Episode 16: The Masculine Genius

Join Fr. Peyton as he explores his favorite topic, the Masculine Genius. Men and Women will enjoy a discussion on what makes the Male/Female difference brilliant, and what does that difference look like our lives. With a deeper appreciation for the uniqueness and commonalities of men and women, we can understand God's plan in our lives with greater appreciation.

Music:
Track: The Four Seasons - Winter - Violin Concerto in F minor, RV 297
Music provided by Classical Music Copyright Free [https://tinyurl.com/visit-cmcf]
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwCCrBXXFY&t=

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Epiphany, the podcast where we Hey guys, welcome back to the Epiphany podcast for our next episode. But before we dive in to what is one of my favorite topics, I want to share an announcement with everybody. So this past Monday, the Archdiocese released the announcement that Archbishop has... For whatever reason, decided that I'm ready to be a pastor. I'm very excited about that. And so I will be moving at the end of June to Selma, Alabama, just about an hour west of Montgomery, for those of you who aren't from this area. I'll be the pastor of two parishes. The first one in Selma is Our Lady Queen of Peace, and the other parish is in Oroville, about 20, 25 minutes southwest from Selma. It's a really itty-bitty parish, but it looks beautiful. I'm excited to get to know it. And I'm That one is called Immaculate Conception. So we began this podcast with Our Lady, and it looks like I'm becoming a pastor of two parishes with Our Lady's patronage. So she's calling me deeper into her intercession, I guess. And so I'm looking forward to that. It'll definitely be sad leaving Auburn, just in all the great things that has happened and all the beautiful opportunities that I've had here and all the ways I've grown and just the people I've met and everything, I will be sad to leave, but I can't lie. You know, the Lord calls and one of the coolest things about being a priest is there are moments like this when beyond the shadow of a doubt, I know exactly what the Lord is calling me to do. That's one of the great gifts of the church and it's being visible and invisible, right? God's will isn't always hidden. Sometimes it's very obvious. And so So the Lord is calling me through Archbishop to move to that parish, and I'm looking forward very much so to being there and getting started in the Lord's new plan. One of, honestly, the most common questions I've gotten from students and parishioners alike once the announcement went out is basically, hey... Are you going to keep doing the podcast? And so I've been telling everybody what I will tell you is I would like to, but I want to recall the whole reason I started this podcast was for my parish. I started it for St. Michael's. I started it for the people here and I started it for the students at Auburn Catholic Student Center. I discerned there was a need there. People were just looking for more content and wanting more opportunities to learn about the faith. And so this is why I started this podcast, but I will be moving to a new parish in June and And a new parish means new needs. And so once we get past the next couple weeks, I do have a couple more episodes kind of lined up. I'm going to take a break for the summer regardless. But moving to the new parish, I'm going to take a moment. I'm going to get to know the parish. I'm going to kind of assess the needs and just what kind of time I have available as well. And I would love to continue the podcast, and so I'm planning to. But If it never comes back or whatnot and you don't hear from me again, I want you to know it's not because I hate you or I'm ignoring you. It's because my parish is called and they have new needs. But I thank all of you who have listened thus far. to the podcast and have enjoyed it. I have been very uplifted and encouraged just by some of your comments and just the things that you've decided to share and stuff. And so it's been a really fun project and I appreciate any and all of you who have kind of joined me on this journey and supporting me in various ways and by your prayer and such. So without further ado, I would like to hop in to what I could call my magnum opus. It's this particular topic we're going to discuss today is probably, it probably is the topic. I'm trying to, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to be honest, but I think it probably is the topic I know the most about. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's all kinds of things in the world to study. And even within the world of philosophy and theology, there's like kind of little niche things to learn and study. But for me, The masculine genius is the thing that I've probably spent the most time studying. And that may sound like a silly statement if you don't understand what I mean. But when we were in seminary, one of the cool opportunities we had is... we were allowed through St. Minerid to get a pontifical degree, which is basically, it sounds more impressive than it is, but basically I was able to get on top of my master's in theology, basically a bachelor's of sacred theology from the Vatican, like a pontifical degree. And the way that worked is I basically had to write a really long paper. Okay. I had to write about a 40 page paper. Mine probably ended up to be 50 pages. And for any of you who have listened to my podcast know that I'm very verbose, so I couldn't stick to the 40 pages. So that's no shocking anybody. But the topic of that STB is the summary for that. And it's funny, if you get to the doctoral level, you get an STD, which is a hilarious thing to put at the end of your name as a professional theologian. But that would be Sacred Theology Doctorate, basically is what that means in Latin. Anyway, to get my STB, that extra degree, I had to write this paper. And so my topic was the fatherhood of the priesthood, if you will, like the fatherhood of priests. I am very blessed and still am blessed to have been raised by and just continue to enjoy the the friendship of a wonderful father who was raised also by an incredible father. And so I just feel very blessed in my life to know good fatherhood. And I took that for granted growing up, to be honest with you, because now that I work with so many young people and just people in all kinds of demographics and age ranges and backgrounds, I've come to learn that good fatherhood is pretty rare nowadays. And that's really sad. But I loved the idea of being a father. My father inspired me to want to be a father myself. I love family. I love the people I love. And so when I was studying to be a priest, the fatherhood of the priesthood was a very important element of that. Many people think I remember one of the things that I heard a lot when I made the decision to enter seminary is I heard a lot of people say, but you would be such a great father. And I kind of laughed because I appreciated the compliment and I appreciated the sentiment, but I also, part of me found it a little humorous, maybe in a more sad way that people assume that the only men who were called to the priesthood are people who would be bad fathers somehow. Like, you know what I mean? Like the priesthood is for the men who couldn't quite cut it as like real dads and they have to go do something else. And there was definitely a time in the history of the church when that may have been the lived experience. You know, I think me and my best friend, Father Andrew Jones, we've talked before about part of the reason religious orders are dying nowadays is partly just because of the secularization of society and all the very negative things things that are going on in the world today. I don't want to take away from any of that. But one of the reasons we had theorized together, and I'd be curious what you think. If you wildly disagree with me, then let me know. I'd be happy to talk about it. But one of the reasons we theorized that religious life is kind of decreasing in the modern era is that religious life for a long period of time in the church was a place where you dumped a lot of men and women who were incapable of marriage. I mean, think back on the days of arranged marriages where maybe you had more daughters than sons and you couldn't quite afford these massive dowries that you would have to pay in order to marry them. up or marry them in the new communities. Or, you know, maybe they even had some social or mental disorders or something like there was really, quote unquote, nothing to do with them. You just take care of them. So I know, and this is definitely a common thing, it's well recorded, but a lot of families would then in piety kind of send those children into religious life. And so they could serve the church and serve God and kind of really still have a vocation and purpose. And so nowadays we don't do that anymore. You know, we have different avenues and opportunities for those who, for no reason of their own, can't get married or things. And so, you know, anyway, and I say all that to say, so I understand why people, when I entered seminary, when my brother entered seminary, when a lot of men enter seminary, there's this kind of attitude of like, but you would be so good at being a dad. Like, why would you kind of throw that away to be a priest, you know? But what I knew kind of in my heart Even then, and then what was affirmed and confirmed when I was studying and going through formation classes in seminary was actually quite the opposite. One of the things our formators said very clearly to us is we have no interest in ordaining to the priesthood men who would be bad fathers. was like, if you're going to be a bad father, you don't belong in the priesthood either. That was a really central idea that we were formed in and taught in the beginnings of seminary. And that's always resonated really firmly with me because I've always seen in my vocation to the priesthood, not a call away from fatherhood, but a call into a deeper kind of fatherhood. And so, I'm laying all this context out to kind of pitch to you why the idea of the fatherhood of the priesthood was so important to me. And in studying that and in learning what a father is, I also had to learn what a man is, right, first, and I had to learn what a male is, you know, and I had to learn, and I didn't have to, you know what I mean, I didn't have to learn that, but I wanted to learn more deeply what those concepts meant, because they're also just wildly under attack today. You know, the idea of maleness and masculinity or even femaleness and femininity and motherhood and fatherhood, it's like those, there's a really nefarious, and I use that word very Um, but. And it's an understandable kind of development in a lot of ways. And we'll get to some of those things later, but it also is very nefarious because what it's doing is it's, it's, it's, it's, corroding from the inside out our very identities, not first as fathers and mothers, not first as husbands and wives, not first as friends, not first as men and women, but first as sons and daughters. And so males and females, their identity and their life, their lived experience as male and female and everything that comes with that and the tendencies and the thing, that's all part of being a human person. And so anyway, when you're And you learn about masculinity in men. And so I've done a lot of research, more research in this one topic than I have about anything else. But I've talked your ear off enough for an intro, but I just want to lay out kind of the background of why I love this so much. Maybe I haven't talked enough. One more little thing of intro. The other reason that I'm very passionate about this is because this particular topic... This particular topic is a meeting place of my two favorite subject matters, which are theology and science. And particularly biology and medicine. Most of you, if not all of you, know that I grew up in a family of doctors and I wanted to be a doctor. That's what I was studying for when I was in college before the Lord called me into seminary. And so I love medicine. I didn't leave because I hated it or I wasn't good at it or I wasn't interested in it. I loved it. And so I still like am fascinated by the realm of medicine and science and biology and in the physical world. But I also love to see as I study it, how congruent and how beautiful the cooperation is between the physical world and the spiritual world, if you will, between the creation and the creator who made it. And so I wanted to kind of like take some of that and draw some instincts and draw some insights and stuff. And I'll tell you this, if If you're a woman and you've gotten this far into the episode, I want you to say this episode is very much so for you too. If you want to understand those weirdos sitting on the other side of the classroom or whatnot a little better, this episode may help you to understand why males think and function the way they do. And so without further ado, I want to dive in. And the first thing I'm going to call upon are two moments where are two moments in the beginning of the Bible. So we're going to start with scripture and then we're going to kind of dance around from scripture to science to lived experience to psychology and all kinds of weird things that I'm not an expert in, but things that I do love and have passions in and know just a little bit about. And so we're going to jump to Genesis chapter one, right at the beginning. And for those of you who don't know, there's actually two Genesis creation stories. There's Genesis one and there's Genesis two. And not everybody knows that, but the stories are a little different. And And so Genesis one is the classic creation story where it says, you know, God created the heavens and the earth and he created the earth in six days and then he rested on the seventh. And so that's the, that's kind of that rhythmic creation where he said, and then God looked at what he had created and said it was good, you know? And so on, and so towards the end on that, on that, on that sixth day, when God's creating everything at, It says this, and this, this will start with, um, Genesis one, verse 26. It says, then God said, let us make mankind or humankind or however you translate that. Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And then verse 27, so God created mankind in his image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. And so the reason I call on this is our understanding of male and female differentiation is comes right at the beginning of our creation. When God created us, he created us in his brilliance as male and female. To be human is to exist in a binary kind of male-female difference. A lot of people have kind of wondered, like, is there humanity before sexual difference and that's that's a conversation that unfolds a lot today and a lot of people would say that male and female is a lot of people would say today that male and female are kind of arbitrary social constructs, which, I don't know, there's elements of masculinity and femininity, which are social constructs, but male and female are about as ancient as, or as ancient as the human race itself. And so from the very beginning, we've been male and female. There's a lot of interesting things, like kind of little rabbit holes we could go down there, but I'm going to avoid those. But I do want to use this moment to distinguish a couple terms. There is a difference between male and female and masculine and feminine, okay? My topic for today is the masculine genius. I'm talking about the brilliance of masculinity, but I want to make it clear that masculinity, although derived from maleness, is not restricted to maleness. Maleness is a genetic biological sexual reality. That's what it means to be a male is to have an X and a Y chromosome and to have all the male parts and all that kind of stuff. To be a female is the opposite, to have two X chromosomes, to have all the female parts. That is what it is to be male and female. Whether You are masculine or feminine after that. That is the realm of not only kind of nature, but also kind of social social development and social nurture and things. And so that's where things get tricky. And so even in like this whole transgender transgenderism discussion about gender being a fluid reality. What they're really talking about, if we're going to give them any credit at all, which I think they deserve a little credit, what they're speaking about is the fact that males can have feminine characteristics and females can have masculine characteristics. Where transgenderism goes way too far in a wildly inappropriate way, not only psychologically and spiritually, but also medically, is then they... then they butcher their bodies in order to try to force their lived experience into their biological reality. And that's a very fascinating move. And again, I don't want to waste too much time on transgenderism and talking, but that's the mistake is they say, oh, this is a female who has a lot of masculine tendencies and characteristics. And so she has probably because of the encouragement of the internet, she is probably now come to understand that she actually is a male, but she's just in a female body. But there's a leap there and a perversion that is unnecessary. And so when we talk about masculine and feminine, I don't want us to get too aggressively... bifurcated or bipolar and like males are the only ones who have masculine characteristics and they also have zero feminine characteristics. And then females are only the ones who have feminine characteristics and they have no masculine characteristics. You can imagine masculinity and femininity as two parallel like slider gradients. And so you can have a lot of masculine characteristics and even have a fair bit of feminine characteristics, but you can also, if you're, you know, you could have a lot more feminine characteristics. And so what I'm going to talk about a lot today are those masculine and feminine characteristics. I'm going to focus on the masculine, but by kind of example of opposite, we're also going to hear about the feminine characteristics. But I don't want you to get too concretized and like, oh, only males can have masculine characteristics. Because many of the listeners may be thinking like, oh, shoot, I'm a guy, but I kind of actually identify a little bit more with some of those feminine characteristics. I don't have that classic macho man personality, and that's okay. I would just say I work in a people-centered field, being a priest as a It's a people-centered profession, if you want to call it a profession. It's a people-centered vocation. And just to say, working with people is a more feminine characteristic. you know, guys like tend to work with things. It's a little sneak peek. So my thing is like, it's okay. Like that's part of what it is to be a human person. If you're a guy with zero competency in the feminine genius, that actually is a very lonely, isolating and vicious life. And I'll explain that later. So all that to say, I want to distinguish those terms a little bit. So when God created mankind, he made them male and female. And then he also gave us a hint in the next chapter. So let's go to Genesis 2 real quick. He gave us... he gave us a hint and this is going to be in verse 18. So, in Genesis 2, in this creation story, it's different. What God does is he kind of creates the earth and it's still this like wild land. And this is the creation story where God forms like basically a golem, like a mud creature out of the dust. And then it says that he breathes into like he breathes into the nostrils of this like Gollum thing. Okay, I'm kind of quoting the Hebrew words, which are unimportant, but he basically forms man out of the dust, breathes his spirit into them, and now he's a human being. And so he creates Adam in that way. And then after creating Adam, he creates the Garden of Eden, and then he places Adam in the Garden of Eden. And then he says this, This is, uh, Genesis two verse 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner. So out of the ground, the Lord formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. And so he, all the animals come before him. And of course, what does he say? Um, he says that there was not found a helper as his partner. So, none of the animals were sufficient to be a true partner, a true helper to man. So, then in verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. Then he took out He took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman for out of man. This one was taken. What I want to highlight about this is is there's a lot of symbols going on in this story. But one of them is it's one of my favorite like wedding homilies. And maybe you think this is way too nerdy to use in a wedding homily, but I don't care. I get to preach and you don't. So I use this. So one of them is in this verse 18. God says, I'll make him a helper as his partner. Another one is another translation would say a suitable helpmate. That concept, that word is ezer konegdo. And so, I'm going to make him a suitable partner. But what eser konegdo means that we lose in the English is eser konegdo means, if I were to literally translate it, it means a helper against. So, the partner that God was creating for Adam was someone who loves him, but also who is a rival of his, someone who stands against him. And this may sound like, ooh, man, maybe some of you who are married are like, yeah, that makes sense. But The reason this is important is the male and the female elements of the human nature, the one common human nature has male and female parts, right? Like both of them are necessary. It is not good for man to be alone. So it's not enough just to have males. Like we need this other part of human nature. But on top of that, they're going to be the same, right? At last, this one is bones and my bones and flesh and my flesh. They're going to be the same. They're both human. They have equal dignity, right? Eve is taken out of the side of Adam, right? So, that's interpreted oftentimes as a symbol of Eve's like equality with man, okay? But not only are male and female like the same in the sense that they're both human and have equal dignity, but on top of that, It also means that male and female are opposite as well. They're the same, but opposite. And when Adam laid eyes on Eve for the first time, I do not imagine it took him a very long time to know that this one's just like me, but also this one's not just like me. There's differences, just physiologically, those would be obvious, right? But then all of a sudden, I'm assuming when Eve started opening her mouth and arguing with Adam, he all of a sudden realized this one's not just like the dogs. Maybe he regretted not being satisfied with his pets and animals or whatnot. But what God saw fit to do was to create partners who would challenge each other. And so the fact that male and female exists is in and of itself genius. And so all of human nature lives as a tension. Between male and female. And I don't mean that like males and females fighting is human nature. What I mean by that is that human nature is enclosed within and like part of being a human person is having this like other, this other person, this person who comes from another experience who you have to kind of like cooperate with. I don't have all the gifts. You don't have all the gifts. But you know what? If we come together, all of a sudden some magical stuff kind of happens. and some miraculous things, I should say, right? And so one of those things is the miracle of childbirth, right? And two males cannot come together and do what a male and a female can do. Although I will say this, there are a lot of things in my life that I would much rather be doing with other guys than cooperating with women. And I would say probably vice versa, right? And there's elements of friendship and peership that are very important and essential, but there's something very special and unique about about the male and female relationship. And when you start to combine that, you get the whole human nature in that way. And so that's an important thing as well. Anyway, so let's talk about that. We've talked about male and female. We've kind of differentiated that between masculine and feminine. But the first point I want to make as we move into, like, what are the characteristics of masculinity? And then kind of by contrast femininity, which I'll mention. But again, it's a lot to talk about both at the same time. So I'm going to kind of focus on the masculine. But I want to propose this. What we know... as traditionally masculine characteristics, while although not exclusive to males, and although many women can become very competent in certain masculine characteristics, which will become important when you see what I mean, or labeled as masculine characteristics, but I want to say that they are born from, these characteristics I'm going to highlight, are born from the natural maleness. There's a certain genius there. And what you start to notice is when we talk about these characteristics, they're very essential, but their opposite is equally as essential. The feminine characteristic that kind of balances that masculine is also very essential. And so as we go through those I'm going to kind of build it up, maybe starting from biology and then coming up. And then maybe at the end of the episode, I can talk a little bit about how this plays out spiritually in the spiritual life and some observations I've made. But the first characteristic I'd like to highlight about the masculine genius is what I would call an external orientation. Okay, so what is the orientation of the male and the female, the masculine and the feminine? It's externally