Why Do Modern Men Feel So Left Behind? - Richard Reeves - #855

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Richard Reeves. He's a writer, researcher, and the founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Men have been struggling for quite a long time. What exactly is going on? What resources can genuinely help modern men? And how can we better understand the dynamics that are driving this decline in male wellbeing? Expect to learn why Obama endorsed Richard's book, the scary trends about male suicide, why it's important for humans to feel needed, whether the Harris-Waltz campaign has even considered men's existence, if this upcoming election will be decided by masculinity, Richard's thoughts on therapy for men and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Richard Reeves. Obama endorsed your book.

**Richard Reeves** (1:07)
Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise. I mean, first of all, it was also a year late. I don't want to criticize, come out the gate criticizing, but the book came out in 2022 And so when his 2023 list came out, everybody who'd written a book in the previous year or so was like, well, I make it, I make it. I didn't make it. I wasn't surprised, but then 2024 comes around, ta-da.

**Chris Williamson** (1:28)
Has that been the growth of this discussion about boys and men? Has it been one of those little compoundy things that didn't spike super hard but has been building?

**Richard Reeves** (1:37)
I think so, yeah. My sense of this is that, even since we spoke, when did we speak? A couple of years ago?

**Chris Williamson** (1:44)
About maybe 18 months, a little bit more, between 18 months and two years ago.

**Richard Reeves** (1:48)
Even since then, the permission space around this conversation has widened. So just to be very autobiographical about it, when I tried to find a publisher for my book in 2020, I couldn't. I was turned down by every publishing house. At the time, it was just seen as like too controversial a topic to engage in. And then you fast forward, and then you're on Barack Obama's reading list. And whatever you might think about Barack Obama, he's not seen as a kind of like men's rights reactionary type. And so that's obviously, as an author, that's a great accolade, because I do think his lists tend to be quite thoughtful.

**Chris Williamson** (2:24)
Broadening the conversation to an audience that...

**Richard Reeves** (2:26)
It's more that, yeah, it's okay. And it really helps me if I'm having a conversation with people who still sometimes understandably think, this is a bit men's rightsy, really the scepticism that people bring to the debate, which I not only understand, I actually have a lot of time for. I think if you're not a bit sceptical to start with, then you're probably not thinking that hard about it. But then to say, well, Barack Obama thinks the book's worthy of reading. It just helps to take a little bit of the heat out of it. But I would just say that's one of the perhaps most prominent examples of just a general sense that the temperature around this conversation has gone down, even just in the few years I've been talking about it.

**Chris Williamson** (3:06)
Well, we'll see what we can do today to turn that temperature up a little bit.

**Richard Reeves** (3:08)
I knew I could rely on you.

**Chris Williamson** (3:10)
Yeah. I'm here to just throw a couple of coals on the fire.

**Richard Reeves** (3:13)
Actually, I'm super interested to know if you agree with that, or also what your experiences as you talk about this.
Because there's a, let's put it this way, there's almost like a gravitational well that pulls you towards more conservative, more reactionary, whatever you want to put kind of framing. Because that's where a lot of the audience is for this stuff, let's be honest, that's where the natural audience is. So I just wonder how you calibrate that. Do you feel that, Paul? Do you see it in your audience? Do you see it in your own conversations? How do you manage this perilous journey between these different... The way I think about it is these gravitational wells out there, they're constantly trying to suck you in.

**Chris Williamson** (3:53)
Yeah, I think about it an awful lot. I've spent so much time considering this very point. You know, I'm so keen about advocating for Boys & Men. It's such an important part, it's been such an important part of this show. You know, 850 episodes, maybe 50 have been on Men's Mental Health in one form or another. Hundreds of psychologists have been on the show and I've been really trying to dig into this. And yet, one miss word by me results in me being accused as a budget Andrew Tate, you're the misogynist that we've known all along, or from the red pill manosphere space, I'm a blue pilled cuck that's like secretly living for the whatever. So to be honest, it's very difficult to do. One of the things that I really do not like about this, and I wanted to get into this with you when we were a bit warmer, but fuck it, we can just run it now. I hate having to temper my talking points to avoid being pattern matched as a misogynist. I hate having to do this weird, prostrate myself on the altar of history. Well, we know that women are struggling and it's very important that we talk about this, like you just said, and if you don't realize that as a point, it's like, I understand why, because the more extreme sides of the pro-men conversation aren't always coming at it from, rarely coming at it from a place of well-balanced, I care about men. It's, do you care about men or do you just hate women? Is this your vehicle to be able to talk about hating women? So I understand why that kind of needs to be there, but I find it fucking exhausting. It's so, and you must too, this permanent tempering of talking points around, well, we know that women are that, there's always this inclusion that needs to happen, even in the conversation for men, there is this requirement for us to include women in it. I don't see the reverse thing happening. The reverse is not happening when it's a pro-female influencer. They're not saying, well, we must remember that men are killing themselves at four times the rate of women. We'd have half a million more men since 1999 if they'd killed themselves at the rate that women do through suicide. But we're talking about women, it's like no one's doing that. So when we're talking about asymmetries in the world and the way that things are positioned, and I just think it feels arduous to me and it still shows when we talk about imbalances in what are some of the things that men have to deal with that women don't and vice versa and stuff like that, the conversation around sexes that are promoting either men or women, there is definitely in many ways this additional cost that needs to be paid by anybody that wants to have a conversation for men by having to bring women into the conversation about it. It's like, is this not exactly what we're here to do, to try and just focus on what are the men's points? And as you talk about a lot, it's this zero-some view of empathy.