[0:00] All right, so basically today I'm going to be talking about man as a biological male. And so I'm going to be going over a lot of, really, biology.
[0:11] I'm going to be talking about a lot of things that maybe some of these terms you guys have heard. I'm going to try to do the best I can to expand your guys' vocabulary, but also show how much it really does pertain to our lives.
[0:23] I think there's some things in every day and age that men live in, in every day and age that men who are following the Lord in. So it becomes different things that are very, very pertinent to those day and ages, men rising to the occasion.
[0:37] And I'm going to talk about some things that has become my perspective that I actually think some Christian men should rise to the occasion in. They're a little bit being neglected. I think there's very powerful forces at work that are very confusing to us, and we don't exactly know what's going on.
[0:52] And I want to open up the hood and describe some things that I think some of you guys, hopefully all of you guys, are very intrigued by and also have some conviction behind and realizing, oh, this is actually what is going on.
[1:06] We live in a very confusing day and age. I think one of the things that's confusing about the information age is that it didn't really increase our ability to grasp truth. It really just gave us more opportunity to validate our own perspectives.
[1:20] And so I think one of the things that's been a hallmark of the information age is that we have more opportunity to create life, to create God, to create our beliefs in our own image.
[1:32] And I want to try to put some meat on the bone of some things that you need to believe because it's reality. Okay? So my goal with this is, number one, showing how what the Lord speaks about a man is entirely equal to what a man is in reality.
[1:56] Okay? There is not competition between what the Lord is trying to reveal and call men to versus what you actually are. I think there's a lie and a deception that what the Lord says has no relevance to what is really the case.
[2:09] That is a lie and I hope to dispel a lot of that lie today. But then number two, I want to answer, and this is perhaps even a more difficult question to answer, why does our culture question what has always been known that men are?
[2:23] And I actually think that there's a really good answer to that question. And I think when we answer that question well, it can really help us in how we respond to these things in our day and age.
[2:39] Because I think we do need a response. I think we need a response as those who would like to be men, because that's what the Lord has called us to, but also respond as Christian men who are submitting to what the Lord has revealed.
[2:51] Very important thing. So what I'm going to start with, guys, this is going to be an incredible biology lesson. I'm really going to try to make this captivating to you guys.
[3:02] This is something that is very captivating to me. I love this stuff. But I also want to try to teach it in a way that is actually captivating to you guys, because I think it's very captivating to a lot of men. Obviously, a lot, but some of these things, for those of you who know me, you've already heard me talk about this stuff.
[3:16] But for those of you who don't know me, I think these things are really significant, and I hope that you will, by the end of this teaching, think they're significant as well. So what I'm going to start with is the male development over the lifespan.
[3:29] I'm going to try to cover this quickly. And then after that, I'm going to circle back around, and I'm actually going to talk about some historical developments that have caused us to really question masculinity in this day and age.
[3:41] And then I want to try to end on a note of some practical implications and how I think Christian men should navigate the unique challenges of this day and age when masculinity is being questioned.
[3:52] I think one of the big things is I would like for men to live differently, not just argue differently. I think one of the things that's a huge weakness is when men just hear different perspectives, and they parrot them rather than actually being different.
[4:06] You know, he who is responsible in little will be responsible with much. It's a very powerful thing when men get real conviction in their own lives, and then when they testify to these things, people see the reality of what's being lived out in their life.
[4:19] That's called embodiment. That is the most powerful form of influence. The most powerful form of influence is when you embody things and then testify to what you're embodying. The weakest form of influence is when you just have opinion.
[4:30] Okay? That's what hypocrites have. And I have been a hypocrite. I am a hypocrite in many ways. May we not be convicted about things where we're just hypocrites that spout different things, but may we be ones who have conviction and live different lives as a result of what we know and what we've learned.
[4:47] Okay? So, male biology development through the lifespan. I'm just going to try to run through this. Okay. Number one, men, XY versus XX.
[5:00] About two to three months in utero in your mother's womb, that X-crobosome gets triggered, and it causes a whole cascade of events. First one, testosterone increases.
[5:11] Testosterone does a handful of things inside the womb. Guys, I told you this is going to be biology. It's going to be biology. Okay. As a result of testosterone increasing inside the womb, it also causes his testicles to start to develop, but it also causes a whole bunch of neurochemical changes.