oriented. So males have a tendency to be externally oriented while females have a tendency to be internally oriented. And the first piece of evidence you need for this is just examine, don't actually go examine, but think about the male and female reproductive organs. A male's reproductive organs literally exist on the outside of his body. They are outside of the body, and a female's reproductive organs are inside of the body. Now, this alone is not sufficient for explaining other orientations or things like that, but this is kind of the beginning, okay? The way that this works out even like communally is there's a lot of evidence to suggest that back in the quote-unquote hunter-gatherer days when we lived in more dangerous worlds afraid of wildlife and other tribes and things, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that males had a tendency to be the watchers and the defenders of the community. And so you can even think about communally and socially how males' attention is on the outside of the community while in general the females would kind of master the internal part of the community, right? And so they were better nurturers, better caregivers for children. They kind of mastered the cooking and those kinds of things. I remember we went to the biblical museum that they've built over in LaGrange, Georgia, just about an hour here from Auburn. It's really great. If you're in the area and if you don't know about it, they built this massive like biblical museum, which is you can kind of go and live and kind of see what the biblical world would have been like But one of the things they talked about was were the camel hair tents that the Jews would have traveled in and lived in if you were a nomadic, you know, people. And they said that the girls, when they turn around, what, like eight years old or something, they're taught how to make yarn from camel hair. And then from that point on. they just start building and weaving these tapestries that then by the time they're a marriable age, they can then gift to their husbands. It's like women like literally would build the homes like back in the day. That's not just like a kitschy little Pinterest decoration idea, but that actually was like a literal thing, you know? And so anyway, so the idea is like females kind of dominated the inside of the community while males dominated the outside. This is, I mean, this is still, this is still played and this, this is even biblical if you think about it, because in that, in that Genesis two creation narrative, Adam was created in the wilderness and Eve was created in the garden, right? Adam was created in the wilderness and then put into the, into the garden to, to tame it, to till it, to Shamara, to protect it and cultivate it. But then Eve was created in the context of the garden. And so if you're ever wondering in a certain sense, why like, this is part of, it's not a, it's by no means a comprehensive excuse why, but this is part of why guys just have like a wildness, you know, to them. They, they desire to be in the woods and they desire to kill things and go fight things and go out into the world and things like that. Like, um, there's nothing more sad than like a very anxious stay at home boy, you know, who never wants to go out into the world, who never wants to challenge hard things and stuff like that. Um, This is, I mean, there's a, gosh, there's so many examples of this. This is another reason why there's also, generally speaking, and again, I didn't say it explicitly, but I would hope You'd kind of give me that license. I'm speaking in wild generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions to rules like this, and that's fine. The exception, I don't think, disproves the generality. But I want you to know I'm speaking in generalizations, so don't take anything offensively. For example, in general, the kind of classic male-female job description duties were that the fathers would go out into the world and work and the mothers would be stay-at-home mothers. In an economy like this today, many young people can't afford to just have a single income home, and that's fine. It is what it is. But my point is that kind of genius of males wanting to go out into the world to conquer something out there and then bring it home to their families. Even men who I know who have wives who also work full-time, what I've noticed is males just have this internal... anxiety, desire, drive. They have this like their, their identity is wrapped up in what they can go conquer outside and then kind of bring home is like a prize for their family. You know, that's like a lot of male pride is wrapped up in that for better or for worse, you know? And so, but that kind of comes from this, this external orientation males genius is out in the, in the wild and they come home to a place that is honestly kind of unfamiliar. Like the, the, the place of the home is a relatively, um, I don't want to say uncomfortable, but it's like a relatively different place than the wilderness, right? One of my favorite books I ever read on the masculine genius, and if you want kind of more science behind all this stuff, this book was called The Male Brain. It was written by Dr. Luanne Brizendine. And she's like a neuroscientist. She probably has like a neurologist or whatnot. But she studies the brain. And so she went from... from like inception to natural death, like through the whole life development of males and what is it like in their brains neurochemically. And I learned so much about the masculine genius. And what was cool is as I learned more about the masculine genius from the neuroscience, all it did was confirm and deepen what I had already learned from philosophy and theology, but also just literature and art and things like that. So it was really cool. But that book is really good. But one of the things they talk about is fathers in general play more roughly with their children than mothers do. And that kind of makes sense. Like, fathers are rough like their hands are bigger and stronger and typically more calloused like they have like rough faces with their you know five o'clock shadows or beards or whatnot their voices are are lower and a little more aggressive right it's kind of that classic like if you've ever seen a young man hold a baby like for the first time you know men who men who don't have much experience with babies it's like very awkward and they're like trying so hard to be gentle but like every motion is like a it's like a macro motion and so because they're they're used to lifting really heavy Heavy things instead of like little delicate things. And so that's kind of part of it. Like the masculine genius kind of has this roughness. But what Louis M. Brizendine, what Dr. Brizendine was arguing is that it is essential. for fathers to spend time with their kids, even though their kids may be a little less comfortable with dad, because he is a little rougher. He's not quite, he's not like the gentle, soft, kind mom, you know, generally, again, generalization. But she said it's really important because what a father's roughness, and I mean, I have to say this just because, but there's a difference between like natural roughness and like abusiveness. Okay. I'm not this, I'm not in any way, shape or form condoning abuse. And if you, any of you have ever had a good father, you kind of know what I mean, you know, but the point is she was saying that kind of like creative and more rough and tumble play, like the play wrestling with dad, right? Like all of those play games and all of that interaction, that's all part of how fathers naturally, um, build their children up to be more capable of entering into the wilderness of the world. And in other ways, like the roughness of a father's face and voice and hands and things like that and play, that is like a simulation for the world. Another great example of this, studies have shown that... This actually kind of surprised me. Let me know what you think. But fathers are far more likely to... Play creatively with their children. to their children, fathers are far more likely to improvise and make up new words. While mothers typically are kind of very stuck to like, these are the words, these are the verses, and they're kind of familiar in a sense. But fathers are like, make up goofy, silly words. And I think we all have kind of an image in our head, either from our own memory or just from watching it, of like fathers kind of being silly and making up words. And the little girl is like, no, dad, it's like, those are not the words. But it's like, and the studies have shown that Fathers playing creatively with their children and playing those little like little tricks on their kids again, not lying to them, not abusing them. But my point is like that kind of like trickery humor where you say things that kind of are in there like, oh, wait, no, dad, like that humor is really important. And it's also part of the masculine genius. And and she said that children who spend a lot of time playing with their fathers are. grow up to be on average far more confident and capable of handling the anxiety of the world than children who do not have a lot of that creative, more rough play with their fathers. And so that's just something interesting. And I think that comes from this masculine tendency towards the external, this masculine tendency towards like the wilderness, like just male's genius is out doing something hard. And this is, gosh, I mean, and I think this is important too when we start to understand I mean, you've probably noticed this as well. I work with a lot of young people when you're in college, and I don't know if you've ever been to Auburn, but Auburn has this wildly neurotic anxiety among the women that's called ring by spring. And so most women here in Auburn are like, oh, I need to be engaged by the end of my junior year so that I can get married right after graduation or something tantamount to that. And And although I'm a huge fan of kind of lowering the average married rate, I think we wait way too long as a general society today. I'm also like, there's this weird social pressure that happens with marriage now where like, you got to get married, you got to be married super quick or whatnot. But what the girls are realizing in their anxiety and rush is, To find somebody is, at least most of the women that I work with, they have pretty high standards for males. They don't want to just marry anybody, and I applaud them for that. And for those of you who have daughters in school, you should encourage them to have high standards. But the problem is what they're realizing is there are not really many impressive men out there. And it seems like the pool of eligible bachelors, if you will, is decreasing. And I'll tell you, I've observed it. That is absolutely true. And it's not because we have fewer males. Because just the population in general is starting to decrease. We're having fewer and fewer kids. But that's a male and female problem. So why do we have all these great women who are waiting or whatnot and do this, and they just can't find men who are competent and capable– Part of that is males mature slower than females do, right? So that's one challenge of college. But the other thing is males are not required to do hard things anymore. We live in the most litigious and– the most litigious and most liability and security anxious society in the history of the world. Anything is suable. Anything is problematic. Even just being anxious is now all of a sudden a diagnosable problem. One of the craziest things I hear is people come and say, I have test-taking anxiety. That's what they'll tell me. They've been diagnosed with test-taking anxiety. And I always laugh because And maybe that's inappropriate. I don't know. But I'm not trying to make fun of them. And I don't know. Maybe I am a little bit. Maybe that's my rough play trying to get them out of it. Who knows? But I always laugh and I'm like, yeah, so did we all. Like everyone gets anxious when you're taking a test. Like I was a pre-med track student. I had to get all A's. I'm a white male. They're not just going to take me into med school, right? So I'm sitting here thinking like, oh, Yeah, I know exactly what test taking anxiety is like. But it was something I had to face. And I had to learn how to go into that OCHEM test and just like, maybe I didn't feel ready, but I was like, the test is right here. So what do I do? Do I crawl up in a ball and cry and ask the professor to give me an extension? Or do I just buck up and say, hey, man, I prepared as much as I did, and I'm going to have to face the consequences. So let's get after it. I mean, what's your attitude towards challenge? And so what I'm noticing nowadays is we're protecting more and more and more and more not only young women but also boys like in men and like the future men right so we're protecting them from