How to speak to men who have an unhelpful view of Masculinity

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Pierce the Deacon's earlobe, you creasy Teresas.

Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast.

If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast.

We're on about episode 404.

I think I didn't get this far to get this far.

Which is a quote from

Mike the Situation Sorrentino from the reality television series Jersey Shore.

Not a big fan of reality television but I always had a soft spot for Jersey Shore.

I used to watch Jersey Shore when it came out in 2007.

I mean how do I explain Jersey Shore?

It's a bag of shit.

It's a big bag of shit.

It's a big bag of dog shit that you rub into your eyes.

It was a reality television show about

some

dysfunctional Italian-American people in New Jersey who used to drink, have sex with each other, go dancing and get into fights.

And Jersey Shore lasted from about 2007 to

2012.

They were all in their 20s

and then around 2019 there was a new Jersey Shore

called Jersey Shore Family Vacation.

where they revisited everybody and now they're in their 30s.

And it was just it was incredible to see.

It was incredible to see people go from being in their 20s to being in their 30s on a reality TV show and one of the characters in particular

Mike the situation Sorrentino

who was caught

who was called the situation because

so he had a six pack he ate fantastic abs in 2007 so

Not only was he he he himself was called the situation, but his abs were also called the situation so it was a superposition of situations where at any point you could be referring to him the man as the situation or you could be referring to his abdominal muscles as the situation or sometimes the situation would get himself in a situation so let's just say he was on a night out in a nightclub and then he successfully manages to bring some attractive women back to his apartment.

Then he would say, oh we got a situation here.

We have a situation.

So, the situation is now in a situation, and then when the situation is in a situation, he lifts up his top, revealing the situation.

I don't think he thought this through, he wasn't being clever.

This tripartite

superposition of meanings, he wasn't being clever.

I don't think effective and clear communication was on his agenda.

This man was a prick,

he was a goal

in 2007.

in his 20s he wasn't a nice man.

He was

a bully.

He was a misogynist.

He was spiteful.

He was jealous.

He was narcissistic.

He had a short temper.

He was by all accounts an individual who

you'd call toxic, a toxic individual.

And then Jarzie Shaw Family Vacation comes around, part two of Jarzie Shaw, and Mike the Situation had this entire transformation of his personality, an entire transformation.

He went from being

from behaving like quite a nasty person in his 20s to like about eight years have passed.

Right?

Eight years have passed.

This is a group of friends in their 20s on a reality TV show.

and then they come back eight years later and I know reality TV is very heavily edited but it is real people so you get to see to watch an entire group change as people from 20s to 30s but Mike the situation goes from being quite a despicable person to becoming

a genuinely kind

thoughtful intelligent compassionate and humble human being and your initial instinct is genuinely because this guy was

This was not a nice person.

Your initial instinct is what's the game?

Am I being manipulated here?

Are you pretend nice?

You know, the episodes go on, you're waiting, you're waiting for that old situation to come back and be a nasty fucker, and it never happens.

And he's actually

in season, in season one of Jersey Shore Family Vacation, he's actually about to go to jail in real life.

He didn't pay his taxes.

He evaded tax and didn't pay any and he actually ends up going to fucking jail halfway through the series.

That's where his head was at in 2012, 2013.

He was like,

I'm so cool, I don't even have to pay tax.

I can do what I want.

Profound levels of narcissism, but he genuinely has this

transformation that makes him a very likable person, a decent person.

Mostly because he had addiction issues.

But not only did he deal with the addiction issues, he dealt with the underlying pain.

The underlying pain that had him acting in these toxic ways.

And I really loved that about Jersey Shore.

That's why I quoted Mike the Situation Sorrento there by saying, we didn't get this far to get this far.

And his transformation, it challenged me.

I'd written him off.

I'd written this man off as a prick, genuinely.

I was like, incurable.

This person is nasty.

And it humbled me seeing his transformation.

I didn't think I was going to open this podcast talking about Jersey Shore.

I'm on opiates this week, lads.

So I'm currently on opiates.

Which is probably why I'm talking about Jersey Shore.

I'm a small bit high.

I'm not on recreational opiates.

I'm on the medically prescribed opiates.

to alleviate my cough.

Codeine.

If you were listening to last week's podcast, and thank you for the wonderful feedback from last week's podcast, by the way.

I got great feedback.

If you were listening to last week's podcast,

I had a bit of a bark.

I had a bark in my throat and my voice was straining.

Turns out I have bacterial pneumonia, which I managed to acquire through

several sore throats and calls over the past two months and not allowing myself to rest properly.

So mild viral illnesses that I had, sore throats and sniffles,

they eventually turned into bacterial pneumonia and I'm doing okay now but I've I'm on codeine for my cough which

it's it's very very mild heroin.

That's what cordeine is very very mild opiates.

So it's it's quite drowsy and relaxing.

And I'm also on incredibly powerful antibiotics.

and I've had some week as a result of these antibiotics because I've never had this before.

The antibiotics that I was given,

I can't go into sunlight.

I can't step out in sunlight while I'm on these antibiotics because it's I looked it up.

it like it turns my skin into fucking solar panels so if i step into direct sunlight or spend too much time in the sunlight then i will blister it's really dangerous and my eyes as well.

So, this week I've been presented with a scenario I never prepared for, I never thought I'd have to deal with.

The weather in Ireland has been immaculate.

Like, I mean, perfection.

It's like every single day has been

just the right temperature, about 26 degrees, with a gentle cool breeze, no clouds.

The weather has been perfect.

The best weather that you can expect in Ireland has been happening the past week, and I'm on fucking antibiotics that mean that I can't step into sunlight.

So,

not only have I not been able to enjoy the weather,

I've had to live like a fucking vampire, darting between shadows, because I've been coming into work.

And again,

I speak about, you know, with my own, I don't don't want to say my journey with autism.

My life as an autistic person, okay?

The one thing I frequently flag,

which

is quite stressful, which I'd really like, I'd love to not live with this,

is eccentricity.

