"What Can A Man Do?" with Christine Emba
The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum
4.7 • 855 Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It seems like everywhere you look, men are struggling to find a sense of meaning and purpose. In fact, men are just getting kind of weird. On the other side of the equation, many women say they can't find a "good man" who meets their expectations.
Enter Christine Emba, Washington Post columnist and author of the 2022 book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. In a recent WaPo essay, she discusses the crisis of masculinity and where men are looking for models of masculinity, from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate and beyond. In this episode, we chat about her article, her book, the past and present mating economy, and the evolution of her own thinking since her college days and the emergence of "the Princeton mom."
(Leave it to her to ask the questions Matt Walsh doesn't.)
In the bonus, we talk about dating apps — everyone's favorite gripe — in addition to the resurgence of matchmaking and how people got dates and met people in the pre-app world.
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WHO IS CHRISTINE EMBA?
Christine Emba is a writer for The Washington Post's Opinions section. She is also the author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, which challenges the narrative of sex positivity. Prior to joining the staff of The Washington Post, Emba was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. She grew up in Virginia and earned an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.
Follow her substack here: https://bit.ly/3Z8nJ49
Read her article, "Men are lost. Here's a map out of the wilderness." here: https://wapo.st/45KoHX4
Get her book "Rethinking Sex: A Provocation" here: https://amzn.to/3EvpU8A
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HOUSEKEEPING
Get your ticket to The Free Press debate with Grimes, Sarah Haider, Louise Perry and Anna Khachiyan: https://www.thefp.com/debates
Meet me at The Unspeakeasy Denver Retreat on September 30th: https://bit.ly/3qRWcaz
Join me at our sanity/real spa retreat in the Poconos with guest speaker Kat Rosenfield: https://bit.ly/3R8IKtL
Can't come to the full, one-day retreat on September 30th? Join us for a co-ed party that same evening! https://bit.ly/45oCp1n
Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v
Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My friendships with, you know, progressive feminists, it's kind of funny in that, like, you know, I have the response of, oh, men. |
| 0:14.8 | We should give them electroshock therapy. Men, I don't believe that they have a problem. |
| 0:18.2 | And at the same time, women are like, oh, they're no good men. |
| 0:21.4 | Men are in their flop era. |
| 0:23.0 | What's wrong with all of the men? |
| 0:25.1 | I can't find anyone. |
| 0:26.7 | And so it's like, well, maybe there's something going on then. |
| 0:33.0 | Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. |
| 0:34.9 | I'm your host, Megan Dow. |
| 0:36.7 | Before I introduce my guest, Christine Emba, just a quick note about the Unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dahl. Before I introduce my guest, Christine |
| 0:38.6 | Emba, just a quick note about the unspeak easy. Yes, our retreat in Denver, our first ever one-day |
| 0:45.7 | retreat is coming up Saturday, September 30th. So if you've been on the fence, now is the time to |
| 0:52.9 | make your move. Go to the unspeak easy.com, find out how to register. |
| 0:58.6 | Again, that is an all-women's thing. |
| 1:00.9 | We have special guest speaker, Jennifer Say, with us, as well as some other surprise guests. |
| 1:06.1 | And we're going to do our thing during the day. |
| 1:08.5 | And then in the evening, there is a party and comedy show for everybody. So this is going to do our thing during the day. And then in the evening, there is a party and |
| 1:10.8 | comedy show for everybody. So this is going to be unlike anything we've done before. So please |
| 1:18.0 | be a part of history, the unspeak easy.com. Okay, Christine Emba is a columnist at the Washington |
| 1:24.9 | Post, where she's also worked as an editor. |
| 1:31.4 | Christine writes about a lot of stuff we tend to talk about around here, |
| 1:37.1 | at least stuff I tend to be interested in, things related to how cultural and economic shifts affect human behavior, especially in terms of dating and mating patterns. |
... |
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