This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 515 The Toxic on Masculinity with Nancy Pearcey This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Sean Finnegan: Hey there I'm Sean Finnegan, and you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity put out today. I'm so delighted to present you with an interview I did with Professor Nancy Pearcy, an author whose books have significantly helped me understand and live out my faith better. Today. We're talking about masculinity. Have you ever noticed the critical and uncharitable tone in our culture towards men? Although our society celebrates? Women and girls who excel at sports, education and business men and boys often receive nothing but criticism, even outright hostility. Some even say masculine men are the cause. Of all the. Problems with the world listen in as I ask Piercy about her recent book and how Christians should approach the whole issue of masculinity, both biblically and historically. Here now is episode 515, The Toxic War on masculinity. With Professor Nancy Pearcy. Today on the show, I'm joined by Professor Nancy Pearcy. She's the author of the Toxic War on masculinity, how Christianity reconciles the sexes, as well as love thy body, the soul of science, saving Leonardo, finding truth and total truth, publish some other books and articles that I I don't have listed here, but she's a professor and scholar. And residence at Houston Christian University. She's been quoted in The New Yorker and Newsweek highlighted as. One of the five. Top women apologists by Christianity Today and hailed in the Economist as America's preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual. Well, Nancy Piercy, welcome to Restitutio. Nancy Pearcey: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Sean Finnegan: So I first came. Across your work, when a friend of. Mine told me. He loved told Truth. So much that he read that book every year that intrigued me, I got to read it myself. Was really interested in the. Whole world view. Approach and but it was really the the love thy body book that hooked me. I really enjoyed this one. I think it was 2018. Such an interesting book, it hooked me and so now this new book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, has outdone them all, in my opinion. This is such a fascinating read. I've learned so much about the history of masculinity in America, which I was not expecting. I just thought it was just another culture war book, which I'm happy to read anyhow. But this was really a lot deeper and I found it very challenging, especially the last. The last whole section. You you really challenged husbands in a healthy way. I felt challenged and I've tried to make some changes in my my marriage with my wife and get get a little more involved and so forth. But so I just want to say thanks for courageously stepping out on the limb here and writing this book. Nancy Pearcey: Well, thank you and I didn't realize when I started that it was going to take courage to tell you the truth, but it has in fact been the most controversial book that I've ever written. I really thought love thy body would be more controversial because it deals with issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, which is really exploding today. But in fact. This one caused more controversy, at least in Christian Circle. Here's an example. When I was writing the manuscript, I taught several classes on it. I LED several leading groups. I like to get lots of feedback, rub off all the rough edges, and when they would tell their family and friends about it. So people who weren't actually seeing the book just hearing about it initially, their first question was always. Whose side is she on with that tone? Whose side is she? On and by. The way the second question was always and why is a woman writing a book on masculinity any. Sean Finnegan: Right. Nancy Pearcey: So this is what I was up against all through the writing process. I rewrote that first chapter multiple times because I had to sort of overcome that suspicion that almost hostility that people have when they just, they're just triggered by the word masculinity. So and and even after the book came out. I. Don't know if you followed. Twitter it all but the day after the book came out, it was jumped on by a Christian egalitarians. Who accused me of giving ammunition their word to complementarians, even though I don't even address that in the book. I even explain why I don't you, you know, because the social scientist said it doesn't seem to make much difference. So I'm giving you data from the social scientist and then once that calmed down, I started getting. Not nearly as not nearly as vicious, but some counter attacks from conservatives as well. So all I had to say it has something to make everyone angry, I guess. Sean Finnegan: Yes, yes and. And and everyone should read it and. See see what it says because it is. It's accessible, but it's also very evidence based and I really appreciated that. Nancy Pearcey: Yeah, yeah, it's the. Most fact based book I've written, so it starts with evidence from sociology and what Christian men are actually like. What are they like? Get rid of the, you know, the accusations back and forth. What are they actually like? Let's look at the social science data where they went out and actually surveyed. Tentacles and then as you mentioned a minute ago, there's a lot of history there too because I wanted. To show where the secular definition of masculinity comes from. As you know, since you've read my books, I'm an apologist at heart. So my goal really is to answer the charges from the secular world. It's secular world that says, you know. Masculinity is toxic, and if you want to counter any social trend, you need to ask where did it come from? How did it develop? And so that's really my goal, is to get to the bottom of the secular. Charges understand where they're coming from and how we can respond to them more effectively. Sean Finnegan: I appreciate that your book is not just masculinity. According to