[5:29] One of the things that happens distinctly for little boys in their mother's womb is there's this thing called the corpus callosum. That is the bridge between your right and left hemispheres of your brain.
[5:40] The corpus callosum is what creates communication between your right and left hemispheres. In a male, it is smaller than a female. Maybe you guys, I didn't know this.
[5:52] Some of you guys already know this. Some of you guys don't know this. That creates a lot of distinction. This is one of the reasons why women have a higher propensity to perform while multitasking.
[6:03] That's one of the reasons why men tend to be niche and to be single-track mind. A lot of people say this kind of stuff is stereotype. That is actually not stereotype. The Lord designed men to have an ability to focus on one task and perform it well.
[6:18] Men outperform women when tending to one task, whereas women outperform men when tending to multiple tasks. The other thing is testosterone increases.
[6:29] Not only testosterone is increased, but also another peptide hormone, which is called basopressin. Probably Jacob's the only one here who knows what basopressin is.
[6:42] It's also called antidiuretic hormone. Basopressin is what animals, male animals have, male mammals have, that causes them to go around and pee on different trees. All right, somebody tell me.
[6:54] What are they doing when they're peeing on different trees? They're marking their territory. Okay, we have that too. It's elevated men. It's about three to four times higher in men than women. Okay? Men distinctly have an ability to assign territory, what is theirs, what they own, and subsequently, what they protect.
[7:17] Basopressin is the male counterpart to another hormone you guys probably have heard of, which is called oxytocin. All right, somebody tell me what oxytocin is.
[7:29] Come on, somebody. The happiness? Okay, close. Yeah, it does produce happiness. Let's say that. So oxytocin fundamentally is our comfort and bonding hormone.
[7:40] Okay? Women have higher degrees, about 50% higher degrees of oxytocin than men. And it's one of the things that gives women a propensity to be able to empathize more efficiently than men. Okay? They are more attuned to people's emotion and extending comfort.
[7:56] Oxytocin has a twin brother hormone that is called vasopressin. Vasopressin is what causes men to have a strong sense of brotherhood. When men go to war and they fight with their brothers in arms, they come back home and they have a connection with those guys they went to war with.
[8:12] A lot of you guys probably heard veterans say this. My brothers that I went to war with were closer to me than even my own family. They'll say things like this.
[8:22] That is elevated vasopressin. Men are designed by way of bonding. How we are predisposed to bond with things is to have a brotherhood that comes from assigning territory, which is ownership.
[8:37] They assign ownership and protection. Okay? The Lord designed men in their relationships to navigate them with ownership and protection.
[8:48] Okay? When men are healthy, they are more predisposed towards feeling like that is my wife. That is my children. Those are my brothers. Okay? And what do they do?
[8:59] They protect them. Okay? Women have more of a disposition towards extending comfort and connection to those that they connect with. Okay? Men have more of a disposition towards this ownership and protectiveness.
[9:13] Okay? Which, again, we're going to come back to this, but one of the hallmarks of masculinity is being an owner of your life. The Lord meant for you to not be an employer of your life, not be a spectator of your life, but to own your life.
[9:26] Okay? So then, as we progress, little boys, little girls, after they come out of the womb, as a result of some of these hormones, one of the things that happens is little boys have a smaller corpus callosum.
[9:41] They tend more to one task, whereas little girls are a little bit more emotional. They have more activity across their entire brain. There's more interconnectivity. And one of the things is they have elevated oxytocin levels.
[9:53] That's why you see little bitty girls immediately having a gravitational pull towards dolls, towards nurturing things. My little bitty toddler girls are nurturing to the little brother that just came out of the womb.
[10:06] That's in their nature. The Lord designed them at a very young age to be more nurturing. And they designed little boys at a very young age to turn everything into a gun or everything into a sword.
[10:19] Little boys who are appropriately developing develop a sense of protecting and fighting for what they care for at a very, very young age. So then, across the lifespan, if you take a little boy's body versus a little girl's body and you can't see their face and they've got their underwear on, just looking at their body, it's actually very hard to tell which is a boy and which is a girl because they have not gone through puberty yet.