challenging things like gosh I just I remember I remember so many times even when I was growing up like for example here's a great example like if my teacher got mad at me like if I got in trouble at school and The last thing I wanted to happen was for my mom to find out about it because then she was going to, I was going to get in trouble at home too, right? Like the idea was if I was doing something wrong, I'd be punished at school, also get punished at home. But nowadays, something I noticed now is you can punish a child at school and actually you're much more likely to have a parent come and complain to the teacher that their child was punished as opposed to backing the teacher. It's like, it's like this weird, like, oh, you were too mean. Like you spoke too roughly, like the whole like gentle parenthood. attitude. And there's something to gentleness, right? Remember, so like if we have roughness on the masculine side, the feminine genius is gentleness, right? And kind of that nurturing, that softness and that kindness and stuff. And those are all good qualities too. So what we're seeing nowadays, just kind of summarize this whole line of thinking, what we're seeing nowadays is a rampant dictatorship of the feminine genius. And I love the feminine genius just as much as I love the masculine genius. But I also am fully aware that we need both masculine and feminine genius. But because masculine genius is rough, and because it oftentimes can lead to getting hurt, even if just accidentally, we have now completely illegalized it. You're not allowed to say anything uncomfortable. You're not allowed to post anything online that could potentially even maybe kind of offend one person in a community of a million. And look, I'm not a fan of being antagonistic just to be antagonistic. But I can see it's a destruction of the masculine genius in our society. And what are we ending up with? We're ending up with more and more feminine men. And I'll tell you, with working with college students, one of the saddest things I see is more and more often, Men are coming to college and they have no direction. They have no drive to work hard at something and try something difficult. They're like incredibly anxious and anxious. to be honest with you, they mask all of this anxiety and incompetency. They mask it with, um, with privilege, you know, with mom and dad's money. They mask it with arbitrary, like social involvement, like just joining a fraternity. It's like, well, good for you. Your, your parents paid some money and now you're part of a group like that doesn't make you a man, you know? Um, although I will say, I'll, I'll defend kind of fraternities a little bit later, sort of, sort of big, sort of there. But, um, Or they just go out and party and they drink and drug themselves into numbness or they get addicted to pornography because instead of actually like going and earning the affection of a woman that you'll be with for the rest of your life, it's just easier to look them up online, you know. How to be men from their fathers. Okay? Yes, there are a lot of circumstances like rampant individualization, the decline of religion, the aggressive liberties taken by third and fourth wave feminism in the past years. Like all of that stuff is true and those are all enemies to society in general. But... I want to say these things could have all been prevented if fathers did the jobs they were supposed to do by raising their children in love and kindness and mercy, but also challenging them to try. The most competent students I ever work with, they have good fathers. There are a couple of exceptions to that, but those exceptions were borderline miracles where God the Father saved them from squalor of fatherlessness, okay? And now, listen... you can be in your child's life and still be a bad father. Okay. I'm not, it's not like a, Oh, well I provided for them and stuff. Well, did you provide for them emotionally? You know what I mean? Like, did you, bother to learn their friends' names? Did you show up to their games? But not only that, did you bother to... You provided them by working 100 hours a week, good for you, but you never bothered to teach your children how to pray. So there's all kinds of layers of fatherhood in how you raise and train your children for the real world. And I've totally gotten off a tangent, but I think it's worth saying. So all that to say... I'm going to wrap this one characteristic up in a nice bow. One of the characteristics of maleness is this external orientation. And these are just a handful of the implications that it can possibly have in the masculine genius and in the world to come. And so, the masculine genius, externally oriented. Now, one of my... I'm increasing in favorite. I started with the third one and I'm going to, I'm going to give two more and I'm increasing. I like this one a lot. This one's very important. Um, and the masculine genius speaks the language of differentiation. Okay. Differentiation. And what would the opposite of that be? Like what's the feminine genius? The feminine genius is connectivity, right? And I always joke with my students and I'm like a really brief example of what I mean by this. Um, a little social analogy is have like, I've never seen a woman go to the restroom by herself. You know what I mean? It's like when you're at like a dinner or something, you're like, Oh, I need to go to the restroom. And then like every woman gets up and they go in like a gaggle, you know, and they go, I don't know what they do in there, but they go and they, you know, they do their thing or whatnot. Like I've never seen a dude get up from a deal. I was like, Hey boys, like I gotta go to the restroom. Want to come? Like, that's just not a thing. Like guys don't do that. They'll like slip away, try to pretend like no one sees them, you know, whatever, whatever. Um, That is an example of differentiation and connectivity. Women have a natural tendency to connect with others, to make relationships. But not just socially, but also even intellectually. Women are much more connected mentally. I mean, literally, neurochemically. There's a portion of the brain called the corpus callosum in women. It's in between the two hemispheres. So your brain has two hemispheres and there's a part that connects it, right? And so the corpus callosum is one of the parts that connects the two hemispheres. And so it connects, you know, nerve endings and connections. And you could even think like theoretically as ideas across the two hemispheres. Well, the corpus callosum is about twice as big, right? in female brains as it is in male brains. And that's fascinating. And that, that kind of explains, um, that explains one of the classic, um, kind of one of the classic bits of comedy is the difference between male brains and female brains. Female brains are like, uh, or like wires all hot crossed and like they're all connected. And so every idea is always relevant and always present at every time of the day. And, and, but a male brain, it's been referred to as a waffle brain, right? Where like, we just have like all these nice little organized boxes And you kind of pull one box out at a time and think about that, and then you put that box away and pull out something else and think about it. And maybe some of you are sitting here like, oh, yeah, I get that. And so what we're talking about there, if I can describe it generally as a trait, is differentiation versus connectivity. We see this in the animal kingdom, especially in the higher mammals. And again, there's a few exceptions to this, but in general, the closer you get in ancestry to human beings, so when you start talking about like higher primates and stuff like that, the closer you get to human beings and ancestry and common ancestry, the more accurate this becomes. But in general, in higher mammals, the males are the ones who define territory, right? OK, they're more territorial. So the males want to basically live in their house like they have their space and it belongs to them. And so what you'll see is the males will actually spread out. But the women, the females of the community of these mammals will always live together with the children, with the young, and they typically will gather around and in the territory of the alpha male. And so it's like you can imagine a spreadsheet of all the males spread out evenly around this big territory, and they all have their own little corner of the kingdom. But then the women all kind of group up around the alpha male, and that's it. Males can't live together if you've ever... raised animals like you know you can't have like three bulls in the same pen that's like a disaster right but you can have like 70 heifers you can have all kinds of you know female you'd have all kinds of female cows in the same area milking and rearing or whatever and have one bull and it's fine but like you you can't put tons of bulls together you can't put tons of roosters in the same place and in the same way another social kind of funny social analogy you're not going to put like four guys in the same bed You know what I mean? Like, like guys are not going to share a bed. I remember, um, you know, that's one thing I just, I'm fascinated with by women because they'll like meet a girl for the first time and they're like, Oh, we're like all going down to the beach condo together. It's like, Oh, there's only two beds and like eight of us. And it's like, it's fine. We'll just all share. And I'm thinking like, if there's two beds and eight guys, that means six guys are sleeping on the floor. And, and, and, the guys know that like, it's not like this, it's not an oppression. It's a, it's a hierarchy thing. It's like, no, no, I have my space and I'm not going to share it with another dude, you know? Um, and so that's, that's kind of even in, even in our human kind of nature, that's, that's part of what we do. Um, and I think, I think differentiation has a lot to do with the, the difference of, of role of fathers and mothers or males and females and families, because part of differentiation is it's an element of protection, um, Differentiation, I haven't really given a good definition. Differentiation is the capacity to understand that things are different. Now, that may sound silly, but think about it. It's like differentiation is the capacity for you emotionally and psychologically to distinguish yourself from another thing or from another person. that's why males in general like males have like three best friends and they've probably had those best friends since they were six and they're probably going to be their best friends till the day they die regardless of what happens in life like they could literally move states away talk to each other once a month and that's like they're still best friends right it's like Because you kind of define small. But women are like super communal oriented. And so instead of being territorial, they're more communal oriented. So that's why women will have 20 best friends. And I always challenge girls. I thought so-and-so was your best friend. It's like, no, no, no. Well, they're all my best friends. I'm like, you can't have 20 best friends. I'm sorry. Like socially, it's impossible. They're like, well, I can. It's like they refuse to accept that. Right. And so part of it is males have a tendency to protection. So they define territory in order to like shore up a place to protect and guard. And like they know this is my place and anyone else who comes into this place is an intruder, right? But females have the tendency to nurture, right? That's kind of the mother's principal role. And so nurturing requires making a connection, right? Like if you were always trying to differentiate your children from you, in other words, pushing them away, What you'd be doing is you would kind of start to fail at the nurture element. Now, I will say, and if we're talking about the feminine genius just a little bit here, there is the other extreme where you're all nurture. in no protection or no differentiation. Like if you're all that gentle play, like I was talking about earlier, if you're all like super familiar, super soft, super gentle play, your children will grow up to be weak. You'll basically smother them to death with your affection. And that's why the masculine genius is important to kind of compensate for like the over softness, right? And so that's kind of, that's why these things have to be intention, right? Because overly rough can become abusive and that's not helpful either, right? So you need that nurture and that protection. So anyway, that's kind of part of it. Um, the other thing I've noticed and I'm, I don't have any like direct, I couldn't quote a study for you on this. So like, you know, take it or leave it, take it with a grain of salt. But something I've noticed is males have a tendency to enjoy defining things. And what I mean by that is like they