Nancy Pearcy. And what you crazy guys should change or something like that, you know, it's it's very much historical. It's broad in its approach and it is very research based, and it seemed like you were very circumspect not to inject. Your own opinion? Don't think I encountered your own opinion very much. It was just like this is what these people did. This is what this this movement contributed and so forth. Very objective, if I can put it that way. So you'll be commended on that. Your book confronts a number of lies and half truths and false stereotypes floating around in the culture today. So I thought we could get your response to a number of incorrect statements I've concocted. And so these are sentences that on their surface appear obviously true, but when examined closely, turn out to be false. So I've written 10. I don't know how many we can get to in this conversation, but what do you think you Are you ready to debunk some false myths? Nancy Pearcey: Yes, I loved reading your list, so I'd love to get started on your list of false accusations that we often hear, especially against Christian men. Sean Finnegan: Alright, so #1. Bible believing Christians are slightly more likely to divorce than non Christians or liberal Christians. Nancy Pearcey: Yeah. So talking about Twitter feed, I've gotten that several times in recent days, and it's also something that we hear in the church, right. In fact, that's probably the first pushback I get is that don't Christians divorced at the same rate of the rest of the culture or even? And higher. And so the sociologists were looking at accusations like that. And So what they did is they did the studies, they did the studies. And here's what they found. They made a careful distinction between evangelical men who are actually committed to their faith, who are who attend church regularly versus nominal Christian men. And that distinction made all the difference, because committed Christian men actually test out the best of all groups in America in. Other words, they. Test test out as the most loving husbands and fathers their wives test out the highest in terms of saying they feel. Happy with their husband's expressions of love and affection, evangelical fathers spend the most time with their children 3.5 more hours per week than secular men, both in shared activities like sports or church youth group, and in discipline, like setting limits on screen time or enforcing bedtime. Evangelical couples actually divorce at a lower rate than any other major group in society, 35% lower than secular men, and they have the lowest rates of domestic violence. Of any group. In America, so this was a real shocker because we've all heard the charges that you just met. That believing in any form of male headship in the home turns evangelical men into overbearing, tyrannical, coercive patriarchs tyrannical. Did I say, tyrannical, trying to get all those? Words in there? Yeah. I mean, there's there's no. Sean Finnegan: Question that, as a pastor who regularly preaches, I'm the lead pastor here at a. Church in New York, Upstate New York, and this stat has it says torment to me. You know, this idea that the Bible doesn't work if you apply the Bible to your marriage, you divorce more, something that really has not fit for me. But I I'm the sort of person that wants to accept. Facts as they are and see if we can do better. And so reading that early on in your book that actually, no, the Bible is not hurting marriages is is helping men to be well not just men men and women to stay together more frequently. That was just like mind blowing it was just like this is. This is a breath of fresh air and I think it's a great. Place to start because you are. Wading into treacherous waters where there are All kinds of. Sharks and piranha and electric eels out to get you. So I think to start somewhere complementary is good because that does make sense to me that like guys that and women that are regularly attending church services. As as a a measurement of how serious they are about their faith that it that it would have an impact. So I I appreciate that on my next statement. You already just kind of dipped your toes into it, but I I wonder if you could elaborate it. It is #2 is Bible believing Christian men are more likely to be harsh and abusive to their wives and children. Nancy Pearcey: Let's go back to that distinction. When I said Church going committed Christian men test out at the top. And by the way, I'm glad you mentioned that we don't hear this very often. I had to go digging in the academic literature to find this, and this is really the final reason. You know, the final trigger that made me decide to write this book as I was, I was overwhelmed. I was. And you know it's it's so counter to the media narratives. And I said we need. To get this. Out there, this is not just a religious figure, you know, giving a pep talk. This is evidence based findings from the social sciences. But the reason that we have the wrong impression is that the social scientists went back and made that crucial distinction. Of nominal Christians, right? These are men who, on a survey like that, might check the Baptist box, for example, but who rarely, if ever, attend church. It's no more of a family background, coastal background. These are cultural. And they test out shockingly different. They test out with all the toxic stereotypes. They'll rise, report the lowest level of happiness with their husband's treatment of them. They spend the least amount of time with their children. They have the highest rate of divorce, higher than secular men, 20%. Higher than secular men and they have the highest rate of domestic abuse and violence, higher than secular men. And so what's happened is most studies have just looked at evangelicals, you know, as an overarching category. So they're picking up men who are better than secular men and men who are worse than secular men. And that's why the numbers get skewed. It does suggest a different way, maybe that churches can deal with this issue. On the one