This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube interview (Josh Trent with Alison Armstrong) about gender dynamics and relationship instincts. Trent introduces concerns about polarized male–female relations and women's empowerment; Armstrong answers by tracing social changes over roughly the past century, describing misconceptions about men’s motives, and offering a hierarchy of male instincts (procreate → protect → provide) to explain current relationship tensions (e.g., men in protect mode, women expecting provision/tenderness).
Chapters
There's quite the polarizing conversation with men and women that we're still under some kind of war. And I'm here to tell you from my perspective, I waved the white flag a long time ago. I don't feel like there's a war. I feel like what's happening is. And Teal Swan talked about this. I just saw a video of hers today. For so long, women were owned like property, they were treated poorly, they were passed for land and title. There's a massive pain body that even Eckhart Tolle talks about that women, I believe have counter corrected. And the movement around women's empowerment, although very necessary, I think it had some repercussions, some unintended consequences that are potentially unraveling and unfolding now. Can you speak to that? Can you speak to what's happened in the past hundred years with women's empowerment? Obviously it's an hour long podcast, so we can't go too deep into that. But in the past hundred years we have experienced a consciousness among men, especially in my community, where, where we want to rise to the demand of the new woman, but we also want to be treated with love. Can you share what's happened in the past hundred years that really can speak to that?
Well, I'm almost 60, so before that it would be hearsay the last hundred years. But I do know some things. Like in the early 1900s, women were not considered intelligent enough to learn to type. Only, only men were taught to type. Women weren't supposed to be smart enough to do that. But I also know from my own study of men since 1991 that. Women think that men are doing everything from a position of power and from that they believe they have a position of power and they're abusing their power. Women assume that of men. Women don't know how much men experience being at the effect of women. Right. How much a man will do to make a woman happy and that he's miserable if he can't make her happy. If she's not happy, he's not good enough. How personally he takes that, that he failed to make her happy. That's a successful man can make a woman happy. I mean I've had to taught, I don't even know how many men. That 95% of a woman being happy is up to her. It's not up to you, it's up to her. And, and what we don't know is how much that men do for us. Right? And we also, there's this, there's this assumption that Everything that men do is this conscious, intentional choice to keep us down. Right. Really have a different view of history. Look at how many female managers and executives and CEOs exist just in first world corporations. Who gave them those jobs? People who care more about results than whether you got an innie or an outie. Didn't care about gender. Who's going to get the job done? She is. He is. That's what matters. So there's such a misunderstanding of what we would call the hunting. The hunting. Operating mode is about that hunting comes from a state of commitment. It's intentional. It has specific results and destinations. The brain literally screens out everything it considers irrelevant to that result. And it begins the moment you commit to that result. And so like this accusation, you're ignoring me, Josh, you've never ignored a woman in your entire life unless that was the only thing you were focused on. Ignore her, ignore her, ignore her. Right. No single focus screens it out. So there's so many things that we take personally and we're hurt and upset and disrespected, and they were not a choice on your part. They were just an instinct. And can I give you one of the most recent examples that's in my face? So I've lived through eras, right? 30 years. There's eras and there's. There. Is that the era of. Or era of emotionally unavailable. Right. Are you a typical emotionally unavailable man? I saw Oprah ask a man that on tv. I wanted to barf. Right. And now we're in the era of narcissists. So in between emotionally unavailable, a narcissist is unhealthy. You're unhealthy. You're an unhealthy man. Well, hello. So narcissist is what you get accused of when you have all your attention on yourself and you don't care about providing for me. Well, that also can be explained by a hierarchy of instincts, which is procreate, then protect, then provide. And a man and a woman can't either. Nobody can provide when they experience being under attack. Right. And no one can provide when they think they have to protect you. So men are having trouble providing for women now. Women want this tenderness and connection and communication. Most men are not in provide mode, they're in protect mode. Protect us from this threat to our economy, our lifestyle, our well being. My. My ability to provide is under threat. I need to protect that before I can provide. And so if a man is not providing, I tell women, just look around. What is he protecting you from? What's the threat he perceives and what is he protecting you from? And then you add to that, Josh, that if you won't provide for me what I need and I can't get you to do it, I'm going to attack you. I'm going to attack you and I'm going to accuse you of things. I'm going to accuse you of not loving me. I'm going to accuse you of not respecting me. I'm going to accuse you of being a misogynist. Well, now your protection has to revert to yourself. You're under attack, you have to protect yourself. And then you get called a narcissist because all your attention is on protecting yourself instead of providing for me. But I'm causing you to have to protect yourself by doing things. And this is where it all started, right? I started studying men because I wanted to know how was I bringing out the worst in them. I found out the answer was by attacking you.