[10:45] So one of the things that happens in puberty is we have a skyrocketing, what we'll call sex steroid hormones. You guys probably know some of these. There's a couple that I think you probably don't know that I'm going to need to introduce you to because they're going to get more and more important.
[10:58] Number one is estrogen. You guys probably already know know what estrogen is. Estrogen skyrockets post-puberty. Women tend to have between five and ten times as much estrogen as men. Testosterone skyrockets post-puberty in boys who become men and it's about ten times as high as women.
[11:17] Okay? The other two hormones that I'm going to introduce you to, some of you guys are married, some of you guys know these things. Women have two primary sex steroid hormones.
[11:29] Estrogen. You guys have heard that before. Here's one you might not have heard of. Progesterone. Some of you guys who are trying to get pregnant have heard of this one. Progesterone is the other balancing hormone that women have but then men also actually have two sex steroid hormones.
[11:45] They're every bit as important. Testosterone. You guys have probably heard of testosterone but there's another hormone that testosterone turns into which is called dihydrotestosterone. So I go what you guys remember. Progesterone, woman, dihydrotestosterone, man.
[12:01] As we progress through puberty one of the things that happens is men have what's called a diurnal pattern. Every 24 hours your sex steroid hormones, your testosterone, and your dihydrotestosterone repopulate when you sleep.
[12:16] It also repopulates for women but women have a very, very different cycle than men do. Every single 24 hours a full rotation of the earth men are completely replenished with their sex steroid hormones.
[12:30] Women don't replenish in the same way that men do every 24 hours according to their hormonal cascade. Women's hormonal cascade is every full moon rotation of the earth every 28 days.
[12:46] Women's hormonal pattern is not dictated by the day. It's dictated by the moon rotating around the earth every 28 days. So there's an extent to which men's hormonal pattern is dictated by the earth's rotation whereas women's is dictated by the moon.
[13:03] It's actually a beautiful metaphor of men and women. Right? One of the things that happens that's very distinct for women in comparison to men is the first half of the cycle, this is all going to tie back.
[13:16] The first half of their cycle is estrogen based. Essentially, I'm making this more simple than it is. Jacob can critique me at the end. But essentially, the first half of their cycle is estrogen based.
[13:28] Estrogen causes women to increase their oxytocin levels. It causes them to be more emotionally attuned. It causes them to be more expressive and also to seek attention and validation for men.
[13:40] Okay? The second half of their cycle, which is after they were fertile, so they're not fertile anymore. They were fertile, now they're not fertile post-fertility. What happens is they become dominant by their other hormone called progesterone.
[13:55] Progesterone is what causes women to kind of chill out. They're a little bit more emotionally stable. Some of you guys are going to say this and then you're going to start watching your wives and you're going to be like, oh shit, he was right. The second half of their cycle is progesterone dominant.
[14:09] They're less interested in sex. Okay? They're a little bit less itinerant. They're more content being home and they're more chill in their evenings. This is called progesterone. Progesterone is what is activating a woman's body when her body thinks she might be pregnant and is being more conservative to protect the potential baby and just set it up for success by way of not overdoing herself.
[14:32] Okay? Men, on the other hand, have the skyrocket of testosterone when they're in puberty. What testosterone does is it crushes cortisol.
[14:44] Cortisol is our fear hormone. It's our stress hormone. So it causes them to be less scared of life and also increases their dopamine.
[14:56] Dopamine is our neurotransmitter that causes us to have more, to focus more on goals and have more ambition. It's essentially our ambition neurotransmitter.
[15:07] So when you increase testosterone, you increase ambition and you decrease fear, essentially. Okay? This is kind of a little bit oversimplification. I'm trying to make this really palatable.
[15:20] Okay. Now, testosterone, again, we're still in puberty here. Testosterone, fundamentally, what it does on our body is it causes us to develop more muscle and more strength subsequently.
[15:35] Duh. But also, what it does is it actually causes our bones to be more dense. Our bones can literally carry more. As a result of elevated testosterone levels, the average adult male is about 40% stronger than the average adult female.
[15:51] It literally makes men stronger. It also increases their dopamine. It also increases their thyroid hormone. Essentially, testosterone's activity in a male's body causes him to be able to be more ambitious, to work harder, to lift more, and to work longer.
