Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.My guest today is George from the Tin Men.He's a content creator, pro-men's advocate, and a researcher.Why is it so hard to advocate for the problems of boys and men?
If we truly care about half of the population flourishing and living lives that they actually enjoy, why is it so unpopular to talk about any of the challenges that they're facing?
Expect to learn what George thinks of the current world of advocacy for men, why the press struggles to define what healthy masculinity is, the lessons we can learn from the rise of the manosphere, the hidden effects of bullying on boys' mental health, whether white guys for Harris actually helped men at all, and much more.
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That's drinkag1.com slash modernwisdom.But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome George from the Tin Men.
men's mental toughness is just toxic masculinity rebranded writer jill stark says a cult hero ned brockman's grueling 1600 kilometer charity run has aussies talking but not everybody sees it in a positive light what do you think about this i mean it's just one more absurd headline adding to the the many many things that we can blame for blame toxic masculinity for which is absurd
I mean, for me, it's part of like a bigger problem where men's mental health needs are often sort of different to women's.
And like some of the crazy things men do, such as run 1600 kilometers and raising millions of pounds, are just outside the view of people like Jill, who think such a thing is toxic and not actually an amazing achievement for anyone.
Despite the fact that they're raising tons of money for charity as well.
So a man, he ran 1600 kilometers, raised maybe one and a half million Australian dollars for the homeless, which is like, I don't know what more you could possibly want.That's still toxic masculinity somehow.And, uh, it just isn't.
And, uh, yeah, I mean, one of the many absurd, we could have a whole podcast just going through these headlines and just one of the many things that just washes over you.
But thankfully some things are just a little bit too stupid to be offensive and that sort of qualifies very much so to that category. What do you make of the current world of advocacy for men? Honestly, it seems to be quite splitting a little bit.
I feel like as it becomes, as any movement becomes sort of larger, reaches a critical mass, which is a lovely thing.It's sort of, it seems to be fragmenting into different view sets, which we can't really afford to do.
And I guess the elephant in the room is certain large organizations that are becoming, in my opinion, too entwined in politics and losing sight of their own mission statement, which is the first, second, the third priority is to help men and ultimately save men's lives.
That's my priority. Unfortunately, we're in an area of advocacy that is just innately unpopular right now.
It's uncomfortable, and it requires making some sacrifices and doing some things that are not going to get you a huge amount of credit, but are necessary nonetheless.
It's interesting to think about when a movement is too big to be small, but too small to be big.It's still kind of revolutionary, but has sufficient size to warrant splinter factions and different sort of approaches.
Well, I'm really interested in things like the diffusion of innovation, where basically maps how a movement becomes viral.And as I'm sure you know, you need about 13% of adoption by the public for it to go viral.
And then it hits that mass market success.So you have that bell curve. of the diffusion of innovation.And I've always wondered where are we on that bell curve?
When are we going to reach that tipping point of 12% where the mass market, the early and late majority as it's called, they're like, actually, this is something that I can now get on board with.The risk is now at an acceptable level.
And I'm like, we're getting there. I really want to get there together.I really feel like we need to work as a single unit here and we need to keep communicating and we need to sort of have the same shared objectives.
So yeah, I mean that's where I want to get to and perhaps that'll be the end product of this podcast.Who are the market leaders in this?The market leaders?I mean the money is owned by Movember, which is the elephant in the room.
People think Movember is just a meme, and it is a meme.Movember is the whole idea of men growing a moustache for November.It started in Australia maybe 20 years ago, but it's far more than that.
Movember now is one of the largest, most powerful NGOs in the world.I think it's one of the top 50.It's absolutely the largest, richest, most powerful men's health and male suicide charity on the planet.
And they are the ones that have the money, to be honest.They're the ones that through which the money is given.They don't do work directly themselves.
They take money from different donors, like growing their mustaches, fund runs, bake sales, et cetera.And they'll distribute it to other people.So researchers and groups and various other things.So that's how it's structured.
And to be honest, that, that comes with risks in its own right too.How so?
Well, I feel like any, any organization that has a huge amount of money and power and influence and others that don't, you've got to remember the men's health and male suicide sector, the men's sector is deeply impoverished.
Like I know people that are doing groundbreaking research and yet they're working second jobs.They're sitting dogs.I know, I know a guy called Jody who's trying to open the first men's abuse shelter in the UK.
And he is sat right now at his kitchen table just answering his own phone, just answering the phone to men.He's taken a thousand calls this year, he's not been paid a single penny.
He's taken no salary, and he's just answering the phone to anyone who will call him.And there's so many charities that get nothing.I've got to mention Mankind, who are an amazing charity.They own the only shelters in England for male abuse victims.
Zero pounds from the government, nationally that is.Zero pounds. So there is a massive lack of money and funding in the men's sector because it's all going to people like Movember.