enjoy describing things and defining things. They're like, um, That's why I think guys really love philosophy. It's like they kind of get into what a thing is, which, having studied philosophy, can totally become... ridiculous and avant-garde if it's not kept in a human. But I've noticed women prefer to focus on and develop experiences, like communal relationships. Women are really good party planners. And it's not just because they're more organized, but they have this kind of social element, so they know how to create an experience. While males are much more about defining things, drawing boundaries, creating rules and like creating like order and things like that. So anyway, that's kind of a, it's kind of an interesting thing. Jordan Peterson, if you're a big fan of him, if you haven't listened to him, I'd encourage you to go check out his podcast. He's a, he's a great thinker, very big influence on me, but Jordan Peterson talks a lot about how an ancient narratives males are the, are the natural representation of order and And females are the natural representation for chaos. Now, at first glance, that sounds like males are good and females are bad, but that's not at all what Jordan Peterson's saying, because Jordan Peterson would argue, as I would, and I think as God would as well, I think it's a very Christian idea, that goodness and perfection is a balance between order and chaos. One of my favorite movies of all time is Disney's Little Mermaid movie. That may sound like a weird movie for a fully grown man to love, but if you think about the narrative quality, like what is actually happening in the story, it's a beautiful commentary exactly on this, the importance of order and chaos. You have King Trident, who is a, is a single dad. So all of a sudden, you know, okay, mother's missing, which means there's something gone. Okay. There's something lacking in Ariel's upbringing and, and sure, sure enough, what was it? It was, it, they were lacking chaos. They were lacking kind of a fun creativity. There is lacking the, the flexibility, right? And so what was King Trident? King Trident was super defensive, super guarded, and he was super tyrannical. Okay. Um, And so Ariel was never allowed to go up to the surface. And I intuit immediately, narratively, Trident doesn't have his wife anymore. Therefore, he doesn't allow Ariel to go to the surface. Oh, this is the overprotective father because his his wife probably got killed on the surface. If I had to guess, I don't know that someone told me there was another little mermaid extension that confirms that. I'm like, well, that doesn't surprise me because narratively that has to be the case, um, because of what Trident's doing anyway. So Trident doesn't let her go to the surface, but she longs to go up there and, and she longs to be fulfilled, right? She longs to become the best version of herself, right? She's dreaming to go above the horizon. Um, But Trident says no because he's afraid of the risk, right? So we get back into that like fear of risk or whatnot. And that's what an overly tyrannical ordered life can be. So who does she end up going to? She ends up making a deal with the evil woman who is like sheer chaos, right? And so then anything, I don't want to ruin the movie if you haven't seen it yet, but basically things go really badly. But think about what happens at the end of the movie is Trident's heart is softened. And so like that feminine genius kind of softens Triton's order heart. And then all of a sudden we have an actually fulfilling life and things like that. And so that's like one little brief example of that. You'll notice to the overprotective one in that story is the male, which is interesting because oftentimes it's the female. So you can see how it's like male and female that the masculine and feminine can kind of borrow from each other. And there's definitely a risk always of one and one of them becoming an extreme to the detriment of the other. Another great example of differentiation versus connectivity is the fact that males are far more okay being alone than females are on average. On average. Again, these are generalizations. And I think that's even exemplified in like if you look at an IQ test. average test, so if you average the IQs of every human person, what you'll notice is that males and females have the same average IQ. But what you'll notice about the bell curve is females' average IQ is much more center. It's very high in the 50th percentile, and then it gets very sharply declined on the outsides. Males, on the other hand, have a flatter bell curve. There's more males on the upper and lower 5% of IQ and fewer males in the 50th percent IQ. So what does that mean? That means that although males and females have the same average IQ, the smartest 5% of the world is predominantly male. But it also means the stupidest 5% of the human race is also male. Males have a tendency to go to extremes. Males have a tendency to live on the outskirts of community, which is what being an extremist does. I think one of the more brilliant examples of this I've ever heard is also from Jordan Peterson. He did a lot of work before he became famous as a speaker and commentator on society or whatnot. He did a lot of work with... with high-octane law firms. And he was a psychologist, so he was kind of a corporate counselor to them. And so he worked with a lot of males and females in their mid-20s who were like the most competent, successful males and females. And something he observed was this. He observed that When the women hit about the age of 30, most of them gave up their careers. And he said it was not because they weren't good at it. And he said it was not because they were being forced out. Actually, oftentimes they were being given better deals even than the males are because they want that kind of like gender difference. Like they were being begged to stay. But he said what happened was the females just naturally started longing for motherhood. And that was an average. There's exceptions to that. But so then he proposes from his experience there on top of a lot of other things. He said a lot of people ask, why aren't there more female CEOs in the big Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.? And Jordan Peterson said, quite frankly, it's like, have we ever considered it's because only men are stupid enough to do it? He said like only males are crazy enough to want to be a CEO because being a CEO requires sacrificing every other part of your life to do that one thing really well. You're working 120 hour work weeks. I mean, like you're getting no sleep. You have no family life, nothing else. And so what he was proposing is not that males are CEOs because there's a gender, you know, like. pay gap or there's like discrimination and he said maybe there is but he said but we haven't taken into consideration just simple psychological factors which would lead more females to not want to be CEOs and more males to be CEOs because I really do think like men are the only ones crazy enough to do one thing for like the rest of their life and think about it like think about like kind of Think about the one kid in your high school class who got along with nobody, but he was super into this one thing. They're always males. They're almost always males. Think of the classic super genius scientist who is the best physicist literally on the face of the planet, but also doesn't know how to tie his own shoes. That's always a male. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure there's examples of women kind of being that same way, but that is almost always a male because males have a tendency to kind of these extremes and it's part of their differentiation. They can shut out the rest of their life to do one thing really well. While I have observed if a girl gets broken up with the morning of a test, That test is not going to go well. But a guy could get broken up with the night before a test and kind of totally be fine on the test and then come back and process. We can kind of differentiate. And I have a theory. And if someone knows, I'd love for you to tell. I have a theory that males are more susceptible to PTSD than females are. And I don't know if I've read that somewhere. I don't know. I haven't checked it up. So don't quote me on that. Maybe we can look it up. But my theory is males are more susceptible to PTSD. And my theory is because males are more likely to bury stuff. They experience something, they bury it. And any of you who have ever had fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers who were in the wars or anything, you know exactly what I mean. They never talk about it. They never talk about it. But that leads to susceptibility to PTSD, right? Where I would imagine females who go through trauma are more likely to communicate that because it is such a part of the rest of their life that they're probably more willing to go get help and process things, which gives them healing. That's my theory. I haven't corroborated with it. I'd love to look up some data on that, but that's just my theory. But that would make sense coming from both the external internal orientation, but then also coupling that with differentiation versus connectivity. And so wives, if you ever ask your husband, what are you thinking about? And he says, nothing. It is actually possible for a male to think about nothing and not be thinking about something. And that's a hard thing, I think, for most women to imagine because they're probably always thinking about something. That's why multitasking is a very female weakness. Or strength, depending on how you see it. Because women are also kind of always doing a bunch of things at the same time. But guys are like, if I'm focusing on something, I'm focusing on something. Which, okay, a little practical advice, guys and girls. If you go to dinner on a date, guys, do not sit where you can see a TV, especially if there's sports on. If you see a TV up in the corner, turn your back to that TV. Sit wherever your back is to it, because I'm promising you, you're going to be looking at that TV constantly. And it's going to be really hard to, to multitask watching that game that you wish you were watching. And also watching the beautiful girl across the table who you're trying to woo as well. Like it, like you can only, you can only do one of those things. So don't, don't put yourself in an irrigation of distraction. Okay. So that's a little advice. Women, if you notice that your, your man struggles with that, maybe you pick, pick the seat where you're looking at the TV. Cause you're probably going to be a little less tempted by that anyway. Part of that also comes from, by the way, this is not the third characteristic, I promised. I realized I have another one, and this one's kind of quick. But guys have a tendency, males, so part of the masculine genius is a tendency towards things, and females have a tendency towards people, okay? And that is obvious right from the beginning in infancy, and Lou Anne Brisading talks about this a lot in her book, The Male Brain, and I love this section. She says that male brains are wired to notice moving objects. Okay. So male brains are wired to notice moving objects. And so if you, if you hold like a baby boy, they're going to be fascinated by things like mobiles, those little spinning things in their crib. They're going to be, they're going to be fascinated by like the balls. Two of my best friends, they have two girls and a boy and a fourth on the way. I pray for them. And it's funny because like Francis, their boy already has, is like he's so young but he's already throwing balls and I'm just like that's so funny to me like there's just something about the like and he loves it he'll throw a ball and just like it'll be the most exciting thing in his entire day and I love it and I love watching him just like kind of throw that ball but that's kind of that but like the daughters who are a little older they want to like sit in your lap they want to read they want to talk they want to show you something it's like they're so social and it's so funny it's just it's just very different even from a young age but Lou Ambrison noticed that boy brains even in infancy are wired towards noticing moving objects but for So, they're much more detail-oriented. And so, and what Lou Anne Brizany mentioned is she said she's had friends and patients who have come to her and said, You know, they had a girl first and mom was like, I just, I love my baby girl. Like we would just sit there and stare at each other and she would just look at me. And if you've ever been at mass and you're sitting in the row, a pew behind a baby girl, and there's that like baby girl, the pew right in front of you, who's of course facing you because mom's holding the baby. And that girl is just dead staring you like, shameless. Babies are shameless with their staring. They'll