"I am the breadwinner"

Traditional gender roles for men, passport bros, and the male urge to blame the effects of capitalism on their wellbeing on women. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to Death by Doctrine. I'm MJ.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

I'm Lizbeth.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So we're discussing traditional gender roles, and this episode naturally is the male counterpart to the trad wife episode. It's called Breadwinner, and we actually struggled a bit to come up with the title for this episode because we're trying to figure out what is the binary opposite to a trad wife.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

A trad husband, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Yeah. And we struggled with it because trad husband doesn't sound right. No. But we did find a term for this, which is breadwinner, right? The breadwinner of the family. Today we're talking about the doctrine of the traditional male gender role in the family dynamic, and we're calling this the breadwinner episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Let's define it. What is a breadwinner? The typical use of the term breadwinner refers to the person in a family unit who is the primary source of income. So these days that can be anyone. Anyone can be a breadwinner. But today we are specifically talking about more traditional sense of the term. In other words, men. So being a traditional breadwinner goes beyond just being the person who earns the most money. For men, being a traditional breadwinner also has traditionally meant that they are, well, the most. So they're the most financially capable, the most tall.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Tallest, you would say. Why did you say most tall?

SPEAKER_02 1:24

To go with the most.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah, to go with the theme of the most. Okay. Sorry for interrupting. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

So yeah, they're the most financially capable, the most tall, the most intelligent, and they're the oldest.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

See, how come you didn't do most old today? You would yourself break your pattern.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

They are the most financially capable, the tallest, the most intelligent, and the oldest. These are what we think of when we think of a traditional heteronormative couple. So the man is the taller, the older, and the wealthier partner. So he is the provider of stability, guidance, and safety. He is the breadwinner.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

We're talking about breadwinner with a capital B. And you see this in media, especially from media of that era. The man is the most important member of the family unit, even if he doesn't spend that much time at home, which is curious. The mother and the wife spends a lot of time at home. The father doesn't spend that much time at home, but he is still the de facto most important person in the family unit. I remember that there are some old movies, I don't recall what they are, but I'm sure they're out there. They exist, where the central premise of the movie, sometimes as a comedy, is oh my god, the mom has a job and the dad has no job and the dad has to stay home and take care of the kids. That was enough to justify a plot. An entire movie plot is just the idea that the dad has to stay home, which goes to show the notion of a man not being the Capital B breadwinner was so subversive that they can justify a comedy movie out of this. Have you seen those movies?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah. So I actually looked this up and I did I found a movie from the 1930s. It's called Thanks for the Memory, and it's based on a play of a similar premise. And I thought it was really funny because in the synopsis, it describes that a man who is an out-of-work writer and he's staying at home, and it specifically says that he's playing househusband as if that's not a serious role that was traditionally forced upon women.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah. So that's the traditional heteronormative couple, right? That's the gender dynamic that we're working with. We have the trad wife on one hand, and then we have the breadwinner with a capital B on the other hand. So let's talk about the actual doctrine, its origin and history, just to put it in context. The original term is actually quite unremarkable because bread was a very important staple food that sustained most Europeans. So whoever brought home the bread is critical to that family survival. The term was born rather organically. The term was first used either in the 1600s or 1800s, depending on who you ask. The fact that it was used to refer to men isn't intentional, but rather it was simply assumed. Under the patriarchy, of course, breadwinners are men. Women didn't even have rights back then. Like, of course, women can't be the breadwinner. It's a very unremarkable term, and it sort of got uh revived, if you will, in the modern era because it has a different context, as we're about to get into.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, and a part of that assumption comes from the fact that patriarchy is so old that it predates written history, and like most things, its origins are probably found in power, money, and inheritance. So women being the typical birthers of children have a pretty definitive proof of which child is theirs. But for men, as they acquired wealth throughout history and they sought to bequeath that wealth to children, specifically their sons, they needed some definitive paternity. And unfortunately, the solution that they came up with was to control female reproduction by limiting the rights and autonomy of women.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

It really is wild how we ended up with patriarchy because again, a woman is responsible for nurturing and creating life, but somehow we decided that that was the lesser sex. We won't get into this because we could literally talk about this forever.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

