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Bert Martinez:
Today we’re talking about masculinity. You know, we hear all this stuff about what should be a masculine, toxic masculinity, and there seems to be a shift. So today on the show we have Dr. Ronald Levant. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Akron and past president of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Levant, welcome.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Thank you. It’s good to be on your show.
Bert Martinez:
You know, I’m excited because, you know, you’ve written so much about this subject. And so let’s start at the beginning. You’ve really dedicated a lot of your life to studying masculinity and emotional health. What first drew you to this path?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Well, that’s a great question. And we say in psychology that research is me-search. People who undertake the arduous task of getting a doctorate in clinical psych, you know, really have to be highly motivated. And in my case, I was. My background, and I recently disclosed all this in my memoir titled The Problem with Men, you’ll have to ask me why I chose that title. I disclosed that basically I was an abused child. My father abused me from a very early age. And then later on, I was bullied by anti-Semitic bullies.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And as happens with many abused children, I became a juvenile delinquent. I ran away from home from Los Angeles to Texas at the age of 13. I was arrested. This is my resume. I was arrested for drunkenness and vandalism at the age of 15, and I was expelled from high school at the age of 17. So how did I get from there to here is an interesting question, but, and we can talk about it, but when I ultimately became a psychologist and landed my first faculty position, and you know, the question is, what are you going to study? Because Faculty, you know, the rule is publish. It used to be published or perish. Now I think it’s publish and perish.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
But in any event, you know, I started initially focusing on an aspect of my life, namely that I was a divorced dad, and there was very little preparation for men who had an involved fathering role. So, in my case, my daughter lived with me for the summers as her mother liked to travel, and then I visited her on the weekends. She lived in New York. I lived in Boston. It was kind of a doable commute, but I really was not— I really was not very good at the job of being a dad. I mean, You know, we often had, you know, kind of meltdowns and, you know, just difficult conversations. And so when it came time to think about research, I focused on fathering. And I was influenced by a movie, Kramer vs. Kramer.
Bert Martinez:
Hoffman?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Hoffman and Streep. Yes. So they portray a divorcing couple, which the movie came out in the height of the divorce revolution that, you know, when people were divorcing like crazy. It was 1979. And at that time I had, you know, in watching. So the story was Mrs. Kramer decided that she was leaving the marriage and she was going to California to find herself. That was really a thing.
You know, if you really want to find yourself, the only place to look is California. And she left her 8-year-old son with, you know, her husband, Mr. Kramer, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. And he made a royal mess of things. I mean, he was just, you know, just a hapless Guy who didn’t know how to relate to an 8-year-old kid. And that kind of, you know, got me into what I call a slow-moving epiphany. You know, most epiphanies are very immediate, but I’m a little stupider, so it took me a while to get it. And the epiphany was, it’s not that Ron LeVant is such a lousy father, but that men of my generation were really not prepared for this kind of hands-on parenting, take care of your child role.
Bert Martinez:
And yeah, because my father was the same way. I think a lot of, you know, you and I are probably close to the same age. So, that generation, starting with our fathers, it was, you know, mom did the female or the mom did everything and dad just showed up and, you know, where’s my dinner? And, you know, he was, you know, my dad was a funny guy and he could be generous. But, and I was shocked the first time he came to one of my baseball games because, you know, he just typically was, like you said, he wasn’t that involved.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Bert Martinez:
It was a common thing. Yeah.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And suddenly, you know, I was involved and I had no choice about it. And what was I going to do? So, Typically, the way things work is, you know, you kind of work with your doctoral students on developing their doctoral dissertations. And I was working with one student, and he and I were actually running partners. We were training for the Boston Marathon. So we had a lot of time to talk on these 15-mile and 20-mile runs, right? And we cooked up this idea that Maybe we could provide an education program that would help fathers essentially be, you know, more effective with their children and, you know, better parents essentially. And so Greg, you know, he did a really elegant dissertation. You know, he had a waitlist control group and he tested the waitlist control group and the treatment group. Both before and after treatment.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And then the waitlist control group got the treatment, and then they got post-post-tested. And basically what he found was by educating fathers about child development and how to communicate with kids and such, the children at, you know, comparing the beginning to the end perceived a very positive change in their relationship with their dads. The wives felt the families were closer together, and the dads felt better about it as well. So, um, I thought it was a great dissertation. We published it. But what was important is the dean noticed it. And, um, at that time, Boston University wanted a community-facing program because the community wasn’t too happy. BU was expanding into the neighborhoods and buying up property, making property values rise, and things like that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So the university wanted some program that would enable community members to see the value of a university in their midst, and they wanted programs that were non-academic but available to the community. And they asked me, would I do this fatherhood course for the community? I said, yeah, you know, I got course release, I got At that time, it seemed like a lot of money, a $35,000 fund, which, by the way, I spent every penny on video equipment because video equipment in the early ’80s was really the thing to have. And it was back then, it was very expensive.
Bert Martinez:
Right. I remember that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah. Yeah. So So we started offering this, this course to the community, and the men would come into the room and they’d see, you know, all this expensive equipment, and they say, you know, something like, you guys really have got it going on. And we said, yeah, we’re going to teach you how to be a better dad the same way you might have learned a sport like golf or tennis. You’re going to do it, we’re going to record it, we’ll watch the recording, we’ll figure it out. Analyze it, figure out how to do it better. And that’s the way you’ll learn how to be a better dad. So in the midst of all this, I was running this course with Greg and, you know, we were getting a lot of publicity.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I was basically on Oprah Winfrey. I was on 20/20 with Barbara Walters. And because it was kind of a hit, it hit the, it caught the wave. Right. This came out in ’82, just as the father’s role was starting to change and you were starting to see dads in Harvard Square carrying infants in chest packs or pushing strollers. So it became very topical. But during the course of one of these meetings, and this is how I got into the psychology of men from fathering. I noticed one of, um, one of the dads seemed kind of upset.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So I, I asked him, hey Don, is something wrong? And he said, yeah, my, my son had stood me up for a father-son hockey game. Now if you’ve ever been to Boston, you know that hockey is very big in Boston, right? Yeah, the Bruins, right?
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And this was a way that he maintained his relationship with his kid. I mean, it was a divorce situation. So I said, well, how did you feel about that at that time, not knowing much about masculinity? And he said, he shouldn’t have done it, pointing his finger with a great deal of emphasis. And I said, I agree, but how did you feel? He looked at me blankly and he said, I don’t know. I wasn’t issued feelings. Feelings?
Bert Martinez:
What does that have to do with it?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah. And I said, okay, let’s role play this because we did a lot of role plays. I said, you play you and I got another dad to play his ex-wife as she delivered the news that his son had forgotten about the date and gone off with friends. So we did the role play, we played it back. I’m sitting right next to him looking at the, at the monitor, at the recording, watching his face fall into a frown, his shoulders slump. And I’m coaching him, I say, look at yourself in the monitor, how did you feel? And he’s going like this, you know, scratching his chin. And he says, I guess I must have felt disappointed. I guess I must have felt disappointed with this much coaching.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
In my head, I’m thinking, how might a mother feel in an analogous situation, like her daughter standing her up for a shopping date? Right. And I’m imagining all this. Well, at first I was hurt that she acted with so little regard for my feelings. And then I was surprised because it’s not like her to give up a shopping date. And then I was worried that maybe she was upset with me and this is her way of showing it. And then I was disappointed and annoyed because I built my whole day around it. Now it was ruined. I guess I must have been disappointed versus hurt, surprised, worried, disappointed, annoyed.
