The Bridge: a Disagreeing Well podcast

Tara Constantine 00:04

Hello and welcome to The Bridge, A Disagreeing Well podcast from University College London and Students Union UCL that tackles hotly debated issues and provides us with tools and techniques to help us disagree about them better. I'm Tara Constantine, UCL student and co-producer of The Bridge, and I'm on a mission to find out how we can have conversations that lead to understanding and mutual respect rather than frustration and friction. Our question for today, should traditional masculine norms and behaviours be celebrated rather than demonised? Recently, the question of what it is to be a man has dominated conversations in the media, in schools and among policy makers. Many have described a crisis of masculinity fuelled by concern over controversial figures like Andrew Tate and the rise of incel culture. But beyond the headlines, there's a real tension between the way masculinity has been discussed and the way it is experienced by young men growing up in this climate.

Niobe Way 01:06

I've been accused many times, Richard, just so you know this that I've abandoned feminism by focusing on boys and men, and that infuriates me, because I say I'm a feminist, and that's why I focus on boys and young men. I don't care about one type of human more than another. I care about humans.

Richard Reeves 01:20

Someone who says the mere fact of working on boys and men, pointing on these issues and trying to find solutions to these problems means your anti women, is not our friend. And anybody on the other side who says that in order to kind of restore like men and bring them flourishing, we have to roll back the tide on women and turn against women. I think both of those views have to be completely discounted.

Tara Constantine 01:41

Joining us to discuss this are Richard Reeves, a writer, social scientist and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Dr Niobe Way, Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University Steinhart, and author of Rebels With a Cause - Reimagining Boys, Ourselves and Our Culture. We are also joined by our resident UCL mediator, Dr Melanie Garson. Melanie, what are you anticipating from today's discussion?

Melanie Garson 02:07

Well, Hi Tara, it's good to be back again. Today I'm really interested, because here we have two guests whose paths have crossed, but they've never actually had the chance to talk about some of these issues directly to each other, similar to a previous podcast episode where we had people that actually knew each other. But in this case, I'm interested to see whether there are any preconceptions possibly that come to the surface. How does that affect the conversation, and will it actually lead to postures that inhibit possibly disagreeing well. What about you?

Tara Constantine 02:45

I'm hoping we have a productive discussion about what masculinity means, and possibly get a more nuanced take on the toxic masculinity debate. Okay, let's hear from our guests, Richard, the question we're asking today is, should traditional masculine norms and behaviours be celebrated rather than demonised?

Richard Reeves 03:03

Yeah, they should be celebrated, but I suspect that a big part of our debate is going to boil down to what we think those norms are. But I think part of the problem actually has been to take traditional masculine norms around, say, protection, a desire to protect, or a desire to provide, or perhaps to take some risks as kind of inherently unwelcome and undesirable. And I think that that has led to a pathologisation of the lived experience of too many men, right? And I think that that's created a real gap in our discourse. To put it really bluntly, I think that the line of thinking that we should demonise traditional masculinity ends up we ask the question of you know, what's wrong with men, rather than what challenges do men face?

Tara Constantine 03:45

And Niobe can I ask you to do the same, summarise your position on our question.