[16:09] And, because of testosterone and vasopressin's effect on the brain, it causes us to be more single-minded, causes us to tend to things more than relationships, whereas women, their effect on testosterone and oxytocin causes them to prioritize relationships and be affected by relationships primarily, whereas men tend to be affected and concerned about their physical environment more.
[16:34] Okay, these are not stereotypes. This is actually how the Lord designed our bodies. Okay? So, then, as a male gets older, there's another guy you're going to meet.
[16:45] This is post-puberty for the most part. His name is dihydrotestosterone. Okay? Maybe the most important hormone we're talking about tonight. Dihydrotestosterone is what causes our beards to grow, our voice to zeepen, our Adam's apple to grow.
[17:02] It's what causes us to have more emotional stability, one of the things that happens with testosterone, it really increases your ambition, but it also can cause your disposition towards risk-taking.
[17:14] One of the things, actually, I think I'll think about this even in terms of movies. If I was going to typify testosterone in a movie, it would probably be movies like Fast and the Furious or something like that where it's like a bunch of young guys doing dumb shit trying to impress people.
[17:28] Okay? This is very, you know, this is very, you know, middle school, high school, college, which is very typified by testosterone's effect on young men.
[17:42] Okay? They're expanding their territory. They're curious. They're learning about things. They're getting grip on having ambition in life. But one of the things that emerges as men are more mature is this other hormone, which is testosterone's conversion to dihydrotestosterone.
[17:59] Dihydrotestosterone, on the other hand, causes the real emotional stability that's associated with men. The only way I can describe it is dihydrotestosterone essentially takes the whole emotional landscape of life and puts it completely under your charge.
[18:17] You still feel sadness. You still feel fear. You still feel anger. All those things. But it's very subservient to you. It does not have control over you. One of the things with testosterone, if you elevate it in isolation, it can make you more aggressive.
[18:31] It doesn't quite feel like anger. It feels more like intensity. I think that's actually one of the things that women sometimes misunderstand, that men can be really intense, but to them it doesn't feel like anger. But for the woman, it actually does feel like anger.
[18:43] A lot of just, if you elevate testosterone in isolation, you'll get a lot of that. You'll get a lot of this intensity and reactiveness. It doesn't feel like anger, but to the other parties you might experience it like anger, if that makes sense.
[18:56] Dihydrotestosterone, on the other hand, is very, I'm trying to think how I say this, it takes very calculated risk. If I was to typify dihydrotestosterone in a movie, it would be someone like the character Vito Corleone from The Godfather.
[19:12] Just someone who's really in control, demands a lot of respect, takes a very calculated risk, knows how to pick his battles, pick his fights, is not pushed around by anybody.
[19:23] This is dihydrotestosterone. This is the more mature male sex steroid hormone. I believe that because of the late development of dihydrotestosterone, a lot of women who end up being attracted to older men are actually being attracted to some of these characteristics.
[19:36] It appears more stable. There is this whole development through the lifespan that causes men to actually relate with the world very differently.
[19:50] Women, in their nature, relate very differently. That's kind of like a little bit of an introduction to some of these biological terms. I know I'm doing a lot of biology. One of the questions I really want to answer is why is the culture having something of a strong critique towards masculinity that is something that emerges from our biology?
[20:16] Well, I believe, I think you guys will believe too after I say all this, that it all happened in the 1960s. Two things that happened in the 1960s are really important for us.
[20:26] Number one, they figured out how to test hormone levels in blood. They were able to figure out the actual hormone level amounts in the 1960s.
[20:37] They basically figured out how to make synthetic hormones and detect synthetic hormones very efficiently, both in our bodies and also make them in a lab.
[20:48] Okay? One of the things that happened in the 1960s, sexual revolution. I believe that essentially the sexual revolution is as a result of the biological breakthroughs that happened around sex steroid hormones that we were able to first work with efficiently because of some of these inventions that happened at the time.
[21:12] And the thing that changed was what is known as the pill. Who knows what the pill is? What's the pill?
[21:23] Birth control. Birth control. Okay. Okay. You guys, if you guys don't have strong convictions about the pill, you're probably going to have strong convictions about the pill after I finish what I'm about to say.
[21:40] Jacob's probably the only person here who knows what I'm about to say. Okay. The pill is, let me just say essentially what it is. The original pill that was developed back in 1960s was a version of progesterone.