You know, what’s going on here? Right. So I, we had a faculty meeting that week and I asked for a little time on the agenda because I wanted to ask my colleagues, it was like 8 or 9 psychologists, maybe they knew. And they said, Ron, women are just more emotional by nature. That didn’t help either. So as a doctoral student at Harvard, I had an opportunity to concentrate in child clinical. Which I, which I did. And as a result, I had to take more developmental psychology courses than my classmates. And I was aware there was a, a research literature in developmental psychology called emotion socialization.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
That means how children are socialized to express emotions. Okay, so I went back to that literature. I was vaguely familiar with it, but I went back to it and I found some incredibly interesting things. First of all, as neonates— that is, hours after birth— boys are more emotionally expressive than girls. But neonates don’t do much. They cry and they sleep. But I found the same finding among 6-month-old children and 1-year-old children. So boys seem to be more expressive than girls at birth and up to 1 year of age.
By 2 years of age, girls were showing greater verbal expression of emotions, which really was measured by how many emotion words they knew, like fear and envy and so on and so forth. And then between 4 and 6, an ingenious study found that boys lose their facial expressivity. Let me explain this to you, how it happened. Yeah, um, the psychologist asked mothers to come into the lab with one of their kids between the ages of 4 and 6, a boy or a girl. The child was in one room and the mother was in a separate room. They were hooked up by a television situation so the mother could watch her child on a monitor. The child was shown emotionally stimulating slides, and the mother’s job was to guess the type of emotion shown in the slide. At 4 years of age, the mothers were equally accurate with boys and girls, but as the children aged, that is, as you worked with older children, the mothers grew less accurate with their sons.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So by the age of 6, there were significant differences and the accuracy of mothers of sons versus mothers of daughters. That’s really— so boys are losing their facial expressivity. So what, what’s happening here? What’s happening to boys between 4 and 6? Well, they’re in preschool and elementary school, and their conformity to the masculine norm of restricting the expression of emotions is being policed by their peers.
Bert Martinez:
That makes sense.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Didn’t that make sense?
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. I’m thinking about my kids and I’m like, you know, it’s resonating with me. So anyway, go ahead.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Anyway, around the same time, I actually a little earlier than I started the Fatherhood Project, I did a summer fellowship with a psychologist named Joseph Pleck. Pleck was publishing a book that really was the landmark book in the psychology of men. It was called The Myth of Masculinity. And he was reviewing galleys, you know, proofreading galleys. And he asked me to proof a chapter or two. And so I got involved in his theory, which became the foundational theory in the psychology of men, which is that basically, you know, boys are socialized to conform to a set of very rigid masculine norms, one of which is to restrict the expression of emotions. Boys don’t do emotions, or as one of my ex-military colleagues says, I wasn’t issued emotions.
Bert Martinez:
I love that one. I don’t know what that programming is. I wasn’t issued those set of instructions.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Sorry. Well, it’s like get issued a pair of boots and a backpack and where’s my emotions?
Bert Martinez:
Well, you know what’s interesting too, because I’ve studied emotions and I’m trying to remember the gentleman’s name, but there was a study done. Where people’s, both men and women, where their emotional connection in their brain was damaged. They had some kind of head trauma and that— Yeah.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And their, their inability to make a decision was because of that damaged
Dr. Ronald Levant:
emotional— Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Unit in their brain. And so bottom line is our emotions, whether we understand them or not, are constantly helping us make decisions, period.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Well, they are basically our navigating system for life. You know, I mean, if you can’t tell how you feel about something, it’s awful hard to make a decision about it. And unfortunately, so in any event,, but getting back to the story, what Pleck was proposing is that children are socialized into gender roles and that there are norms for behavior for both boys and girls. Sure. And among those, at the same time, there was another psychologist named David Brannon who had developed a scale for measuring masculine norms. And one central norm in all of that was the norm to restrict the expression of emotions. And I can certainly attest that when I grew up as a boy, and maybe you had the same experience, we were discouraged from being in any way emotional. He just had to be kind of buttoned down and tough, right?
Bert Martinez:
Boys don’t cry, for an example, you know, right?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I mean, exactly, boys don’t cry. But boys don’t emote in other ways as well. Right. Now, so we had, I was now sitting with evidence that boys are socialized to restrict the expression of emotions. And we have emerging kind of theories about what masculinity is in terms of a set of social norms, one of which is restrict the expression of emotions., and, um, I went— I took a step further. I’m going to introduce this, a term that, um, may sound like I’m sneezing: alexithymia. It’s, um, a-lexi-thymia, which, uh, essentially means no words for emotions. It’s derived from the Latin, and A without Lexus, not the car, but L-E-X-I-S for words and thymus for emotions.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So it’s without words for emotions. So I propose that men who were socialized as boys to conform to the masculine norm of restrictive emotionality had an increased likelihood to grow up to be a man who was alexithymic. And then I set out to see if that was true. And I first did a narrative literature review of all the studies that compared the men and women on a measure of alexithymia and found that the men more often than not met the criteria for alexithymia. There’s a cut— there’s a scale and a cutoff, all kinds of technical things we don’t have to get into. But the point is that in that narrative literature review. And then I did what’s called a meta-analysis, which is a statistical aggregation of a group of studies. And I had a larger group of studies at that time.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And I found the same thing, that males were more likely to be alexithymic than, than males than, than females. And these studies were also going on around the world. And Finland actually did a prevalence study of alexithymia. And found that men met the criteria for alexithymia. 17% of— they did a stratified random sample to reflect the entire population of Finland and found that men met criteria for alexithymia, 17% of men, whereas only, I think it was 10% of women met the criteria. So once again, it’s more common among men. It’s not unheard of among women, but it’s more common among men. And it’s a problem.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
It’s a problem for a number of reasons. I mean, look, every relationship except the most superficial requires some disclosure of how you’re feeling, right? You know, that violates the masculine norm of not expressing vulnerability, especially if you’re feeling sad or afraid., or lonely, or things of that nature. And, um, if, if you can’t even know what you’re feeling, much less put into words, your ability to form close relationships is going to be limited, right? Makes sense. Uh, secondly, stress management. The most effective means humans know for dealing with stresses ranging from minor hassles to major trauma is what? It’s to talk about your experience with
Bert Martinez:
a trusted other person.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
But once again, if you can’t put your emotions into words, you’re going to be limited in getting that relief. And, um, and it’s no accident that men will seek other ways of getting relief, like drowning out the feelings with alcohol. And men happen to meet criteria for alcohol use disorder 3 to 4 times as frequently as women. So it all kind of all falls into place.
Bert Martinez:
Well, and that’s it. Again, that’s one of those, I think, male stereotypes, right? All of us, you know, most of us probably saw our fathers come home have a drink, right? Yeah, you know, whether it’s, whether it’s hard alcohol or beer or whatever, you come home and don’t bother Dad for, you know, don’t, don’t bother Dad until
Dr. Ronald Levant:
he’s had his drink kind of a thing. Yeah, my dad didn’t drink, but he, um, he worked. He had, he had a, a printing plant, and so he was subjected to noise and noxious smells all day long. And so what my brother and I had to do was something that was very hard to do, is make no noise when Dad is home. You know what’s so funny? Two boys tasked with making no noise.
Bert Martinez:
What’s so funny is, uh, my dad also had a printing background.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Oh really? Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And so And so, he had 3 boys and 1 girl, and the girl was first. And to your point, she was much quieter than the boys. And I remember her saying that Dad needs quiet time.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
What is that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I get it now, but as a little boy, I didn’t get it. You know, I mean, but yeah, I mean, those printing presses make a lot of noise and you’re around it all day long. Um, so, you know, this kind of continued to evolve. I did more and more. I started, um, my own attempt because the first scale that David Brannon had developed, a masculinity scale, didn’t meet the basic statistical criteria. So I developed a, a new scale that took off from his, called the Male Role Norms Inventory, and it’s become the leading scale to measure, um, masculine adherence, belief in masculine norms, basically.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And what’s the name of the scale again?
Bert Martinez:
It’s the Male Role Norms Inventory.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Male Norms Roles Inventory.