Niobe Way 03:49

Okay, so first of all, I want to say a couple of things, because it's important in the discussion, which I'm really excited about actually. Richard and I agree on one fundamental thing that's important to start this conversation off, we both have noticed that boys and men are suffering, and we care about their suffering, and we want to help them to thrive. How I would answer that question was basically informed by what boys and men have told me. So I've been listening to boys and young men in my research since 1987 and I would say the answer to the question from the boys perspective was it depends on what you mean by masculinity. So often times what gets defined as masculinity is being an asshole, basically. And boys definitely don't want to value being an asshole. Nobody wants to value being an asshole. When boys talk about what has been deemed masculine, that's positive, stoicism, courage, protection, responsibility, autonomy, I mean all those wonderful aspects that have been deemed masculine, but this is where they have an unusual response, which has surprised a lot of people, is they also talk about valuing what's been traditionally feminised, which is sensitivity, relationships, empathy, being able to do what we call in psychology, theory of mind, being able to understand the other persons perspective, yes, there are certain aspects of masculinity that should be demonised. Unprovoked aggression, I've never talked to a boy that thought that was a positive quality. They value the parts of themselves that are obviously according to anyone positive, but they teach us one thing, and this is where I think we may disagree, Richard and I. They see what we deem masculine and feminine as not masculine and feminine is not masculine and feminine, it's just human capacities. In fact, when we make it masculine and feminine, we miss the part that actually wanting autonomy, being stoic, being courageous, protecting is not a gendered phenomenon, It's a human phenomenon, human capacity. Same with being sensitive and soft, it's a human capacity. And we need both our hard and soft sides to thrive. When you're aggressive, when someone's attacking you, that's a positive thing. So I would even say even aggression, according to boys, is not necessarily bad. It's unprovoked aggression that is bad. I would actually like to move away a little bit from a gendered analysis of this and more thinking about what are the qualities that we want to promote in boys and men that enhance their natural capacities but also allow them to identify as a man in the way they want to identify as a man.

Tara Constantine 06:08

Thank you for that, both of you. I think you've laid the groundwork for a really fruitful discussion, and I'm looking forward to see what exercises Melanie guides you through. Melanie, over to you to lead us through the discussion.

Melanie Garson 06:19

I want to just start by asking each of you to ask the other, what is the driving force for her to become engaged with this topic?

Richard Reeves 06:30

You've been working on this issue, as you said Niobe for a very for a very long time. And I think your kind of work with boys in schools I think it's really, really interesting and powerful. You probably agree with the term feminist as a label,

Niobe Way 06:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Reeves 06:44

Maybe that will wait for another day. As a feminist, progressive academic, why are you so interested in boys?

Niobe Way 06:53

I love the question. I love the way you tweaked it Richard. Because of my feminism. My feminism is about looking at power structure, what we call, in psychology, the ecological context of human development, so looking at how power structure shapes kids lives. And I've always been interested, and I started off being interested actually working-class kids. And I was fascinated by, we weren't listening to working class kids, and we were basing all our whole notions about being human on middle, upper class, white kids basically. Part of my training, I was a graduate student, I was in a public high school in the late 80s in Boston. I started here boys obsessively talking about their friendships. They were talking about their desire for friendships, their struggle with finding what eventually was called deep secret friendships. I was totally stunned, because I thought, wait a minute. I thought you were going to talk about girlfriends or teachers or parents. I think you'll resonate with this, Richard. I became fascinated by why we didn't look at boys friendships, we didn't think that boys wanted emotionally intimate friendships. We didn't even think they had real friendships. And so when I talked about doing research on boys, people would often times say, when I wrote a book about it Deep Secrets, they would say, oh, that book's gonna be really short. And I'd say, why is it gonna be short? They say, well, that's not really a boy thing. And I'd be like, what? But I really became fascinated by why we weren't telling that story, and that was as a feminist, and I say this because I don't interpret feminism as caring about girls more than boys. I think of it as understanding how stereotypes right, get in the way of our capacity to connect with each other. And I was recognising that a masculine stereotype was getting in the way for boys to connect with other boys, and for girls to connect with boys. And then we got into this gender divide that intensified when it was boys versus girls. And I've been accused many times, Richard just so you know this that I've abandoned feminism by focusing on boys and men, and that infuriates me, because I say I'm a feminist, and that's why I focus on boys and young men. I don't care about one type of human more than another, I care about humans. I'm trying to understand why at the root of that they are suffering. That's really my question. Okay, now I'm gonna ask you the question. Not only what drew you to this work, but I would be curious in also your relationship to feminism, because I think that was, I disagreed with you most in your review of book, is that I saw the guy was being put a little bit into this feminist category that wasn't my version of feminism. So, you know, I mean, like hating on men and hating masculinity. Are you kidding me?

