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Today, we're diving into the deep end, tackling Christian Bros and Toxic Masculinity. We'll be dissecting means to be a 'manly man' in today's world and whether that fits in with God's plan. Plus, we've got our first-ever guest, Alyssa's husband Nathan, joining in. He's going to share his take on how toxic masculinity affects everyone. Get ready for laughs, deep thoughts, and maybe even a chicken impression or two. It's going to be a wild ride!
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name's Bri.
We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Hello world.
Welcome, welcome, one and all, to our graduation.
I don't remember the rest, but I was dressed as a duck.
No one but me and like mom and dad are going to get that.
That was my speech from the kindergarten graduation.
And it wasn't even my speech.
You got, didn't you get like part of it?
Like everybody got a line.
I don't know, but I was dressed as a duck.
Why?
Cause I did the little duck part.
I feel bad for these parents cause you think like they want their little kids to be dressed
up in their cute little fancy clothes and they made you a duck.
Well, I still had a dress.
I took off the duck costume.
For the ceremony or like after?
No for the ceremony.
I don't really fully remember it, but we did like, we need to move on.
You don't think that this is a great hook for people?
Feeling very overwhelmed.
I don't, I was five.
I was five and I was a duck.
You were a duck.
I don't remember it either.
I can't do as good of a duck sound as I can a chicken.
You want to do your chicken?
Tell the people about your viral YouTube video.
I made a video in college of myself clicking like a chicken and I think it has like 5,000
views.
So I'm pretty much famous.
Pretty much.
Really you don't need the podcast.
You just needed to make more chicken sounds.
That's it.
That's all I needed.
I think you should probably find a new life calling.
When I was in high school, I worked the set crew of the plays when they did the student
show.
So it was less important.
I was a duck or a gufnaf.
I do remember.
Backstage I was clicking like a chicken.
So people in the auditorium were like, why is there a chicken back there?
What's going on?
I loved the student shows.
Those were always so fun.
I know.
Mostly because we got out of class.
Yeah.
For like most of the day.
Yeah.
I snuck people with me who weren't even in the drama department.
They didn't want to pay for tickets.
I was like, come back with me.
I remember, I think probably like half of them I was in and then half of them I went to see.
And either way it was a good day.
Yeah.
It was a great day.
It was like last hour I think you got out of class.
Or maybe two.
I don't know.
For the play?
It might have been two.
Depends on how long it was.
It's true.
Anyway.
Moving on.
Two and a half minutes of nonsense.
But frankly we're doing great if we're two and a half minutes of nonsense.
Yeah.
Actually we're very clear and concise and succinct.
That's who people think we are.
How can you describe Alissa and Brianna?
Succinct.
That's the word.
Yeah.
People tune in specifically for our succinctness.
They just don't love to do it.
They just like to talk so we started our own podcast.
I mean frankly.
No one else wanted to listen to us.
So here we are.
Here we are.
Talking to the world.
Hello world!
I have a week off and I don't know what day, what time, who I am, what's my name, where
I come from, where did I go.
Is my name Cotton Eye Jo?
I think it is.
And you should probably do the dance.
TikTok!
That's not where my mind went.
I was like, Jo!
Transition!
Jo is a man's name.
We're talking about toxic masculinity.
Obviously Jo is toxic.
Wow.
That was a journey.
So later when I edit this...
You're not gonna edit that out because that is perfect.
That is pretty funny.
So anyway today we're talking about...
Jo.
Any Jo's that are listening, I'm real sorry.
She has a vendetta against you.
So anyway!
Today we're talking about toxic masculinity.
Jo!
No.
No.
What is toxic masculinity?
Can you define it?
Because WebMD can.
Do you know that when I edit these things, it sounds like I'm splicing things together
because we go from cracking up hysterically to one of us becoming really serious.
It's not.
It's just us being real stupid.
That's alcohol free, ladies and gentlemen.
Just for you.
Mostly ladies.
Except that guy on TikTok.
Except that one guy on TikTok.
He loves me.
Yeah, someone basically proposed to Brie on TikTok, so you know, updates coming soon.
Yes, I'm taking applications.
So today, as we go through toxic masculinity, we're gonna have a special guest later.
Yes, Jo!
No!
We wanted to talk about toxic masculinity and how it affects women because we are women
and that is the perspective that we can speak from.
We also wanted to talk about how toxic masculinity affects men.
And while we can talk about that from an academic standpoint, we are not men.
We are not men.
I hate to surprise you guys.
I know that sometimes I go by Brian.
I am not a man.
So later on, my husband Nathan is going to come on.
We should ask my future husband, TikTok man.
TikTok man!
Would you like to be on the pod?
So later on, Nathan will be here.
We have some questions for him that hopefully he's looking over right now.
Did you give them to him?
I did.
Okay, good.
So hopefully he's preparing himself.
I'm gonna guess he's napping.
That's a solid possibility.
I'd be napping if I weren't here.
You might be napping now.
I am.
I'm sleep talking.
So Brie has some definitions for us, yeah?
WebMD has a definition of toxic masculinity.
And I will tell you what it is now.
I'm prepared.
You spit on me just now.
Good.
It's a good thing we're close.
What is toxic masculinity?
I'll tell you.
It is an attitude.