And it's frustrating because everyone talks to me about, no one cares about men.No one cares about men.And they do care about men because there's so much money raised for Movember.There's lots of people doing amazing work in Movember right now.
But the money just doesn't seem to be getting spent in the right way, in my opinion.And that's a problem.It's not a lack of effort, not a lack of ambition or generosity or compassion from the public.It's just not being used in the right way.
What do you make of Movember's efforts?
I mean, I want to qualify everything I say right now.Movember is a massive organization, massive.I think they've done about 1200 projects in about 20 countries, including mainly the UK, Canada, Australia and America.They do amazing work.
They do amazing work, especially in things like prostate cancer and men's health.They've done some really great work recently where they're talking about men who die young in the UK.So they found that I think 15 men die young every hour in the UK.
So in the end of this podcast, that's 15 men who have died young.Most of those deaths are avoidable if we can increase the sort of the health literacy amongst men and sort of do more work for men's health. And no one can argue that.
That's really, really important.My issue with Movember was within their mental health area and certain things in terms of prioritizing sort of parts of it.
I mean, it's hard to dance around the subject, but basically my main issue is their recent advocacy around violence against women. And you've got to remember, violence against men is a massive deal and no one's taking it seriously.
One in three victims of abuse in the UK is a man.And that is me being conservative.In America, it's one in two.If you look at the CDC data, it's one in two.And people might say that's not true, but go check it for yourself.
The research, I'm happy to present you with so much research.I can literally give you hundreds of papers. to prove that, but it's at least one in three.And there is virtually no refuge for men and virtually no refuge for in America or the UK.
And I think in America, there's maybe two shelters for men.In the UK, there's a few more, but really nothing.
And remember recently, and this is where a point of contention I have with them, they've been sort of allying themselves with organizations that are trying to end violence against women and even giving money over to violence against women.
And that, to me, is not right.That, to me, intuitively, is not right.That does not make sense, especially what I know about how impoverished and how desperate men's shelters and people like Jodie, my friend, are for money.
I need to qualify another thing, is that when I criticize violence against women, That does not mean I am pro-violence against women.No one is pro-fucking-violence against women.
The naming of violence against women is extremely effective because it's named after really important sentiment, violence against women, like who doesn't want to end that?I want to end violence against women just as much as anyone does.
The issue that I have are a certain amount of policies around violence against women that basically gender it.
Gendered violence, meaning that men and boys are taken out of the picture and the funding, the policy, the shelter is given exclusively more or less to women and girls.
And those, that one in three victims are men, which in the UK represents about 750,000 men every year.There's nowhere for them to go.There's no, there's really no help.
What is the abuse that you're talking about?What constitutes abuse or gendered violence?What is that?
Difficult.I mean, this is why some stats say one in three, some stats say one in two.In Australia, it's one in four victims is a man.It really depends on what do you consider violence.
Does that include emotional, psychological abuse or financial abuse or abuse by proxy?Are we specifically talking about physical abuse?
In America, if you're talking specifically about physical violence by a partner, there are actually more male victims of physical violence by a partner, according to the CDC.And that's just a shocking stat, but that is also true.
And that report, that survey comes out every few years, and I dread the years where there are more victims, more male victims, because I'm like, this is going to be so fucking unpopular.
Your point being that you would have to talk about it, you're going to report on the actual stats and you can't say something that would be more popular publicly because you have to say the thing which is unpopular publicly.
Let's just say I prefer it when it's one in three, because it just takes the edge off a little bit.When it's more, when there's a greater disparity of men, I put it a lot less.
What would you say to the people who go, ah, there's an imbalance in abuse, especially gendered violence, because men are more effective.
Men are stronger, therefore the severity of the violence in one direction over the other is going to be much worse.
I'd say that's sometimes true, sometimes not.The latest data for the Office for National Statistics, which is the sort of government's data body in the UK, finds the exact opposite.It finds that men are more often injured.
So male victims are more often injured by female partners than the opposite way around.So that intuitively sounds right.And I would totally understand people that would say that.And it often is right. But not always.
I mean, this is the issue I find with the discussion of violence against women, is that it so often becomes centered around the very, very extreme, like mostly homicides, like people who were killed by partners.And that is mostly women, absolutely.
But that is also a small part of the problem.That is like, you know, tiny, tiny percentage.I interviewed Don Dutton recently and he summarized it well.
He said, we measure domestic homicide per million couples, but we measure domestic violence per hundred couples. So you can sort of see the disparity outside.It's a much different scale.And that's not to say domestic homicide isn't important.
And that's not to say that men aren't also killed by their partners.I think it's about one in four victims of domestic homicide is a man.And if you look at male victims, so including children, it's even closer.
It's really close to 50-50 because there's a massive Disproportionate number of boys killed, often by parents.So if you bring in the boys, then it's very similar.