It's a deep dive.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah, deep dive. So it was a term born out of patriarchy, and it initially was very unremarkable. It's just whoever brought home the bread, and of course, men brought home the bread. However, the term breadwinner and the doctrine that it represents pertinent to our discussion is more specific than just the patriarchy. In the beginning, breadwinner was a fixed identity for the simple reason that it was impractical, if not impossible, for a woman to support a family. A woman earning a lot of money? Inconceivable. In a marriage, the man is the de facto breadwinner. However, times have changed. World War II happened, jobs needed filling, so women starting to work. We have second wave feminism, we have capitalism making single-income family more and more difficult, and then we have third wave feminism and all those other things that sort of happen in the 20th century. The notion that the man is a de facto breadwinner is starting to slip.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

And this freaked a lot of men out.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yes, it did. And that sort of is the crux of the problem that we will sort of dissect here. I believe this is when we start to see this notion of breadwinner start to take a new form, start to have like a renaissance, if you will. The idea that the man in a family unit is the principal financial provider and therefore the most important member in that relationship starts to take on a gendered identity. If you're not that, then you are not a quote unquote real man.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Yeah. And being a breadwinner is a relative identity. So however tall you are, whatever your education level, whatever your salary, you can still be the breadwinner as long as you're superior to your wife in every way. The only consistent quality is that you have to be a cisgendered, heterosexual, and ideally married man.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I think the most interesting place this doctrine that we're dubbing the breadwinner doctrine manifests is in the dating scene. We sort of talked about how the original definition, the man has to be taller, older, wealthier. And where does that play out so clearly than on the apps? What happens if you subscribe to the belief that a man needs to be better than his girlfriend or partner in a society where women have rights, career, standards, and options? Like what happens to those people?

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Yeah. So to consider probably one of the more extreme examples of this, there is a phenomenon in the dating world today known as the passport bro.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Anything with a bro, just assume that it's not good.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Yeah. So a passport bro is a term used for men. Usually they're from Western countries like the United States, who travel internationally for the sole purpose of dating. So beyond that, the definition's a little bit murky. It's not very clear if passport bros are fleeing cultural norms at home or if they're seeking true love, as many of them will state. Every single passport bro you ask will probably give you a different answer. But one value that has prevailed among many of these men would be that they must travel for romantic partnership because the traditional values and family values that are more prevalent outside of Western countries, thanks to recent cultural shifts in said Western countries, such as feminism. So if you find this odd after we spent the last episode discussing how there are, in fact, many women in Western countries who subscribe to said traditional values, then you would be right. But as YouTuber Ray Like Sunshine puts it, when you're in a country where the standard of living is higher, the standard to succeed in that dating market is higher. And that's where the truth really lies. So women in Western countries have a higher standard of living. They often make their own money. Even the trad wife influencers.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, they pretend like they don't, but they actually make a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah. So they have access to higher education, they have voting rights, they have no fault divorce laws, prenups, among other things. Yeah. So really many passport bros are want-to-be breadwinners who feel the standard is too high in their home countries. So they travel to countries where they imagine key word there, the standard will be lower to maintain that breadwinner requirement of being superior to their female partners.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Yeah. And I think what's interesting is because their mindset is stuck in the idea that men have to be better than their woman partner. It's kind of like a very neat loophole that they found. It's like, well, if I need to be better and all the women here are kind of really good, then I guess I will need to go to a country where the standard of living is a lot lower. And one of the ways that this manifests is that the countries that they go to are specifically countries where there is still a very strong traditional gender role country. And if it feels gross, like they're wife shopping, it kind of is gross if you think about it. Just to go back to the point earlier where we talk about, oh, like there's a lot of women in America and in Western countries that would love to be a trad wife. Like, why aren't they just matching up? And I would like to tell a story of a mutual friend of ours who will remain nameless for the sake of her privacy. But she was dating. She's just recently gotten out of a relationship. She was dating, and then she met up with this dude who told her that he would like her to be a stay-at-home wife or stay-at-home mother. Now, this is funny to the two of us because this mutual friend of ours is a cardiac anesthesiologist, which do you want to provide some context as the doctor in this call?

SPEAKER_02 10:28

So that is the anesthesiologist who takes care of you when you have open heart surgery.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, a very um, shall we say, technical role that requires a lot of training on top of the existing training just to get out of medical school to become an anesthesiologist?