Bert Martinez:
Male Role Norms Inventory.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Male Role norms inventory. Yeah, it’s, it’s an inventory of norms of the male role. Sure, we’ll get it right. But, um, uh, you know, and so that, that’s kind of how my field defines masculinity, is in a set of social norms which are basically Based in culture, they change with culture and historical era. I mean, just to give it one example, we’re talking about restrictive emotionality. Well, the norm is very different for Italian men than it is for Irish men.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I never thought about that. Okay. And I know this because I had a private practice in Boston where the two largest white ethnic groups were Irish Americans and Italian Americans. And I would see an Irish-Italian marriage in couples therapy. So in Ireland, you really don’t express strong emotions unless you want to break off the relationship. Oh, interesting. In the— among the Italian community, you know, just you let it all out. Okay, so you get an Irish person and an Italian person and they marry, and then they have an argument, and the Italian person goes, and the Irish person says, oh my God, I better pack a bag, I’m gonna have to
Bert Martinez:
go live with Mama. So, uh, My background is Cuban. Cubans are loud, kind of like Italians. And it reminds me that when my wife first came over to— we were having a family reunion, and so she came over for the first time to meet the family. And as she walks in with me, she goes, what are they fighting about? Her background is— she’s got a great family, but they’re they’re very quiet, very reserved. And my family is the complete opposite. We’re very expressive, very loud. And she just grabbed my arm and was like, what are they fighting about? This is a great time.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
This is normal. Personal example of how emotional expression varies by culture. Very, very much so. And that’s my point. And so in this case, the culture we’re talking about is gender. And, um, and basically in every culture there are a set of beliefs about how boys and men should think, feel, and behave. And these are what we call the masculine norms. Sure.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And so, as I said, after I did all the work I related to you, I started using my scale to see to what extent masculine norms were helpful or harmful. And guess what? They’re overwhelmingly harmful. They’re, they’re associated— 40 years of research, not only my own, but I’m going to show you. We have— one of the things I did is I started a division in the American Psychological Association on the psychology of men and masculinities. And we published this journal.
Bert Martinez:
Can you see it?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yes, Psychology of Men and Masculinities. And we’ve been publishing this journal. We’re now in our 25th year, and there are tons of studies in there linking adherence to masculine norms with harmful outcomes— violence, sexual assault, substance use, poor health habits. You know, the list goes on and on. By and large, boys who are conformed to these masculine norms and then grow up to be men who strongly adhere to them— manly men, manly men— are likely to have a range of other problems. I think the biggest thing I could probably tell you that would illustrate it is in the area of health. So, in the United States, prior to the pandemic, it all changed with the pandemic. Let’s just do prior to the pandemic because it was stable.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Men died on average 5 years sooner than women. Okay. And, and that’s kind of overall on average. And they also, men had more diseases in every category there is of every, you know, cardio— cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, whatever. Men had more illnesses. And so the first thing, well, is there something biological going on? Well, it turns out there’s a small effect, positive effect, from female sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone. That’s kind of a, a health buffer. But the biggest factor is men’s behavior.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Sure. Men engage— one of my colleagues wrote a book. I’m going to show it to your audience.
Bert Martinez:
It’s got a great title,
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Dying to Be Men. He kind of summarized all this, and he said that men engage in about 30 voluntary behaviors that put their health at risk. So think about it. Men wear seat belts less often than women. They consume more alcohol than women, more tobacco products than women, more illicit drugs than women. They engage in unsafe sex more often than women. They do not visit their physicians when they’re ill. They do not take their medications as prescribed.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
They have poorer diets. They don’t exercise. The list goes on and on and on. And, and this is all related to masculinity.
Bert Martinez:
Well, sure. I’m thinking, again, if you’re a manly man, what do you do? Well, you have a big steak.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Maybe, maybe a couple of leaves of vegetables. You’re going to have some kind of alcohol. And then there’s nothing better than a manly, you know, cigar. Yeah. I mean, that’s it. That is literally my dad right there. Now, he had great genes, and so— and he did believe in exercise, and he lived to 95. He was very active up until like ’93, ’94.
Bert Martinez:
But I think on average, again, he’s a— he’s an outlier, right? He just happened to have good genes. But I think especially as a Cuban, I would see that all the time.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Big steak, your stogie, and alcohol. Yeah, my father, like I say, didn’t drink, but he did smoke stogies and he ate, you know, a lot of— he loved processed meat like salami and that sort of thing. And which is even worse than steaks, actually.
Bert Martinez:
Right, exactly.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
My dad was a big sandwich guy, especially making the Cuban sandwiches. You have to have those processed meats.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Absolutely. Yeah. So here we have it. Masculinity, let me just phrase it more precisely. Conforming to masculine norms puts your health at risk.
Bert Martinez:
Conforming
Dr. Ronald Levant:
to masculine norms overall, men who conform to masculine norms have more related problems of the type we’re talking about— violence, sexual problems. It just goes on and on and on. One of the things I focused on very intently was gun violence, mostly because it just kind of gives me the creeps. I just— like I said, research is me-search. I Let’s look at gun violence. So there was a lot of studies on gun violence, and I decided to go outside my comfort zone and to look not only in the psychology journals but also sociology, cultural anthropology, criminology, and there was one other anthropology. And what I found was the same finding across all of these disciplines, although they all use different terms to describe it, and they often use different research methods. Psychology tends to be quantitative.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
The other disciplines tend to be qualitative. But the finding was that the men who are more likely to become aggressive. Now, you can’t study violence in the laboratory. You would never get through your institutional review board. You can’t set up an experiment that would lead to violence. So you have to— you have to use proxies. Um, so what we typically do is, uh, such things as, uh, seeing whether they choose to punch a punching bag or sit quietly in a room or shock an opponent, but it’s not a real shock. So we have these little devices to try to assess what is likely to lead a man to do something that would be kind of a proxy of violence, not the actual act of violence.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And what we found is men who basically, whose masculinity is threatened. Sure. A typical experiment would be we’d We— the way we work, let’s say I get 100 men. I randomly assign them to an experimental and a control group. I give them different tasks. I ask the experimental group to do a feminizing task, in this case to, uh, braid the hair of mannequin dolls and put in pink ribbons. And the control group gets a masculine task of braiding rope to make it stronger. Okay.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
At the end of the task, each group is given the option to either sit quietly in a room or punch a punching bag. Which group do you think chose more
Bert Martinez:
often to punch the punching bag?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I, I’m thinking the control group with the rope. No, really, it’s the men whose masculinity was threatened.
Bert Martinez:
That— yes, I could see that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. I’m glad, I’m glad we, we you guessed incorrectly the first time because it kind of illustrates, you know, how unobvious it is, right? Right. And, um, yeah, it’s so— it’s, it’s kind of a peculiar thing because a group of us are trying to figure this out right now. Because if you take a group of 100 men and give them my scale, the Male Role Norms Inventory, and then take the average score, it’ll indicate that on average men don’t endorse traditional masculine norms. Yet you put these same men in the experiment I just described to you and they get, you know, the experimental condition, they’re going to want to punch the punching bag. So there’s something we haven’t figured out about conscious lack of endorsement and gut-level feelings that we have to get to. And I think it has to do with Daniel Kahneman’s idea of thinking fast
Bert Martinez:
and thinking slow, but we haven’t worked that out yet. Yeah, that’s a great book, by the way, if you guys haven’t checked it out, Thinking Slow, Thinking Fast. You know, again, growing up, I remember there was this big push against homosexuals, right? Because that was— that was the first time that there was this— I don’t want to— I don’t know, this kind of a nationwide threat against masculinity. Here’s a man who likes men. Hey, I’m no fag, or I’m not gay, or whatever it was. And I remember all through high school and maybe even parts of college where that was a thing. And then as it, as it became, as being homosexual or gay or whatever became mainstream, it seemed to kind of, you know, again, it peaked and then it kind of simmered down where, where men didn’t feel as threatened anymore. But I remember that just growing up, that that was the first time that I had seen that male
Dr. Ronald Levant:
masculinity being
Bert Martinez:
threatened by, uh, what do you call
Dr. Ronald Levant:
it, not normal or less than normal, uh, roles. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And that has, as you say, since the Obergefell Supreme Court decision, you know, not only men but the entire society, I think, has kind of just grown more accepting of the different sexual orientations. And, you know, I mean, I have Probably like most people, I have gay members of my family. Sure. And, and I have gay friends. And, you know, you just forget about that fact. It’s like I have black friends, too.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You know, you just kind of forget about these things.