hand, I think they should be more positive and supportive. Of men who are doing a good job, one of my graduate students is the leader of a women's ministry in a large Baptist Church here in Houston. And she said on on Mother's Day, we hand out flowers and tell the women they're wonderful. On Father's Day, we scold the men and tell. Them to do better. And so I was very careful not to have a scolding tone in this book because I think we should get this positive information out there. Ohh, and here's another example. So in my class at Houston Christian University, when I told them I was writing a book on masculinity, one of the male students shot back what masculinity? It's been beaten. All of us. So in Christian circles, men are also feeling beaten down and demoralized. You know, they're picking up the message. You know that that, that masculinity is toxic and we need to come to. That in the church it does suggest too, that we need to do something about these nominal men if they're sort of hanging around the fringes of the Christian world and claiming an identity. As evangelicals, how do we reach out to them? They are using the language of headship and submission, but they're not giving the biblical meaning to those terms. Instead, they're imputing me importing, meaning infusing meaning from the secular script for masculinity. And so how do we disciple these men? You know, insofar as we have access to them because they're hanging around? You know, the edges of the Christian world? How can the church have a better ministry to disciple these men? Sean Finnegan: That's that's really an excellent question to address because it's these guys on the fringe, as you point out that. The old fashioned word for it are hypocrites. You know, there are people that are going to talk the talk but not walk the walk and they're giving the rest of us a bad name. And yet as a pastor, I can tell you that we are hopeful that by having them come whenever it is, they happen to come, that something will sink in and. That they will have a true. Heart change, you know. So I I think. It's a hard thing to figure out. We can't just cast everyone out of the church who's not living up to the standard of Christianity. Some churches have tried that, but it, you know, it, it ends up with this very judgmental, you know, holier than thou kind of environment. So. It you're right, it is. It is a really thorny problem. Problem but it is important to address for. Sure. Well, let's. Let's move on to number. Three. So the Bible is endorsement of male patriarchy, we're told causes toxic masculine behaviors. What do you think? Nancy Pearcey: Yes, that that's one of the reasons that I relied so heavily on the social science data. What was happening was, of course, evangelical men were being held up. Exhibit A of toxic masculinity. It was very easy to find examples with a quick Google search, but I will give you just one example. So this was the co-founder of the Church 2 Movement, which came after the Me Too movement and she said the theology of male headship feeds the rape culture. That we see permeating American Christianity Today. So what happened was the social scientists, psychologists, sociologists were reading these accusations and saying, oh, where's your evidence? You know you're making these charges, but where's your data? Yeah. And that's what really sent them back to the data to do the studies in my book, I cite some dozen studies or so. I was just looking at what the social scientists were actually finding. Like, some people have said, well, wait a minute. Who cares what the social scientists found? I want to know what the spokesman say. What did the theologians say? What does this Danvers statement say? For example, which is on complementarianism egalitarianism, and so on, and and frankly, that's not what I was concerned about. I don't want to hear what the spokesman. I wanted to answer the secular charge, which is, if you believe in this theology, it will turn you into an overbearing, tyrannical, coercive Patriarch. And my question was, does it does it? Let's look at what it does do, in fact, in terms of these surveys of evangelical couples. And so I have two chapters on this. And I was to tell you the truth. I was again. I was blown away by the the. Surveys the surveys where they went to Christian couples and said, do you believe in male headship and not all? But the majority of the evangelicals would say yes and then they would say what do you think it means? How do you live it out? I was blown away. The loving, respectful, mutual understanding that they had of headship. They would not usually define it in terms of, you know, the final authority or the tiebreaker or the bread. Dinner, the most frequent definition, was spiritual leader, spiritual leader, and then they'd be asked, what does that mean? And of course, they would start with the practical things, get your family to church, get your kids to youth group, have family devotions and family prayer. But it also most of them would talk about the intangibles as well, right? That you're responsible for your children's spiritual growth. You're responsible for your wives, spiritual health and the most frequent verse they quoted was Ephesians 5. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. That might not sound significant to you, but when I had chapters later on abuse in Christian homes, I literally ran into people who said they never heard that verse, one woman who said I had to go look it up in the Bible. I didn't believe it was there. I had never heard a sermon on Ephesians 5, the part of it. That is addressed to husbands, and there was another example where there's a pastor who works with abusive men in court ordered counseling. Most abusive men are not in counseling unless it's court ordered, but this is a Christian pastor and he was working with a man who was abusive and and his wife had actually fled the home to escape from his physical abuse. And he kept quoting the first part of Effusions 5. She's supposed to submit to me. This is wrong. She can't leave. The home and he. And so the pastor said, well, what about this other part of it? She didn't. And he said the man was shocked. Kid never heard the part of Ephesians 5 that was addressed to husbands. And so that's why it's so significant that the committed Christian men and couples. That was what they quoted all the time. Ephesians 5. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And so I went to the actual studies. The surveys done of Christian couples to see. How do you live it out? What do you? Think it means. That's what I report in. The book. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, a lot of your book gets into the history of masculinity in America. And I thought that was really eye opening because as somebody who started a lot with early church history, Old Testament history, New Testament history, Second Temple Judaism. I could tell you all about. The Roman Empire, you. Know there's this, like memes going around. How? Often, do you think about? The Roman Empire too much, that's. That's my answer but. American history. I'm not so strong and much less with respect to gender. I really found this, this research you did fascinate. Thing. And so my next myth is about the suffragette movement. And it goes like this. Number four women initiated the suffragette movement in America because they wanted to be treated as individuals of equal value. It sounds just like obviously true, right. But is it? Nancy Pearcey: No, it's not true. First of all, women didn't initiate it. A small group of women did the early feminist. But even they acknowledge that most women were against it at the time. I had so many readers. You remember, I said I had readers on my manuscript. I had so many readers who were skeptical of that that I went out and find the quotes. Some people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other early feminists saying the main opposition to the vote. For women, it's other women. So I got the quotes from people saying that why would they opposed to it? Because they did not want to be treated as individuals. It was just the opposite. Is the framework to understand it. The vote was not described in that day as men's vote versus women's vote. It was framed as household vote versus individual vote, and most women wanted the household vote. And why did they want that? Because it put responsibility on men to take into account the. Interest of the entire household. And even broader, I'll try to be short, but even broader. It was a shift in political philosophy. Early America was governed by political philosophy that saw so institutions like the family as an organic unit. Not just a collection of individuals who happen to be there, but there's an organic unit connecting them all to one another and therefore there was a common good. In other words, I look out for what's good for me. You look out for what's good for you, but who looks out for the common good of the marriage, of the family, of the Church, of the school and so on. That's what authority was for. Authority was a person who was not supposed to look out for his own interest. The favorite word of the time at the time was he should be disinterested by which they meant he doesn't pursue his own interest. He's the one who's responsible for the common good of the whole. America, after roughly after the revolution began to shift from that political philosophy to a political philosophy called social contract theory, which does see societies and social institutions as collections of autonomous individuals who've just come together out of a common interest. Well, in that case there is no common good. And so men were no longer held responsible for the common good. And so many women at the time realized this is actually letting men off. The hook. It's giving them a pass on moral responsibility. You know, they're no longer held responsible for the common good of the entire house. And so that's how the debate was framed. Many women that at the time said we want our men to two cents, that they are responsible for their wife and children, and back then the household was was larger, right? So it included extended family and servants and and so on. The man was in charge of the small. Commonwealth. So anyway, it was women who opposed the vote largely, and it was because they saw it as a way that men were going. To be held to a reduced standard that we were lowering the standard on male responsibility. Now I would say that eventually most women came around to it. It took. About a. Century. Eventually, women came out to around to supporting it. But why? Early feminists framed it in terms of autonomy and individual rights that did not speak to most women. Women came around to supporting it when the temperance movement. Began to say this can be a way that we can hold men in check because men are drinking. They're coming home drunk and beating their wives and children and women have little recourse when that happens. And so the head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, her name is Francis Willard. Historian says she was the most influential. Women of the entire 19. And she began to see the vote as a way to give women power in the temperance movement against drunken, abusive husbands. And so she renamed. It she called it the ballot for home protection. No. If it was about home protection, women were for it, so that that, that shift is why women came around to endorsing it. But again, not for the reasons we think autonomy and individual rights. But ohh, this is a way to give us some leverage against some of the common male voices of drunkenness. And abuse. Sean Finnegan: This home protection at every turn seems like there's so much more to the story than you know on the surface you think? Ohh well. Women were hopelessly oppressed and you know until they got the right to vote, they couldn't do anything about it. You know, that's kind of like the typical way of saying it, but it's so much more complicated and new, nuanced. Just Dance between men and women in American history is incredible. To see