Behaving in ways which are perceived to be strange or eccentric.

But but it being outside of my control me not having

Sometimes self-awareness fails me when it comes to eccentric behavior and it's very stressful

because it leads to having to look weird in public situations and becoming a spectacle and people staring at you or people thinking you're weird so

so this week i'm on these hardcore fucking antibiotics

And I'm presented with this novel situation of, oh fuck,

How do I protect my body from sunlight?

I've never thought of this.

Like I prepare for rain.

I love my outdoor gear.

Rain, snow, cold.

I've got Gore-Tex, I've got layers.

I know how to deal with this.

But never ever in my life have I had to deal with...

Protect yourself from the shade, but also stay cool, because it's fucking hot outside.

And I can't just wear sunscreen.

Sunscreen isn't enough.

I have to actually cover my body and especially cover my eyes.

Vampire.

This week I am a vampire.

That's how I have to live.

So I was looking through all my clothes going, fuck it, what am I going to wear?

And I didn't have anything.

Because when it's warm in Ireland, you wear a t-shirt.

You take advantage of it.

You don't have light clothing like you like like you live in fucking Panama.

You don't have light breezy clothing.

If the sun is out, get a bit of of it because it'll be gone forever next week.

So I'd nothing in my wardrobe and I went looking around and eventually I found fucking.

So during the pandemic we all went a bit mad buying things online.

So I'd purchased a...

a black kimono.

A silk

kimono.

A fucking kimono.

With golden dragons all over it, you know.

What a geisha would wear.

A fucking kimono.

So I I see it and I go, Brilliant, this.

It's made out of silk, it's flowing, it's not too hot when I wear it, and it'll protect my skin.

So I put on my kimono.

And then I don't own sunglasses, I'm not a sunglasses person.

But during the pandemic, I did purchase sunglasses purely because

it was like 2020, couldn't leave the house, bored out of my skull.

The only pleasure I would get was clicking by and waiting for packages to deliver.

So I bought a pair of sunglasses called Lokes.

They were on eBay.

They were delivered like a Fiverr.

I only bought them because Cypress Hill used to wear them.

They're very thick, very black shades

and only Latino gang members from East Los Angeles in 1995 wear them.

So I think it was last Friday I found myself in Limerick city centre

wearing a floor length black kimono flowing off me and loax sunglasses darting between shadows like a rat focusing intently on the idea that antibiotics have turned my my skin into solar panels and of course what happens people stare at me people stare they stare at the lunatic they stare at the lunatic in the kimono because that's what happens that's what happens when you're wearing a floor length black kimono in public in a very hot day.

People don't understand.

Oh, that fellas on antibiotics.

Why would they make that connection?

So I got...

I got about 15 minutes of publicly embarrassing myself again.

And then afterwards, afterwards I went, oh, you did something slightly socially unacceptable.

You drew attention to yourself.

You did something weird and eccentric in public.

And this brought the shameful gaze of the public.

So then afterwards, that's the thing with this shit.

Afterwards I went, oh yeah, that was nuts.

Shouldn't have done that.

Yeah that was fucking mad that was.

But that again that's one of the things with my autistic experience is that I don't want to do things like that.

I really dislike doing things like that.

I'd love to be able to spot things like that in advance.

Sometimes I catch them in the moment, but not

if my mind focuses.

If I'm focus, I was focused on the idea that antibiotics can turn my skin into solar panels.

I was fascinated by that.

And

that's all I was thinking about.

And by focusing on that,

that's how you end up wearing a floor-length kimono in fucking Limerick city centre.

Not

a very hostile environment for kimonos.

For men wearing kimonos on opiates.

So that's been my week.

Tomorrow's my last day of antibiotics, but I haven't really been leaving the gaff.

I've

staying inside my house is better than stepping outside in a kimono.

But what I did do, I got around to finally watching Adolescence which

I think everybody has seen Adolescence.

It's that Netflix.

It's the Netflix drama

with Stephen Graham in it.

It's all shot with one shot.

It's brilliant.

Phenomenal.

Phenomenal acting.

Out of every single person, phenomenal writing.

It's fantastic.

It's perfect.

But it created

a lot of debate around incel culture, what we call toxic masculinity, male violence towards women.

Do you know what?

I want to do a bit of a phone call style rant about this.

So I'm going to do the ocarina pause now.

So I don't disturb myself so I can just speak.

I don't have the ocarina, I've got two tea bags, two Tetley tea bags, and I'm gonna rub them off each other.

And you're gonna hear some adverts for some bullshit.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

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I don't want the teabag bursting.

A burst teabag is a very unfortunate situation.

Right, that was the tetley tea bag pause.

That was like an advert for Tetley tea.

It's my favourite fucking tea.

They probably don't need my endorsement.

I just think it's good tea.

Support for this party.

They could be involved in awful unethical shit now.

Do you know what?

Fuck Tetley.

This.

I don't even know that.

I've no.

I'm neutral on Tetley.

I didn't endorse them.

I didn't not.

I happen to enjoy the tea bag.

Alright?

But check up their ethical record before you go buying them, maybe, just in case.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

This podcast is my full-time job.

This is how I earn a living.

This is how I pay my rent for this office.

It's how I pay all the bills.

It's how I put the lights on.

This is my job.

And I'm only able to show up every single week and deliver a podcast because this is my job.

That's the only reason I'm able to do this.

So thank you to all my patrons.

And if this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider becoming a patron.

Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of tea once a month.

That's it.

And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it.

Just listen for free.

Listen for free.

Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free.

Keeps the podcast independent.

Means I can speak about whatever I want.

Advertisers can't come in and adjust my content in any way.

This October it's going to be nine years of the podcast and I haven't missed a week in nine years.

I couldn't be happier.

And as an autistic person,

I've found the job that meets my needs perfectly.

That's what this is to me.

That's what this means to me.

And for that, I'm just incredibly grateful.

I'm unbelievably grateful.

