them has been a focus on the psychology of the shooters, so you have the extreme psychologyization, for example, in its some of the work on columbine, basically like looking in a painting like really, really up close so you see dots, but not a picture at all, or, and, you know, so its guns, goth music, causes that make them go, and they were bullied, constantly beat up, all the guys have that story, by the way. Host so, like, wheres the aggrieved entitlement . Guest the additional part, and ill get to the entitlement part. The additional piece that i add is that its not enough to profile the schools. Sandy hook is different. That was not a student coming into his school. So, and, since columbine, remember, School Shootings have had a dramatic turn. You dont just go to school and try to kill as many of them as you can as people did before them. Remember, you know, they are still in jail, but you kim yourself at the en. This is not suicide. This is suicide by mass murder. You kill you take out as many of them as you can because they have done you wrong. Thats the constant line that goes through their head, theres the entitlement. The line that goes through all host explain it again, explain guest their accounts are we have you have done us wrong. You have bullied us, beaten us up, ignored us, gay baited us, ect. , you know, spread rumors about us, lied about us, you know, and what is interesting, i thought about this on the train down here, that the Rampage School Shooters are the boys version of girls who commit suicide after being bullied and shunned in all of that, that they cant take it anymore. The boys explode, girls internalize. This is but its a similar kind of dynamic. Its not true that only boys bully. We know that thats not true, but they have different kinds of responses to it. For the boys, they, you know, they feel wronged, badly done by, ignored, and ill show you, get even with you. Thats their logic. Now, there are thousands of boys who are feeling this all the time. Host right. Guest why are School Shootings horrifying and in some ways, you know, a regular o current also reasonably rare . Like, 99 of the schools have not had one. Why . Thousands of boys feeling this every day in their basements attics, bedrooms, blowing up the galaxy on the computer, wanting to take revenge, why not . Schools have characteristics. One sociologist called it a the jockeys, the place where the jocks rule, columbine, for example, one of the players parked his hummer in a 15minute zone all day, never got a ticket because the administration protected him. These guys rule the school, and the administration in the faculty collude with them. You take the case, for example, of ohio, not that long ago, these guys, these athletes, if you remember what happened, this is what entitlement sounds like. These guys gang rape this girl, and filmed it. One of them was worried and said to the other, we could be in trouble for this, like, yeah, and the other one said, dont worry, the coach will take care of us. Hell clean it up. Sur enough, that day, the coach immediately did exactly what the guy said. He questionedded why the girl was there, what she was wearing, drinking, whether she led them on. Host we had several cases like this. Guest right. So how did the city of stevenville, ohio deal with the absolutely horrific response . They rehired him; right . Were not talking about this, were talking about the entire town behind the coach who runs into fears of the players. Thats entitlement. This Football Player was right. He was entitled, and it worked out as expected. My feeling is thats what we have thats what i want to interrupt. Host right. I understand that. Theres a different point than the rest of the book because they intrt the entitlement. Thats a real phenomena where one day they could be rick at the gun show. At the moment they are not, but thats like Old Fashioned class. Guest that is really interesting, hannah, because these guys the athletes, the top jocks, homecoming kings and all, they feel they have aggrieved entitlements Walking Around they say, guys tell me, you know, athletes, high guys on campus walking with targets on the back, everyones looking to get us, to do us in. Were the poor victims here. Host right. Everyonements to be a victim, you know, the relationship between the shooters and the jocks described, you know, that could have taken place in many decades. Like, you know, the entitlement of the jocks, the hummer, what happens to the jocks thats the new thing where every guy feels like he cant make it. My only other response to the chapter is, you know, didnt seem like you chose between psychology and cosh yolings. They are whatever. You have sociology and others interact with that in a way making them crazy. Its not, you know, its not necessarily important. Guest you dont sacrifice one for the otherment they work sociology provides context and psychology is the insight into the individual believer, why this person and not that person in that context. Host right. Now, the section of the book, which i greatly appreciated because im so curious and edited stories about it, is the thorough take on Mens Rights Movement because theres confusion. You have a sense they are angry, but theres a sense they have greefns, a old history to it, but it was use. , i think, to put all those strands together and kind of separate them in the way you