[21:54] Remember, a woman's cycle, what makes her more strongly attenuated to her relationship to men is estrogen. It's what causes her to get pregnant. Okay. In her second part of her cycle is progesterone.
[22:08] They developed a synthetic derivative of progesterone. It's called a 19-nore progestin. Okay. This is like one of, again, you guys probably don't know any of this.
[22:22] One of the most abused drugs in bodybuilding is 19-nores. The reason is 19-nores are, they are a derivative of progesterone that is similar enough to testosterone that has about the same amount of activity on the progesterone receptors as it does their testosterone receptors.
[22:43] So this is what actually happened in the 1960s. They developed birth control pill. This birth control pill caused women to no longer be fertile. So there was a sexual evolution because we can have sex, men and women, without consequence.
[22:57] But it actually made women essentially have an estrogen experience that was negligible. So what you do, put them on a 19-nore, you get all this progesterone activity, their body thinks they are pregnant, and you give them a little bit of estrogen, and you essentially keep them in the second half of their cycle.
[23:17] Okay? Their body thinks they're in the second half of their cycle, not the first half. What it causes is this is the most independent a woman is towards her husband in the first place. A woman's second half of her cycle is when she's least interested in sex, and when she's most chill, and just like, whatever, you know, what a woman is in her second half of the cycle.
[23:38] Okay, here's the other thing that's happening though. It is acting on her testosterone receptors as much as it is her progesterone receptors. So one of the things that happened in the 1960s is women actually experience, in a manner of speaking, what it's like to be a man more than had ever been the case.
[23:57] Unless you think that this wasn't very prevalent and this didn't actually have super big social ramifications, by 1980, that's 20 years, 80% of women who were adults had been on a 19-nor at some point.
[24:12] Okay? A vast majority of women, 80% of women by 1980 who were adults had been on a 19-nor by that time. So in a 20-year span, almost all women had been on this kind of birth control.
[24:29] Okay? What it caused is for women to experience a lot of the testosterone benefits and the disposition of testosterone as men had experienced.
[24:40] I believe this is one of the big reasons why the sexual revolution also ushered in our second wave of feminism, which is like, I'm woman, hear me roar, you know, I don't need a man, independent woman, all of this.
[24:55] Okay? It fundamentally crushed the experience of women as having this indispensable relationship with man where she was tied into this dance with masculinity where femininity was inseparable from masculinity.
[25:12] Okay? So, coming up to today, modern day is, because of the ramifications of this, it's actually not the mainline treatment for women who are seeking for birth control.
[25:28] It's actually minority. but one of the ramifications has been is there's a lot of cultural perspective of women speaking from their real experience. They really feel like they don't need a man and all this stuff.
[25:38] They've entered the workforce, all these things. But, it actually was enough, in my opinion, to really question a lot of women's need for the beautiful dance that is femininity and masculinity.
[25:52] Okay? Now, the other thing that was discovered in the 60s was our ability to test men's testosterone levels. And what we discovered around that time is the average testosterone level in men was about 700 nanograms per deciliter.
[26:06] Okay? So, we are about 60 years removed from there. Currently, the average testosterone levels in America, this is where, like, so it's about 700 in America in the 60s.
[26:20] Currently, 2020s, the average testosterone level in men is about 440. So, the average man in America would need to increase his testosterone by a little bit over 50% in order to have the same androgenic activity as what his grandpa had back in 1960.
[26:43] So, since then, what's happened is a huge decline in some of these really distinct sex steroid hormone characteristics that really make men, you know, we're not little boys and little girls anymore.
[26:55] we're really different because we're post-puberty has really watered down some of the real strong distinctions that you would anticipate for men and probably could have experienced for men back in the 1960s and wouldn't even have to have a huge argument about it because it would have been really, really evident.
[27:11] Right? Sorry, I'm just checking with that. All right. So, up to modern day. There's another question. Why has it dropped so much?
[27:22] Really, I would say, in essence, really two main reasons. Men, we primarily work inside sitting all day.
[27:35] We eat too much, work physically too little. If you look at the obesity rates between 1960 and today, obesity rates went from 10% of men in the United States were obese back in 1960.