Um, so also recommend the podcast to a fucking friend.

I think that's the reason.

Like, we still have loads of listeners, we still have like a million regular listeners, and

it, I don't think it's social media, I think it's people literally just telling their friends about the podcast.

I think that's where my audience comes from because

I had

270,000 followers on Twitter, and Twitter went to absolute shit when Elon Musk took over.

So that's 270,000 followers down the drain.

Gone.

Useless.

My Twitter account is useless.

Doesn't work anymore.

Nobody's Twitter works unless you're a right-wing grifter.

And even though my Twitter went, it didn't affect the listenership.

So that tells me that my listenership is word of mouth.

It's people telling someone that they know.

listen to the blind by podcast to think you'd like it so if you can't become a patron, please recommend to a friend.

Recommend to a friend who you think would like this podcast.

Send it on.

Or follow me on Instagram, Blind By Ball Club.

Also, don't sign up to Patreon and the fucking the Apple iPhone app

because Apple are greedy cunts and they take 30%.

So, if you're signing up to the Patreon and paying money, please do it on a browser or a browser on your phone.

Gigs.

Right, I've got a hot tour coming up in

Scotland and England.

Looking forward to those breakfasts that you have.

The tumescent, the tumescent sausage that you have over there.

Looking forward to that.

This June I'm doing a giant tour and it's almost sold out.

Briston.

Not fucking Briston.

What the fuck is Bristol?

Bristol.

Cornwall.

Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex and Norwich.

Come along to those gigs, feign.co.uk forward slash blind pie.

Then Vicker Street and Derry in September.

We worry about that when we get to it.

Get the jocks and the tans out of the way first.

So I watched that lessons.

It was fantastic.

It opened up all this conversation around toxic masculinity.

There was all this huge debate, mainly in the media.

Even

I saw a fucking article in it was the Irish Times or the Examiner.

And the article was

podcasts for toxic centrist dads to listen to

and my podcast was was recommended in it my podcast was recommended as like a cure for toxic masculinity and no disrespect to the journalist the article itself was brilliantly written with wonderful arguments made

but

like i'm losing more and more faith

I'm losing more and more faith in the business model of media as time goes on.

I I love journalism, journalism, journalists, public discussion, opinion columns, fucking love all that, really important.

But they exist within an ecosystem, an ecosystem that the business of media, where all news is presented as entertainment, and

headlines in particular, are designed to get an emotional reaction.

So even that article, podcasts for toxic centrist dads, that adds to the problem.

That adds to the problem.

Social media is gamified.

Social media is a type of video game.

It's owned and controlled by billionaires.

Billionaires have decided how we must discuss things.

And they've decided this by creating the forum where we discuss things.

And all social media pivots everything towards binary oppositions and turn and response combat.

Clickbed headlines exploit this by pissing people off.

So when I looked at the comments underneath that article, I didn't see lots of middle-aged men who are willing to have their opinions changed about things.

I saw a lot of fucking angry middle-aged men going, who are you calling a toxic centrist dad?

More walk nonsense.

Because the headline of this very considered well-thought-out article the headline which isn't written by the journalist, but by a separate department that writes headlines for social media, the headline was designed to piss off the very audience that it intends to target.

It was designed to annoy, rattle, and cajole the type of men who could do with thinking about gender roles differently.

who could do with thinking about what it means to be a man differently.

So I don't have faith in the corporate media space, the the clickbait space or the social media space to solve any problems to solve any discourse because everything is pivoted towards turn and response combat people become farther entrenched

in dysfunctional beliefs it's it's one of the reasons too

you don't see me on on TV shows that much anymore on talking head stuff

like i might get a phone call every two weeks for from a radio show or from a TV show in Ireland to come on and go headblind by this week we're speaking about toxic masculinity.

Will you come on to our TV show and speak about toxic masculinity?

No I will not.

I won't because I don't think you're interested in a helpful discussion.

You're looking for sound bites and you're looking to edit what I say down into a very simple clip that you can put on Instagram not to help people but to piss off as much people as possible so that you can get engagement in the comments.

So I just say, No, no, thanks, not interested in that.

I've got a podcast here with a million listeners, and I'm going to speak about it there, where there's time and nuance and space and seagulls nesting on my roof.

But Lordsy were asking me to speak about adolescence or to speak about the themes that are brought up.

I mean, what do I have to say about masculinity?

One thing thing I can say is

never

have I found gender expectations helpful ever.

And what I mean by that is at no point have I ever said to myself as a man I should do this.

A man should do that.

A man should be like this.

I should do that because I'm a man.

I shouldn't let that happen to me because I'm a man.

Fuck it.

Should I have reacted to that situation in a more manly way?

Is that what I should have done?

Like even the situation the other day where I get these antibiotics

and I can't go out into the sun and before you know it I'm wearing I'm wearing a fucking kimono with ridiculous black shades in the street and a few people stopped and looked at me and I think a few people kind of not laughed at me but like one lad There were two lads who saw me and one fella tapped his friend's shoulder to go look look at him.

What the fuck is he wearing?

And that's not nice.

That's not pleasant.

That's public shame.

It's not pleasant at all.

It's, like I said, if you listen to this podcast a long time, this is a frequent problem that I have.

Publicly eccentric behavior that I kind of only cop onto afterwards.

That's part of the autistic experience.

Now, what would a man do?

What would a man do in that situation?

A man would walk up to those two lads and say, are you fucking laughing at me?

Because a man a man must be dominant a man doesn't allow other men to laugh at him in public you see a man has to win so now i i i gotta walk up to those men and i i gotta fight them now and i gotta win my reputation is at stake my reputation as a man is at stake And now I'm being aggressive.

Now I'm being aggressive to two lads who I don't know.

I don't know what their situation is.

I'm getting myself into a fight in public.

I'm risking personal harm, death.

You can get a box into the head and knock your fucking head off the carb and die and I'm risking arrest because I just said to myself what would a man do in that situation?

And you've seen that.