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Perhaps one of the most competitive subspecialty of anesthesia, if I'm correct.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

And one of the highest risk.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

One of the highest risk. And this man looked at her in the eye and said, I would like you to throw it all away. How many years of training? I'm gonna say 11. I mean, depending on whether you count pre-medieurs, but like almost a decade of training, throw that all away and be a stay-at-home mom.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

And not to say that being a stay-at-home mom is bad. It's not but when somebody spent so much of their life to have a career on a craft almost. Yeah, to gain expert level knowledge and skills, it's almost communicating like I want you to prove that I, as this dude, the random dude, am more important than all of us, exactly. And I think that that kind of signifies a really dark sort of power dynamic here. It feels more powerful for these men to convert a woman to their ideology and make her be submissive than to find a woman who is willingly submissive.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah. In theory, someone with some tech savvy would have made like a trad wife and husband dating app where these two people who love to be in this gender dynamic and just meet each other, that would sort of solve a problem. But again, it's the feeling of superiority that comes from conquest almost, just to be a little bit crude. It can't just be you're willing to be submissive, like I need to turn you into a submissive person, which uh yikes.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, as if to conquer a high performing woman is to be all that more powerful because you proved yourself superior to her in however way you imagine that to be.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah. So we mentioned a password bros, and we sort of talked about our friend's story. And I do want to say these are on the extreme end of this doctrine. Obviously, not everyone who fall into this space believe in this extreme. However, there's other manifestation of the breadwinner doctrine in the dating scene. Do you want to go through a few of them?

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Just little things here and there.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Little things, yeah. Micro red flags, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yeah. So I think anyone who's ever used a dating app, especially women who are looking at men's profiles, will notice that it's not uncommon for men to lie about their height, their income, their age. There's a lot of insecurity out there. If you do anything that shows you might be smarter than a man on a dating app, not uncommonly, they will respond negatively to that.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

There's a general refusal of men to engage in the domestic sphere. And there's also what is come to be known as weaponized incompetence in relationships. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

So I don't know how to do this.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yep. So men claiming they have never washed a dish before, they can't imagine how to do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Like willful ignorance, if you will. Like they purposely don't learn how to cook, even though everyone should learn how to cook. And it's like part of a basic survival skill in the modern day, like you shouldn't really know how to cook, but they will say, no, I just eat junk food. And a part of me is always puzzled by this because why start out your romantic relationship based on a lie? Like, why lie about something so obvious? Like if you're 5'8 and you say you're six foot, that's like a very factually obvious thing that could be disproven very quickly. Why lie about these things?

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Yeah, you know, it's really funny how all the men on the dating apps are six foot.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah. Someone did the data on this, and the least common height for men is 5'11.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

I believe it.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Even though there should be like a smooth distribution, but there's a little dip at 5'11 because all the people who are 5'11 say they're six foot. It's just weird to me. And then obviously, if you were to ask these breadwinner doctrine-believing men, they will say, Oh, it's because you know this is the world that we're living in. Like women are so shallow. Like, we if I don't say my height is this, then no one's gonna swipe on my profile. Uh, what would you say to them if that's how they're coming at you with this? What would be your response?

SPEAKER_02 14:41

I mean, it sounds like they're misdirecting their dating frustrations and blaming it on women. Obviously, it can never be their own fault. It can't be because they're liars or because they're because of their attitudes towards women. That that could never be the reason why they can't get women to date them.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Also, it's funny to me because okay, let's let's humor them, right? Let's say they're right, and some women are superficial and only care about how much money you make and oh, how tall you are. Even if that were true, doesn't that mean you are also superficial by lying, right? Like you're a superficial person trying to date another superficial person. The pod calling the kettle black almost.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Yeah, but I think a lot of these men are not able to have that level of insight. Like they can't, they can't admit that they might be superficial, so they have to claim, oh, I only lied because I had to, because women wouldn't give me the time of day otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

What I would say is be honest about your height. And if a woman didn't swipe on you because you're too short, then that's not a woman you want to be with anyway, because that's like a quote unquote superficial woman, like you said, right? Don't you want a real connection?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, you can't wear platform shoes for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Isn't this a perfect way to weed out those quote unquote superficial women is by being honest? That's what I would say to them. If they come with the oh, because women are superficial, it's like, well, you are also being superficial. Anyway, yeah, the dating scene is uh kind of rough out there. Uh shout out to all the people trying to make it. So that's the doctrine is the traditional male gender role in a family dynamic. At the end of the day, it's toxic masculinity. Their masculinity is tied to being superior to women, specifically your partner. We are not gonna get into everything about toxic masculinity, that's like a separate episode. We're just gonna focus on this doctrine in the family dynamic because it's a little bit more contained. Let's get into the public health aspect of this. Why is believing in this ideology bad for health and public health? How does the breadwinner doctrine make you die sooner?

