Normative Male Alexithymia: a conversation with Ronald F. Levant

[@robertalenrichter]

Ellie Anderson streams an infectious enthusiasm which always makes me feel better.

[@005Turk]

she seems so excited to talk with him!

[@billmiller9145]

Pure gold! As a childhood trauma survivor, this was ingrained in me from the time I started elementary school. Now at age 64, I'm learning to feel my feelings AND be able to identify them. I feel like I'm finally getting into that functioning male mindset. Thank you for a very informative discussion!

[@jimesalinas4580]

Overthink raised my bar too high and now I cant listen to other podcasts without thinking about how you would have approached the topic ❤

[@ercano4799]

Sincerity spontaneity and sophistication all together have made me watch the conversation with full of surprise and joy. Thanks a lot.

[@billmiller9145]

Thank you for clarifying Stoicism, it's NOT about shoving one emotions down, but more about managing one's emotions despite people, places and things.

[@jerrypeters1157]

Thank you for sharing this interview. I'm in my fifties and still processing my traditional, conservative upbringing. I innately wasn't interested in group sports or machinery. This automatically put me on the social periphery. I was creative, and music seemed to be the most allowable public expression of deep emotion within my religious community. I also learned to channel my most personal emotions in prayer, mostly at night. So, i was use to living without a listening response to my greatest heart-felt expressions as a human being. I was jealous of kids in 80s TV shows with Dads who basically counselled their kids. I felt like i was in a black and white tv show working jobs with mostly men and in a color TV show working jobs with mostly women. After journaling through depression i've felt, i realized i struggled to articulate my emotions. I looked up the emotion wheel and forced my self to come up with personal experiences of each emotion listed. When I started therapy after a devastating loss in my personal life, i warned my therapist in our first session that i struggle to communicate emotionally - because i feared i would be misrepresented when evaluated. All this to say, I'm working through my own growing resentment as i learn about how my environment/society stunted my emotional/relational life just because i happen to be male. And when pronouns became a prevalent matter on social media, i thought, I'm "he/him" among my liberal-minded friends, but i'd consider "they/them" in public just to not be associated with toxic masculinity. So, my relationship with myself has become complicated. Lol.

[@saturdaysequalsyouth]

When I was growing up sports was the only place where it was even remotely acceptable for boys to cry.

[@SnarkyOverload]

Loved Dr Levant's point that whilst women have been forced to change, perhaps standard social rhetoric has suggested men should NOT change, which is a really interesting point to consider when thinking about gender equality in general. Fascinating discussion as usual!

[@valerianrapillard-wo9fw]

This channel is a gold mine

[@DavidJohnson-vd7cu]

In your 2023 podcast on Continental philosophy, you mentioned that you read 60 philosophy books in the process of getting your Ph.D at Emory. A video or two outlining the 60 works would be informative. A list of the works should be offered in the notes and/or transcript. Preferred translations/editions would be helpful as well. Thank you.

[@robertalenrichter]

Perhaps a bit too much to ask for a detailed list, but I've also often wondered what is considered indispensable in the infinity of material and the shortage of time. Which, of course, would vary a bit according to college and country. How much does a philosopher have to know about Spinoza? Does basic knowledge really imply understanding? Where is the cut-off point of commonality? I guess the only way to get a sense of it would be to go through the process oneself.

[@PlixlyPrincess]

This was such an interesting topic and conversation! Thank you for sharing the intervju, love the mutual enthusiasm!

[@Mika-ld9fl]

Thank you for this interesting conversation! Perfect for me, as my undergrad consisted for a large part of philosophy and as I'm doing a master's in social psychology now. Dr. Levant writes truly valuable papers and your interview was a great opportunity to hear a bit more about the story behind his research. 😊

[@ulysseh4598]

What a fascinating conversation. It really hit home! I didn't know the guest but he was great and his work seems very important, loved the anecdotes. Using men's competitive "nature" to have them find more words for emotions lol, I would have fallen right in 😭 And it seems so obvious but I never heard put quite this plainly that while women gender expectations progressed tremendously in decades, men's have pretty much remained the same.

[@isakmloyeni920]

I wish i could glimpse the inner psychological and emotional life of people living in the future.

[@richarddehn4552]

I appreciate you

[@jimesalinas4580]

😂

[@madzjelly500]

Thankyou, this helped me understand my male relative who has aspergers better

[@morqesahar]

So useful, thank you.

[@sharpsheep4148]

I feel like I am really good at expressing my emotions. Happy: Mmmm Sad: Hmm Scared: mmmmm Angry: MMMmm Confused: Mmm? I might be the exception I suppose.

[@rogerz3624]

My primary issue with this video is that it actually reinforces Normative Male Alexithymia rather than helping men past it. The core social problem driving this is the empathy gap! I see lots of families raising their sons to be expressive and then they get out into the world and every social message given to them is that nobody cares and they need to just deal with it. If a problem affects women then it's considered a social problem and everyone needs to bend over backwards to fix it. If a problem affects men, then it's a personal problem that they need to deal with on their own. This is the exact emotional framework in which they use to discuss this topic... and most of the men out there who don't feel comfortable expressing emotion feel uncomfortable because they know deep in their bones that society at large doesn't cares about them. Even when they start talking about the issue in depth... Dr. Anderson only seems to care how this affects women by forcing them to do "emotional labor". The reason all these boys are moving towards men who champion negative aspects of masculinity is because of this issue. You cannot just point your finger and these boys and tell them how bad they are... you have to start by showing them that you actually care.