Are you telling me in all your time on this world you've never been in public and you've never seen one man say to another man what the fuck are you looking at?

What are you staring at?

And then a fight happens because one man is staring a bit too long at another man.

So that's why I never say to myself, What would a man do?

What would a man do in this situation?

What should I do here as a man?

Never.

It's because it's never useful, and I'm aware that all of these rules about what it means to be a man, they're social constructs, they're fucking bullshit.

They're made up.

They are made up things by society.

They're gender performances.

So if I don't say what would a man do, what do I say to myself?

I say, what would an adult do?

I replaced the word man with adult.

If you're a woman, same fucking shit.

I don't want to be a man.

I have no interest in being a man.

I want to be an adult.

I want to be an adult.

I don't want to be a man.

What's a man?

I want to be an adult.

So what did I do in that situation?

I went into my office.

I took off my kimono and my sunglasses.

I had some self-compassion and said, you're fucking autistic.

You're autistic.

And this...

unfortunately

sometimes you get yourself into into situations that are publicly embarrassing because you struggle with social norms and what I always say to myself then is who gives a fuck who cares did I harm anybody

by wearing a kimono and silly glasses outside did I harm a person did I insult anybody did I deliberately try to hurt someone else's feelings No, I did not.

That lad who touched his friend's arm to point at how ridiculous I looked, fair enough, I looked ridiculous.

Does his opinion of me in that moment define my worth as a human being in any way?

Absolutely not.

But the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation and shame that I felt, that's that's baggage.

That's my wounded inner child because I have a lifetime of this stuff.

I've been doing things like this my entire life.

My entire life,

I've been publicly embarrassing myself.

And I have the awareness that when these new situations pop up I bring a lot of that childhood pain into my into my present moment and it's not real it's not real feelings are not facts but if we take that back to how I should have acted as a man

so what society told me what I should have done if I'm a man

I should have gone up and had a fight with those two lads or instigated a fight or threatened them or asserted dominance.

That's not being a man.

That's behaving in a,

I don't want to say emotionally immature, it's behaving in a childlike way.

A child,

right, a little child,

this is why I don't like saying immature, you see, because this is how a child is supposed to be.

If you point and laugh at a six-year-old, that six-year-old will experience that as very painful and might throw a tantrum.

They might start to cry cry or they might try and physically attack you or they might call you names.

Because a six-year-old doesn't have the...

they're not at an emotional place where they have healthy self-esteem yet.

You laughed at me, that hurt.

Now I have to hurt you.

Whereas an adult goes,

you laughed at me.

I noticed a feeling of heart coming up.

That heart is actually rooted in childhood heart.

But as an adult, even though you laughed at me i kind of i like who i am i'm very happy with who i am i've got self-esteem and self-worth so i don't want to get revenge because you laughed at me i'm just going to move on with my day that's the adult position that's what an adult does that's really difficult that takes skill effort practice to get to that place

All of these men that you see in the in the manosphere,

I'm talking your Andrew Tates

and men who behave like Andrew Tate.

They're performing gender.

They're engaged in a performance.

They're acting.

They're acting out gender.

Even though what you see is a grown man

swaggering, appearing to be incredibly confident.

You're not seeing someone behaving like an adult.

Adults don't behave like that.

Adults

adults work on emotional literacy.

Adults understand

all of their emotions, what they're feeling, and how to respond to those emotions in the here and now rather than react to those emotions.

Donald Trump too, highly reactive, combative,

pointing the finger, blaming somebody else.

Jordan Peterson too, he's a fucking psychologist, Jordan Peterson.

Any of these

new influencers who are promoting a certain type of masculinity, they're not behaving like adults.

They are not behaving like adults.

Contrast it with someone like Barack Obama.

Now, Barack Obama, I'm not a fan of Barack Obama because he used to drone weddings in Pakistan.

He's got a lot of blood on his hands.

So this isn't an endorsement of Barack Obama's fucking foreign policy.

But if you see him speaking, if you see him debating people, He tends to do it in a very adult way.

Now it's not stoic.

Like one of these things too about what it means to be a man.

Don't show emotion.

No emotion.

That's harsh shit.

Absolute fucking harsh shit.

Instead what I focus on is vulnerability.

Being vulnerable.

Now that's another fucking word that gets thrown around.

Vulnerability gets thrown.

If you say vulnerability to somebody like Andrew Tate or one of Andrew Tate's supporters, Vulnerability is perceived as weakness.

They think of vulnerability as a man who is cowering, cowering like they're being whipped and whimpering.

Vulnerability is to be completely open to very frightening and challenging emotions.

Very, very frightening and challenging emotions.

Emotions such as

I feel insecure.

I'm jealous.

See that man over there.

I'm jealous of his job.

That man over there has got a job and that job is better than mine or that man over there has got a car and that car is better than mine or he's got a possession and that's better than mine and when I look at his possession I feel really really insecure and small and insignificant now normally what would pop up when that type of emotion comes up normally what pops up we don't even have that awareness When a feeling such as jealousy for another man comes in,

you skip that emotion and a defense mechanism pops up and you move to the secondary emotion of anger.

Look at that fucking prick over there with his car.

Fucking wanker.

I bet he thinks he's great.

Vulnerability is catching the jealousy in the moment, noticing it, watching it and taking it on board as part of who you are, part of yourself.

Ah, I feel really, I'm insecure.

I'm insecure and jealous because someone else has something that I want and this makes me feel like a failure and makes me feel insignificant.

I'm going to take this feeling and I'm going to embrace it as part of who I am, as part of the inevitable, the inevitability of being a flawed human being.

You can't be a human being without having fallibility.

You take it on board and you go, even though I'm jealous right now,

the feeling of I'm insignificant, I'm a failure.

That man is better than me because he has a thing that I want.

That's actually bullshit.

That's bullshit because we all have intrinsic worth.

We're all the exact same as human beings.

So that's what vulnerability is.

Vulnerability is truly noticing and taking ownership of very, very frightening and threatening emotions and responding to them and growing from them rather than reacting.