I gotta stop.
It's an attitude or set of social guidelines stereotypically associated with menliness
that often have a negative impact on men, women, and society in general.
I think toxic masculinity, obviously it's popping up worldwide.
This is not a church specific thing.
It's a very buzzword topic.
Two weeks from now we're also going to talk about toxic femininity because I think that's
super important as well.
Less spoken about.
Yeah.
But for this week, toxic masculinity I think we see everywhere.
I mean it's all over social media.
I think yes, it's everywhere but it's such a deeper topic than we give it credit for.
Right.
Because like I said, it's a buzzword.
So if you see a manly man with a fish the size of Mount Rushmore and he's like, ugh,
I'm a man.
Like, ugh, that's toxic.
Right, but is that toxic or is that just being who he is?
Yeah.
And when does it become toxic?
Because it certainly can.
So I think in the church we're seeing this so much tied to religion.
Toxic masculinity has woven its way into the fabric of church men or Christian men or whatever
you want to call them, but men that find themselves in church.
Our dad says this all the time.
He says that of course that attracts a certain kind of man who is maybe not confident in
himself who is maybe not sure of his place in the world because it tells him you have
ultimate power.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Go dad.
And like you said when we were getting coffee for the 14th time in a row, it's all about
power.
Even deeper to define it a little bit.
That's such a good basic definition.
But to go further into it, we said if it's not the man holding the giant fish, what makes
it toxic?
Well I'll tell you because I read a whole article on WebMD about it.
Okay, tell me.
Okay.
I'll quote it.
WebMD.
The author's name is Sarah Valley.
I just feel like I should give her credit.
Yeah.
I don't know.
She says, it's not meant to imply that the idea of masculinity in itself is inherently
bad.
Instead, it's meant to point out that certain behaviors and ways of thinking often associated
with masculinity, from mental and physical toughness to sexism and homophobia, have a
negative and often dangerous impact on the world.
And I think just to dive into that a little bit, we talked about this earlier.
When you tell someone that they have power over one group of people, so in this case
women, it usually doesn't stop there.
Usually if you say, I'm stronger than women, you're also probably going to say, I'm stronger
than this type of person.
I'm stronger than this type of person, which lends itself to racism, which lends itself
to homophobia.
Like so many things.
Because you've decided you're higher up on the mountain than everybody else.
Yeah.
Because I'm physically stronger than this person.
I have more power over this person, but also this person and this person and this person.
Exactly.
It gives you this heightened view of self, as opposed to looking out at the world and
saying, how can I be a healthy, happy part of this community, this world, this relationship?
Well think about Jesus.
Jesus is fully God and fully man.
He could have come down fully God and just been like, do what I want you to do, people.
But he didn't.
He lowered himself and he didn't look at himself as any better than anybody else.
And that kind of leadership is what the world needs.
You know, literally.
When men jump off this precipice into this toxic, I have to be a man.
I have to be a manly man who hunts and fishes and does taxidermy.
I think that's going to be our running joke throughout every podcast.
Men love taxidermy and women love embroidery.
Obviously.
Cats are women and dogs are men.
We know that.
Did other people think that or was that just us?
I think other people think that.
That was like a weird childhood thing.
It's like a Mandela effect or something.
But I think when you see men tying their personalities into this, it just becomes almost impossible
to be a healthy person.
Because we had talked about this earlier.
We've had many conversations about this today.
That masculinity has become a personality.
Yeah.
The idea of being a manly man is not a personality.
Like if as an individual you like certain things that tend to be more masculine, great.
Same thing with women.
If you tend to like things that are more feminine, great.
But that doesn't just because you're a man doesn't mean you have to like these things
or have to be obsessed with power.
Right.
Well, I went through a few different articles.
We did so much research for this one, guys.
Are you proud?
Yeah.
I have several pages.
I do too.
So one of the articles that I went through focused on someone named Andrew Tate.
And I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with him.
This is a little bit of an older story, but I think it's important to bring stories like
this to light.
So he was someone that he was on the show Big Brother, which I've never watched.
Have you ever watched Big Brother?
I think I've seen clips, but I haven't actually watched.
I'm not super familiar with what it is.
Isn't it on MTV?
Yeah, it was an MTV show.
But I think like all the people live in the same house.
They do.
Yeah.
Anyway, so he was on there and got kicked off for a video that surfaced of him very
extremely abusing a woman.
The reason that he is of interest in this story here for us.
Because just like Britney Spears said, he is toxic.
He is toxic.
Yes.
But also he became someone of great influence.
He at one point, I don't know if this is still true, but at one point had over 9 million
followers over on Twitter, which is now X.
I'm so confused.
It's very strange.
But at one point he did and he was very, very vocal about what men are supposed to be and
what women are supposed to be.
He called his followers the war room.
Great.
Yeah.
He talked about how men need to fight to reorient the world around themselves.
He also then talked about, I just, I just have to like quote this because it's, I just
can't.
He believes that women are barely sentient.
Just pause there for a moment.
How do you speak to any other human being on the planet?
Any other human being at all?
And say, you can barely turn your head to breathe.
You literally can barely keep yourself alive purely because you're a woman.
Like that makes no sense.
I don't, I, I can't even really respond to it because it is so far from what I can even
understand.