[@Anson120]

Severe clinical depression/multiple mental health conditions (neuro divergent), and my potent SNRI kinda gives me Alexithymia. But , if you get me around animals and nature I a bowl of mush. I think I am tired of how society (and people) works too.

[@TurkAllah]

Interesting topic

[@nathanrohde3440]

Expressing vulnerability makes you a target.

[@robertalenrichter]

An interesting conversation which couldn't help but make me think about my father, who clearly had difficulty articulating his emotions; my mother was certainly an extreme example of a "hermeneutic worker", though I think it was a little more complicated than that. Life is always a bit more complicated than that. Anyway, aside from wartime trauma suffered on the German side, which is easy to make out as a contributing factor, there was another aspect to his character which I wonder about. Namely, that he was highly creative and definitely smart, yet this didn't extend to language. There was a kind of anti-intellectualism. Perhaps there are two different modalities to this male alexithymia -- one is to become hyper-rational and use words as a kind of defensive weapon; the other, an inner rejection of the notion of articulation itself. Words can be dangerous.

[@aosidh]

Excited to listen to this! My first (perhaps unfair) thought is that Ohio is a great place to study depression 😹

[@dilbyjones]

Fastest hour !

[@yclept9]

Women's place is covered nicely in Choreographies an interview of Christie MacDonald and Derrida, look at the first 5 pages or so. Feminism has been marching in place for 100 years for a reason. Showed up in Diacritics long ago and has been republished in various places, and is somewhere on the web as a pdf.

[@larss4119]

This is why we can’t have nice things.

[@juanmontoya9890]

you both are great? are you taking phd mentees?

[@76Terrell]

The philosopher Erin Manning who is focused on valuing Neurodiverse modes of knowledge production would argue that neurotypicality and whiteness are also mediums of normative alexithymia, I would be interested in a more intersectional account of this phenomena

[@IsomerSoma]

What a salad of words only to express nonesensical identitarian political beliefs. What a sad state - wokes versus manosphere. Both idiots.

[@TheCALMInstitute]

There’s an inherent bias in how we’re talking about this topic - and it’s the idea that normative “female” emotional expression is the right one, but normative “male” ways are not. To translate emotions to actions or behaviors is a much more integrative perspective on them, and I feel like we could just as easily be telling the story about how women have problems DOING anything with or about their feelings, and get stuck only talking. I say this as an emotionally expressive man who spent twenty years married to a woman who cannot articulate her feelings.

[@michaelsteven1090]

Stoics will be not watching..

[@amellirizarry9503]

Nobody cares about their opinion anyway 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@grreeeeee]

you mean men who have internalized the capitalist's wet dream of a self-driven working individual cog, protestant to the core, as ascetic whipping boys to themselves? QQ

[@tonegoober]

@@amellirizarry9503i hope they can manage to accept that 🙏

[@jamoyky1]

Wait, am I missing something? What’s wrong with stoicism?

[@grreeeeee]

@@jamoyky1 it's very popular in the productivity-idiot-space, bro stuff. like a joe rogan type that has fundamentally misunderstood it and enjoys just the tip of casual racism.

[@pipersolanas3322]

I lowkey think this stuff about "men can't express emotion that's so sad for them" is equivocating to women's historic oppression like its MRA nonsense

[@Jack-ns9sz]

I lowkey think you're the only one equivocating that and you're too intellectually dishonest to just own it.

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

I don't take this to be Dr. Levant's point--it's much more nuanced than this

[@jimesalinas4580]

But at the end of the interview he talks about tradicional masculinity being unadaptative -not sad- for men in a context in which gender roles having shifted for women.

[@LoneWulf278]

I understand how it can appear that way. But most of the time, people are talking about this issue in good faith and out of genuine desire to help society. But I definitely know of instances that gave me that impression, so I won’t fault you for seeing it in other conversations.

[@DemetriosKongas]

As a result of their socialisation to be tough, men have a difficulty in expressing their soft feelings rather feelings in general. E.g. they express their anger quite easily. So is alexithymia the proper term?

[@ethangroat8333]

Jordan Peterson is nothing like Tate. Peterson doesn't advicate for non-negotiable fixed gender norms. His advice is far more nuanced than that.

[@chooseadventure]

“Is it ok if I call you, Ron?” - How do you expect him to answer that question other than a “sure”? I would have addressed him as Dr Levant unless and until he specially asked me to use his first name.

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

We'd already communicated using first names via email--this was a formality. Also, in that case he should also refer to his interlocutor as Dr. Anderson instead of Ellie? :)

[@chooseadventure]

Seniority matters IMHO. You’re talking to professor emeritus. Anyway, I’m just saying what I’d have done. You do you.

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

it would be very weird for one college professor to refer to another as Dr. or Professor while the other one refers to them by their first name, at least in an American academic context. Regardless of rank within the professorship, professors are colleagues.

[@Normal-u5w]

The problem with "traditional masculinity" is that it was wrapped up in Christian morality in providing boundaries for those who dont deserve.. Let the Khan and his lack of feelings enter

[@ggauche3465]

I was disappointed Ellie to see you being so fawning and obsequious.

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

admiration and respect ≠ fawning

[@ggauche3465]

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy I completely agree. You reminded me of someone at a Taytay concert. I don't know you except from these vids but never expect that.