And reacting is

jealousy pops up.

Oh, he's a fucking wanker.

I bet he thinks he's great.

And what do you get from that?

You further entrench yourself in placing your own self-worth in external things you become more angry you become more bitter and the reason the reason I use Barack Obama as an example is if you watch Barack Obama debating or arguing he doesn't get angry he doesn't react emotionally He doesn't raise his voice, he doesn't talk out of his fucking arse.

He makes well thought out points.

He defends his argument because he's being vulnerable in the moment.

What is he being vulnerable to?

The vulnerability of possibly being wrong.

The vulnerability of conflict.

That's a big one.

As men,

we're conditioned.

These rules, these gender performances about what it means to be a man.

Don't show emotion.

Don't be emotional.

Which is bullshit that means nothing.

But it's a message we receive.

Stand upright.

Be stoic.

Show a brave face.

Don't reveal any emotion in any situation.

That conditions us to

turn away from emotions when they pop up rather than sitting with emotions, rather than sitting with uncomfortable emotions.

And when we don't understand our emotions, we become afraid of them.

When you're afraid of your own emotions, you're afraid of conflict.

Now, conflict, conflict doesn't have to be a fist fight.

It's...

It's normal and okay to be afraid of a fist fight because like I said, a fist fight, you can die.

But generally when we're afraid of conflict we're afraid of an argument.

Arguing with someone, disagreeing with someone, the discomfort of a person disagreeing with you, the fear that if someone disagrees with you you might get so angry that you'll explode and probably too when you're arguing with a person.

You're focusing on being right who's right and who's wrong rather than compromise.

Donald Trump when he was with Zelensky in the Oval Office, it wasn't the Oval Office, he was in the White House, Donald Trump when he was with Zelensky about a month ago.

Did you see how reactive he was?

Did you see how he was pointing the finger?

How emotional he got so quickly?

And some men will look at that and go, yeah, he stood up for himself.

He showed Zelensky who's who.

He showed him who's boss in his house.

No, he became deeply uncomfortable and afraid of the feeling of conflict.

the feeling that someone might be disagreeing with him.

And then he had a tantrum.

He had a tantrum like a child would have.

He responded not in the here and now as an adult but he responded

as a wounded child, as a wounded child who's just been scolded by a parent.

And are these are alpha males?

Are these the alpha males we hear about?

None of it is useful.

None of it is helpful.

I keep getting asked how do we how do we help young men?

We take men out of it.

We all focus on being adults.

We focus on what it means to be an adult.

And I bring up Barack Obama as an anecdotal, an anecdotal

example.

He's done war crimes.

He's done war crimes.

Alright, look at his drawing program.

But if you see him arguing with people, communicating with people, he's an excellent example of somebody who is in the adult state.

I'm picking him because it's very easy to contrast him with Trump.

It's the same fucking job, but they're in the same situations.

And Trump is seen as a masculine, dominant alpha male he's somebody that he's seen at the top of the food chain that's who you aspire to be donald trump the masculine the masculine fucking performance the masculine performance that's sold to us of masculinity it's actually it's asking you to to be to respond in a very emotionally immature way in a very frightened way the masculine performance is

very ridiculous sets of armor that that you wear while being absolutely terrified, terrified and dumbfounded by basic emotions inside.

I mean what do I work on?

I work every day

to try and be an adult.

Every day I work to try and be an adult.

It's not a state I'm going to arrive at.

It's not permanent and fixed.

but it's it's something I work on all the time through awareness.

To be an adult is to focus on the present moment, to focus on what's happening right now, to use critical thinking, logic, observation, evidence, especially when it comes to emotions, emotions that pop up.

Am I angry right now?

Or am I actually afraid?

And the anger has popped up to protect me from fear.

Let's push the anger aside for one moment and look at the fear, look at the vulnerability.

Do I have rigid rules about how people must treat me or am I willing to be flexible in the moment?

Like

what are childish thoughts?

You can't treat me like that.

I'll show you.

I bet you think you're better than me.

I'm gonna take you down a peg.

See, those are all very emotionally reactive,

insecure,

heart-frightened ways of reacting to other people.

They're also quite competitive, masculine ways of reacting.

That's how a man should act.

Fucking stand up for yourself.

Don't let people talk to you like that.

They think they're better than you.

Fucking

show them that you're better than them.

So if I find my if I catch myself thinking like that, I try to notice it and shift it towards a more adult position.

And the adult position is when you're dealing with other people or there's potential conflict or disagreement or whatever, I'll say to myself, what are the facts here?

Let me consider other people's perspectives.

What outcome do I want?

And how can I achieve it constructively?

And then if I think that way, my behavior is proportionate, constructive.

I'm interested in solving problems rather than being right.

I'm completely open to being wrong about something.

Why?

Because I've got intrinsic self-worth.

I love myself.

Of course I'm going to be wrong.

I'm a fallible human being.

Being wrong is part of being a human.

I want to be wrong so I can learn.

So I'm comfortable to be wrong.

And if I am wrong, I'm open to apologize to the person for being wrong.

Another thing we're taught as men is to don't apologize, don't apologize, because to apologize is like admitting defeat.

No, I want to apologize.

If I'm wrong, if I'm genuinely wrong, I want to apologize.

A, it's compassionate, nice thing to do for another person.

B, you gain respect.

You gain genuine respect if you can actually apologize.

C,

nothing will grow your self-esteem and self-worth more than practicing the genuine vulnerability of apologizing and taking accountability when you're actually wrong.

You're getting right down there with very frightening emotions.

Very frightening emotions there.

Everything that society has told you as a man about what it means, about defeat, weakness, giving in, giving up.

If you can genuinely apologize and take accountability you're getting right down to those terrifying emotions and you're bringing them in as part of you you're making them part of yourself you're parenting them

part of being an adult is also noticing that there's an there's an insecure child in all of us there's a little hurt child in all of us who pops up in tense situations and when you're vulnerable and like i said vulnerability is taking ownership of very frightening emotions.