just look at you like, there is nothing wrong with me just staring right into your soul right now. And you just start to get kind of uncomfortable. Those are girls typically. But then that same mom was like, oh, I just love it. Now I have my boy and he's like, he never looks at me. And you start to think like, did I do something wrong? Am I not connecting with my baby boy? He's like, no, no, no. He's fascinated by different things and that's okay. That's part of the masculine genius, right? So males have a tendency... towards things. So women are also more emotionally aware. They pick up on those little microaggressions and those microfacial expressions, maybe to a detriment sometimes. I mean, ladies, can we admit that? Maybe to the point where you're maybe even reading into things a little bit. But no, they have a sensitivity to emotional environment, right? That doesn't mean all women are emotional, but their brains are more hardwired to notice emotional data. Males, on the other hand, they love playing sports. Like, Throwing a ball really far very accurately is one of the most pleasurable things for a guy to do. On the scale of pleasures... Throwing a football really far right in like on a dime to your receiver running really fast Like that is one of the most exciting things you can do as a guy Which is also why guys love video games things moving very fast. It's very bright colors. It's very engaging visually it kind of simulates that natural desire for like combat and war and sports and in competition, which We'll get up. We'll get to in a sec and It's also why guys love action movies and girls love rom-coms. These are just little examples of how this kind of thing versus people orientation comes up. I've also noticed this is why guys have a tendency more towards concept, like philosophy or like theoretical physics and things like that. While women who maybe love the same kinds of fields and studies, they typically personalize it. I've noticed that because they have a tendency to bring things down to reality. They kind of live on earth, you know, and because they're people oriented. So they want it like, well, what does this mean for people? It also is why guys can sometimes be a little rude or rough and or in general much more sensitive to like emotional like how they're coming across emotionally and communicative so all that to say it's like it's kind of again it's that masculine and feminine genius and those things complement each other really well especially when they cooperate with each other but this is just a little way of kind of helping understand um It's also, this is one of Jordan Peterson's other reasons why he explains the gender pay gap. He says a lot of the gender pay gap also comes from the fact that males have a tendency to work with things and women have a tendency to work with people. But the thing with thing-oriented jobs and occupations is that they're much easily scalable. Like if you're a salesman, which is really a people-centered kind of thing oriented, so maybe that's not a great example. Maybe let's think of like Let me think about like an engineer. you can't handle more than 20, maybe 30 students. You can't then all of a sudden teach a class of 100 kindergartners. That's like a nightmare and a half. So you can't really scale people-centered professions nearly as easily. I think of even nurses. We have a lot of nursing students here in Auburn. And if you're listening, tell me if I'm wrong, but you can only care for so many beds at a time. You couldn't have 100 patients at a time, right? So All that to say, it's like the kind of field you get into can change the scalability of the income there. But the other thing is guys are much more likely, and this is a great segue into our final and my personal favorite part of the masculine genius, which is guys are much more likely to do jobs that will risk their lives. And that is a great example of the final and one of my favorite, by far my favorite part of the masculine genius, which is the masculine genius speaks the language of expendability. Males are expendable. Now, you may take great offense at that and it may come off really harsh, but let me explain what I mean by that. If you know anything about sexual reproduction of higher males, you know that A male has about, you know, one minute, five, ten minutes if they're really lucky and good at their job. Like males have a very short amount of engagement in those sexual reproductive act. And then they can go on their way and do whatever they want, you know, for better or for worse. Females, on the other hand, at least in the human species, have that same beginning. But then they have about nine months of activity. And that's not even including the 18 months to two years after that where they are basically the primary caretaker because of the nature of motherhood and young infants. So you're talking like three years of engagement where a male can engage literally for 30 seconds and then be done and wash his hands and walk away and never be seen again. Females have to be involved for a much longer time, and that is general across the whole mammal kingdom. When we say males are expendable, I'm speaking purely biologically. Males are less required for the reproduction of a population. One male and 20 females, that could actually revive and become a new population. Now, one female and 20 males, that population's dead. And that woman's life is going to be miserable. So that's, you know, that's like, so that's the expendability. And so the opposite, the feminine genius is, is a genius of preciousness. That's like the best word I could come up with. I'm, I'm open to new words, but like there's, there's, there's an idea that femininity is, is a language of precious. Like we, we take care of and we guard not because they're weak, but because they're like actually biologically more important. Now, you could be thinking to yourself, well, you just talked all this game about how important father figures are. And I'm like, I'm totally, I totally agree with you. So biologically males speak the language of expendability, which is why as the animal kingdom developed and evolved, it made sense that if we're going to put weapons on one of the genders faces and make them bigger with denser muscle mass and more aggressive and angry, we probably should make the males do that. Because if, if someone's going to go fight and, And protect our kingdom. It's better that the males go and die because we need less of them, biologically speaking. Now, this is all very like animalistic. So let's like get into the human level. And like I just said, like I just made a big pitch for the importance of father figure in houses. But this expendability is still there. Because you can see it. Males are, on average, bigger, denser muscle mass, higher shoulder-to-hip ratio, which gives them faster running and also gives them greater strength in combat and fighting and allows them to do more things athletically, feet-wise. Their muscle mass is denser, if I haven't said that already. But they're also naturally more aggressive. Males are aggressive. They're I've got plenty of stories of that, and probably so do you. But I just think of guys going and destroying stuff is so much fun. Fighting is so much fun. Things like that are so much fun because they have this natural aggressiveness. One of my favorite little tidbits is years ago, there was a 60 Minutes, I think it was like a 60 Minutes episode, and it was about this elephant population in Africa. And what happened was because of all of the poaching of the elephants to get ivory from their tusks, because of the poaching, all the like big bull male like dad elephants had been killed in this population. But there were still like young teenage boy elephants, right? And so what the... What started happening, though, is those teenage elephants, they started to musk. And if you know what that is, it's like they basically get very aggressive because they're ready to reproduce. I'm going to leave the language at that. You know what I mean? And so what they started doing, though, is what those teenage boy elephants, if I can use that like they were going around and being very destructive they were they were killing other animals for no reason they were knocking down trees but then they would also get into little villages and they would destroy tents and homes and they'd flip cars and all this kind of stuff they were they were being wildly destructive and you don't want to go kill these guys because there's already a reduction of males in the community but this is like that natural male aggression so what did but i loved this solution the solution that came up with was like so brilliant and creative and very edifying so what they did is they literally the conservationist went and grabbed one really big nasty like bull elephant from another community and brought it and dropped it basically airdropped this this father figure into this community and what that father figure elephant did was he literally marched up to those like rowdy teenage boy elephants beat them up like bullied them into suppression and then all of a sudden the guys were fine they were fine like they didn't act out anymore there was like a it's and it's not just a discipline thing and i because it can sound like oh you just need to discipline your kids like yeah that's that's true for sure don't get me wrong but it was something more than that it was something like the males had this aggression and there was no one to like trained them in how to tame that. There was no one there to like wrestle with them so they could get their aggression out and so then they can go live in society again. And so that also leads to the fact that part of this expendability, part of this aggressiveness that's natural to males is also a male tendency towards ritual combat. Okay, males have a tendency towards ritual combat. And what I mean by this in the animal kingdom is When males wrestle with each other, and I use the word wrestle intentionally, when males wrestle with each other within a species, so two wolves or two giraffes wrestling each other, they fight in a way that is not lethal and it's not meant to harm. So they're not hurting each other. They're just kind of pushing and wrestling, and they're measuring their strength. And now sometimes death can occur if it gets out of hand or if there's an accident, but it's generally not. But when males in a species are fighting against a rival species, an enemy species, they're fighting to kill. And so literally the way they fight changes depends on who they're fighting. So males in the animal kingdom can differentiate between real and ritual combat. Like what is like we're just play wrestling to strengthen each other and what is like I'm fighting for life and death. Okay. This is also part you could imagine of the differentiation genius of the masculine genius. Males can differentiate between life and death scenarios and combat. and play scenarios, even in the animal kingdom. So guys have a natural tendencies towards competitiveness. And I think competition is a very healthy and necessary part of the masculine genius for so many reasons. One of the reasons is, as I was saying, like it gets out some of that natural aggressiveness and teaches males how to hone that energy in a healthy way. So by simulating combat, by simulating the dangers of life in the risk in the fear and the anxiety of sports or games or any kind of competition. What you're doing is you're actually training yourself for life and training how to hone the energy of your aggressiveness in a way that's more helpful. But the other thing that ritual combat does is it trains males to be stronger and they compete with each other and they actually grow in strength. If you do not believe me about this ritual combat nature, I want to tell you to watch one thing because females do not have as much of natural tendency towards ritual combat. I don't want to say they have no capacity for it. I know plenty of women who are very competitive and love competing. But have you ever watched a women's soccer game? That's some of the most vicious sport I've ever seen in my entire life. You would think they were fighting for life in there. And that is because most women, when they get into a competitive situation, are very bad at differentiating the fact that, hey, this is not real combat. This is not real. This is a game. And that's like there's hair pulling. There's name calling. I mean, I had a lot of friends in high school. I played soccer. I had a lot of friends on the girls' soccer team. And they would talk about the other girls on the other team as if they were like... spawn from Satan himself. Like, I'm like, these girls are probably just like you. They just go to a different school and they would be like, no, like this girl is legitimately like the worst. And I'm like, okay, whatever. While