Does he forget who birthed him?
Or anything.
Like look at women across the world, leading businesses, leading countries, leading their
families.
He wouldn't go to a female doctor and be like, Oh, you're barely, barely able to turn your
head to breathe.
Like, I know he wouldn't go to a female doctor.
He's the worst.
And if he did, she would kick him in the face.
Or worse.
Further along.
So obviously this man has found himself with a lot of influence.
Horrifying, but that has attracted people.
That attitude has attracted 9 million people.
And part of it, I think is just the love of controversy.
We just love to watch the world burn a little bit, but at the same time, I think people
like that power dynamic.
It's going to attract people saying, yeah, I should have absolute power.
And look, this guy says so too.
And I think the danger is like social media.
Yes, pretty much everybody uses it, but a lot of young people use it.
They think, Oh, you know, it's, it's against the norm.
It's interesting.
So yes, you're going to attract a lot of young people and you're going to fill their heads
with garbage.
Yeah.
If you give them a definitive, this is how the world is supposed to be, it makes a little
bit more sense when you're younger.
Yeah.
It's easier when things are black and white.
Right.
And so he has found himself with all this influence.
Now as he went along to just prove what a horrifying human being he is, in case I haven't
made that clear yet, in I believe it was 2022, so end of 2022, a great year, not for him.
He was arrested in Romania with his brother and two Romanian women on counts of human
trafficking, creating a criminal gang to sexually exploit women and further charges that I won't
say because then I have to mark this as explicit.
So, he now is standing against charges on all of those things in Romania and the UK
has additional warrants against him.
They're just waiting to extradite him until he stands trial for all of this stuff.
That's insane.
So now are we saying that all people that subscribe to this toxic masculinity crap are
going to go this far?
No, but that's where the thought process leads.
If you can't respect women, if your ideology says to you, I am superior to women, then
they have no value.
So yeah, I mean, human trafficking isn't that big of a deal if-
That person has no value.
Exactly.
If they mean nothing, then who cares?
You have to give other people value in order for harming them to have consequences.
And they do not have to earn your respect or earn their place.
You do not have the right to anybody else.
I think that's a really good point that we should bring up.
I think men who subscribe to this specifically, it's very much like respect, right?
That's the big thing.
I think we've mentioned this before in the podcast, but you'll hear this in churchy circles.
Men want respect and women want love, which is utter garbage.
I want to be respected.
Men also want love.
Women also want respect.
We all want both of those things.
As people, we want to be loved and also respected.
And you should respect the people around you as people, as people deserving of the same
rights as you.
And if we're going to talk biblically, the Bible specifically says, God created men and
women in his own image.
Male and female, he created them.
Did you know actually the English standard version of the Bible, that verse, I gotta
look it up, it says he created men in his own image.
I think we're obsessed with finding the differences as a culture, as a society.
We're obsessed with finding the differences between men and women and defining them so
differently.
And we do not think about how similar we are as just people.
People want respect.
People want love.
That was one of the things that was said to me when we first started this podcast was,
well, you can't deny that men and women are different.
They're different.
We just love to hold on to that.
There's like one thing that's different about us.
Maybe two things.
Maybe three.
But we're desperate to hold on to that.
Men and women are different.
We're different.
We're different.
But why?
Why?
Why do you want that?
I can like whatever I want to like, whether it's stereotypically masculine or stereotypically
feminine.
I can pursue whatever career I want, whether it's stereotypically masculine or feminine.
Just in general.
Because I like doing something traditionally masculine.
Does not make me a man.
I'm a woman and I'm allowed to like what I want to like.
Well when you make such-
And I don't have to like embroidery.
Thank you very much.
When you make such distinct boxes for people, it becomes very hard to feel comfortable in
your own skin.
Like I have a very assertive personality.
And I've always said that.
And I have struggled with that a lot of my life because I was told that's not what a
Christian woman is.
And I think we talked about this in our first episode, in our stories episode, where I said
I felt out of place in the church because I was a strong vocal assertive woman.
And that's not what I was told.
That's not what I was supposed to be because we have these tiny, tiny boxes of what women
look like and what men look like.
And that leads to toxic masculinity.
And think about an amazing God created men and women.
Why are we trying to make him smaller?
Think about all of creation, what he created.
And yet he's going to think of men and women and put them in these little boxes?
No, there's so much more to us that we just deny.
I want to circle back to those translations that I was talking about.
So it's Genesis 1.27.
And we've talked in the past about the different versions of the Bible and how some of them
were written with a lot of this toxic masculinity crap imbued in them.
That was kind of the purpose of them.
So that's the English Standard Version.
So first I'm going to read to you from the New Living Translation, which has a lot less
gender bias.
It was kind of written in such a way that things were more gender neutral.
And done because that was found in the original texts.
So Genesis 1.27 in the New Living Translation says,
So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God, he created them male and female, he created them.
Now let's look at that in the English Standard Version.
I wish you would.
I wish I didn't have to.
So then the English Standard Version, same verse, says,
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God, he created him.
Male and female, he created them.
Gotta love that.
And that's confusing for people who haven't looked into multiple different versions or
the historical aspect behind when those translations were written.
Which one do you believe?
But I think we can circle back to toxic masculinity traits, not just violence.