When you're vulnerable, what you're actually doing

is you're being a parent for that little child inside in you.

You as an adult are giving your little inner child, you when you were four, giving that little child a hug and saying, I know these feelings are frightening, but you're safe.

You're safe because I'm here now.

And the I is you you now as a fucking adult.

That's what the I is.

And that's what vulnerability is.

Vulnerability is seeing your little wounded inner child and going down and genuinely giving that little child a hug.

And taking accountability and apologising is a great way to do that when you're actually wrong.

But the other thing too about being an adult, being an adult who focuses on the here and now and notices emotions,

you genuinely can tell when you're wrong or when someone else is wrong.

You can genuinely tell it's it's not clouded by reactive emotions.

I'm not speaking about misogyny.

I've done a lot of podcasts on misogyny.

The reason I'm not getting into it is because that's a whole separate podcast.

I've spoken about it before.

It's massive.

It's massive.

Misogyny is the learned hatred of women.

The belief that women are weak, less important, that they're to be dominated and that they exist to only have children and serve men.

If you know someone, a lad, who's stuck into this Andrew Tate

masculinity performance shit, you know they also have very rigid, horrendous black and white views about women.

In my opinion, you're not going to get them to tackle those views unless they focus on being an adult first.

Like being in an emergency on an airplane.

Like when you're on an airplane you look at that diagram what to do in the event of an emergency and putting on your air mask, right?

And it always says, if you're an adult with a child, put your own mask on first before you put the child's mask on.

Now, most parents,

in the high emotion of an emergency, most parents won't put their own mask on first.

They're going to put the mask on that little helpless child first.

But if they do that,

then the adult might go unconscious before they can actually help the child so that's why the adult puts their own air mask on first so that they can calmly respond to the child's needs because the child might be fucking panicking and that actually works as a nice metaphor for our internal worlds fears insecurities

angers

They tend to be wounds from the past.

They tend to be hurtful things that we learned at a very young age that are popping up as adults.

The easy thing to do do is to react, to react to that pain, to that inner pain.

The difficult thing to do is to be an emotionally intelligent adult in the here and now and to notice this pain and put our mask on so that you can calmly respond to it.

That's the difficult thing to do.

Lads who are in the throes

of listening to Andrew Tate and believing that bullshit and putting pressure on themselves to be masculine and spending all day wondering, is this how a man should be?

Should I respond like am I manly enough?

Am I more manly than that person?

Am I enough of a man?

Any adult who's thinking that way, their self-esteem is in a very bad place.

They don't have very solid self-worth.

They don't like themselves.

They don't think that they're worthy of love or loving themselves.

They're afraid of women.

They're afraid of genuine connection with a woman in case she sees what a pathetic, useless, horrible individual he is.

That's what he thinks about himself.

So these men use objectification and hatred of women to protect themselves from these deeply insecure feelings.

So in my opinion, just my opinion,

that fella has to put work into being an adult, into building self-esteem, into vulnerability.

and sitting with deeply uncomfortable emotions and getting to a state of calmness and self-acceptance and when they get there then a word like misogyny or patriarchy or feminism isn't utterly fucking terrifying isn't terrifying and anger inducing like a lot of these men have placed their entire self-worth their entire self-esteem they have placed it into the hands of an imaginary woman Their internal thoughts are that like these lads would see

they'd see a woman that they find attractive and their internal thoughts are

I bet you think I'm fucking pathetic, don't you?

I bet you'd turn me down.

I bet you'd hate to have me as a boyfriend, wouldn't ya?

I bet you'd think that I'm useless and pathetic and hopeless.

And that's why you have that boyfriend who's taller than me or who has a better job than me.

Because you think I'm a worthless, pathetic, tiny little fucking worm, you bitch.

Why do you keep reminding me of how I feel about myself?

You remind me by the men that you're attracted to who are clearly better than me in every way.

So that's the internal dialogue of some of these lads.

Like, what can I read their fucking minds?

No, they write this shit on the internet.

You can see it a mile away.

They can't even access a sense of self-worth.

because they've hand they them they have handed it over to a

imaginary woman a a collective imaginary woman they've given all their self-worth over to this imaginary woman and this imaginary woman and this is what they always say

80% of women are attracted to 20% of men though that's skewed data based on

the dating sites dating sites which like I said earlier with social media dating sites aren't real life tinder's not real fucking life what's Tinder?

It's social media for riding.

Tinder is gamified.

It is a gamified platform designed by billionaires to extract data.

What if I looked at humanity based solely on how people behave on Twitter?

Everyone on Twitter's a fucking prick.

Is that a representation of real life?

Because in real life

I find that most people are quite agreeable and nice, but on Twitter everyone's a fucking asshole.

Why?

Because it's a platform designed by billionaires billionaires which is gamified and turns all responses and all communication into turn and response combat.

Tinder and bumble and all this shit, they're also gamified.

Walk out into the street.

Does it look like 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men?

No, because I see a lot of women going around with men who look like belly buttons.

What does it mean to be human?

All humans want to be loved and want to love someone else.

That's what it is to be human.

All humans want to be loved and want to be loved by someone else.

And that doesn't have to mean romantic love.

The other thing as well is...

So a lot of these...

these ways of thinking, it's the

unhelpful emotions.

So genuinely believing something like

80% of women are attracted to 20% of men.

That's a very fear-based view of the world.

It's not based on evidence, it's not based on reality, it's based on a type of a very fearful, all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, and also mind-reading.

Reading the minds of women and going, I know what you think about me.

Whereas really, what you're doing is, no, you think this way, you think this way about yourself because your self-esteem is quite low.

You think this way about yourself, and you're projecting that into the minds of women you haven't even fucking spoken to, and you're blaming them for how you feel about yourself.

These are deeply unpleasant, mentally unhealthy ways of thinking.

Very frightening, stressful ways of thinking that get our fighter, that get our fucking adrenaline flying and our cortisol stress hormone levels flying.