SPEAKER_02 16:39

They don't call it toxic masculinity for no reason.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Let's break down this ideology. Let's break down the breadwinner doctrine. If you subscribe to this breadwinner doctrine, what sort of things do you believe in? You probably believe that you, the man, must be the main financial provider of your family, or at least appear that way. You must be superior to your wife in all areas traditional masculinity deem as important, life physical appearance, finance, and status. In turn, because you're superior to your wife, you are the head of the household by default, and your wife is there to support you. You're not expected to perform any domestic duty. In fact, it is imperative to your masculinity that you don't do any domestic duties. Did I miss anything?

SPEAKER_02 17:18

That pretty much sums it up.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Just a terrible mindset to have, but we'll get into why. So this mindset elicits various types of problematic behaviors that impact our health and well-being. First, we'll accept the premise established in the previous episode that mental health impacts physical health. We can agree with that. Assuming you are a man, the breadwinner doctrine is bad for you individually because it puts unnecessary financial strain on you. Instead of working together as a team with your significant other, you are arbitrarily making your life harder by saying, No, I need to make a lot of money and a lot more money than my girlfriend, otherwise, I'm not a man.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yeah, and like we said, in countries where the standard of living is high, this can be a really high bar to reach.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah. They are trying to hold on to a society that does not exist anymore. The era of the single income family is over. While the numbers will vary depending on the location and the definition that you use, the income for a single adult to quote unquote live comfortably in the United States ranges from 80k a year to 115k a year, depending on the state. I'll add that this definition assume you're saving 20% of your post-tax income. So technically it's a slight overestimation. And you may think to yourself, oh, 80k to 150k. That's not outrageous. However, let's also take a look at the median income for Americans. Comparing the two values state by state will show that more than half of all Americans are unable to live comfortably. They are likely not saving, or they're living paycheck to paycheck covering necessities, or worse, they're taking out debt and loans. It's tough out there, folks. And I myself can attest to this as someone who makes within that income bracket. This is for a single adult. If you believe in the breadwinner doctrine, you can't even just aim for 80 to 115,000. You have to aim for way more if you want to be the sole source of income, or it limits how much your partner can make, and in turn means you need to make more money. This is, cannot stress this enough, completely unnecessary. Instead of working together as a team or celebrating that your wife has a big paycheck, you're stressing yourself out. And for what?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

The notorious male ego.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah. Now, are there people making enough money to support an entire family with a single income? Sure, but it's not most people. And depending on like what neighborhood you grew up in, you might not know that the median American income is like that low, much lower than the 80 to 115k. And that's if you remember stats, that's half of the American population.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

It's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

I'm very fortunate to not be there, but just remember that a lot of Americans are. Keep that in mind. Sure, it's possible to make enough money to support an entire family, but that's not most Americans. Another effect of the breadwinner doctrine on men is the effect of defining worth via income. This is not healthy, but that is what traditional gender role demands. This sharp division of the public and the private sphere may also mean more sense of isolation for the man. You know, the quote, like, the only people who remember that you did all this overtime will be your wife and kids. Have you heard this quote before?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

I haven't, but I can see why people would say it.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah. Who are you working that hard for? For a company for sureholders' bottom line. The root of our problem is capitalism.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah, and it's led to an interesting phenomenon that I've noticed working in healthcare too, is that every so often a father will bring in their kid to the doctor and not know anything about their health or their medical conditions. And a common phrase used in this situation would be quote, you'll have to ask my wife, which is just infuriating for multiple reasons, that it shows that they are so uninvolved in child rearing that they are clueless about their own child. But also they imply by saying that that they aren't even going to ask their wife for you.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