I think in Australia, I think it's about 36 males and 44 females killed in domestic violence rather than intimate partner violence. And it's so frustrating because people say, well, women are just killing their partners from self-defense.
And I'm not talking about women and men, I'm talking about children.And if you consider that the majority of males killed by their partners, by family members, are boys, who is defending themselves from a child?It doesn't make sense.
And I mean, I would just, I guess I'd underscore it by saying every victim needs to be spoken about.It doesn't matter if it's 1%.It doesn't matter.It doesn't matter if it's one single person.I would say they're just as important as anyone else.
What's the issue of a men's health charity like Movember getting behind a movement that tries to reduce violence against women?
Nothing, but Movember is a men's health charity and there's lots of work, but by no means enough, lots more work being done to end violence against women.Violence against men isn't even a thing.Violence against, and it quite literally isn't a thing.
If you're a male victim of abuse in the UK, you are literally classified as a victim of violence against women. How so?
Literally, the government released a document not long ago, two years ago, and the title of this document was Supporting Male Victims of Violence Against Women.
And I'm like, so you're a man being abused by a woman and you're somehow a victim of violence against women.
So we arrive at this crazy sort of backward somersault of sort of mental gymnastics where a male victim is now a victim of violence against women.
Give me the steel man case for why it's framed like that and then give me the more concerning potential reason for why it's framed like that.
One of my more tin hat reasons behind why we don't care about men, I asked Erin Pizzi this, who was the founder of the first domestic violence shelter anywhere in the world, which was in Chiswick in London.
And I, I, she was thrown out of her own charity because she wanted to help male victims.And, uh, she, she wanted to talk about interactive violence where both partners were abusing each other.And which is half of all domestic violence is, is that.
I asked her, why are we doing this?Why don't we help men?Why is there not more support?And she just said one word, money.She just said money.They don't want to share the money.
If you look at Sandra Hawley, who was the CEO of Refuge UK, which is the largest domestic violence charity in the world, she's on record saying, if we were to say men are as likely to be abused as women, we would have to share the money.
And they don't want to do that. But this is going in the other direction.
You're talking about an organisation like Movember, which already has lots of money, probably, I would guess, receives like 90 out of every 100 pounds given to men in one form or another, maybe even more.
I don't understand why this reverse trick is being played in that regard.If the women's charities already have more than they need, why is a men's charity donating money to it?
They seem to stick to a more antiquated model of men's health that is more around blood pressure and obesity and the physical side of men's health, whereas I want to look more broadly.
I'm more interested in the systemic, societal causes of men's health that hurt men. So that's where the divide is.I would say, for instance, a man who's raped in prison is a men's health issue.
A father losing his child in family court is a men's health issue.A husband abused by his wife is a men's health issue.A boy being bullied is a men's issue.Men's health isn't just about prostates and BMIs and all that.Those are important.
we have a different definition of men's health.That's where the divide is.I think men's health is out there, and Movember seems to think men's health is in here.And they just don't consider it.
They consider, from what I can understand, they consider violence against women a men's health issue.
Which doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me, but from their perspective, they want to help treat violent men to stop them from abusing women, which is a noble cause, but again, you're just looking at one side of the problem.
You can't solve any equation with one side.You've got to look at both sides.Both partners need help.Like I said, half of all violent relationships, both partners are doing it.They're both participating in a cycle of violence.
spirals out of control and you know, an argument become yelling and yelling becomes shoving and shoving someone gets slapped and then slapping it becomes punching and it gets worse and worse and worse.
So it's certainly important to help men be less violent through certain treatments, but that again, that's only one half of that cycle.So.
Yeah, they want to reduce violence by men against women by seeing it as a men's health issue and I guess doing certain therapies to encourage what they consider healthy masculinity, which is a rather nebulous term.
So violence against women is a men's health issue and violence against men is a violence against women issue?
They certainly don't consider violence against men a men's health issue, but violence against women is a men's health issue.And it just reminds me of this strange political dancing where they're basically, in my opinion, they're just afraid.
Look, I had this conversation with Richard Reeves, which you got to see, and I get this sense that anybody who is trying to run a public-facing, legitimate, not like you or me, illegitimate, outside of wedlock communicators, anybody that's trying to do forward-facing stuff in Washington, DC, in Sydney, Australia, in London, England,
and is trying to have these conversations, they need to pay this penance, they need to sort of kiss the ring of the existing gendered mental health, gendered health, gendered violence, gendered marital issues.
cliches and stereotypes and caricatures and the way that this stuff runs, because it is still too big to be small, too small to be big.
It is not yet sufficiently big or widely adopted that you can talk about the problems of boys and men without first saying we know the problems of girls and women are a big deal as well.And this is like a structural, operational,
policy, political nod.We know, we know, we know.Look, all of the support, or the support that we give to men, can't be done.You can't call us, castigate us for being uncaring misogynists that are anti-feminist.Look, we gave money to Vogue.