Richard Reeves 09:14

Yeah, it's interesting, though, because I knew you were interested in class, but I didn't know that in the sense of this, roots are the kind of power structures that create narratives and stereotypes that can inhibit people, and I think that's a shared thing. So I did a lot of work on social mobility and economic inequality at Brookings, and then before that, over in the UK, and I just kept running across these data points showing how just economically, socially, a lot of men were struggling, and it was particularly men from lower income backgrounds. And in the US context, it was black men, especially. And so one of the findings that was a sort of stop you in your tracks finding, for me, was that all of the black, white gap in upward mobility in the US is explained by the lack of upward mobility of black men. And I just kept seeing other things. When the pandemic hit, the college enrol rate for men dropped seven times more than it did for women. The suicide rate, as you know, is four times higher rising, it's risen by almost a third among young men just since 2010. And then I'm raising boys, my boys are all now in their 20s, i'v got three sons, all in their 20s. And so we're having that conversation through a lot of these cultural moments when really gender and gender politics has really come back up in a new way. And so it's almost like shuttling between the sort of appendix two data tables on my desk at the Brookings Institution, and then the discussions around the dinner table about, well, why are people calling us toxic now, kind of thing with my sons, that kind of led me to think that there wasn't a good enough conversation happening, in my view, that was like empirical.

Melanie Garson 10:43

Thank you. Going back to thinking about the topic and thinking a little bit of what you heard. What is it that you heard from Niobe's position, that you feel she needs out of her point of view, or she needs out of her position.

Richard Reeves 11:02

Her needs? Wow, that's good question. One of the reasons why I think I have a lot of empathy with nobody's position is it's not dissimilar to the position that I had myself until a certain time ago. And I suspect that the need is to combine genuine empathy with the revealed suffering of many boys and young men. The view that the differences that exist between genders are largely, and I think you might even say, like, entirely socialised. Rather than in any way innate, and I think that's the difference between us. And I also hear, and it's interesting to sort of hear you talk about a lot about these different approaches that they have, and almost, I think, an ideal world of coming close to androgyny in the sense of just those gender differences just largely dissolving away in favour of a broader humanism. So I think there's a need there to square this clear evidence of boys suffering with a long run commitment to a world which is close to, at least ethically and androgynous world, whether, in a sense, the question just ceases to be a relevant question at all, because we're just raising good humans. Is that fair?

Melanie Garson 12:10

You took the words out of my mouth, maybe I was going to ask, do you feel that Richard has understood that need?

Niobe Way 12:18

So first of all, one of the struggles I have with the way that you, and you have a very large following. Framing the issue is that girls are suffering too, and non-gender binary kids are suffering too. And if you look at the data, boys and men, even though I study boys and men, are louder in their suffering, because they die by suicide, and they kill each other and they kill other people. If you look at eating disorders, you look at cutting, you look at substance abuse. The question I want to raise to you, Richard, is I want to frame it to try to diminish this divide that's really getting terrible, is this, we're all suffering, but we're not all suffering for the same reasons. Second thing, this is a point of contention, I think for us. I always feel, and I would say, the feminists too, right my community, we always try to flip the hierarchy. So we always try to put our group on top and the other group on bottom, and then try to justify why we put them on the bottom. So the idea is, it's, it's, you know, who's better, who's suffering less? Nobody wants to be on the bottom of a hierarchy. I'm sure if you listen to Trump supporters, they would say the exact same thing, don't put me on the bottom of a hierarchy, like, don't, don't treat me as if I'm not fully human. And so I just want to stop flipping the hierarchy. Then finally, yes, it is true. I think the major way we disagree is because I listen to and watch four-year-olds and five-year-olds, I'm a developmental psychologist, that's my training. And in those first six-seven years, you see amazingly high rates of cooperation, caring, behaviour, curiosity in each other. And then we grow up, and I'm going to be crude for a second, we grow up in an asshole culture, you know, where it's very anti-social. I'm writing about the anti-social nature of our culture right now. Or we die by suicide, or we commit violence, or various things, we come into the world with beautiful capacities to get along, relational intelligence, emotional intelligence. We come into the world, why do girls end up having more of those by the time they're adult than boys? It's not natural, It's cultural that we socialise girls to be able to do that more than boys, and then boys struggle to do it. Four-year-old boys have unbelievable capacity to read the human emotion and ask questions about it, you can probably see that in your own kids. In the fact, I would say, biologically, we're caring, cooperative and curious. Obviously, there'd be gender differences in some capacities for social emotional needs and capacities. There's more gender differences within groups than across groups.