on the other hand, I'm playing sports, and so I'm competing with guys, beating them up as best I can, trying to run faster. I'll push them down. I'm like, we're going to win this game. But then after the game, we're shaking hands like best friends. We're like, oh yeah, man, that was such a good game. That was really cool. And if you don't believe me, if you don't believe me, read about I forget the name of this moment, but there was a moment in World War I. So World War I, trench warfare, the French on one side, the Germans on the other side. They're just stuck there for months and months and months, running out of food, cold, damp. They're literally dropping mustard gas bombs into each other's like that's how uncivilized this kind of warfare was you can imagine how miserable they are and how much they hate their enemies but on Christmas Day they all decided to leave leave their weapons behind And they met in No Man's Land, the kind of wasteland of dead bodies and destruction that was between the trenches. They met in No Man's Land, celebrated Christmas together. They showed each other pictures of their families. They played a game of soccer together. And They even gathered their comrades, their dead fallen, and brought them back so they could be buried. And they just kind of paused war for a moment and had fun and enjoyed each other. And then they kind of waved goodbye. They went back to their trenches, and then they started shooting at each other again. I feel like that's such a male thing. That's part of the masculine genius, the ability to differentiate between real and ritual combat. And you would say, well, warfare is real combat. And I'll say, yes. It is. It is life and death. But there's also a sense of game in warfare as well. You know, it's like nations and things. There's etiquette to warfare. You see what I mean? There's like a sense like there's certain things you're not allowed to do. Now, the more and more depraved we get as a world, the more and more like... the more and more horrific tactics we'll use in war. And it's getting really scary. But if you read, if you read like accounts of warfare back, even before the 20th century, you'll, you'll get a sense. There's it's a, this is like a gentleman's sport in a sense. Like, yeah, lives are being lost and that's awful and real. And I don't want to take away the drama of that, but there's also kind of a ritual element as, as well. Right. These are nations fighting and we're just kind of the pawns on the field. Right. Anyway, I don't want to get too much into that, but my point is ritual combat, um, Ritual combat versus kind of real combat. That's also why they say, by the way, the mama bear, like the mother bear is the most dangerous. Because again, if a mother's fighting in the animal kingdom, it's like the last ditch effort and I'm going to protect my kids and kill anything I see. So anyway, that's kind of a difference. So males have this tendency towards expendability, which is why they're much more eager to risk their lives. It's also, okay. This is kind of maybe one of my hottest takes and it always stirs up the community, but expendability is also why males are better comedians. Just let that sink in for a moment. Expendability is why most comedians are males. Um, And here's why. A comedian at the end of the day, someone who stands up for stand-up comedy, and there are female comedians. Unfortunately, most female comedians oftentimes compromise their femininity to become comedians. Like they wear pants and they act like in a very boyish way, or they also get really vulgar. I've noticed female comedians have a tendency to rely on vulgarity to kind of compensate. And it's like a shock humor. But males, like what is a comedian? A comedian really at the end of the day is the joke. Like the jokes they're telling are funny, but what's really funny about a comedian is the personality and the style of the comedian himself. In other words, a comedian is funny because he gets up on stage and makes fun of himself, right? I mean, anyone who's familiar with Chris Farley's story can be aware of that. That dude would get up and make an absolute fool of himself, and we would all laugh and enjoy it. But it led him to a premature death. I mean, he overdosed on drugs and was depressed because everyone thought he was funny and everyone wanted to be around him. But what he started to notice is no one actually cared for him in any real way. They just wanted to laugh, right? And so every comedian, in a sense, is like a sacrifice the community makes for their own humor. We're basically putting up a sacrificial lamb we're sacrificing this comedians like integrity because we're all laughing at him but he's okay with it because he's an extremist and an individualist and differentiated because as a male is but we're like okay with it we're okay with a male going up there and kind of dying on behalf of the rest of the community that language also by the way if you ever if you like beef or pork or whatnot most animals we eat are males right okay so we slaughter mostly males and So males are kind of the expendable ones. I also think of just even the Old Testament, and we can get into the spiritual stuff now, but I even think of like in the Old Testament, like you would always slaughter the male. The firstborn male was the sacrifice, right? Like the males are the expendable ones. The males are the sacrificial lambs for the sake of the community, if you will. So even comedy is actually born from that. It's born from that idea. It's like only a male is crazy enough to get up on stage and make fun of themselves for the sake of like everyone else's humor. And so, yeah, there are plenty of women who do it. Again, this is a generalization. Chill. But there's something to that. I know, I forget. Oh, gosh, I forget her name. There's a famous female comedian, and she said when she first started, she's just really funny, and she's sharp and witty and just really good with humor. But she said that when she started the comedy club, she would go up there in a dress, dressed like a woman, and the comedy... club owner basically said hey if you ever want to make it in this game you need to start dressing like a guy like wear pants you know wear kind of a loose shirt wear like a hat or something like it and it kind of was offensive at first but then she started doing it and actually that's when she blew up and became really famous and so yeah is it misogynistic maybe or maybe it's just a natural part that like we don't like watching women die you know what i mean like There's nothing attractive about a woman going and dying. Women are precious, right? That's their genius. Women should be protected. They're more important in a sense. No one wants to see your mother hurt, right? But your dad going out there grinding it and sacrificing himself and losing parts of himself in a loving sacrifice, that's heroic. And I'm not saying that... Look, I'm not saying women sacrificing themselves is not heroic. This is where the spiritual... nature gets up and this is where the masculine and feminine really start to kind of come into a fuller picture but my point is like there is nothing comfortable about watching a woman die which is also why like until the very I'm telling you female like mixed martial arts fighters are just still so weird in it and even like people who love UFC and like love watching fighting it's like the women it's something so unnatural about watching women fight and bleed and punch each other it's like so weird Anyway, last couple thoughts. We're kind of getting to the end of time here, and I've probably bored you with my magnum opus, and I have many, many more details I could share, but this is what I got so far. I want to talk a little bit about the spiritual ramifications of this, because we aren't just bodies. We're not just animals. We also have this spiritual life we can transcend, and a lot of it comes from you know, there, there are plenty of women who have some of these kind of more masculine tendencies, like women who are drier, a little less emotional women who really love things like math and science and, you know, like stuff like that. Those are great examples of kind of what we'd call exceptions. And the same thing, there are males who love people and who love to connect with people and do people things. And there are plenty of males who, who love community and really want to do stuff together. Like it's, it's, Again, this is a generalization. But this starts to have effects on our spiritual life because although we are not just animals, we are embodied. We are incarnate. And so our spirits manifest in our bodies. And so what happens in our bodies and what our bodies tend to desire and want and what they tend to prefer does affect our spiritual life. So one example is this. Women are far more likely to practice religion than males. than men okay that's just like seen statistically across the board especially in the modern time and I think one of the reasons is because women are an internal orientation as opposed to males external so women have a have a have a orientation of receptivity. Males are natural givers. Women are natural receivers. And so the idea that we are sons or daughters, and so for women, for daughters of God who gives you everything you are and you don't earn it and you don't fight for it, it just is given to you because he loves you, that makes a lot more sense for a woman. They're much more willing to accept that, although plenty of women have daughter wound issues. And I encourage you guys to pray about that and think about that. But men are like Even the really faithful guys here in this parish, I'll notice they're like, okay, how can I serve? What can I do? What can I make? What can I build? What can I cook? Does someone need something? They want to do something. There's always this giving element, which is beautiful. But the problem is the first step of the spiritual life is understanding that you are not giving anything, but you are receiving everything. And then any gift you give is merely born out of the abundance of the gift. And so a lot of males have a hard time, like they'll serve and they'll work and they'll do all kinds of good stuff for you, but then they'll miss the contemplative life. They'll miss the interior spiritual life. And again, they're externally oriented. So the focus on the interior life can be difficult for males, right? Now, on the other side, males have a natural tendency and natural desire to die. and to die for something meaningful and to die for something they love. And so the idea of like being a martyr and really wanting to go and like fight it out and like get killed for the faith. Guys are like, yes, I want that so bad. So when you get a guy excited about the faith, he will die for it. And that's very natural for men. And I know a lot of young men here who like they entered the church or they started getting back in their faith and they're all about it. Women have a more communal nature. And so what I've noticed with some of the women in the young community is they're very good people. They have great hearts and all that stuff, but they are really, really struggling with letting go of social groups that that are obstacles to their holiness. A guy, he gets convinced about something and he's like, he'll leave every friend. He's like, no, no, no, this is it. And if my boys can't follow me, that's fine. I'll go. It's like, I'll find new boys. It's like guys are much more likely to do that. And women kind of struggle with that. The social element is much more important for women and they struggle with that a lot. And I've noticed that. And so for any of you who are listening, any of my female students who are sorority girls, I noticed this. Don't let your social groups be obstructions to your relationship with God. You know what I mean? Like, it's okay. There are new social groups. There are new people who you will find. And I promise you, you will have no friendships more deep and more fulfilling than the friendships you make in Christ. And so, that goes for anyone listening. And I want to give that encouragement to some of the women who may be struggling with that very thing. But the other thing is, I mean... church is not just an idea. God is not just an idea. He's a person. And so males like, yeah, males have a tendency. We can learn a lot about theology and learn every little nuance about, you know, the Trent, the theology of the Trinity and the hypostatic union and like the processions and the essences and the energies. And those are words that for most of you were probably thinking, what the heck is he talking about? Um, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? It's, you don't need to know that stuff, but a lot of guys get obsessed with those kinds of nuances of theology, but then miss the whole point, which is that God's a person.