You have to ask my wife.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Yeah. It's just another manifestation of weaponized incompetence. And it goes even further than that too. I was actually recently saw a TikTok story from a dentist who talked about how often he has male patients come in and they have no idea why they're there because their wife made the appointment and they just showed up.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Now that is funny. This is somewhat related, but men on average don't go to the doctor as much as they should. And it's probably not related to the breadwinner doctrine. It's probably related to like toxic masculinity in general, like not wanting to show weakness. But yeah, like this breadwinner doctrine, it defines your worth via your income or your work. That's just not a healthy mindset to be in. We have to acknowledge that traditional gender roles do make things worse for women, but we also recognize that it's negative for men too. It's really hard to be a good parent and form a meaningful bond with your child if you're not participating in the domestic sphere, which is what the brain. Red winner doctrine guides you away from. Also, what role model are you being to your child if your gender ideology is rooted in I'm better than your mom in every way? That's like a weird doctrine for your kids to model after.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah, and then it just leads to these ideologies persisting for another generation.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah. Your son thinking that, oh, like I also need to find a woman that's also like lesser than me, or your daughters thinking that it's okay to be in this sort of setup. And again, if you want to be a stay-at-home mom, there's nothing wrong with that. But it has to be a choice that you make consciously and willingly rather than being forced into by like societal expectations.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Yeah, it has to do with where you get your fulfillment in life from.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

And if your fulfillment is raising kids and being at home, that's perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's just that that's not everyone's fulfillment. Exactly. Now, the health effects of this, like many of these larger intangible movements, it's hard to pin down because it's diffused with hundreds of other factors. What we do know is that overworking and the feeling of isolation has negative impacts on health. On a more direct level, insisting on a one-income family rather than dual income means you have less financial stability, which also negatively affects your health. For example, more than 300,000 Americans are bankrupt every year due to medical bills. It is the leading cause of personal bankruptcies. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, on top of that, have some form of medical debt. And a quarter of Americans said they delay medical care due to cost concerns. On top of all of that, America has an employment-based health insurance system, meaning that in a single income household, if the breadwinner stops getting the bread, there is no backup. You lose your income and your health insurance for your entire family.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah. And even in countries with universal health care, the cost of living crisis is still a thing. And it's important to note that we can't pin this whole situation on the breadwinner mentality. Inflation over the decades has made single-income families impossible to sustain.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah. The main problem with the breadwinner doctrine, it is just such an unnecessary thing to insist on a single family household. You should be working together. You should be working as a team. You should celebrate that your wife has a big paycheck. I would also add that even if you're a stay-at-home dad and your wife makes a lot of money, that also still is unstable. Like, what if your wife loses her job? Lastly, having this financial pressure could mean more risk-taking behavior. You might be more vulnerable to, for example, some get rich quick schemes or making some speculative investments. Desperate people tend to make worse decisions. We're seeing a concerning rise in gambling, sports betting, and day trading, specifically specifically with young men. Now, how much of this is attributed to the breadwinner doctrine or traditional gender roles, I cannot tell you. However, it's just a concerning trend that we're seeing a lot of young men spending, or I guess losing, a lot of money on these uh essentially gambling.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah, and that made me think of um this video from the financial diet a couple months back where a woman named Anita talks about her ex-husband's financial infidelity. So basically, he had a gambling issue that she had no idea about. He got himself into a ton of credit card debt, secretly drained their combined savings.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Oh, that sucks.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

And then illegally opened a credit card in her name on her good credit without her knowledge to try to pay off some of his debt. So this stuff really happens.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

It really does happen. Now, I don't know what that husband's mentality is. Maybe he's just a gambling addict and it has nothing to do with gender roles. Could be. That's true. Who knows? Who knows? But you can see that, right? If that is something that you believe in, if your wife has a very stable job and you are having trouble getting a job, you might feel extra pressure to take on these unnecessary risks. Hard to say, right? The data is not there to prove anything.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Or even mooch off of her financial success to maintain the illusion of your own.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yes, the appearance of being a breadwinner is also very important to them, which is again not good. The last point I want to make is a little bit more abstract, so stay with me. The breadwinner doctrine's negative health effect are connected to the mismatch between fantasy in their head and reality. We don't live in a world where a single family income is feasible. We also don't live in a world where women don't have rights. Obviously, not as much as they should have. There's still a lot of inequities, but much better than before. And that's a reality. And this breadwinner doctrine is stuck in the past trying to live in a fantasy. What happens when the core of your masculinity is based on being superior to your partner in a dating pool where women are increasingly more educated, more financially independent? What happens to your tiny breadwinner mind?