Melanie Garson 14:38

Richard, Niobe's identified areas where she feels that you disagree. Would you say that those are the correct areas that you disagree on? Do you feel that's been fully understood, or is there something you'd like to respond to there?

Richard Reeves 14:54

I agree that this is not some sort of suffering, more suffering, etc. I mean, I go out of my my way to say that there are many ways in which kind of women and girls are clearly suffering more than men and boys, and that's very contextual at like which country, which issue and so on. The motivation for me to kind of focus my attention right now on this is around boys and men, is because there is an asymmetry in just the institutions and the kind of awareness I am a huge supporter of the work of all the groups that draw attention to the challenges of women. I think that there is also a case for drawing attention to the challenges of men. Someone who says the mere fact of working on boys and men and pointing on these issues and trying to find solutions to these problems means your anti women is not our friend. And anybody on the other side who says that in order to kind of restore like men and bring in flourishing, we have to roll back the tide on women and turn against women. I think both of those views have to be completely discounted, but they are very prominent on social media and in our polarised politics right now, that zero sum framing, and I'm really troubled to see a rise in zero sum thinking among younger people. It's probably a difference of waiting in like how far these differences are naturally occurring, as opposed to socialise, as opposed to an absolute one. So neither of us are dumb enough to take the absolutist position, neither is going to do that. And I'm putting more weight on the externalising tendencies around mental health as coming from biology. We've just published stuff on drowning rates, teenage boys drowning at like, five to six times higher rates than girls right now. I don't think that can all be socialisation, and I've also seen evidence that there's huge differences in I don't know if it's unprovoked aggression, but like among one-year olds and two year olds, big gender gaps. The reason I get quite frustrated with this debate about nature and nurture, and I suspect now, as I say this, you might end up agreeing to say that there are some natural differences, say, in risk taking behaviour, doesn't make culture less important. It makes culture more important, because then it's the job of culture to say, like, if there's a tendency among boys or men right to be higher risk takers, to say, Okay, well, given that, how do we channel that? Rather than saying, well, that's just socialised anyway, It's because they got given the wrong toys or whatever, and so no, and I don't think that's good enough, and I don't think it ends up serving anybody very well.

Melanie Garson 17:14

How has this conversation now bringing us back to what the original point of discussion was sort of influence all your thinking on should some of the traditional masculine norms of behaviours be celebrated or demonised? So I'll let you respond, and then think about how it links back to that.