did. The history of the mens rights, can you talk about the origins of the movement and where it comings from . Guest well, i locate the origins of the Mens Rights Movement in the guys response in the 1970s to the beginning of the womens move m, you know, the feminist movement. A lot of men because what feminism challenged was called by social psychologists the female sex role. You have to be nice, pretty, quiet, you know, do all though things, and women said, thats not who we are. We are ambitious, assertive, confident. We want to do stuff, and we dont want to sacrifice the nice nurturing stuff either. We want to be moms, workers, lean in, loosen up, do it all. Okay. Men said, you know, and the women in the lives were all, like, getting, becoming feminists and critiquing our behavior, and guys said, well, you know, they are right. Women have gotten a raw deal here. They cant be all and golly, so have we. We got a raw deal. They can never express your feelings or tell people that you love them, and all of your relationship with men are completely, you know, restricted by homophobia and terror people get the wrong idea about you, whatever, being a man sucks too, and those said it sucks just as much, and some guys said it sucks more, but origins come from the mens Liberation Movement that men needed liberation too from restrictive constraining, oppressor roles. Host sympathetic to feminism initially; right . Guest initially, it was. Host that was interesting, yes. Guest initially, it was sympathetic to feminism, but there was also but as one became angry, and i think there is a mens Liberation Movement, impulse, that is independent of feminism or sees itself independent, but not antifeminist, but thats basically faded. What has emerged now is Mens Rights Movement that women basically, the Mens Rights Movement takes as true the same thing i an hear from my female students, which is when i come to my classes, and i start to tell them the history of sort of the gender revolution, my students say, well feminism, that was your generations issue. We won. Thank you so much. We dont have to worry about that now. We can do anything we want. Host men or women say that . Guest women say this. Why . Because they have not been in the workplace yet, but five years later, they go, you were right. Before that, you know, feminisms over, and we won. We dont need to deal with that stuff anymore. We can have sex as we want, drink as much, like sports, go to law school, were fine. Host right. Guest so the men have the same critique. They basically think that feminism is so victorious that women have basically taken over. There are several ways in which the Mens Rights Movement embraces many of the original claims of mens liberation. For example, around mens health. Now, before they get angry and say theres too much funding for Breast Cancer and not enough for pros tait cancer, they say the traditional definition of masculinity, basically means you are indeferent to health concerns. Men do not go to the doctors for routine screenings, ect. , all Health Issues are true. They come from a critique of the male sex role, and that, i think, the Mens Rights Movement has positive things to offer. Particularly around health. Around stress related diseases, around how massachusetts cue linty leads to greater stress. All that stuff. Host right, right, right. Guest we agree with that sks right . Host right, right. Guest i agree with that. Somehow because women took over the medical establishment, and all this funding for Prostate Cancer, i think not. Host right. Guest no funding for Prostate Cancer and a lot for Breast Cancer. Host right, right. Guest i dont think so. I dont blame women for this, but i think that that critique is reasonable. The critique so that one thing the major tributary that feeds the river has to do with entitlement with fatherhood, the fathers Rights Movement. Host right. Is that a minor strand or separate strand, like, why did the fathers Rights Movement come to define, essentially, i think, of bitterness about divorce overwhelming amounts of bitterness. Host and child custody. Host but it becomes, i mean, all emails i answer are emails i recognize because they will so vile that its shocking. Guest right, okay. Host why how did that come from . Guest yes, i think its understand l. In the 70s, the critique of the male sex role enabled men, or in some ways inspired men to become more involved fathers. This is where the mens Liberation Movement coincided. Host right. Guest they said we need you to be better fathers, share house work and child care. We want it work, pleas. Men took it seriously and started, you know, think about it. Think about your own husbands, think about compared to you know, my father had to fight fought and lost to be in the delivery room when i was born. Host that explained a lot about you, a nice feminist father. Guest he lost. They would not let him in. Now, if the man is married to the woman who is giving birth to the child host and hes not there, hes a jerk. Guest 95 of men are there. Think of how it changed. Men are far more involved in child care and kind of like it, so, okay, what happened since the 70s, why there was a trickle of stuff about fatherhood then, that grew into a varied ocean of positive stuff and all the these, you know, these beautiful pens to involved daddihood, and, you know, daddy and me stuff. Its