Bert Martinez:
They’re your friends, right?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Right.
Bert Martinez:
That’s right. Your friends are your friends. You don’t care about any of that other stuff. But, but again, I think it was— it just took time. It took time for, for that to be processed. Especially, I think, what was the funniest thing to me— excuse me— especially in Christian organizations and maybe in some Muslim organizations as well. You know, this became like this heated topic, right? And, you know, one of the overall, you know, one of the commandments, for lack of better terms, is, is love thyself or love your neighbor as thyself. And a lot of people interpret that
Dr. Ronald Levant:
as gays must die.
Bert Martinez:
In terms of what I didn’t quite get— oh, that, that, uh, they interpreted the, uh, love thy neighbor as thyself as some kind of, uh, gays must die kind of a thing. It was, it was kind of the weirdest thing that all these Christian organizations that, that promote love and peace were very violent and very hateful towards gay men and women.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Oh, absolutely. We have a, you know, at my university, we have a church that’s right adjacent to the campus that’s extremely homophobic. And there’s constant conflicts between, this is kind of what we’d call a town-gown conflict, but you know, between, the gown referring to academia and the town referring to the church. But yeah, I mean, within certain religious groups, there’s a— there’s very intense homophobia. And, you know, but I think by and large, I would say most of American society is accepting. Of, of gay people. And, uh, you know, I was just listening to the news today on NPR, and the announcer talked— it was female— and she was talking about her wife. I mean, you wouldn’t hear this on National Public Radio, but there it is.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
It’s all out in the open. And as far as I’m concerned, I
Bert Martinez:
have no problem with it, you know. No, and I think, I think In my opinion, the people who have the problems with it, again, are individuals who were brought up in— I’ll use the term toxic masculine roles, right? And/or these overreaching religious goals, because it’s not just the Christians. Again, I mentioned the, the Muslims and I think the Jewish faith as well, you know, have this, you know, have very strong opinions about gays and stuff like that. But I think that, as you said, most of society is okay with it. And I think it comes down to the fact that most people just kind of say, hey, it’s two consenting adults, what do I care? Right. That’s really what it comes down to.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
But most of us don’t want to know about our friend’s bedroom practices. Right.
Bert Martinez:
And yeah, but at least as far as I’m concerned, that goes for the straight and gays. I don’t want to know what you do in your bedroom. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Exactly.
Bert Martinez:
So that doesn’t matter. But, but again, just like I said, growing up, I remember that just being a thing that, that was the first time that I saw, like, for lack of better terms, a nationwide threat, if you will, towards the masculine norm. Right. And again, fast forward today, as you’re talking about, you have it’s mainstream. You have gays that are serving in the military. And then you have, you know, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
For the most part, it doesn’t matter anymore. Yeah. When I was a boy, I grew up in a working-class town where the fathers of most of my friends worked in one of the two factories and None of them aspired to college. You know, the highest they aspired to was a trade. And, and, you know, that was the one way to start a fight. Call somebody the F-word. I’m not going to say it on the air, but you know what I’m talking about, right?
Bert Martinez:
Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s still okay to say fag and gay in this context anyway. But you’re right. If you want to— if you want to call somebody, if you want to assert that this person is less masculine
Dr. Ronald Levant:
than you, you would call them gay.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, right.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So, yeah. And it goes back to, again, boys don’t cry. Men are strong. And I want to ask you this because this, this is something that I find interesting in just generally speaking, because again, culturally there’s been this celebration, if you will, for the strong, silent type, right? The Clint Eastwoods, the James Bond. And even I would say that most women, it seems like most women appreciate the, the, the stoic, quiet, strong man. Is that changing?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Is that just— Oh yeah, let’s talk about, let’s talk about that. Yeah, let’s talk about men and women.
Bert Martinez:
Okay.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Cause I, I’ve just signed up for an interview and I’m not sure if it’s a show. To talk about why men aren’t dating, but we’ll get to that in a second. But they aren’t— young men, I should say. So back in the 1950s, women had fewer rights than men. They couldn’t get a credit. They couldn’t get credit without their husband’s approval. Very few women worked. Especially mothers of small children.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
In 1955, the percentage of women— of mothers of children under 6 in the workforce was in the single digits. But that all started to change with the advent of the second-wave feminist movement in the ’60s, so that by 1985, 50% of mothers of children under the age of 6 were in the workforce. So from single digits to 50% in 30 years. Wow. Gigantic jump. And then, so that’s, we’re talking about mothers of small children. Mothers who don’t, women who don’t have children or mothers of older children were, you know, went into the workforce in even greater numbers. Women entered the workforce like a tsunami.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Between 1955 and 1985. The next thing that happened was the divorce revolution. And two— little known fact is, so the divorce revolution started in ’65, went to ’85. By the end, it was said that half of all marriages are going to end in divorce, right? And a little known fact is two-thirds of those divorces were initiated by the wives.
Bert Martinez:
Well, and here’s a little— here’s a little trivia for you, and I believe It was Ronald Reagan, because to your point, not only could women not have a credit card and, and they weren’t working outside of the home, but they couldn’t initiate a divorce. That was Ronald Reagan that signed that into law, that a woman or a man could initiate a divorce. And that’s why the divorce revolution took
Dr. Ronald Levant:
off, because now women could get— could divorce. You’re talking about no-fault divorce, right? Yes. Okay, yeah, you’re right. Absolutely. There are two things that kind of propelled the change in women’s status: the advent of no-fault divorce and the advent of childcare. You know, both enabled women. So what happened between ’55 and ’85 is women dramatically changed their position in society. What happened to men during that period? Nothing.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
We stayed the same. So now you have— you’re probably familiar with Richard Reeves and his book Boys and Men. He’s all over the airwaves and such. And what his book shows is that boys and men are doing more poorly than girls and women on nearly every educational, health, and social welfare indicator that there is.
Bert Martinez:
Right. Uh, I— you’re right there. Women are getting higher educations, they’re buying property, they’re basically outperforming men like 2 to 1.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah, all over the place. I don’t know the exact number, but I mean, anybody could read Reeve’s book, it’s been a bestseller. And he, you know, sorts out all the facts. But so when I first started my first faculty job in 1975, it was an all-graduate program, so I was only dealing with MA and PhD students. They were all men. I retired from my last job at the University of Akron, again in a graduate program. I also had to teach undergraduates here, but that— but my graduate students were all women. Total change, you know.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Over the course of my career, over the 50-year career. So, um, while women were going through all these changes, and there were all these conversations that took place, millions and millions of conversations between mothers and daughters, between aunts and nieces, between grandmothers and granddaughters, about how to navigate the world where gender is changing. So they were informed, they knew what to do. I’ll give you one example. I was a student at Berkeley. That’s where I went to college in the 1960s. And you know what they say about Berkeley in the 1960s, don’t you? They say is if you can remember
Bert Martinez:
it, you weren’t here. I have not heard that one, but I’ve heard something similar. Yeah, that’s pretty good. I like that. Yeah.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
If you can remember it, you weren’t here. But I can remember it, and I was there, and I remember the women I knew were taking assertiveness training classes to overcome the effects of their gender role socialization to be dependent on and deferent to men. Men are not taking emotional self-awareness classes to overcome the effects of their socialization to be emotionally numb. No, they aren’t doing anything. And that is the problem. The problem with men today is that they’re hewing to standards of the 1950s when the world has moved on. And I was on a show a couple of weeks ago and the guy asked me for advice. What advice would you give? And if any of your listeners you know, are men who are struggling with this, what I would say is, you know, take an inventory of the rules you live by.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Write down the rules that guide your life and consider if they’re still working for you, particularly the ones you learned as a boy, like don’t cry, for example. You know, if you do that, you can kind of free yourself from what’s called the man box. You know, this set of restricted roles that we men are supposed to live in. We’re not supposed to have any emotions and all that kind of thing. But let’s— I did want— I mentioned crying. I want to say a word about
Bert Martinez:
crying, if that’s okay.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah. Yeah. So think about crying. All humans have tear ducts, and crying relieves sadness because it releases oxytocin, which is a feel-good hormone. When you cry, your body releases it and you change and you’re less sad. It doesn’t make it all go away, of course, but, um, and, um, then consider this. What’s the shortest sentence in the Bible?