Niobe Way 17:35

One of the things to think about with your one-and-a-half-year-old example, and I've noticed this with four year olds and sitting and watching three and four year olds of the last year. Do I see gender stereotypic behaviour in the classroom? Absolutely. The boys are more likely to be fighting with the dinosaurs, and the girls are more likely to wear frilly little things and pretend they're princesses. However, the boys are also more likely to play in the kitchen, and in fact, they a lot of times they play in the kitchen. And they also play a game, which amazed me, called Baby and Daddy, where each boy gets to play a baby, and then the daddy, you know, nurtures them, and they hug them. I mean, it was like, unbelievable. And the girls will also be the ones that will, often times, at least, you know, this is anecdotal, will also be the ones that know a lot about dinosaurs. So even though they don't play the fighting dinosaur. They know a lot about them. So the boys will turn to them when they want to know what type of dinosaurs are, different dinosaurs. Then you see counter stereotypic behaviour. So it goes to your point, Richard. I mean, it actually goes to your point. I truly believe, after watching kids and listening to kids for so long, for almost four decades now, I think we're just born with different capacities, born with the potential to be, you know, a devil and potential to be an angel. And you know, and are boys more likely to be risk taking? Maybe, maybe testosterone has to do with it, I'm not really sure. I think the part I've just learned from you, which I think is a is something we do agree on. I would say we come out with the potential to do all sorts of things. And it depends on the context in terms of whether you're more gender stereotypic or not. It doesn't have to be inevitable, as you said. So the idea is we can nurture boys and girls to value both their hard and their soft sides, not just their hard sides. So even if you're right that boys are naturally more risk taking, let's give that to you. So we could nurture the good types of risk taking and diminish the bad types of risk taking with boys and girls. Whenever people give me examples of gender stereotypic behaviour, it's never compelling to me, because it's like, we all can produce gender stereotypic behaviour, but we also do its opposite. And I think finally, with the with the culture thing, I think making a cultural argument is fundamentally, profoundly optimistic. You know, it's the culture that makes us so. So that means we can change it. We can change a culture to nourish right, our capacity to care, cooperate and be curious with each other, with boys and girls and non-gender conforming kids. I mean, biology gets us into trouble, because then we think, once we have it, you know, it's hard to get rid of it, but neuroplasticity and all that whole field, you know, comes in with saying, actually you're shaped by your environment. And finally, I would say, Richard changed something in my head. I became more open minded about something, when he used the risk-taking example, I was about to push back, because I know a lot of that early childhood data, you know, that doesn't suggest gender differences. The only gender difference I can find consistently is that boys are oftentimes a little bit more able to think spatially, and girls are a little bit better with languages. But even if you're going to get the point that they're more risk taking, I don't need to make an argument that it's cultural, because even if it's true, I'm making the same argument. You know that you could create boys that take positive risks, not negative risks, just like you can do it with the girls. So I did change my argument Melanie, as a result of what Richard said.

Melanie Garson 20:41

Thank you, and I'm sure Richard would like to respond to that and perhaps think about what you've heard from Niobe and again, how does that feed back to the original premise of our conversation?

Richard Reeves 20:52

I actually wrote a biography of John Stuart Mill many years ago, the liberal philosopher, and he had this really beautiful line where he said that when you're disagreeing with somebody, the picture you should have in your head is of somebody trying to get to the top of the same mountain, but choosing a different route. That's really become kind of clearer to me in this kind of conversation, how much Niobe your work is really kind of motivated by real concern about kind of male suffering. What we're talking about here is like, what's the balance we're going to strike now between really leaning hard against gender stereotypes, which can trap boys and girls and so on, to the extent that there are remaining differences, and some of them are natural, to make them pro social, to channel them in pro social directions, like, as you said, positive risk taking, etc, and to celebrate them where appropriate, where they are pro social, right? So if women are, on average, a little bit more empathetic, a little bit better at some of these kind of social dynamics, which it looks to me they are, hallelujah. In the same way that if there are some things on the other side, a man more risk taking or whatever protectiveness, so long as we're not trapping anybody in them. Robert Bly wrote this book, Iron John, which got a lot of heat. I have a lot of disagreements with this book, it's an old book now. But he said people are worried about using masculine and feminine as terms, and the reason they're afraid of it is they think some moral carpenter is going to come along and make boxes out of them within which to trap us. We are afraid of boxes, and rightly so. I think about my own sons and how different they are on these different dimensions, or myself, my wife and others, and the glorious diversity of all of it. But as far as the question is concerned, look if they are traditional male norms and behaviours that to some extent will remain even after we've done all the kind of cultural changes, because there are a little bit more innate for boys and men. What I've incorporated into my answer now is, I think this social element that Niobe is bringing good risk taking appropriate, non-dominant forms of protectiveness, then hallelujah and the same the other way around.