great. Those men became more involved, more active fathers, and the laws did not change. The court system thinking of them as our fathers generation. The court system thinks of them as wallets. The court system thinks of them as utterly uninvolved, married to the jobs, not acknowledges they have more input, so when they come to a custody decision, they feel like, why did i put in all this work and all this effort and all of this stuff with my only to lose everything. Now, a little reality is helpful here because the majority of custody cases are not contested. They its not a case where i want joint and you want sole. It is taped most of the time, in effect, over 80 of cases, the husband and wife who are divorced agree on custody prior to the court date. This is glsh agree in what direction . Usually joint or sole physical and he has visitation. There are case loads, one out of five cases, really is, conflict. He wants joint, she wants sole. He wants sole, she wants whatever. He wants more than she wants him to have. In those cases, courts sides and here i think the father rights data probably have some valid discrimination, and most of the time the court sides with her. I mean, i have an analysis that its not all that wrong. Theres a lot of different theres a lot of cases, a lot of circumstances for for this. One does not know. Theres charges of, you know, violation in the home, which is also pervasive. Theres correlation with those cases, you know, whatever, but what im saying is that by and large whats the anger that fuels a lot of the father rights and mens rights group is a sense that we change, the institutions have not. They are furious at courts, judges, at lawyers, but also at their exwives. There is an antifeminist strain, but its not the whole thing. I think of all the chapters of the book, i mean, i think that the fathers rights are legitimate. Host i always thought that. Guest on the other hand, all groups i talk with in the book have a gripe. They are just taking delivery their angry mail to the wrong address. Host legitimate institutional gripe, how about that . Guest absolutely. Host some institutions which is, you know, not meeting the current era or something, some institution not moving forward, perhaps. Guest the thing that, the reason that im, you know, critical, of course, is i think that some of the reversals of data are loopy, but most of the time, but i do get the anger especially the fathers, angry dads, saying we changed, the institutions havent, and thats wrong. Weve been badly done by. Theres the entitlement. We put this up. We are entitled. Host right. There was a funny quote you had in there by a kid, a friend of yours, a supervisor or something, and a kid who said, you know, do you spend time with your dad . Hes busy working on his dads Rights Movement that i never sigh see him. That was very funny. You end on a depressing story, and the sense that theres like toxic building, you know, ending on a hopeful note, promise, but theres a emails uncomfortable to read, the letters of the shooters, you know, just a sense against women. What do you do with that . Wheres it come from, and what do you do with that . I think a lot of guys felt personally is buffeted by the changes in womens lives around sexual empowerment, around entering into the workplace, you know, they feel i think the emotion under the ang er is they feel confused and berest and bewilderedded and just kind of, like, at sea. These are unstable emotions. You cant get your footing, in quick sand, and i think theres anger thats a way to sort of stabilize yourself. He shot up the women in the gym, and in his testimony, he said he had, you know, he had had not had sex in years, a date, all these gorgeous women, hes not a bad looking guy. Hes not if you look at the picture. Host he says i wear cologne, a depressing letter. Guest it breaks your heart. A lot of guys, you know, think about the, all of those angry white men pickup artists, a genera of being a pickup artist, how to get women to, you know, i remember being a kid there were, like, pheromone based colognes, women couldnt stay away, guaranteed, you know, moneyback guarantee if you dont get some tonight, you know, and all the strategies and a friend did research on how guys prepare for going out for bars and stuff with their friends, and how do yo go to a bar and with the chances of you actually having sex that night with someone you pick up are, you know, less than 5 . How do you prepare for failure every single weekend . Right . You know . So theres a resentment and anger and confusion stuff. Look, women refused to sacrifice their hotness and femme anymorety for being confident in the workplace wanting to be taken confident as women and workers. They are beautiful. They are sexy. They are hot. They like sex. How come not me . You know, so, like, i get that. I feel i can understand that anger. I feel that guys feel like resentment, like host odd thing its like fantasy. Two things about the letter is one is that you read it and what hes saying incorrectly, but what you see the logic is im doing everything i need to do to be a man, and its not working, like, thats the fundamental truth of the life. You know, its superficial, im wearing this, working out, doing this, you know, looking for a job k all these things, and its utterly failing. Guest all these things that you women told me i had to do. Host