Bert Martinez:
I— sentence.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Go ahead, tell me.
Bert Martinez:
Jesus wept.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Jesus wept. I remember that now. Yes. So if it’s good enough for Jesus, why can’t it be good enough for American boys?
Bert Martinez:
Right, right. Well, you know, what’s interesting, that would be an interesting study because he did a lot of things that were completely revolutionary in that time, right? I mean, like you said, public weeping. I guarantee you that the leaders of that time would not have condoned a man publicly weeping, right? So, so, uh, that’s very interesting. Uh, I like that Jesus wept.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
All right, keep going. Yeah, so I’m, I’m, I’m hoping to encourage your audience, if they’re men and they’re, and they, they’re afraid to cry, hey buddy, it’s cool to cry. I, I love crying myself. My wife and I sometimes, um, watch, um, you know, uh, tearjerker type dramas on TV and she’ll be sitting there
Bert Martinez:
all dry-eyed.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You’re weeping.
Bert Martinez:
Whole box of tissues. But I want to, I want to go back to, to again, there’s this, I think it’s true. There is a certain attraction to the, the, the, the strong silent type. And, you know, there was a, a Friends episode. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the series Friends. And this is one of my favorite episodes. Okay. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Well, this is one of my favorite episodes because there’s some truth to it, right? So the guest star is Bruce Willis, who is a, you know, is an action hero, a manly man, right? And so he’s playing this part and, and the, the actress that he’s working with, the female is Jennifer Aniston. I can’t remember her character now. Rachel Green is the character’s name. And so she is a little befuddled that he’s not opening up, he’s not showing any emotions, and, and it’s really bothering her. So she finally gets him to open up and he starts weeping and crying and talking about his childhood and how tough his dad was and, and all the stuff that— I love your idea of the man box. He starts talking about all the rules and in his, you know, he starts talking about his man box. And at first she’s elated because he’s opening up. And then later on in the episode, she’s like, I can’t stand him anymore.
Bert Martinez:
He’s so weepy now. He won’t shut up about his emotions. And I think there’s some truth to that. I think women want you to be sensitive to a point. And then they, you know, I think that some women also have to maybe reorient themselves as to what a man is.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
What’s your thought? Yeah, I, I don’t know that. I don’t know that particular episode, and I can imagine that any kind of behavior could be repeated ad nauseam to the point that, okay, I want— I encourage you in the beginning, but we’ve reached my limit here, you know. So I could understand. I didn’t really— I never was a fan of, of that particular series, but I probably should go back and watch it. Everybody, everybody brings it up and I don’t know a thing about it. So I better watch it.
Bert Martinez:
I’m going to send you the clip so you could, so you could look at it. But, but I think there, again, there is some truth to that, that, that men, I mean, that women want their men to be somewhat sensitive, right? They can’t be the stoic, unemotional robot, but at the same time, they don’t want them being too too sensitive. And maybe I’m wrong about that. What’s your take on that?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Can men become too sensitive? Well, I’ve heard that. I don’t know any— I don’t have— I don’t know of anything that would prove that right or wrong. I mean, I’ve heard that it’s a stereotype. You know, I just don’t know. But let’s talk about dating. Okay, because men are not dating. Men are not— young men are not dating. They, um, uh, I, I— there was an article on an online source, I don’t remember the source, where the man said he’s no longer going on dates because they’re too
Bert Martinez:
much like job interviews, you know. And I’ve seen a lot about that. I have. I have a, a friend of mine He’s single. I expect him to be single the rest of his life simply because he is 50-something years old, cannot make a relationship work for whatever reason. But he talks about how difficult it is now and that the dynamics of dating have changed. And I think part of that is because when you and I were growing up, if we wanted to date women, we’d have to go out and either whether it’s a church function, going to a bar, going to some other social function. We had to go and meet women.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And now you just sit on an app. Well, that’s it. Yeah. Dating has been replaced by hooking up. Yes. And that’s sad. You know, you go on an app, you meet somebody, you hook up, and you never see them again. Yeah.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Now, you know, in the— I mean, a lot of my dating occurred in the context of college. Right. Which is, it’s a great opportunity. You get, you know, thousands of men and women in their early 20s with
Bert Martinez:
all their hormones bursting. And they have freedom for the first time, right? A lot of them are living in the dorms or they’re living slightly off campus and there’s this freedom.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So, it’s like a double hit. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you learn responsibility at a certain point, but It’s like going to a candy store in the beginning.
Bert Martinez:
And you know what? Going back to the gender norms, right? Or masculine roles for college young men. You got to drink. You’re not a real man if you’re not getting drunk every weekend. And then there’s— I remember going to a frat party once and it was just nothing but booze, cigars and and poker.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Total, you know, total man. Yeah, I, when I got to Berkeley, I joined a fraternity and it was a horrible experience. But I remember my first frat party, you know, I had just come back from 3 or 4 classes and wanted to look at my homework, but since I was a pledge, I was— I basically was at the beck and call of the brothers. So they were setting up the kegs, you know, the deal, and they cranking up the music. Yes. And he started handing me beers. I had to finish them. And I, I guess after 3 or 4, I just, you know, let it
Bert Martinez:
all hang out, so to speak.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You returned it back. I said, you know, this kind of sucks. Yeah, sure. I want this kind of life. I really don’t like throwing up, especially on my shoes.
Bert Martinez:
Right, right. Oh, my goodness.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
You know, one of the benefits of growing up the way we did is my dad— once we turned 13, my dad would allow us to have beer with his supervision. So if we wanted to try beer or wine at the dinner table, it was okay because Mom and Dad were there.. And so by the time I got to a senior in high school or college, I was not a fan of beer. I was over beer. I think it smells funny. It tastes funny. It looks the same coming, you know, going into you that it does going out of you. Well, that’s true.
Bert Martinez:
Not a fan of beer. So I did not join any particular group just for that one reason. It just— I just seemed like this
Dr. Ronald Levant:
is not for me anyway. Yeah. No, I, do drink, but you know, not like that. Okay. I mean, you know, I have a couple glasses of red wine with dinner or something like that, but not, not like that frat thing where you just, you know, kept chugging beers. Right. I kept being given beers and I was asked to chug them. But, um, You know, alcohol is a huge problem for men.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I mean, we meet criteria for alcohol use disorder, like I said, 3 to 4 times as frequently as women. And as we know, alcohol use disorder can destroy all your internal organs. I’m not saying drinking, I’m talking about drinking to excess. Right. Abuse. Yeah. Abuse.
Bert Martinez:
Thank you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that again, it’s like anything else, you know, you can, you can diet abusively to the point of harming yourself. You can, you can drink abusively. You can, you know, there’s so many things you can do abusively.
Bert Martinez:
But yeah, I’m glad you pointed that out. It’s that abusive drinking that again, it’s encouraged in the, you know, in the
Dr. Ronald Levant:
men, the masculine norms. Definitely.