Niobe Way 22:54

Okay, I want to answer the question too now, the original question. Basically, my argument is consistent with what Richard's saying, and with the tweak on it, what I've learned from boys and young men, we need to value the traditionally hard, I call them hard sides, so they've been masculinised. So thinking has been seen as masculine and feeling as feminine. And the reality is thinking and feeling it doesn't have a gender identity. It is human capacity and need. To me, it's not just celebrating the good sides of masculinity, It's recognising that what we have deemed masculine is not masculine at all. It's a human capacity. Whether or not boys are more likely to do something in another doesn't reflect what we our human capacity is. We're in a culture, I call it boy culture in my rebels book boy, meaning it's a stereotype of a boy, it's not a real boy, it's a boy who only values his hard side. We're an entire modern culture that only values our hard side, whether our definition of maturity, success is all about valuing autonomy over connection, self over other, me, over we, et cetera, an entire culture that values the hard side and not the soft side, I would say, yes, the positive, pro-social aspects of traditional masculinity should be celebrated, and so too, the traditional positive aspects of traditional femininity, with its stereotype being sensitive, soft, relational, you know, responsive. We hate our soft sides. We think it's lame, we think it's girly and gay, which is an insult. So the idea is we have to value both sides of our humanity, and it's ultimately, Richard's point, our pro-social qualities should always be celebrated, and our anti-social qualities should always, always be troubled.

Melanie Garson 24:33

Richard, I think I could give you a minute to respond to that.

Richard Reeves 24:37

Yeah, I think actually, we're going to end up loudly agreeing about one thing at least, which is that we want a society where one of these more stereotypically feminine, stereotypically masculine, and I would say somewhat innate, is better than the other. For me to say, actually, look, if guys are, on average, a bit more risk taking and they have a slightly more protective impulse, that does not mean that those are better values, than the ones that are more stereotypically feminine, or the other way round. Barack Obama said recently, we've done a much better job of saying what's wrong with young men than with what's right with them. And I do think we've got to do a bit of counterbalancing here too, so that we don't think that gender equality requires the destruction of traditional feminine values or the destruction of traditionally masculine values. We've got to have both.

Niobe Way 25:25

So remember that girls and women have a history of being pathologized, and I know you're going to agree with me, Richard, we can't flip the hierarchy. That's what the, you know, the woman's discussion is doing, and that's what the men's discussion is doing. We're trying to figure out who's on top, who's on bottom, and boys and young men, ironically, are asking us to stop it, to stop flipping the hierarchy and putting their hard qualities on top. Boys say things like, it might be nice to be a girl, because then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. They want us to value both sides of who they are, and girls want that too. When we talk about valuing, we have to understand that girls and women have felt undervalued their whole history. So the fact that boys are now being challenged, a lot of women feel like it's your comeuppance. I'm speaking as a feminist now, you can't flip the hierarchy. Nobody wants to be on the bottom. Once you do that, you're going to piss people off, which is what's happening with young men in this country. Now, Richard, I assume you agree with what I just

Richard Reeves 26:17

said. I do agree with it, but I have, I have a question back to you, what then do you think of the slogan 'the future is female'?

Niobe Way 26:24

Oh, it's ridiculous. Any kind of language that puts one group of people on top of another people is toxic. Anytime we assume that somebody represents human, it used to be white, privileged people that we saw as more human than all other people. We have a history of doing that. The reality is is we have to stop it. We're grown-ups. We're all suffering. We live in an anti-social culture. My new book for Harvard is called Our Social Nature in an Anti-Social Culture, a five-part story. We're social animals, and we grew up in a culture that doesn't nourish that, especially for boys and men. And we have to actually nourish both sides of our humanity.

Melanie Garson 26:59

There we go. But I think we have to bring it to a close, and I'm going to hand it over to Tara. Tara, did this conversation meet your expectations?

Tara Constantine 27:09

I think it exceeded my expectations. I definitely think it's given me some food for thought about my own preconceptions coming towards this discussion. Very briefly, both of you, if you could just come up with, we'll start with Richard, one or two key things that you take away about disagreeing well around this issue.

Richard Reeves 27:27

Assume good faith in the person that you're disagreeing with and that they're trying to get to the same place by a different route. And I think we've captured that spirit here. You can disagree quite strongly about certain things, but not assume that as a result of that disagreement, that other person is somehow badly motivated. And I would say the other thing is that just understanding a little bit more about the background to someone's approach to this issue, because you will get these very interesting stories from it. And I've really learned from that. And I've been in other meetings where someone said, like, how did you get to this issue? And somehow understanding that, a) I think it humanizes it, dare I say it, it brings in some of the more stereotypically feminine aspects of the conversation, which are more about empathy and understanding, and doesn't take away but make sure we don't overweight just the intellectual side of the conversation.