its like a aaa commercial that i quote in the book in ran in the super bowl with silent men, i picked up your laundry, hell held your lipstick. Its mute, like the men are dproazen and mute. Like youve done this to pee. Guest a now i drive a muscle car. This is how i know the commercial did not necessarily work on you because it was not for ford. Host right. Guest it was dodge. Challenger. Host my mom had a dodge challenger, a gold dodge challenger. The other thing about the i mean, you are to get over that, in, like, the middle, thats a very, my husband said that, oh, in middle school, the girls had something and you couldnt have it. It is a legitimate feeling, but you are not to have it when you are 40. You have to understand the world in a slightly more sophisticated way. That struck me as sad in the letter. Its like the thoughts of a 14yearold boy, not the thoughts of a 40yearold man. Guest take the 40yearold man and put him back 26 years. 26 years ago, he was right. Guest right. Host 236 years ago, a 40yearold would have been right to think that. Guest yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Guest see what im saying . Youre right to say this. That he embraced it, that, you know, when 40 ill have these things, and so its regressive, yes. A lot of the stuff is out of this they regret, but some of the guys i quote in the beginning of the book, all this they take away our country, you know, its all its very nostalgic, but he was right 24 years ago. That is key. Things change quickly. You cant rely on youre not don draper. They dont exist. Host goes to work, puts on perfume, looks good, and gets the girl. Its not necessarily going to work, right, right. We have a few minutes left. I want to end, this is the hardest part, you know, you got men who are failing, angry, the what can you do question . You know, we race through that at the end of the book. You know, what can you do with this wage on the radio and, you know, online and sort of in life and with what do you do . How do yo address them . They are generally suffering and falling off the map in many, many ways, you know, as fathers as workers and all sorts of ways. They may not be right or entitled to their entitlement, and, yeast, they suffer. What are a couple things to do . Guest this defines our posture, you know, we disagree somewhat in some republics, but we run on parallel lines, and what i think is similar between your book and mine is that we both have a significant amount of exams for the guys who suffer. We recognize that. My what i say is the pain is real, but its not necessarily true. That is they feel real feelings, and anger, of course, is the one feeling men can feel; right . They are feeling real feelings, but their analysis of why they feel it is not matching up with the data. Grs how do you convince them its not the black woman who stole your job . Guest two ways one can do this. First of all, look, its a done deal. Right . Do you think that women are going to have some moment saying, oh, i i got to go home, boating, working, driving cars, having or gasms, forget it. Go back to the way it used to be. Host compingses wont be like that either. Guest thats right. Thats not happening, exactly. Thats a good point. The ship sailed. Do we get on board or swim after it . Heres where we have something to offer. The data on men this is a very it, in some ways, i make it a big movement; right . Its actually a declining number of men because most men, your husband, in fact, the friends have quietly accommodated themselves to greater gender equality in the relationships in their families, and you know what . They dont hate it, but they like it. They like having those relationships with their kids. They like feeling better about themselves, and men with house work and child care go to the doctor for routine screenings, but less likely to end up in the er, less likely to go to therapists or diagnosed with depression. The children are less lick liely to have adhd. So heres what i would say. The answer to your question, in a sense, is on the one hand, the deals done. On the other hand, you know what . Its actually better. Your life will improve. On the political side, i think we have to say what are the institutional structural constraints that prevented us from living the lives we want to live. How about Adequate Health care . What about universal child care for our children so that our wives, you know host like laugh in your face about that. Guest of course they would. Of course they would. Host they have to get usedded it them, i guess, you know. Guest the feeling is if we keep saying this, you know, and im sour that this is part of what was happening in the backyards last weekend, the likely nest mayor of the city of new york proposed universal child care to be paid for by taxing the wealthy, you know, okay. Probably wont happen, but its being talked about. Its going to increase. Eventually, eventually, we are going to end up looking a little bit more like europe. Host i put a lot of faith in the sloi personal experience. You watch tv, guys take care of their children more than there was two or three years ago. Its mainstream sit coms, everyone has shows, guys with kids, whatever, so you see that, its normal, you pick your kids up, a situation of a lot of men these days. You just like ac la mate. Guest all i say is, like, in the corporation to say that you want