it going back and forth throughout your book. So what about the statement our time today, the 21st century is the first when women in America have publicly accused men of toxic behavior. You think? Nancy Pearcey: Well, I just gave you a good example. Where the temperance movement certainly popularized a lot of public rhetoric that was very critical of men, here's the the bigger picture on that, too. So America was becoming more secular. And as that happened, they were governing their behavior less by a biblical ethic, naturally. And how did that happen? Well, the material conditions that gave rise to secularism. This before the Industrial Revolution, men worked alongside their wives and children all day on the family farm, family industry, the family business, and so the cultural expectation on men focused a lot more on their caretaking role and their like. I said a minute ago. Their responsibility for the common good of the whole. Even a secular historian says the masculine virtue was defined as duty to God and man. I I love these surprising facts that come out of history. A surprising fact is that most literature on child rearing was addressed to fathers. If you go to a bookstore today, they're mostly dressed to mothers, but back then they were dressed to fathers. Fathers were considered the primary parent, and so men were given. A lot more responsibility for the. Sean Finnegan: Right. Nancy Pearcey: The Industrial Revolution takes work out of the home and of course, men had to follow their work out of home, into factories and offices for the first time. They were not working with family members who the people they loved and had a moral bond with. They were working as individuals and competition with other men, and that's when you see the literature start to change. People began to protest that men were becoming individualistic, self interested, egocentric, make it at all cost, greedy and acquisitive to use the language of the day. And that they were making their career, their idol, as they were losing their biblical loyalty, they were making their career, their idol, actually using language from the day they complained that men were starting to make an idol out of financial success the first time that we see negative language applied to the male character. Was in the 19th century after the Industrial Revolution and the secularization was was happening at the same time, in a sense, with the Industrial Revolution, a large public sphere developed. You know, society kind of split into private and public people began to ohh public. What do I mean by that? Factories, businesses, financial institutions, universities. Of course the state. And people began to argue that these large public institutions should be operated by scientific principles by which they meant value free. In other words, don't bring your private values into the public realm, which is what we hear today. And since it was men who were getting that secular education and working in that secular field, they were becoming more secular in their outlook before women did. And so naturally, are we surprised that the 19th century saw a huge increase in what our kind of traditional male vices like drinking and gambling and fighting and crime and prostitution? And that's why there was, in response to that, a huge flowering of reform movements. The reform movements are where you see the negative language really develops as they begin to attack men. For all of these vices, I'll give you a quote. So one of my favorite historians puts it this. All of these reform movements were implicit condemnations of males. There was little doubt as to the sex of the Tavern keeper, the slave master, the drunkard, and the seducer. So the language of the 19th century was almost as hostile as anything that we hear today. From radical feminists. Sean Finnegan: It's interesting, you know, if there's smoke, there's usually fire, right? So and you, you do get into that a little bit at the end of the book, some of the misbehavior of men is driving the the modern complaints about toxic masculinity. I think a lot. Pundits advocates today for men are not really delving into the misbehavior of men in our own time. But I think getting this historical perspective can really help us to see, OK, well, what did you want the. Women to do. You want them to just get beaten and treated like punching bags in the home. Of course they they rose up and they advocated and there was rhetoric and. You know, women are powerful, just like men are powerful. Women are powerful, so it makes sense that that would happen. You talk so much and and and this. This is probably the biggest thing that blew my mind in the a lot of the historical work you did, you talked so much about the industrial revolution and you've already touched on it here, but this this next myth really ties into that. Number six men have traditionally worked outside of the home and have been the breadwinners. I think so many of Us are under that impression, especially as conservatives as Christians, Bible believing man, we're like ohh yeah, it's my job to, to, to work outside the home and be the breadwinner. And if I just do that, then I'm satisfied what God requires of me. Nancy Pearcey: The the fact that the literature on parenting was addressed to fathers speaks to the fact that fathers were in the home. See what happened is with the family industry, the family business, the the home was the economic center of society. They didn't have this distinction. A father could be working at home. And raising his kids, you know, and so could a mother, by the way, a lot of manufacturer with household manufacturer think of Proverbs 31, right? The the woman who's running several businesses. She wasn't going to an office to do that. She was working out of her home. And that was the case. That was case right up until the industrial revolution. Both men and women. Could be, could be involved in economically productive work while raising their kids and and in fact, historians say that fathers were just as involved with their