Bert Martinez:
Definitely.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You know, it’s not in my scale, but it’s, um, we probably ought to revise the scale to put it in.
Bert Martinez:
And yeah, I want to talk about this because I think you’ve said something along this line, that one of your missions is to change how we raise boys. Yes. If you could sit down with parents today, what would you tell them about
Dr. Ronald Levant:
nurturing emotional strength in their sons? Well, I can probably, uh, best, um, convey what I do by talking about a case I saw. It was, uh— excuse me, blow my nose.
Bert Martinez:
Sorry, you can edit that
Dr. Ronald Levant:
out, right? Absolutely, no problem. Um, in my practice, I often saw parents around, uh, problems they have with their children. And, um, I remember one case in particular where they had a 6-year-old boy, and they, they were seeing me largely because they had conflict between the two of them. But in the context of the, of the counseling, they brought up that we want to raise, uh, John to, um, you know, be emotionally expressive. We let him cry in the house. We don’t do the boys don’t cry, but we’re worried about how he’s going to be treated out in the world. And I said, well, you’re very right to be concerned about that because a lot of— there’s a lot of people who believe that boys should not cry. Right.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So I suggest what you do is you kind of inoculate your son against that, so to speak. Have a conversation with him and say, John, you know, in our house we think it’s okay to cry because, you know, crying makes you feel better when you feel bad. But not everybody agrees. So you kind of have to know who you’re around because some people think boys should not cry, and if you cry in front of them, they’re likely to get very mad at you, you know. So you kind of explain it to your son so he gets the idea that You know, it’s perfectly all right for him to cry, but he has to be careful about who he cries in front of. And I think things of that nature, you know, are helpful. I have a colleague who wrote a book called The Mask. Let me pull it up.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah, here it is. I’m going to do an advertisement for his book. It’s called The Masculinity Workbook for Teens. And this is, um, my, my idea is that this ought to be in the, uh, not all schools have, uh, ESL classes, emotional and social learning classes, typically in middle school. Uh, very important because middle school is adolescence, and adolescence is all kinds of problems. I mean, it’s great, but it also brings with it a lot of hazards. So what this book does, it has exercises where the boys— because boys get a lot of pressure in middle school about being masculine. That’s really where it’s very intense.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And this enables them to talk about the pressure, talk about where it’s coming from, talk about what they value, what their family values. And really figure out what kind of guy they want to be so that they can, you know, avoid the pressure and just be who they want to be. And I think something like that, if we implemented that in schools in the emotional and social learning classes, which I think all schools should have because children really need something besides arithmetic, you know, they need guidance, you know, in kind of dealing with emotions and dealing with people and and these kind of things. So I’m very much in favor of that with boys.
Bert Martinez:
And you know what, I agree with you. I think that especially as you’re saying, you know, in junior high and high school where all these changes are happening, but I love the idea of having some kind of social emotional learning at school. Again, the kids are spending 6 to 8 hours there. And we really, at this point, I would say most children, especially boys, haven’t talked about emotions. They don’t know how to express emotions. That, you know, again, the information they have is probably not that well-rounded. But I love the idea of setting up your child, your son, to be able to express himself. And like you said, you got to know when to do it, when not to do it.
Bert Martinez:
And this idea of emotional training, because in my philosophy or my belief is that in school, whether it’s junior high, high school, or college, they don’t teach the most important things, which is how to regulate your emotions, how to set and reach goals, right? How to manage your money. And how to manage your relationships. And so these 4 things, you’re supposed to learn them on your own, and
Dr. Ronald Levant:
you do, but it takes forever. And you make a lot of mistakes along the way. A lot of mistakes. Yes. No, it should be built in because all though you hit the high points, those are the things that we really need to learn. One thing I did want to mention to you is we talked about normative male alexithymia. An easier thing to say would be emotional inexpressiveness. I developed a manualized treatment for this.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
My career kind of shifted in 1989-90 when I essentially expanded my practice to full-time and took a part-time academic job.. And, and I told my colleagues— I was at Harvard Medical School— I told my colleagues, send me the men that
Bert Martinez:
your women clients complain about. I like that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
What a great way to develop referrals. Well, and also, this was in the year of the Yellow Pages, which probably many of your audience won’t realize, but in the ’90s, one of the ways that a psychologist would advertise would put an ad in this book called the Yellow Pages that had every— all the businesses’ phone numbers and things like that. So I had a big ad that said counseling for men, and I would list some things that men might be, you know, want counseling for. And I got a lot of men who were emotionally inexpressive in my practice, and I started experimenting. And this is important not only for the reasons we described, but particularly in psychotherapy. Because every form of psychotherapy requires that the patient be able to identify their emotions. Even the most behavioral form of therapy, which is called exposure therapy, which is used to treat phobias, the patient is expected to discern subtle differences in their levels of fear in response to threatening stimuli. Alexithymic people can’t begin to do that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
So I started off, I had known from some prior work that men had a very poor vocabulary for emotions. So I, uh, would, um, tell my client, well, first I’d explain, you have to explain what you’re going to do and, and get buy-in. You have to do a sales job essentially. And once I do the sales job and they’re bought in, I say, okay, we’re going to work on your vocabulary. I want you to write down as, as many emotion words, that is, words 4 emotions as you can and bring it back next week. And then I would rely on men’s natural competitiveness. I say, the guy I saw earlier
Bert Martinez:
this morning brought in 30 words. That’s a good— that’s a great strategy, God.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
That would work all the time. I know this guy is going to bring in 31. That’s good. And so it usually takes about a week to build up a nice vocabulary. Then I tell them, we’re going to now teach you how to identify emotions in other people. And I would teach them about facial expression of emotions, tone of voice, body language. And I’d say, when you’re with somebody or even just watching TV, you’re looking at a character. Ask yourself the question while you’re listening to that person, what are they feeling when they say this? Try to discern what the emotion is underneath the talk.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And then the, so that’s step 2, and that might take a couple of weeks. And by the way, this doesn’t take the whole session. It’s like 10 or 15 minutes. And I give them homework as I, as you saw with the, with the vocabulary. So the, the third step is learn to identify emotions in yourself. Now, I have to say, some of my patients didn’t even know they had emotions. They had— they were so alexithymic, they, they, um, they would describe a bodily sensation. They’d say, like, I have like a tight band across my forehead, or I feel like I have butterflies in my chest, or feel like my legs want to run away from me.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And what they would be describing is the physiological arousal that precedes the emotion. But they were so alexithymic, the idea didn’t occur in their mind that I’m feeling afraid or I’m feeling sad or what have you. So I tell them, okay, when you have an emotion for the guys that actually did, or a bodily sensation for the other guys, Write it down. What are you feeling? Then ask yourself the question, who is doing what to whom and how does that affect me?