[27:54] They're at 40% today. The rate of diabetes went from 2% of the population to 13%. What I would say, nerding out about this stuff, is the real two fundamental things that are, like you can empirically test, are that men are way more insulin resistant and way more overweight, fundamentally.
[28:20] You'd ask, why is that? A vast majority of that is because we don't work outside. I would say a vast majority of that is we don't work outside, for the most part.
[28:31] The other thing is we live too indulgent at all. That's really what it comes down to. Try not to get too much in the weeds about some of this stuff, but one of the things that happens insofar as our bodies are concerned, the Lord really designed our bodies to work physically.
[28:55] As a result, what happens is we get gradually more and more insulin resistant, which I think the best way to think of insulin resistance is when you eat carbs, it turns into fat versus your kid, you give your kid a candy bar, they're bouncing off the walls, you eat some pasta, and you go into a food coma.
[29:16] That's called insulin sensitivity. If you work with your body regularly, you break a sweat regularly, when you eat carbs, you are getting jet fuel, you have a lot more energy.
[29:30] When you eat carbs, and you are sitting all the time, your body doesn't know what to do with it, and your insulin moves that fat. Also, as you get more obese, you have more of an enzyme that's called aromatase.
[29:46] Aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen. Again, guys, I'm sorry, this is a lot of biology, but I think these things are really relevant. Thank you, thank you, Jacob.
[29:56] I don't want to hear that. Thanks, man. He's the only person here with a medical license, by the way. Okay, basically what happens is, as we get more overweight, men convert more testosterone to estrogen.
[30:14] Also, as we get more insulin resistant, again, relationship to carbs, what happens when you eat pasta, the ultimate test of insulin resistance is what happens when you eat pasta. Okay? When you're more insulin resistant, your body produces less sex steroid hormones, your total production decreases, and when you're more obese, your body converts more of that to estrogen.
[30:36] I would say, if I could get every single man in the United States to reverse those two things, I would bet that we get really close to the 700 nanograms for deciliter that we were in 1960.
[30:48] Just that alone. Okay? So, fast forward to modern day. Me and my wife, we help a lot of people with fertility. She's about to become midwife. I'm a nerd about these things. So, we have a lot of couples that will send her blood work to both of us.
[31:01] One of the things I see way more, it actually breaks my heart, is actually really sad. There's a lot of people who are trying to get pregnant and they have no clue what's going on.
[31:15] And a lot of it is this stuff. We have people who send her blood work and we're just helping out as friends. And the guy's blood work comes back and his testosterone is like 200. This is really, really freaking low.
[31:29] And he's obese and he's insulin resistant. He's almost diabetic. And then the wife sends in her blood work her testosterone at like 130. Her testosterone is supposed to be like below 16 nanograms per deciliter.
[31:42] He should have 10 times as high testosterone as she does. Why is that happening? Well, for women, when they get insulin resistant just like we are, they cause them to crash. What happens is in their ovaries, they have insulin receptors.
[31:57] When those insulin receptors are overly active, it causes them to produce more testosterone. When they produce more testosterone, it causes them to become infertile. And it causes them to feel much less like a woman.
[32:09] So one of the things we are fighting in the state and nation, this is what I want you guys to hear. This is not all about the culture war of belief systems. I really believe that a lot of people are having some really, really difficult experiences they don't know how to explain it.
[32:22] Okay? A lot of these women do not feel like women. Okay? And if you look at their blood work, their testosterone is almost the same as their husband. And those husbands probably don't feel very much like men.
[32:35] Seriously, they do not feel very much like men. And who could blame them? I can see your blood work and I can tell you you probably don't feel very much like a man. Why is that? Because he's overweight and he's really insulin resistant.
[32:48] Okay? It's a very sad thing. It's a very sad thing. But a lot of people don't even know how these things connect and what we're actually arguing about. Okay? I say all that to say, I think that one of the points that I want to get across is that we live in a day and age where we can indulge endlessly.
[33:10] Okay? We can get home from work. We can scroll endlessly on our phones. I'm not going to make you guys do this right now. But if you want to know what the culprit is, just pull out your phone, check screen time. You know, we get on our phones, we scroll endlessly.
[33:24] Instead of going outside and playing with our kids, we just watch Netflix with them, etc., etc. When we're needing to grab lunch, we just go grab fast food, eat a bunch of junk food. There's a real extent to which we are the most self-indulgent generation that's ever existed and we are reaping the consequences on a health level.