children as mothers were. So that kind of blows your mind too. Wait, just as involved as as. Because we're, I mean, just it's just hard for us to use our historical imagination, you know, to think what that was like. So what we have to remember is prior to the industrial revolution, we're talking about all of human history. We're talking about millennia. So it's only very recently in human history, namely the 19th century, that fathers began to work out of the home. And by the way, another thing that I this helps explain is why our fathers ridiculed and mocked so much in the media today. That was another one. That I thought. Well, you know, we all know this is true. Homer Simpson, you know, from advertisements to animations and to movies. Fathers A you know the doofus dad, the the bumbling idiot, my, my, my own son loved the Bernstein bears. So you know the dad was always the bumbling idiot. Anyway, where did that come from? Well, when fathers were taken out of the home at the Industrial Revolution, they did lose touch with their children compared to when they worked side by side. All day they didn't know their children as well. They didn't know what was happening, their family dynamics and already in the 19th century, you see people say, you know, fathers are becoming kind of irrelevant, you know, to the family and even incompetent. You know, the idea that he's incompetent if he doesn't know what's going on in his family, he. Doesn't know the solutions. You know, he doesn't know how to how to solve the family problems, so he's considered incompetent and you see it in the literature of the day. So again, the deep roots to this. And of course, it does also suggest. What the solution is the solution is can we reconnect fathers to their children even after the industrial age? Are there ways to tweak the workplace? I have a whole chapter on that and and the pandemic had a very small silver lining in that a lot of fathers discovered they do like being at home more. One study found that 65% of fathers don't want to go back to the office full time. You know they prefer some kind of hybrids setup and and this one's not in the book because it just came out recently. But the New York Times had an article and the title was something like during the pandemic. Many fathers got closer to their children and they don't want to lose that. So I think that's encouraging that when fathers had a chance to be close to their kids, a lot of them said this is great. Look what I've been missing out on. I mean, I think Christians should really think creatively about ways to flex the workplace. I've had interviews with a lot of fathers who said I'm willing to pay the daddy penalty. You. Know they know they. May not move. Forward quite as quickly in their career if they take more time off to have time with their kids. But most of them said it was well worth paying the daddy penalty. Sean Finnegan: Yeah. I mean at the end. Of the day, let's say you choose to work. You know an extra 10 to 20 hours a week so that you're always the one who gets in the report or finishes the project. And you, you. Find some upward mobility and you know. You what do you? Do you just move your house to a different neighborhood? You move to a different neighborhood by a fancy your house. Now you've got, you know, some more. Expensive cars. Maybe you have a more expensive boat. Maybe you're going to a farther away place for vacation, but like. It's not. It's not worth the sacrifice to not know your children and to not be able to have a healthy marriage that lasts. You know, we tell women. Oh, well, don't. Sacrifice your family for the sake of your career. Because we see so much pressure to do that now. In whatever wave of the feminist movement we're in right now, and so much celebration for women in the workplace, any kind of achievement celebrated and yet the same is true for men. You know, don't sacrifice your family for your career because at the end of the day, you're going to be sitting on your. You got with people you don't even know, people that don't even care about, you know, like, even if you did succeed to that, to that degree. So let's switch sides. We were just talking about how the men are the breadwinner is a new term that was unused before the industrial revolution. Just a totally foreign idea. But what about on the women's side? Traditionally, women focused on keeping the home and raising the children rather than contributing economically, right? Nancy Pearcey: They didn't have to make that decision. There wasn't an either or choice until the Industrial Revolution took work out of the. Home. Remember, it took women's work out of the home too, not just men's work. So women back then, a lot of household manufacturer was presided over by women. So you Can you imagine when you had to cook everything. From scratch, turn your butter, bake your bread, and even grind your flour. And when you had to make all your clothing from scratch, you had to card the wool or the cotton, and you had to weave it. You had to design it and. Cut it out, I. Mean canning and preserving food, making buttons, making candles women's work was extremely rich and and varied. You know, women had a lot of different skills, they had to master. So in many ways, that was more intellectually challenging too. And so it was a true loss, a genuine loss when all of that was taken out of the home. You know, life got easier. On the other hand, it got a lot more boring. You know, when all that's left now is early child care and cleaning. I mean, you know, that's why you have advertisements that glorify, you know, getting your sink cleaner. So I think that that's an important thing to recognize because it it was one of the causes of the feminist movement. Like many secular movements, it identified a true problem. It just gave the wrong. Solution and most people don't want women to follow men out of the home if it means leaving kids in substitute care. They really want parents raising their own. Kids, what women are doing today, though in my studies, I found that