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Um,

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He's a relationship, right? He's bagging a relationship with you and he loves you, right? That's like, that's the heart of this whole thing, you know? And so all the information is great. All the knowledge is awesome, but only in so far as it actually feeds the relationship. And so I think women have a much more natural tendency to lean on the relational aspect of God, which is the core of the faith life, which is another reason I think why women like religion a little more than men at times. The other thing too, though, is the church is hierarchical. The church is hierarchical and males are naturally hierarchical. I didn't really talk too much about that and don't have time to, but females are much more committee based. And so what we're seeing right now in the church with Pope Francis's whole like synodal church, which a lot of people I know kind of have a visceral like, oh, that's so lame and weird and I get it. But like it is a certain step in the direction of inviting a little more of the feminine genius into the conversation. The feminine genius is a genius of committee. A male genius is like a military eyes like hierarchy. There's a leader and we just all follow what he says, right? And it's like much more hierarchical. And so the church does have hierarchy. It has a legitimate hierarchy and that hierarchy is never going to go away. Like even in a synodal church, the Pope is still the Pope, the bishops are still the bishops. So that's a little something like, I think guys are all about having like this kingship. It's like, oh, this is the Pope and I'm going to die for the Pope and serve him. And women are oftentimes like, I'm not being listened to. And it's like, okay, there's a balance there, right? And so those things can affect even the way that We play within the church and play within our faith lives. And a lot of people I think are probably because of third and fourth wave feminism, they're very repellent against the church because of its hierarchical nature. But I want to say, like, be sure that you're not rejecting the church. just because you've been informed and influenced by third-wave feminism, you know, and post-Marxism and things like that. You know what I mean? Anyway, so that's a whole other thing. And we'll get into that more. I do have an episode lined up coming here in the future where we're going to talk more on a political side about how the church's thinking and thoughts, like, affect our life. But the other thing, too, it's interesting that the masculine and feminine geniuses are required for marriage. Like, you need a male and a female. You need a male and a female to get married, and that's just the definition of marriage. It's a union between one male and one female, one man and one woman. And I'm not going to dive into arguments against that. That's just so plain and clear and obvious. And I hope as I explain the masculine and feminine genius a little bit more, I'm hoping you're starting to get an appreciation for why that's important. Why... The kind of maleness and femaleness are both necessary because it's the fullness of human nature. What's interesting is in the church and in our theology, we use both images of father and mother oftentimes. And so fatherhood is the principal image that God uses to refer to himself as God the Father, right? God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And so God the Father, God presents himself as a father. And that's interesting because... Think about all the masculine genius we've talked about, and all of a sudden you start to realize how genius fatherhood is for an image for God. He is the giver, the eternal giver. He is the one that defines things and differentiates things. He creates things, right? And all that kind of stuff, right? But he's also relational, right? He's not just male. And also we have to keep in mind God does not have a gender, right? Both male and female came from God equally. It's not like God's more male. But when we talk about the nature of what God does, it seems that fatherhood is the image God decided to use to kind of communicate that to us. But mothers don't be downtrodden because motherhood is the main image used for the church. The church is mother, and so you have like the bride and the bridegroom, right? The bride is the church, the bridegroom is Christ, and so there's a love there and a caring for. And so, I don't know, there's a lot of use of this language throughout scripture and through our spiritual lives, but all I want to say is this. Whether Whether you're male or female, whether you feel really inclined or attached to the masculine or the feminine genius, whether you have a tendency one way or the other, at the end of the day, every single human person is called to be a saint. And sainthood will require joyful sacrifice. It will require love. It will require both receptivity and gift. And so, learn... to become more competent with the grace of God and by his instruction and prayer, learn to be more competent in maybe the other side. Say you're a guy who's super things oriented. Maybe you're like an engineer and you love building things and playing with toys and stuff like that. But you know what? Take a little bit, like, go listen. You know, go have a genuine conversation with somebody. Go get to know somebody. You know, just practice some of those social skills, you know, things like that. It will do you good. It'll probably also surprise some people in your life if you do it with someone who knows you well. And women, like, yeah, people are awesome, but Also, stop gossiping. You know what I mean? There's ways in which our tendencies also bring us into certain sins that we're more likely to have, right? It's the classic adage in romantic relationship. Males are more likely to use emotional manipulation to get physical attention. affection, but females are much more likely to use physical manipulation to get emotional affection. And it's like a perfect storm when you have two insecure people enter into a relationship like that. But that's what I mean, even sin and grace. So women, people are awesome. People are great. Spend time with people, but also learn how to be on your own. Maybe read a book about theology. Challenge that more conceptual side of your mind, things like that. And again, it's not a smart or dumb thing. It's a matter of what are we interested in? You know, again, guys have a tendency to be more thing oriented. Women have a tendency to be more emotionally oriented. Guys, differentiation is great. It's a great gift, but you also have to care about things. You have to care about people and you do have to care and understand that things are connected. Okay. Things actually are connected. You can't break up with a girl right before she has a big test. Okay. Like you may be able to handle that. She cannot and don't do that to somebody, you know, that's brutal. But women at the same time, not everything is that connected. You know what I mean? Like you can let go. You can differentiate. You are not all of your friends' problems. Differentiate a little bit. And we have an episode coming up real soon on that particular topic. And so that idea is going to be tossed out a lot more. So get ready for that. The other thing is if you're a mother or a father, um, Appreciate the uniqueness of the play style of your spouse. Mothers are going to be much more kind and simple and sweet and nurturing to their kids, and that's totally fine. Mothers, it's okay. I promise you. your husband is not going to throw your baby into the ceiling fan. He has a lot more control over his body and what he throws than you would imagine, but let him take those risks. Let your child learn how to grow in confidence and in trust that in the arms of a father, that they are safe, even if it may be scary. That's an important balance as well. And so with that, Maybe that's a good little piece to end on and just mothers and fathers trust each other, trust each other's geniuses. One of my favorite things that Luanne Brizadine said in her book of the male brain is she said, the amount of time a father spends with his children is contingent above all else on one factor. And that factor is how much the mother is willing to allow the children to be with him. That's something profound. Like mothers are considered the gatekeepers of their children. So in family life, guys, like respect each other's brilliances. We need more good fathers. All the men listening to this, become good men. If you don't know how to be a good man, go find a man that is good and learn from him. If you don't have a father in your own house who can teach you, that's okay. We all have constellation of father figures who can teach us how to be men. All of us need multiple male role models in order to learn how to be the men we are today. And so if you don't have any good examples, go find one. Go find a man who is virtuous. Go find a man you look up to and learn what he does. We need more fathers in the world. And women, Do not settle for boys in marriage. Marry men and encourage men to become good men and good fathers. And then we may have a shot at turning this boat around in our society if we were just to do that. Women become good mothers. Males become good fathers. And the Lord can do a lot of work with that. And with that, God bless you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Epiphany Podcast. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.