Niobe Way 28:16

The question that I found the most powerful for me is, how did you come to this work, and listening to Richard talk about his kids and his family, and that made him, in some ways, Richard, it humanised you. And then even our residents around being interested in social class and income inequality, immediately then I see myself in you when you said that, so that I thought, oh okay, interesting, we share some similarities and background. Once you see the similarities, it allows you to see the differences in a softer light. So Richard kept on saying something that I really disagree with, that men are more likely to be protective, and I think of single mothers as being very protective. But I realised in some sense that was irrelevant, because the larger point that we actually agreed on was much more important, and so I actually was able to privilege my disagreements, right? Because the similarity made me want to agree with him. I just said, Let it go, Niobe, because it's going to lead us into a place that's not very productive. I mean, I've never spoken to Richard, and we've been pitted against each other now for a while. It's just interesting the impact, quite humanly, of actually talking to someone direct, direct, where we see each other. And then I finally have to say, having a moderator is very helpful. You even cut me off from interrupting and saying something to Richard, which is actually really good for good communication. I cut people off all the time, it's the way my family engages. But it's important to let someone say what they're going to say right before you jump in. The fairness of your questions, making sure each person started differently. You started with a different person each time, so that I don't feel like I'm being dissed. Melanie, you did a fabulous job, your questions and your just general tone, your sort of soft, gentle tone, soften the conversation.

Richard Reeves 29:59

I agree. I think one of the things that I've learned, I mean, tone does really matter. One aspect of more masculine forms of interaction that I don't admire, that's sort of combative for the sake of it winning the argument, to win the argument. And I love what you just said about leaving stuff on the table. There is a tendency in academia especially, and I do think it's fair to say this is more of a masculine weakness to just say, okay, let's find the three out of 100 things we disagree about, yeah, and spend all our time on that.

Tara Constantine 30:29

Thank you both very much. And it's been a really great discussion from our point of view. And I'm sure the students are going to love to hear from you. So Melanie, we've taken a moment to reflect on the discussion we've just had. What do you think about it?

Melanie Garson 30:42

Well, there was a lot to reflect on. It was super surprising. I've got so much to say, but what are your top takeaways from this conversation?

Tara Constantine 30:49

So I think it was really just a masterclass in what we're trying to do here, at Disagreeing Well. I think there was a lot of nuance to the disagreement and what they came to at the end of the discussion, and I also think they really took a lot of the noise away from the wider debate that people are having around toxic masculinity, and I think it's really given me a lot of food for thought about my preconceptions around what it means to be a man and how we've sort of framed this wider debate.

Melanie Garson 31:15

That's a good thing, because I did say we went into the conversation, I said one of the things I was worried about was preconceptions, and it was interesting how they were able to take some of that away. I would say there was still a lot of division, but what they were able to do was find, actually some commonality in the goal that they want to get to decide that actually it wasn't worthwhile fixating on some of the wider points of difference, although that's not to say they didn't think they were important, but actually that an overarching solution space was more important, and I think that's something that gets lost a lot when some of our real polarising discussions today. It's easier to get hung up on points of difference than go to that place where might not be perfect, but there's some points of commonality.

Tara Constantine 32:08

And I think I really enjoyed how reflective they were and how they were really able to see each other and see where they came from.

Melanie Garson 32:14

It's true that the power of a good question, but that power of actually asking somebody why?

Tara Constantine 32:25

Thank you to our guests, Richard Reeves and Dr Niobe Way, and to you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the discussion and picked up some tips for disagreeing well. If you have, please let us know how you use them. You can drop us a line at podcast@ucl.ac.uk, you can find out more about UCL's Disagreeing Well campaign on the UCL website, or follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky using hashtag #UCLDisagreeingWell. Please do subscribe wherever you receive your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Final thanks to Students' Union UCL and the UCL podcast team. This is a Research Podcasts production.