Bert Martinez:
Right?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Right now, who’s doing what to whom? And then go through your vocabulary list and pick out the word or words that match. So here’s an example. Butterflies in my stomach. My supervisor was expecting, I was expecting my supervisor to give me feedback on a report at noon and it’s 2:30 and I haven’t gotten it. Go through the vocabulary list. What are you feeling? Butterflies in your stomach, supervisor. Well, I’m anxious, apprehensive. So you see how this would work.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
It’s, it’s a little bit like kindergarten for emotions, which is really appropriate because a lot of men’s emotional self-regulation, self-awareness was interrupted when they were in
Bert Martinez:
kindergarten or first grade or second grade. I’m fascinated by the fact that in your work there, that the boys are very expressive until they hit, like you said, that age between 4 and 6 when they start getting around their peers. And to me, that makes so much sense because our environment does teach us how we’re supposed to conform.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
You know, and one of the things that I’ve looked at, not that I’ve done a study, but one of the things that I’ve looked at is in the African-American community, in the, in the Cuban-American community, and there are several other communities that the men are encouraged to dance and they’re good at dancing. But in the white American male, you know, dancing is not taught. It’s one of those things that if, if, if you dance, you’re kind of weird. That’s not manly to dance. But let me tell you, women like
Dr. Ronald Levant:
men who know how to dance. Oh yeah. So, and there are certain cultures that would cultivate that in men. Like you say, the Cuban. I don’t know much about the Cuban-American culture, but I, you know, I can imagine. I knew growing up in California, I knew many more people from Mexico than from Cuba. Um, you know, obviously two different nations,
Bert Martinez:
two different cultures, right? But again, the Mexican culture has a lot of the, the, the macho stereotypes, right?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I mean, well, they have two versions of masculinity. They have a machismo and, um, and a familisimo. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right. Familisimo? Could be. Yeah. Um, so machismo is the macho version, and the familisimo is the family-oriented man, um, who is kind and loving and that sort of thing. So they actually The Mexican culture actually
Bert Martinez:
has two versions for masculinity. Let me ask you this, because we’re running out of time here. Have you started to observe a shift about modern fatherhood, or are you starting to see that dads today are more
Dr. Ronald Levant:
emotionally present than, let’s say, your dad, my dad? Absolutely. The two biggest shifts among men in the United States that I’ve observed from when I first started doing research in the 1970s to now is one with regard to fathering and the other is regard to attitudes towards gay men. Those are totally different than they were in the 1970s. The other ones, not so much. One of the things I do want to give a shout out to is, you know, athletes acknowledging their vulnerabilities., and that has a big effect. Like Terry Bradshaw, who is a football player, quite some time ago admitted that he suffered from depression. And more recently, here in Cleveland, one of our former basketball players, Kevin Love, you may have heard of him, he left a game in the middle and didn’t come back. And then the next day he addressed the media.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
And he said, I have panic disorder. I had a panic attack on the field. I had to leave to kind of go through the exercise I know to do because I’m in psychotherapy and to kind of calm down. And I highly recommend anybody suffering from panic disorder to see a psychotherapist. And all this bullshit masculinity we were taught as boys is just that. Oh my goodness. You know, he actually gave a news conference. I don’t know if he used the
Bert Martinez:
word bullshit, but something to that effect. And I think, you know, I think that that is a great thing that some of these icons are doing, like a Bradshaw. Because when you look at Terry Bradshaw, again, here’s a manly man. He played football. He’s built like a football player. He’s, you know, he’s, he’s a, he’s, He’s what a lot of guys look up to as a man’s man.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah, absolutely.
Bert Martinez:
And for him to come out and say, yeah, I deal with this, it really helps take the stigma, the stigma. Thank you. Out of it. And I think that one of the things that I’ve seen, especially after COVID, is that people are starting to become more comfortable saying, I have this issue that I’m dealing with. Yeah, I’m going to therapy because of this issue or whatever. And I think that was one of the blessings out of COVID that I think that generally people woke up to the fact that we’re in this rat race for what reason. And a lot of people, we would go to the park and like the first couple of times we went to the park, there was barely anybody there. But within, you know, within like 30 days after that, the park was a gathering place for families.
Bert Martinez:
And you would, you’d go to the park and you’d see families that are having a picnic or enjoying each other’s
Dr. Ronald Levant:
time for the first time in probably a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pandemic really kind of put a squelch on social activities, and it’s good that it came back where you live. But I do think, you know, celebrities, athletes are revered by men. Men, yes, revere certain athletes. And to the extent that You know, they’re human beings. And like Kevin Love, he’s a great forward and, you know, playing basketball, but he’s a human being and he has a panic disorder and he’s getting treated and he’s, you know, admits it openly. There’s no shame.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
This is what you do if you have a psychological problem. So I think that really helps. And I think it will help around the emotional restriction. End of things. We haven’t seen it change yet in terms of the, you know, the larger population of men. We haven’t seen men, uh, change in terms of their, uh, prohibition of
Bert Martinez:
being emotionally expressive, but I think that’s coming. Yeah, I, I agree with you. I, I think, again, it’s like everything else, it is a slow progress, right? Uh, and Again, when I was growing up, if you heard your father tell you he loved you or he was proud of you, it was probably right before his death. It was just so, so unheard of for your father to give you that kind of emotional recognition, at least again, the way I was raised. But today, you hear fathers telling their children all the time, I love you. Yeah. And
Dr. Ronald Levant:
so, It only took 30 or 40 years.
Bert Martinez:
Well, we’re getting there.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
We’re getting there.
Bert Martinez:
Who knows what will happen in the
Dr. Ronald Levant:
next 30 or 40 years, right?
Bert Martinez:
If we don’t blow the planet up. Yeah, if we don’t blow the planet up. I’m pretty sure we— I don’t think we’ll blow it up. We may wreck it some more, but that’s okay. It’s all part of a plan, I think. Let me ask you this. This idea that you brought up about emotional social learning, is that something that
Dr. Ronald Levant:
you’re seeing a lot in schools or just very few schools? Well, I really haven’t done a survey of schools. It’s been more just, you know, if I happen to notice it. So I don’t really know how widespread it is. I’ve seen it in a few schools., and, and I think it’s a great idea as a psychologist and somebody who was originally trained as a child psychologist, you know, that, that children need this kind of guidance and also, you know, the opportunity to learn with their peers, and that, that’s tremendously helpful, you know, because a child may have a particular problem and they’ll keep it to themselves and they’ll believe they’re the only person that has this problem and everybody else is doing fine. But when you get a group like in a classroom and children are kind of admitting things they struggle with, it takes the onus off everybody because they can realize, well, hey, maybe everybody’s— has, has got something that they’re not happy about or they’re struggling with or trying to work on.
Bert Martinez:
And that makes a person feel a lot better. Yes. One of the things that I’ve learned from Ms. Brené Brown.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yes.
Bert Martinez:
She gave a great talk and she’s brought it up several times about vulnerability that, again, especially for men, we’re not supposed to show our vulnerability. But she says, she talked about when somebody gets up on stage or when an athlete publicly admits that they’re— that they have this vulnerability, we look at this person and we say, wow, that’s brave, that is courageous to admit that they have this vulnerability. But yet at the same time, we
Dr. Ronald Levant:
as humans fear showing our vulnerabilities, especially for men. Yes, especially for men. That’s one of the one of the rules, in addition to not cry, is never show any vulnerability, you know, because in
Bert Martinez:
boy culture, um, you’re going to get beat up. Yes, we are going to get beat up. Yeah, I remember again growing up, uh, we would definitely make fun of people who even dressed differently. Yeah. That guy, you know, that young man dresses too nicely. He must be a queer. We got to make fun of him. Or, you know, whatever, or whatever the deal was, right? Let me— you know, we talked a little bit about the shift in dating.