There's other things tied to that.
Like we said before, homophobia.
I have more to say on that.
But a need for control, we kind of touched on that.
Promiscuity.
Being a man means that you can sleep around however much you want, but as a woman, you're
not allowed to because your virginity is your greatest gift.
And your hair.
And your hair.
Sorry, mom.
I thought of an idea for a TikTok.
We clip together all the time so we say sorry, mom.
Do you know how long that will take?
And sorry, grandma.
We say that a lot.
Using to help with household duties because they think they're beneath them.
Risk taking.
So stupid.
Sexual aggression towards women.
We kind of spoke on that.
Stoicism.
So like a lack of emotions.
Lack of emotion because they're always told that women are the emotional ones and women
are weak, so therefore emotions are weak.
Real quick, I saw something one time and it was like the biggest joke on humanity is that
men have rebranded anger as not an emotion.
Yes, I've seen that.
In my experience, men are 100% more emotional than women.
It's different emotions.
And they don't know how to channel it and they don't know how to deal with it, whereas
women have kind of learned how to deal with their emotions.
Well because stereotypically we teach men to tamp down those emotions.
As parents throughout the world, we're teaching our boys tamp down those emotions.
Don't talk about it.
Don't feel it.
Don't whatever.
So then when those emotions come out, they don't have a way to handle them.
Whereas for women, we're hopefully, and again this is just generalizations, but hopefully
we're teaching our daughters a little bit more of how to handle a wide range of emotions.
Yeah, like you're feeling sad.
I understand that.
Let's sit down and talk about it.
Let's breathe for a second.
The world isn't ending.
Whereas men get sad but then they get angry because they are sad.
And they can't tell anyone they're sad.
And they throw away all their stuff.
Yeah, like access to mental health services, not as prevalent with men because they don't
know how to deal with their emotions.
And it's not socially acceptable to seek help.
It took me a long time through our marriage for me to be able to talk Nathan into seeing
a therapist.
And he's really not like this at all, but even not like that.
And that's why we want to bring him on later and have him talk about this.
It's like men don't go to therapy.
That's still running through his brain.
They don't believe in therapy.
I've heard that several times too.
When honestly I'm telling you, I'm constantly in therapy.
I love therapy.
And I think it's so good for people.
Even when you're not going through a crisis.
I think that's the best time to be in therapy because then you can deal with your little
day to day stuff.
You're building a good foundation for when those bigger issues come up.
You're able to handle them a little bit easier.
Your house isn't gonna blow over.
So another article that I went through.
Look at us reading.
I know, I'm so proud of us.
Turns out we are illiterate.
Well we knew I was.
We were questioning you.
And I've always said that.
So then the question starts to become like, what is biblical masculinity?
So I read another article and this was from 2020.
So it's a little bit further back.
But it was written by a former evangelical pastor.
And he was talking about the toxic masculinity that he saw in the world around him.
And he kind of was part of it and has now obviously moved past that.
So in this article he talks about a conference that he went to.
And the speaker was talking about how to grow your church.
And I've worked at churches.
The spaces that I have been in and the pastors that I have talked to, it just is so often
about how big can I make my church.
So that was what the conference was about, was growing your church.
Or at least this was, this speaker was part of the conference.
And the speaker said that in order to grow your church, you need to get more men involved.
Because obviously.
And he said that churches have too many women.
Honestly there are just so, so many women.
And I've had enough of the embroidery.
They're not even focusing.
So he said that about women attending and in key leadership positions.
And I'm sure he tried to hedge it a little bit because you can't exactly say that beyond
film.
But he went on to argue for complementarianism, gender roles, men being elders, pastors, leaders,
you know, as you do.
If you haven't heard about these things, go ahead and listen to all the rest of our podcasts.
And talked about how women can hold small roles, but that they're not designed to carry
the weight of real leadership because we can barely turn our heads to breathe.
What will we do?
So this, and he referenced first Timothy 212.
So this is from the NIV.
So we've talked about this before, but it says, this is from Paul writing to Timothy
in his church and he says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over
a man she must be quiet.
Now I'm not going to get super deep into this one right now because we have talked about
this in the past and we will continue to talk about it.
But if you are hearing that and you're confused why that's in the Bible, remember that Paul
absolutely had women teach and preach and sent Phoebe off with his book of Romans to
teach the Roman church and had Prisca teaching other men.
So listen to our other podcasts as well on this, but if this is all you're hearing, please
don't be confused.
Sometimes translations suck.
Translation suck.
And also know that a lot of times Paul would quote the Roman rule and then he would refute
it.
And a lot of times also Paul was talking about a specific situation.
So I think historically in certain contexts that like he would be talking to a church
where I believe in this context he was talking to Timothy's church who had a lot of women
who had not been allowed to learn up until this point.
And so when they were coming to these house churches, they were very loud and boisterous
and asking all kinds of questions and it was distracting everybody else.
And so Paul was essentially saying like, learn, but learn quietly so other people can learn
too.
Right.
Not all women throughout time, but this specific church at this specific time.
Because remember Paul didn't write this to every church.
He wrote it to Timothy's church.
So if it was correct for every church, then he's leaving the rest of them in sin and only
caring about Timothy's church apparently.