SPEAKER_02 26:46

It explodes.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

It can handle it. I think this is something that's consistent with toxic masculinity issues. Is the cause of these men's suffering at the end of the day is capitalism. We live in an economy where a single family income is unfeasible, there's no job security, the economy sucks, etc. etc. There's a lot of different explanation for why things are tough right now. But it requires a lot of introspection to realize that. However, if you have the breadwinner doctrine in your mind, to you, perhaps the problem is just women. Well, women are just they're too outspoken now, right? Like their frustration is sublimated onto women and it manifests as a very toxic misogyny.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah, it's a lot easier to just find somebody to blame than to have the introspection and the insight to identify all of these moving parts.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, like so when you can find uh a woman that fits your breadwinner doctrine, like you can't find a woman that is less educated than you, earns less money than you, willing to be a stay-at-home mom. When you can find that in a dating pool, frustration can manifest as misogyny and in some cases, violence against women. We have a femicide and violence against women problem. The rate is difficult to determine and obviously varies wildly from countries to countries, from cultures to cultures. From the data that we do have, there is a strong correlation between how regressive a country is and how high the rates of femicide is. Shouldn't be surprising. The United States, to deform, accounts for the greatest share of femicide in high-income countries, around 2.6 to 2.9 deaths per 100,000, which works out to be around three women a day because of their gender. A lot of this is due to intimate partner violence, which represents the majority of these murders, specifically committed by men in heterosexual relationship. The rates of violence are lower in gay and lesbian relationships, so it's not just like a domestic thing. It's specifically about this gender dynamic. The feminicide problem is also a male violence problem. I think it's helpful to frame it not just as women are dying, but men are violent. How many of these murders are due to the breadwinner doctrine and traditional gender roles? I can't say for sure. But you can see the connections.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Yeah. The connections are there.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 29:03

I think when you raised by society to not come to terms with your emotions, being a man of traditional gender role ideology, have poor emotional regulation. So when you can't find what you're looking for, you can't find a woman who fits this ideology. And you feel, I think you get this sense of frustration instead of being able to have the insight to identify that maybe, you know, yeah, you're living in a fantasy world where capitalism doesn't exist. You feel that it must be women's fault. And it's easier to blame women than to blame yourself. And a lot of men manifest that with violence.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

We see this in some high-profile incel-related mass shootings. Um, the one I'm thinking about is the I La Vista shooting, uh, UC Santa Barbara, I believe. Do you remember that one? There's been so many.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

I think I've heard about this one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, there's so many mass shootings, unfortunately, in America. Yeah. Hard to remember just one, but it was a special case because he wrote an extensive diary leading up to the mass shooting and mass killing. And it was the most misogynistic diary that I've ever read in my life. And he is unable to find a romantic connection with another woman. And that led to him killing people.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Because men are frequently raised with this ideology that they are owed a female partner who fits all these qualifications of femininity. And when they don't get that, they feel that they have been treated unjustly.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

So, does the breadwinner doctrine contribute to this femicide and violence against women problem? I can't tell you. I can't say for sure. I'm not an academic or I'm not a researcher in this area. If by some off chance you are a researcher in this area, please email us. We would love to know what your thoughts are on this. But it's not a big leap to see how the mismatch between believing the breadwinner doctrine and a dating pool of more accomplished women would cause this sort of dissonance that manifest as something negative, like misogyny. That's the breadwinner doctrine. Elizabeth, how are you feeling? Sad. Yeah, unfortunately, in this series, Death by Doctrine, uh, the ending to a lot of these episodes will be sad. But I think I'll just want to wrap up with saying these doctrines, beliefs, and ideology has health impacts on both you and the people around you and society at large. If you're interested in having a healthier life, maybe don't believe in these things. Maybe think about why you're restricting yourself to these specific gender roles and why live a life that's perhaps making you unhappy.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Choose happiness.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Choose happiness. When you're confronted with that dissonance, choose deconstruction. Maybe start unlearning some of the things that perhaps were ingrained in you as you were growing up, and maybe start learning how the world actually works and choose happiness, like Lizbeth said.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Thank you so much for listening to Death by Doctrine. If you like the show, please tell everyone you know about the show. That is the best thing that you can do to help us. I have other podcasts as well, including Everything is Public Health, and Public Health is for everyone. For more information and all updates, please visit everything ispublichealth.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next time.