the vast majority of women who are home with their kids are doing some kind of home based business or home. Nice work, because it's almost impossible in our economy not to have two incomes. But women want to be home, and so they white collar work is the easiest. Of course, in a knowledge economy. So there's all kinds of IT professionals and writers and editors and marketers. And I I list several of them in the book Blue Collar and pink color, where it can be done from home to some extent as well. I I give the story of when I went to. I have my. Their style and the the woman had a beauty chair in a basement, one chair. And so while she's working with her customer or her client, she's got a glass door that looks out onto the backyard in a fence fenced in backyard. So she's kind of we're keeping an eye on. Her kids. And blue collar workers, this is some of the. Pushback I get is what you know. What about men? Isn't this kind of an elitist thing that, you know, men? Can come home well. Aspects of almost every job can be done at home. A friend of ours owns a car repair shop. For the most part, he's not going to bring his cars home, although sometimes he does work on friends cars. That is in his driveway. But he can bring his bookkeeping home right. He can bring his bookkeeping home. And in the evening, he's sitting there working while his kids are sitting beside him at the kitchen table and doing their homework. He's talking to them. He's answering their questions. And so there's aspects of almost every job that can be done at home while your children are young. I'm not saying it's the ideal for everybody at every stage of life. I'm just worried about the kids while your children are young. That that's what I recommend. People trying to find at least some aspect that could be done from home, you know, at least part time. Sean Finnegan: You know, it certainly is the case that with the the way our economy is and inflation and everything else that. Being a single income household is closed to most people, even if you would. Want to be a. Stay at home. Mom, you have to make some serious sacrifice. This is a lot depends on what's available too, whether or not you can. You can do that and where you live and and so. Forth, but let's talk. About solutions my myth #8 here blocking or limiting men's testosterone will solve the problems of our society with badly behaved men. Nancy Pearcey: We have to start with how to God create men. And by the way, this is one of the questions I always got and therefore I had to put it at the front of the book. People would say, well, what do you think are the differences between men and women then? Well, let's start with basic biology. Men are larger, faster, stronger, 75%, greater upper body muscle mass, 90% greater upper body strength. Ohh, and I just read this one the other day. It was something like 300%. It was very high, 300% more punch force. Any woman who's been abused knows that and because of testosterone, men do tend to be more aggressive. And more risk taking and I think we have to start with just saying, well, this is all God made men and therefore it is intrinsically good. This is before the fall. These are the traits that God created men with. And I have to tell you, one of the things I found most encouraging is I have a couple of studies of men around the world. And they find that. Men do know that these unique masculine strengths are not giving them just to get whatever they want right to dominate others, but are giving them to provide and protect. I'll give you one of them. The this was a study done by an anthropologist. It was the first ever cross cultural study done on concepts of masculinity and what he found out is. Of course, there's differences between cultures. But what they? All share is what this anthropologist called the three P's. It is expected that the good man will provide, protect and procreate, meaning become a father, right, have a family. Build into the next generation, be future oriented and this was all across the world. These were not countries with the Western or Christian background and I thought it was really amazing to see that this just seems to be an inherent innate knowledge that men have universally. I would say they're made in God's image. And therefore they inherently know that their unique masculine strengths were not given them to just get whatever they want, but to provide, protect and build into the future the next generation. This gives us a better approach when we're dealing with men as we can, we can try to tap into that innate inherent knowledge, men. Don't respond well to being called toxic. Nobody would. But what we can do is to tap into their inherent and acknowledge of what it does mean to be a good man. What it does mean to use their unique strengths and abilities for good. And that way we support masculinity as God created it. Including the testosterone, we can then be. Obviously, and my book is full of criticism of the secular definition of masculinity, you have no problem with being a, you know, good critical thinker in analyzing secular thought. But we should start with really supporting, affirming and respecting men for the way God created them. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, that's so helpful. Because I think so many of us are feeling beaten down. I've got four sons. My oldest is 17, and you know, just seeing how Society is telling them over and over be more feminine? Change yourself, and of course you know who celebrated guys who dress like women. Those are those are like the most popular kids in the school. Now it's it's everything is kind of flipped on the the trans, LGBT and Q and so forth in the in the. Last few years. And you know the message they're receiving is you. Know if you. Could just be more like Sally then you know you'd be really great. We want to avoid toxic masculinity, but we don't want to avoid masculinity. There's a difference there. Nancy Pearcey: Yeah. Yeah. Let me give you another study again. I love these studies done by non Christians. But this was the study again. I put this at the front of the book. As well because answering remember I said, people said who? People would say, whose side is she on? Well, you don't have to take a side because there are different scripts for masculinity. And this study brought it out very well. This is done by a sociologist and again it's global. So this is. Around the world is universal. He gets invited to speak around the world, so he came up with this clever experiment where he asked young men two questions. The first question was what does it mean to be a good man? If you're at a funeral and in the eulogy, somebody says he was a good man, what does? Young men all around the world had no trouble answering that they would immediately say things like honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice do the right thing, look out for the little guy, be a provider, and be a productive. Be responsible and the sociologist would say, would you like that? And they say, I don't know, it's. Just in the. Air we breathe. If they were in a western country. They would often say it's part of our judeo-christian heritage. And then he would follow up with the second question. And he'd say, well, what does it mean if? I say to you, man up be a real. And the young man would say ohh no, that's completely different. That means be tough. Be strong, never show weakness, win at all costs. Suck it up. Play through pain, be competitive, get rich, *** ****. I'm using their language. And so the sociologist concludes that there is an inherent universal knowledge of what it means to be the good man. You know another way we could talk about this from a Christian perspective is general revelation, right? General Revelation is what we know. On the basis of creation, apart from Scripture, there are truths that we can know through general revelation. It's also Romans too, right? Everyone has a conscience. What these non Christians anthropologists are finding is that it is a universal awareness that men aspire to be the good man, but they are also feeling this. Cultural pressure to be the quote UN quote real man. And as you saw, those were somewhat more toxic traits. Especially if they are disconnected, decoupled from a moral vision, they can slide into the Andrew Tate phenomenon that we see today, where masculinity is, you know, fast money, fast cars, fast women, it can slide into that. I mean, that is apparently for many young men today that's becoming the real man I just got. A e-mail from a former graduate student of mine who's teaching now at the high school level, and she said all my boys, all my male students, are fans of Andrew Tate. They're even using both of his in the yearbook. And then she said I'm teaching at a classical Christian School. So even a Christian young men are looking to places like Andrew Tate, who are exemplifying a very secular view of masculinity. I'm finding out not everyone knows this, but you know he does. Run. He's made a lot of his money by running an only fans company. Sean Finnegan: Yeah. Andrew Tate is is a pretty complicated fella and he's, I, I have hopes that he will reform his ways, seen glimmers of hope there that, you know, he can embrace more the PPP that you mentioned before than the FFF fast cars fast. Come in and fast success, but instead protect, provide and. What was the? Third one. Procreate. Yeah. Within marriage, I would say. But yeah, there's no question about it. Tate has struck a nerve, and he's preaching a gospel of masculine excellence and. At the same time, there's a lot of that real man script mixed in with his message and really what we need is insight from the designer of masculinity himself, you know, and and we could find that in Scripture and we could find that. Also in our own souls, you know. Seeing these different. Sides of us, you know the the image of God, the imago day stamped upon us, but then also our fallenness, so really really deep points and I encourage you listeners that if you're curious about this at all, check out this book. Get yourself a copy the toxic War against masculinity. Well, this has been a great conversation. How can people find out more about? Hey, Nancy. Nancy Pearcey: Yes, I'm glad you asked because my publisher graciously just designed a new website for me, so it's nancypearcy.com, and Piercy is P/E, ARCEY, nancypearcy.com. And so you can come over there. You can browse my other books you've mentioned a few of them already today. You can browse them and find out what he. Was talking about. And you can also leave the message. I don't have time to answer them all, but I do read them all. So come on by nancypiercy.com. Come on by and say hello. Sean Finnegan: Very good. Well, thanks so much for joining me on Restitutio today. Nancy Pearcey: Thanks for having me. Sean Finnegan: Well, that brings this interview to a close. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find Episode 515 the Toxic War on masculinity and leave your feedback there and I can't stress to you enough how important. This book is. Whether you're a man or a woman, but especially I talked to the the men out there. I really found this book incredibly informative and very challenging. The whole last section, which I didn't really get into. She goes into issues within Christian marriage on how to handle yourself as a man, as a husband, and the whole thorny topic of domestic abuse and how to handle that. As a church leader and some really important thoughts there that we didn't get into in the interview, so take a look at that. For the record, I'm not receiving any. Compensation for promoting this book, I really just believe in it, and I think Piercy is really good. So take a look at that. Well, that's going to be it for today. If you'd like to leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, we certainly appreciate that. If you'd like to support. Studio you can find us.online@restitutio.org select the word restitution with no n.org and thanks to all who are supporting us, we'll catch you next week and remember, the truth has nothing to fear.