Oh, Timothy.
So anyway, the speaker from this article heading back there, he said that churches are too
feminine for modern day men.
Bri, we put up too many lace curtains.
I told you.
I knew it.
I knew it all along.
We painted it pink and we weren't supposed to.
I thought it was supposed to look like Barbie's dream house.
I'm confused.
So essentially he said that churches need to offer tougher, more manly events to attract
the men.
Leather, cigars, taxidermy.
No, no cigars.
Just the smell of cigars.
And hunting and fishing and you got to kill some stuff.
Yeah.
So in order to do that, he said you need to embrace a muscular Christianity model.
Then going on to say if you get the men, you'll get the whole family.
If you get the women, apparently the family just dies in a river.
But if you get the men, you get the men, the whole family will follow.
And this is something that Christian churches actually do still talk about.
This is not an uncommon thing where they say there's a set of statistics that say that
if a man comes to church, his whole family will come.
And if a woman comes to church, and I don't have the exact statistics, but if a woman
comes to church, the family is much less likely to come.
Which at least in our experience is not true.
Not at all true.
And biblically it's not true.
You can look at women in the Bible who created house churches.
It doesn't talk about their husbands.
It doesn't talk about anybody else.
It talks about them bringing their family to church.
They're being bossed.
Bees.
Yeah.
And on top of that, this statistic that keeps getting quoted, it doesn't actually, like
there's no basis for it.
Nobody can find where it came from.
It's just something that's been quoted so many times that people kind of think, oh well
clearly it's true.
So this speaker said start up rugged ministries that only appeal to men and their sons.
They can appeal to women.
Things like eating steaks and talking about men's issues and feelings, but not too much.
Not too many feelings.
And you should have retreats that only have male speakers that talk about male based things.
And in order to attract these tougher men, you have to make ministries that are cool,
tough, and rugged.
And this will make men want to be part of the church and it'll get them saved.
Now I just, I would like to back off of, I know we're like making fun of this a lot,
which is what we do as people, but I want to back off of it for a second and ask the
question where did Jesus say that?
Like we say all the time, give me a verse.
Give me a verse.
Jesus never said in order to attract people to me, you've got to be manly.
You've got to kill some stuff.
You've got to eat a lot of steak.
I think the point of Christianity is that God is the reason that people are attracted
to you.
That's what sets us apart.
That's our little light that we have to let shine and God does the rest.
Well, and who was Jesus?
Was Jesus this rugged, intense man?
Like I don't see any evidence of that in the Bible.
No, but thousands and thousands of people followed him and think about even now people
follow him.
They say Jesus was the most impactful, even non-religious people will say Jesus was the
most impactful figure in history.
One of the things that I wanted to ask is, and this is a little bit like pointed, but
I don't care.
Have you ever?
I know.
If you think your church is not like this, if you're sitting there going, well, thank
goodness my church is not like this, ask yourself if that's true.
Now maybe from the pulpit, they're not saying, yeah, men are better, men are masculine and
we need to have masculine stuff.
But maybe they have ministries that only the masculine men are invited to journey on.
Now I'm not saying that you can't have a men's or women's small group and separate people
out like that because I do know that personally I'm more comfortable opening up and sharing
in a group of women, it makes me feel safer.
I'm not saying that there's not some place for a small group, just like you might cater
to a specific age group.
You might have a under 30 group.
Or if you're me, a small group of divorcees that I somehow was a part of and was not a
divorcee.
I'm not saying that there's not a place for that, but what does that ministry look like?
Does it look like men encouraging other men to be strong Christians who love Jesus and
exemplify Jesus?
Or does it look like men telling other men to be masculine?
And we can only talk about X, Y, Z because that's what's on the masculine list.
How to get more power.
Right.
What does it look like?
How to be more dominant, assert your authority.
Really analyze that in your churches.
I think that's critically important if you're looking for a church, if you are asking yourself
if your church is the right place anymore.
Bree and I have been through a lot of churches and we've had to ask this question a lot.
And it's difficult because sometimes you do get involved somewhere and then you realize,
oh hey, I've fallen into the same trap.
Yep.
Yet again, I thought this was different.
So I think it's important to ask that question.
But then the article goes on to ask if the problem for this toxic Christian masculinity
stuff is Christianity itself.
Now I wasn't explaining this very well to Bree earlier so she got a little confused.
So I'm going to try and be more clear.
I am easily confused so it's fine.
So according to people who believe in this toxic masculinity for Christian men, they
don't think they would call it that.
They wouldn't call it that.
They would call it masculinity for Christian men.
Yes.
They would drop the toxic.
You never know.
Some of them are a little crazy.
But in order to believe that Christianity becomes a little bit of an issue, Jesus becomes
a little bit of a problem because Jesus didn't exemplify this.
And so the author has a quote here from Mark Driscoll who is a pastor who I personally
didn't know a whole lot about.
I've heard the name.
Yeah, I've heard the name but that's about it.
He is a big mega church pastor though I do know that with a lot of influence and hopefully
that disturbs you after I read this quote because it disturbed me.
So this is a quote from him.
He says, there is a strong drift toward the hard theological left.
Some emergent types want to recast Jesus as a limp wrist hippie in a dress with a lot
of product in his hair who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while
shopping for the perfect pair of shoes.