[33:42] Our bodies don't work as well as they did just 60 years ago. Now, I want to pivot for a second because I'm realizing I didn't cover a couple things.
[33:52] I really want to go over a couple of distinctions as far as when we get these things right, there are things that happen that make women feel more like women and I think these are some things that we should take really seriously as men.
[34:11] One of the things that happens for women is they have these elevated oxytocin levels. The more emotionally attuned. It's a stereotype, it's a true stereotype. One of the things that is an epidemic in this day and age is women who feel like they have no need of a man and like even these single moms or even these matriarchs of homes and maybe some of you are married to a woman where it's actually really hard and you need to feel like you are the owner of your home.
[34:39] You feel more like an employee in your home. So when I say something, I hope this gives you really good conviction because scripture has a lot to say on this. Women only overproduce vasopressin under one circumstance.
[34:52] Vasopressin causes you to assign ownership and protect things. Okay? Women only elevate vasopressin when their cortisol, their stress and fear hormone, is elevated.
[35:06] So one of the things that happens, I see this all the time, didn't understand this on a biological level to more recently, but I've seen this my whole entire life, is that you see these women who, let's say, are abandoned or just are jaded and they are, let's say, the matriarch.
[35:25] Okay? This woman has this elevated cortisol, so it's driven by fear and anxiety. It crushes their oxytocin and it crushes their estrogen.
[35:38] What's happening there is she is having maybe more of a disposition for responsibility and she is feisty and fights about everything, but it's actually because she is losing her femininity as a result of giving in to a role that she was not made for.
[36:01] The Lord designed men, again, testosterone opposes cortisol, men have an ability to have elevated testosterone, they're able to experience fear and navigate fear without having, or they're able to experience conflict and navigate conflict and even exert authority without having it elevate their fear of life.
[36:27] Okay? This is actually one of the main reasons I actually think that there is confusion in our culture in this day and age about whether or not women should be in these primary positions of authority, let's say president of the United States, let's say a general in the military, let's say even in charge of their own home.
[36:46] Women are not designed for positions of authority that necessitate high conflict. They're literally not designed for it. What will happen is it will crush their femininity, and this is what we see in women.
[37:00] Men are designed for those positions. Okay? Men are meant to protect. Men are meant to own, right? So, basically, my perspective that there is, you know, this whole natural development, but then also there's this kind of interesting historical development, and then one last thing I just want to say about the historical development, I think there is, as a result of kind of where things are concerning these topics, a real confusion, especially about Gen Z coming up.
[37:30] So Gen Z, we think our obesity rates are bad, and our pre-diabetic rates are bad. It's way worse for Gen Z, okay? These kids are just a bunch of screen kids. They're eating bad food.
[37:40] Like, I'm trying to think how to say this. The average adult male, 40% obese, 13% diabetic, the trajectory that Gen Z is on is way, way worse.
[37:54] So one of the things that's happening for these kids as they're going through puberty is they end up in this hormonal purgatory, okay? So what happens? They don't quite feel like a woman. They don't quite feel like a man.
[38:05] So then what happens? Pharmaceuticals come along, and now, what if you're really a woman trapped in an ant's body, okay? So now what we're going to do, we're going to put you on a dose of testosterone and an aromatase inhibitor that's going to prevent your testosterone from over-converting to estrogen.
[38:22] What's going to happen? You, woman, who feels like you're in hormonal purgatory, are now going to feel approximately like what ballpark of a healthy male would feel, and it feels a whole lot better than what you were experiencing.
[38:39] Now your friends are really confused, floating in nothingness, and you're going to preach the gospel. You've got to get on HRT. You're really a man.
[38:50] You're not really a woman, and vice versa. So what's happening is, in my opinion, a lot of this kind of like bullshit pharmaceutical therapy is just making the landscape even more confusing, if that makes sense.
[39:04] So from my perspective, I actually believe that men are men, women are women, and a lot of these distinctions, a lot of this dance needs to be facilitated and called out, and even people should rise to, I think men should rise to the occasion, and actually kind of address these things not through cheat codes, but actually through the practices of life.
[39:29] You know what I mean? need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do. You know what I need to do.