And when a man is thinking that way, I have no worth unless women are attracted to me.

I'm worth nothing because I don't have a girlfriend.

I don't have um I can't attract a woman because I'm not good enough.

Women only want men who have money are assholes.

They don't want nice guys like me.

Feminism ruined everything that's why I'm alone.

80% of women are attracted to 20% of men and I'm not in that 20%.

This is hopeless.

That way of thinking about yourself,

thinking about other people and thinking about the future.

That will trigger your fight or flight response to be thinking that way.

And when your fight or flight response is triggered, you focus only on threat and you end up in this loop where you'll you will look the world

you will search for the things that confirm your fucking beliefs you will only see women with boyfriends over six foot tall because you believe that women only want men who are over six foot tall you will only see that you will only view yourself

Through a lens of not being good enough and being undesirable.

You'll seek out all the information that confirms this and you'll completely ignore everything to the contrary.

Everything to the contrary.

Because when you walk outside and walk around the streets, there's lots and lots of happy couples.

There's lots of people in all different shapes and sizes, in all different types of relationships, just being humans together.

A lot of this shit, this manosphere stuff,

you can trace it to

interpretations of Darwinism.

Like Charles Darwin, I don't want to say Charles Darwin did a lot of damage, but the people who interpreted Charles Darwin's work did a huge amount of damage.

Charles Darwin, he went and looked at nature and said, look, there's a thing called natural selection, and this looks to me like survival of the fittest.

And bad actors cherry-picked this to mean fighting and dominance and hierarchy.

It was used to justify

exploitative capitalism.

In the 19th century, it was used to justify racism.

Racism, race doesn't exist.

Race isn't real.

You've just got human beings.

Human beings are human beings.

We're all the exact same fucking race.

There's variations of skin tone, hair, eye color, depending on...

as responses, biological responses to different environments that humans humans found when they settled.

But there is no such thing as race.

That's a social construct.

It's words made up by social Darwinists to justify colonization.

There is no such thing as race.

And colonial Europeans with white skin decided a thing called race exists.

And we white Europeans are at the top.

So we're justified in if we dominate and colonize and subjugate and murder and kill this is just survival of the fittest this is Darwinism it was also used to justify liberal economics the economy is a wild animal capitalism is inevitable don't interfere with it it's it's nature just let it be some people are just supposed to be rich and other people are supposed to be poor it's darwinism you can follow all that down to this this manosphere shit we can follow it all to

there's alpha males and there's beta males and all males are in competition but ultimately women are the ones who get to select the best males because the males are in competition with each other to dominate you want money muscles and status that's how you become number one that's how you become the alpha if you do that you'll get the most amount of women are you a high value man are you a high value man and these readings of darwinism this survival like It's not survival of the fittest, it's an ecosystem.

There is an ecosystem.

Competition exists in that ecosystem, but ultimately, everything is in a perfect balance and everything depends on everything else.

It's holistic.

Bad faith interpretations of Darwinism will say, well, we're fucking humans.

We're humans.

We're the best.

We are the top of the food chain.

We're number one.

We rule the world.

That's Darwinism.

We're the fittest and we survived.

Well, if that was the case, why would we all go extinct in a year?

If bees died tomorrow?

If all the bees, bees, bees, tiny fucking bees,

I could kill a bee with my fist.

I could headbutt a bee and kill it.

If I got into a fight with a bee, I'd win.

I'd dominate that bee.

I'm fitter than the bee, I'd kick the shit out of a bee.

Bees pollinate 75% of the food that we eat.

If bees disappeared tomorrow, we'd all die.

All humans would die.

Most of life on Earth would collapse.

Same with with

what you call it, mycelium.

The fungus, the fungal network that connects plants to soil.

If that went tomorrow, that's it.

Gone, done, everyone dead.

Wasps.

We need wasps.

Wasps.

Wasps help things to decompose.

So actually what we have is an ecosystem based on balance, harmony, cooperation.

That's the reality of it.

The apex predator might look like number one, but that apex predator relies upon the tiniest insect to survive.

All humans want to love and to be loved.

That's it.

That's what it means to be a human being.

If you can work on being yourself, if you can work on being an adult, loving yourself, experiencing the vulnerability of difficult and frightening emotions, becoming an adult, then eventually you become

the type of person who feels safe to be around, who feels safe to be around and who feels nice to be around.

And I'm not going to gender this.

That's what humans are attracted to.

That's what humans are attracted to.

Do I feel safe and happy around this person?

Or am I walking on eggshells?

Or do I feel unsafe?

Or do I feel threatened?

And if you think that you're a nice guy, oh, girls only want assholes.

Girls like assholes are rich fellas and they don't like nice guys at all nice guys get friend zoned here's a good way to think about this nice guy shit

usually the nice guy thing right

it's a performance

of niceness that men put on in order to try and get sex from women right

it's it's not nice it's perceived as very sneaky and unsafe and weird

Pretend for the laugh that

it's a man, right?

And he's got a PlayStation 5

and

you want him to give you his PlayStation 5.

So what you do is you

embark on a fake friendship with this man.

You pretend that you want to be friends with him.

You pretend that

You fake that you're interested in all the stuff that he says.

And you drop little sneaky hints all the time about how he should give you the PlayStation and you invite him out for dinner and laugh at all his jokes and bring conversation back to PlayStations every so often.

And then at the end of the dinner you say,

I paid for your dinner, give me your PlayStation 5.

And then he says no and you get really angry because he's been teasing you.

So generally...

When you find lads who are

stuck in this manosphere mindset, this

dysfunctional way of viewing themselves and viewing other people based on faulty information about gender that we receive from society.

Generally, these lads when they speak about being a nice guy, they're referring to a situation like that.

This has been a bit of a phone call and a ramble because I have been sick all week and I'm on opiates currently.

I'm not a fucking expert.