In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand,
and the commitment to make someone else bleed.
That is a guy I can worship.
I cannot worship the hippie diaper halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat
up.
I'm gonna let that sink in just for a second but also I feel like if that's not blasphemy
I don't know what is.
That's insane.
It's insane.
They only had dresses back then.
They didn't have pants.
And they didn't have hair product.
They had oil.
They also didn't have decaf coffee.
But let's... there's a lot... I could do a whole podcast on this.
But let's talk about first of all that he's pulled out Jesus in Revelations as opposed
to Jesus when he was on the earth.
So Jesus in the end times when really we don't have a lot of information on what that's gonna
look like, you know, because it has not happened, because it has not happened, as opposed to
Jesus when he was on the earth and said, hey look at me, follow me.
The historical actual account of Jesus.
When he was here.
When he loved people.
And all of this stuff that he's saying, he drank decaf.
Is that an insult?
Can I just... is that... to me it is.
I mean we don't drink decaf.
But like if you drink decaf are you less of a Christian?
Are you less of a man?
Are you less of a person?
What in heaven's name?
If you use hair product, I guarantee you this man, he's on TV.
I guarantee you he's using hair product.
In fact, I guarantee you he's got makeup on his face when he's on TV.
Does that make you less of a Christian or of a man?
I don't understand.
It doesn't.
I don't understand.
There's a verse that says essentially you'll know who they are by their fruit.
You'll know who they are by their goodness, not by their hate towards other people.
I think this is actually super relevant to this in particular because he is a pastor
and the label, the little header, which again is added by translators, but the little header
for this section is true and false prophets.
I'm proud of you.
So this section is Matthew 7, 15 through 20 and it says watch out for false prophets.
They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
Sheep's clothing.
By their fruit, you will recognize them.
Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
I think that's perfect because it does talk about it's your attitude that people know
Christ through you.
And when your attitude is like Mark Driscoll's and it's, well I only have respect for people
I can beat up.
That's not Christ.
That's alienating.
Well, first of all, I don't know your workout routine.
I don't know who you're beating up, but how many people are you alienating?
How many people can you not respect?
Well, that's what it boils down to is it boils down to you can't respect anyone that is not
physically stronger than you.
So then who else don't you respect?
Because I'm going to guess most of the biblical characters weren't weightlifters.
Are you not respecting Abraham, who did most of his work when he was old?
Or Ruth, who it's unlikely was super physically strong or had the opportunity to be so?
Jesus himself?
Right.
Like, if he isn't a super buff gym guy, you can't respect him?
And then pull that into modern day.
So now I assume that this man thinks all women are weaker than him.
So just going based off that, not that all women actually are weaker than him.
I feel like I could take him with a shiv.
But going based off of that of his assumption, now he can't respect any women.
He can't respect any differently abled people.
He can't respect children.
He can't respect anyone that isn't as physically strong as he is.
And he's leading how many people?
What about the elderly?
You can't respect your elders because that's quite literally biblical.
So then the rest of this article goes on to talk about in this perspective.
Now this isn't what the author thinks, but from this perspective, he said, what do women
even do in this view of the world?
What is even the point of women other than to pop out babies?
And he said that according to these people, women just need to submit sexually and socially
to fulfill their role.
This obviously would make them the happiest if they just did those little things.
Obviously.
It's so simple to not have any personality whatsoever.
They also need to hold up their husband's ego.
This is me being a little sassy, but just because he can't hold it up on his own, he
might just fall right over.
It's a big ego.
It needs a lot of people to hold it up.
Maybe multiple wives.
Maybe.
And also that wives need to be well-kept and pretty at all times because if they aren't,
their husbands might be liable to just run off and find someone else who's prettier and
lovelier and clearly that's their fault because they didn't put on enough makeup today.
I'm looking at you and I right now.
We're not looking great.
We're not looking great.
I did shower.
Brought to you.
It's just the whole concept of it.
And is this taking it a little far?
Maybe, but I don't think this is taking it out of the realm of what someone who subscribes
to a toxic masculinity attitude would say.
It makes it very hard if you're surrounded by that constantly to want to follow Christ.
To want to be a Christian at all.
You see women, and like I said, we've said this before, but women are leaving churches
in droves.
They are running from the church.
Why?
Because of this.
Because that's the reputation of the church right now is hate.
You look at our TikTok for example, and I love that we're getting interaction over there
because it's showing me what people's attitude is towards things like this.
My husband's there.
But we've gotten a lot of comments when we post clips from the episodes of like, well
the church just hates women.
Well the church is a business and they're trying to bring families in because they want
more money.
Well, the church wants to tamp women down, so why would you be there?
Why not just leave?
And those are the kinds of comments that we're seeing and I'm so glad that people feel comfortable
enough to say that to us.
Coming from a church position because I want to hear that.
I want to hear that you've had these kinds of problems.
Because if we're stuck in our own bubble all the time, how are we supposed to further God's
mission?
How are we supposed to share the love that we know that is truly there?
And I think that's what we're trying to do here is to pull back all of this, all of the
submission and the masculinity and whatever, to say there is a loving book underneath all
of this that we've lost.