Bert Martinez:
And one of the things that, that I find interesting is because we have, quote, all these digital connections, social media, all this other stuff, but we seem to be less emotionally connected. And is there a way to maybe get around that? Because I think one of the things that I’m taking away from today’s conversation is that we need to be more emotionally present in whatever we do. So, is there a practice for men or maybe for all of us
Dr. Ronald Levant:
that we can adapt to become more emotionally aware? Yeah, I think there is, but I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all. You know, I think, you know, the men that I saw in my practice would first need to go through a process where they could begin to identify and put their emotions into words. I mean, they basically, you know, have to kind of go back to emotional kindergarten because they couldn’t do what you’re suggesting because They just simply can’t put their emotions into words. So I’m saying different strokes for different folks. I, you know, like I say, I wish that we had these ESL classes all across the United States. I think we’d have a lot less gun violence if we did, if we, if children you know, in the 5th grade or the 6th grade, you know, were taught kind of how to, when they’re upset, how to express themselves, you know, when they have a conflict with a peer, how to resolve that conflict. You know, if they learn these basic, how to give comfort to somebody who’s suffering, they learn these basic human skills it’s going to be a lot better off. But, you know, as far as there are groups in society, they’re ready to move in the direction you suggest, but
Bert Martinez:
I don’t think every group is prepared for that. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think that this idea of different strokes for different folks is probably the best one because Everybody has different needs. Let me ask you this. I kind of want to get your thoughts on this and kind of maybe cast a vision, if you will. If the next generation of boys and men, if they were to grow up emotionally fluent, for lack of better terms. Yeah. Emotionally self-aware.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
More self-aware. I
Dr. Ronald Levant:
like that. What kind of world do you see? Well, first of all, I don’t think we’d have the crisis that we have between the sexes among young people today. I mean, I think if men were, if young men were more emotionally intelligent, that’s another term to use. That’s actually probably, I think it’s copyrighted,
Bert Martinez:
so we got to be careful.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah, but I think you’re right. Emotionally intelligent. I’ll just say emotionally self-aware because I’m not going to step on anybody’s toes. You know, I don’t think we have the crisis of connection between men and women where women, you know, are essentially writing men off and men are writing women off. I mean, we can’t exist as a society if that continues for a very long time because we’re not going to reproduce. You know, the population. And, you know, hopefully things won’t get as bad as they are in South Korea. I don’t know if you know what’s going on there.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
No, what’s happening in South Korea? The alienation between the sexes is so intense there, it’s given rise to what’s called the Four B’s Movement. And in Korean, B or B-I-S, BIS, B means not. So it’s no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage with men, and no having children with men. That’s the 4 Bs movement in South Korea. And Asia, I mean, not only Korea, but this— I read some articles about this maybe about a decade ago in Japan where women were turning against it. In some of these Asian societies, the women have really pretty much renounced men, and I hope we don’t get there. I think, you know, we still have an opportunity to kind of turn things around. I think shows like this, you know, can help if we can encourage men to reclaim their humanity, reclaim their emotional life, you know, to really throw out the man book and be yourself, okay? The man book is nonsense.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You know, think of what
Bert Martinez:
Shakespeare said, to thine own self be true, right? Right, right. You know what? And since we’re talking about Korea and Asia and stuff like that, look at what’s happening in China. Because for years, you know, if you were, if you gave birth to a female, she was either killed or put up for adoption.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Right.
Bert Martinez:
And just I want to say a couple of years ago, there was this young Chinese lady who for years has been experiencing these terrible migraines. And, and she finally went to the doctor and they did an X-ray or whatever for the head. And they found that her parents, who were trying to kill her because she was a female, they had put a bunch of pins in her head or needles in her head trying to kill her. Kill her. And, and it was an extraordinary thing. But that’s the culture that they grew up with, where women were considered less than men by such a huge measure that killing them was appropriate.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Right.
Bert Martinez:
And to your point, where if all of a sudden we follow the 4 Bs as they’re doing in Korea, sooner
Dr. Ronald Levant:
or later that civilization disappears. Right, exactly. It’s a matter of math. You know, you mentioned China. China is one of the most sexist cultures in the world. Don’t forget, in the 19th century, Chinese women had to bind their feet. Because small feet were considered— so basically
Bert Martinez:
you crippled Chinese girls. You know, because some guy said, hey, small feet are sexy. And if you guys want to look up some gross history, this happened in Japan as well. Is that— look up binding of feet and it’s, it’s just absurd and gross. You feel sorry for these poor women.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I’m sorry, poor children, because it started at an early age. Yeah, they were girls, not women, obviously. Yeah. You know, the United Nations on their website publishes a gender equality index where they rank every nation in terms of gender equality. And you can imagine that China, Russia, Afghanistan. These countries are down near the bottom. The countries that are at the top are the Western European, particularly the Scandinavian countries. And I’ll tell you a story.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I was able to spend some time in Bergen, Norway. I was invited to do this honorary lecture, so I got to hang out with, with people there. The women in Norway strike me as some of the most empowered women I’ve ever met.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, you’ve been to Norway or? I haven’t, but I’ve been seeing some of the reports.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Norway and Iceland. Yeah. Very empowered. Very empowered. I mean, I just, it was, the United States, the last time I looked was number 17 on the list and it goes all the way down to like 194 or something like that.
Bert Martinez:
So we’re not terrible, but we could be better. We could be better. It’s never so good it can’t get
Dr. Ronald Levant:
better, and it’s never so bad it can’t get worse. Well,
Bert Martinez:
there you go. Is that an old Cuban expression? It is. It is. You know, but yeah, I mean, you look at, at in the Middle East, I’m going to pick on the Taliban. How they treat their women. Oh, oh, it’s, it is mind-boggling. Yeah, I mean, talk about having no rights. They, they mutilate them by removing their clitoris.
Bert Martinez:
They, they, they can’t vote.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Some of them can’t drive, can’t own anything. And you know, you know how hot it is in, in that part of the world, and think of having to wear this burqa, everything that covers your face and your entire body. Can you imagine anything more uncomfortable in a hot country? And I’m pretty sure they don’t.
Bert Martinez:
Not all buildings have air conditioning in Afghanistan. I bet you, I bet you, you’re right there. I bet you very few buildings do. And not only are you wearing this to be black, which is like, yeah, which is, keeps the heat in. Attracts the heat, keeps it in. It’s like, my goodness. I do believe that they will be dealt with, if not in this life, in the next. I just cannot imagine reasonable men saying this is how we need to treat our women.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
You know, that they have to be just below a slave almost. It’s— excuse me, it’s a theocracy, right? The Taliban is kind of a little bit like Iran. Except they don’t have a supreme— well, maybe they do, I don’t know. But it’s a religious-based society that, you know, enforces these strictures on women. And both are Islamic societies. I’m not sure if they’re both Shiite or the other one. But yeah, it’s religion. That does that.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Um, religion can do a lot of good.
Bert Martinez:
It’s like a two-edged sword though, right? Right. Well, in this, in this scenario, uh, you know, you have some men who are also the religious leaders, and they come up with these ideas, uh, based on their, you know, based on their opinion, I guess, because I don’t see. you know, I have studied, um, you know, uh the, the, the Quran a little bit, and, and I’ve studied, uh, uh, what do you call it, the, uh, the Jewish, uh, the Old Testament Torah. What’s that? It’s called Torah. Thank you. The Torah. And, and I cannot find any evidence in the Quran to support some of these religious restrictions. And, and again, it’s all man-made, right? Yeah, I,
Dr. Ronald Levant:
I haven’t looked into it as deeply as you have. I’ll take your word for it that it’s not there. It’s just basically arbitrary. You know, why they forbid girls from having education beyond grade school is beyond me. You know, they’re essentially robbing their society of the potential half the talent that they could possess. I mean, you know, intelligence is not sorted on the basis of the sex chromosomes. I mean, you know, intelligence kind of varies in a society independent of sex, independent of race.
I mean, you know, it’s like a bell curve, like most things, you know, a high end, a low end, and most people are in the middle. So why should you just say, Bill, because you know, you, you’re female, you, you can’t have education beyond grade school. Right,
Bert Martinez:
You can’t have any rights. You can’t own, you can’t drive, you can’t vote. And, and I look at Afghanistan and I’m thinking that one of the reasons that Afghanistan has progressed so poorly over 100 years is because the way they treat their women.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Like you said, 50% of their, of
Bert Martinez:
their talent is being suppressed, right?
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, exactly. It’s a remarkable thing. I want to thank you so much. We’re out of time, but I want to thank you so much for stopping by. And this is a topic where, my gosh, it, it, it invades everything. And so it’s, it’s great to be able to talk about it. absolutely. I mean, there’s just so much to unpack.
Dr. Ronald Levant:
Yeah. We could talk the rest of the afternoon. Yeah. So thank you for helping me on this. Thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciated talking with you. You’re a very pleasant person to talk to.