If you were to ask me, you know, where is all this shit coming from why is it exploding

this

I'm trying to avoid the word toxic masculinity because I don't think that word is helpful anymore

the baddies are winning

the Andrew Tates

the Donald Trumps they are winning

their message is more appealing

to certain men than a message which is more compassionate and nuanced and fair.

Andrew Tate's message is winning because it's providing very simple answers to a person who feels quite afraid and inadequate.

Anger and rage and bitterness

are very useful secondary emotions.

When you feel insecure or worthless, frightened, not good enough, that's deeply threatening, that's not pleasant at all.

And when we feel this way, we want to get away from that as soon as fucking possible.

And bitterness, blame, anger, resentment are excellent short-term solutions because

they make us feel like

they're actionable.

They make us feel like we're doing something and they give us a target to point at and a target to say,

you make me feel this way.

The you in this situation is women.

So the influencers who can dangle bitterness and hatred and anger in front of men who feel very very frightened and insecure and have low self-worth.

The men who can dangle that anger in front,

that's like sweets.

That's like they're handing them a bag of sweets.

You're not going to reach these men by using words like toxic masculinity.

I don't think so.

I don't think it's an emotionally intelligent approach.

I think that the conversation about toxic masculinity is something that happens a little bit down the line when that person can rebuild their self-esteem and their self-worth and can feel the type of calmness where they can think critically about unhelpful information about gender and how a man should be or unhelpful information about women.

This is why I critique the media space.

Toxic masculinity is used in clickbait to guard, to goad and get a reaction out of the very men that it needs to reach.

So I prefer to talk about being an adult.

What does it mean to be an adult, to be in the here and now?

To have self-esteem, to understand what vulnerability actually means.

That to be vulnerable is actually to be really brave.

And also to have the

emotional awareness and critical thinking skills to reframe.

To reframe the likes of fucking Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, any of these men existing in the manosphere.

Any of these fellas who are out here, they're doing a performance of masculinity.

And we need to view that for what it is.

It's an adult man behaving like a child.

Not a person to be relied upon, to be trusted, to be listened to, to be given any degree of responsibility.

Because currently, they're behaving like a child.

This person is behaving like a child.

They're throwing tantrums and they're blaming people and they're behaving like children.

I'm going to plant a lot of the blame on neoliberalism.

We've been sold a faulty belief.

Through the generations we've been sold a very faulty belief about gender, whereby

a man's worth, the worth of a man, depends on his ability to provide for a woman.

A man must work,

make enough money to bring a woman in, then he provides solely for that woman, he buys the house, he's the breadwinner.

and then she just pumps out children.

And he does this.

It's It's a means of economic control.

It's control and coercion of women.

That's what it is, really.

But we've existed in a society where the messaging is: a man has worth if he can do that.

And because of neoliberalism, that cannot exist anymore.

It's highly unlikely, highly, highly unlikely for the average man today, the average millennial or older Gen Z

to be able to

have the type of money where he can buy buy a house, pay the mortgage, pay all the bills, have a wife, she doesn't need to participate in the workforce, instead she gets to be a stay-at-home mother and look after the kids while he provides everything financially.

Neoliberalism has made it so that doesn't exist anymore.

But you still have

the faulty and incorrect social construct of a man's worth depends on that.

So then you get a generation of men who cannot achieve worth and effectively feel like absolute and utter utter failures.

So the thing to get angry with there is the system of neoliberal capitalism.

You want workers' rights, unions, no zero-hour contracts, pensions, no vulture funds.

That's your enemy.

Get that back.

You get that back.

But so that you can work towards a situation where people can choose that life if they want.

That's the thing.

Someone should be able to have the choice, regardless of gender.

All people should have the choice to have kids if they want to have kids.

And all people should have the choice for a parent, whatever gender, to stay at home and be a full-time parent if that's what they choose to do.

We exist in a system where that's impossible for most people.

And it wasn't impossible for our parents' generation.

I suppose I did start this podcast speaking about Mike the Situation from Jersey Shore.

And I think I now realized there was a reason.

I'm not telling you to watch Jersey Shore.

It is dog shit.

But

sometimes I want dog shit.

That's my little dog shit that I enjoy.

Jersey Shore.

I really do.

But Mike the Situation is a wonderful example of someone who.

In the earlier seasons of Jersey Shore, he was

an absolute misogynistic wanker, bully, manipulative prick who performed every

gender performance stereotype of the alpha male, he did it.

And then you come back eight years later

to Jerseyshore family vacation and now he's an adult.

He's kind, he's compassionate, he's not reactive.

He's a humble, decent human being.

And when you see that person, who he became, the adult, and then you look at him when he was 26, 27, as this alpha male, you can look at it and go,

that's a very hurt child.

That's a child who is very, very hurt.

And he's wearing this suit of armor.

This is what's working right now.

And he's very hurt.

And he doesn't understand his emotions.

And that's the thing too.

When we don't understand our emotions, we try to control other people's behavior.

Misogynists try to control women.

They try to control the behavior of women in every aspect of their lives.

Alright, wink at a swan.

Genu fleck to a wren.

Pick up a worm and

take it out of the hot sun.

Hopefully, tomorrow, I'm finished my fucking antibiotics tomorrow.

So hopefully, after tomorrow, I'll be able to go out.

It's the best time of year.

It's fucking May.

This is the best time of year.

This is when, right now, I'm pissed off fucking vampire

This is when when when trees are at their absolute best like

Leaves they're they're only up about two fucking weeks.

They're at their prime.

They're at their peak.

I I want to go out in in the evening sun like fucking seven o'clock at night down to Yarti's couch and I just want to smell the full bouquet of nature that you can only get right now in fucking May and I can't do it because these antibiotics are after turning my body into a giant solar panel.

So hopefully I'm off them tomorrow and then the day after

fucking bollocks first into nature.

Dog bless.

Also not promising anything

but I've lined some things up and next week's podcast may be very very special right but I can't promise anything.

But it might be very special next week I might have a very special guest.

coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

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Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question!

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

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Please play responsibly.

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