Because we've covered it in our social expectations and in power and in all of these things we've
covered it and the book is in there, it's down there, Jesus is trying to shout as loud
as he can and we're not listening.
Nope.
We're so obsessed with the rules and we're so obsessed with the definitions, trying to
define men and women and making them separate as much as we can and you're right, we've
lost the love.
We've completely lost the love.
Okay, so we are going to jump into our interview portion.
I titled it Interview with a Man.
I'm so proud.
So we asked my husband Nathan if he would come up the stairs and record with us because
we want to learn a little bit more about what toxic masculinity looks like from a man's perspective.
If he even thinks it's toxic.
We don't know yet, we have not interviewed him.
That's true, I'm sorry for the influence, Nathan.
Alright, so Bree's going to ask some questions because otherwise she's going to feel like
a real third wheel.
That's a direct quote.
From myself.
Okay, Nathan.
Hi, I'm Nathan.
I am Alyssa's husband and long time listener of the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me here today and I am terrified of your questions.
Oh no.
Okay, I'm moving on.
What are things you were taught as a child that would make you more manly or were you
ever taught things that would make you more manly?
Is that insulting?
I don't think I was, I don't remember anything directly like, you know, like you gotta do
this, be this way to be manly.
I do remember like one instance where me and my one friend, we were outside riding our
bikes after it rained and we both fell and got really bloody knees and I remember his
dad would not let him put a bandaid on his knee because, you know, that's for women.
What?
Because women bleed.
Yeah, he let him put a pad on his knee.
That's insane.
That's insane.
I remember thinking though like, oh maybe I shouldn't have a bandaid on my bloody knee,
but then I did.
Because like health and wellbeing is only for women.
Well I mean that's what your statistics said.
Men are less likely to seek medical attention.
That's very true.
Do you have anything more to say on that?
No.
Okay, I'm moving on to question two.
In your own words, not in anybody else's words, what does it mean to be a man?
Well, I don't know, I think that's kind of a loaded question to some degree depending
on who you're talking to just because I don't think being a man is really defined as doing
certain things to be a man.
All Jesus calls us to do is to love God and love others.
God doesn't say like, do this to become a man.
He just says, love me and love others.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
As a person in general?
Okay.
What do you think God wants for men today?
I don't think he wants anything specifically for men.
I think his commandment is to love him and love others.
That's all he's asking.
And so I think as humans, men and women, we complicate and make the Bible very difficult
for ourselves.
Question number four.
What do you hope to teach your son as he becomes a man?
I hope to teach Bibliobab as our son's name, just to be kind, to love people as they are
and no matter what they might believe, no matter what they, however they choose to live,
because that's how Jesus loved them.
I don't care what they're doing or how they do it.
As long as he's loving them as Jesus called to, then they see God through him by, I don't
know what the word is, by telepath.
Just by seeing him.
Yeah.
I think that's a really interesting statement though, because you do not think of kindness
as traditionally masculine.
People aren't taught that.
That men should be kind.
Yeah.
Well, I think our church a couple weeks ago for Father's Day did a pretty good job at
talking about that too, is like the pastor asked, what do you think of when you think
of a man?
And he showed a picture of Rambo with his shirt ripped off and his muscles being where
they shouldn't be and all kinds of things.
Then he's like, this is what maybe most of you think of.
And then he showed another picture of Mr. Rogers, someone very kind, teaching kids,
things like that.
Those attributes of being a man might not be the stereotypical view of people.
Just to circle back, I promise that we did not name our son Bibli Bob.
However, to all the Bibli Bob's out there, I'm sorry, I don't mean to insult your name.
If your name is Bibli Bob, change your name.
Because that is stupid.
That's my grandmother's name.
Question five.
If you could go back in time, what is one thing you wish your younger self could know?
It was okay to wear that bandaid.
I don't know if I have anything, honestly, specifically that I wish my younger self would
know.
Because I don't really feel like I grew up in a situation where women were less than
other men in the church.
I grew up with women speaking in the church.
There was women pastors in the church.
They all held those titles.
I think that's a huge difference in the way that Nathan grew up versus the way that we
grew up.
Because we grew up primarily Baptist, sometimes non-denominational churches that are just
secretly Baptist anyway.
But Nathan grew up more like Assemblies of God churches.
And community churches and things like that that didn't have the Baptist background at
all, I would say.
So that's a huge difference that we've been talking through a lot lately.
Yeah, I didn't really know this was a thing.
Not even until we got married, probably maybe five years into our marriage, did we really
start discussing this being a divide in the Christian community for ourselves as we were
trying to be adults and loving the Lord.
Finding one of our millions of churches.
Millions.
Do you think traditionally Christian men are misunderstood?
No.
I think men, they tell you how they feel.
Maybe not tell you how they feel, they tell you what they think.
I think fairly easily.
I just think that instead of listening to others or listening to women specifically,
they get stuck in a rut because they're old grouchy men.
Well, I think that ties into what we're talking about in this episode for toxic masculinity
and saying that when you think you're right on everything, you don't have to listen to
anybody else.
You don't have to listen to people who are less than you or who you could beat up.
You don't have to take those opinions into account.
For the most recent church we had just left, something that I can take away from them was
is if you put men and women in this box and they don't fit in this box, then they're not
doing the right thing.
They're not being a man.
They're not being a woman.
You really got to go to the Bible and read and see what is God's box.
Again, for a million times, love God and love others.
Those are his two greatest commandments.
That's all he gave you.
Do you really think that being the head of the household telling your wife what to do
and how to do it, is that really loving?
I would really challenge that.
Well, in the most recent Bertrandt season, she says power is intoxicating and if all
you're after is power, then yeah, you're going to be a little drunkard.
What are your feelings on the bear analogy?
I love bears.
Give me the overview on the bear analogy again.
Usually it's asking women if you were walking through a forest and you came upon something,
would you rather come upon a bear or a man alone in the forest?
It's hard to say most because I haven't surveyed all the women.
I have asked every single woman and they have all agreed.
I can tell you what TikTok says.
But a lot of women, a surprising majority of women have said they would rather find
a bear in the woods as opposed to a man.
Yeah, I think that can be very true.
I think as humans, we can hurt each other way more whether it's verbally, physically,
mentally, whatever that might look like.
We have a lot more options to hurt somebody.
A bear can just, you know, dead.
Yeah kills you and you're done.
All right, I'm going to ask the next question.
Were you ever taught to directly respect women?
Like was that something that you were talked to about?
Because as women on the other side of things taught, we were taught this is how you respect
men.
This is how you respect your husband.
This is what they expect of you.
Was that something that you were taught kind of on the flip side?
And the way that I grew up, no.
I would say that conversations I've had with other guys in my life, friends in my life,
I would say for them, yes.
And it's definitely was done by their church and what their church believes in this topic.
But me specifically, no.
What kinds of things would you say they were taught?
I mean that they're supposed to be the ones that provide and take care of things and make
sure everybody's good all the time.
But I was never taught, oh, I'm the spiritual leader of my household.
I never heard that before until last maybe six years of my life.
The last five churches we were in.
I think that it's interesting though that you say that they are taught not how to respect
women, but how to provide for women.
Like we need them in order to exist and survive as opposed to how to respect us as human beings.
Okay.
What are your thoughts on toxic masculinity if you have any at all?
I mean I think it's so messed up to me it's hard to really put words into it honestly.
Because I see so many people that I care about around me being hurt by people who are doing
what they should be doing in the name of God.
I really don't have any tolerance for it to where I'm going to stand there and be like,
oh, that's okay.
That's just the way they want to live their life.
And I'm not going to go out there and attack them and be hateful.
But the Bible says to confront your brothers on their wrong doings.
So I'm not going to let them just, if they're doing it in the name of God and they consider
something Christian, I'm not going to sit there and listen to them and respect them
for that.
Do you think black coffee is the most masculine way to drink your coffee?
Considering that I know that you put this question in there for me to admit that I only
drink cream and a little bit of coffee.
Just like my grandmother.
She says I'm very wise.
We go to Starbucks and he gets like extra cream in his coffee and it comes out white.
You don't have to look at the labels.
You just know who's a Zeus.
Yeah.
I've heard that little jingle on the radio that's like, you're the cream in my coffee.
That is kind of dirty.
Thank you for that.
All right.
So we're going to say goodbye to Nathan because frankly, I have to edit out enough of this
crap.
If you listen to everything I said and believe me, you'll be in a good neighborhood in heaven.
Shut up, Nathan.
Say bye, Nathan.
Thank you for your time.
Get out.
This is why it's a sister's only podcast.
I'll tell you that much.
On that note, thank you for being here today.
We appreciate Nathan coming all the way upstairs and answering many a question.
Many a question.
With questionable answers.
Yes.
Anyway, so we hope you enjoyed our discussion on toxic masculinity.
I don't know if enjoyed is, I keep saying enjoyed.
I don't think enjoy is a good word here.
We have a lot more to say.
Does anybody want a part two?
Cause we're still, we still have to talk about toxic femininity, but femininity, femininity.
That's a hard word to say.
Not in that song.
That's a good song.
That's a good movie.
Yeah.
Do you want a part two?
Because I have more to say.
I think we all have more to say.
I would love to hear.
We actually, we posted on TikTok for any men that happened to be listening to our feminist
podcast.
If you have any thoughts on toxic masculinity, we love to hear them.
Head over there.
It's we.r.more4 and you can let us know kind of what you think about it.
Women, we'd love to hear your thoughts too.
Women!
So please let us know.
And we'd love to incorporate those in future episodes.
Yes.
Feel free to message us.
Feel free to comment.
Feel free to send us a carrier pigeon.
Any way you want to communicate with us is fine.
I dislike birds.
Please don't send us a pigeon.
What if it's like enchanted and it talks?
No, I don't want a talking pigeon.
And no one wants that.
I do.
No, you don't.
You don't like birds more than I don't like birds.
A bird flew into our work window the other day and it scared me.
Inside?
No, just ran into the window.
Oh, okay.
All right, well, we'll see you guys next week for our mini episode.
What are we talking about?
Subliminal sexism.
That's it.
We walked through Target for research purposes.
Research.
Not for Starbucks or shopping.
Just research.
Just a casual like $100 later.
Fine!
Fine!
Fine!
All right, we'll talk to you guys next week.
Have an awesome week.
We love you!
We love you!
Bye!