And in that regard, I think, well, maybe that's a weird kind of entry price that you need to pay.But something tells me, in your opinion, that
You don't need to do this is mostly bullshit in my opinion to call it what it is like i mean go look into my richard's podcast is self evident you both spent twenty minutes talking about that, the first twenty minutes of a podcast about men you spent talking about women and that makes the point how many people dropped out as a result probably quite a few.
and it's not good enough.You're only undermining yourself long term.It reminds you of people that say, oh well, I'm not a racist but, well don't fucking say it then.You don't need to say that.The proof is self-evident.
No one could ever accuse Richard Reeves of being a misogynist and someone that would should not be bargained with, can't be bargained with.I just feel
all this penance paying and apologies and this long litany of small print that has to seemingly come with every single piece of well-meaning advocacy of any more.
You're just burning bridges with people like me that are not doing that and refuse to do that.And it's not, I don't think it works long term.I think you weaken your point.
I feel like you're setting a precedent that we don't want to follow and we won't be following.
What's the biggest elephant in the room around men's issues at the moment?
Oh, the clear intertwining of politics.Once money's put into large organizations, like I've been very enthused by Richard, for example, $20 million from Melinda Gates, Movember, about to open up a $100 million Movember Institute.
There's money to be spent.And with money, it becomes expectations and politics.So I can understand there are political expectations
I'm sure they're sat around tables, women's organizations, being told what they can and can't say, what they can and can't argue about.I have no doubt people at Movember care.
Actually, I know they do care because people have contacted me from within Movember to say, we do care, but we can't do anything because we're playing this political dance.
And that is just not good enough for Movember to seemingly be scared of just sharing the truth of male victims of abuse in this example. be afraid or browbeaten by, who knows, unknown feminist organizations it seems.
And also, our own government are afraid of these organizations, and they're on record in saying that.It's not good enough.I'm sat here with nothing.I don't have that $100 million.I don't have their large legal teams that defend me.
I'm just sat here with a laptop, and I'm doing the hard work.I'm the one that's actually taking risks, and those like me.And to hear these large organizations suggest that they're afraid, well, you know, we would love to do what you do, George.
Of course you can.You're the one person that can do it.You're not a small organization, remember.You are the biggest men's health organization on the planet.If not you, then who is it going to be?You don't see it from women's organizations.
More power to them.They're constantly pushing the boundaries.They're constantly asking for more.They're constantly making more and more things women's health issues, as they should. They don't toe the line in the same way.
They're not browbeating and they're not afraid.And that's, that's admirable.And I would just, I would just remind them of your obligation to men.You are obligated to help men.That is your first, second or third priority.And that is really it.
Like, I'm sorry if that's uncomfortable.I'm sorry if saying that in a meeting is going to get you into trouble.I'm sorry if you know. It's hard.I'm sorry if you lose money, but unfortunately, your job is to save men's lives.
And I'm sorry, but that is unpopular.The things that are causing male suicide are often unpopular to talk about.And if you can't talk about them, then this isn't for you.
What are the unpopular things causing male suicide?
Well, Martin Seeger has attributed 20% of male suicides in the UK to family breakdown and child custody battles.So a child being lost in a family court and a relationship breakdown, that's 20% of suicides.That's what I mean.
That is a men's health issue in my opinion.Of course it is.And if we could fix family courts and if we could help support men after divorces, we could potentially reduce male suicide by up to 20% like that.
Again, domestic violence, I said it has a massive detrimental impact on men's health.11% of men being abused will consider suicide.And like I said, 750,000 men being abused in the UK every single year.What's 11% of that?You do the maths.
In America, it's 50 million men in their lifetime being abused.
11% of that are potentially at risk to suicide and these are the men that are just being betrayed, left behind because powerful political men's health advocates are just too afraid to say the simple truth that domestic violence is not gendered, there are a significant amount of male victims of abuse and that abuse has a massive detrimental impact on their mental health, does lead to suicide and they are not being helped.
I'm really struggling to make sense of it myself.
Well, you got to have a chat with Zach and maybe some more people, I don't know.What did you learn when you had a chat with Movember?
And the reason I ask is I must have done between 30 and 50 episodes on this podcast talking about mental health relating to men in one form or another, whether it's
loneliness, sexual dynamics, mating markets, socioeconomic status, education, employment, training, going deep into the world's leading researchers on the intel movement, all sorts of stuff, everything, everything, from top to bottom, left to right.
And I have asked myself the question, why am I not a massive, like, card-carrying Movember guy?Like, I should be.I should be the poster boy for
always talking about, I love the work that they're doing, they're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing the other, you know, I should be like balls deep behind them, literally, saying that I love the work that they do.
And for some reason I'm not.So I'm interested in what you learned when you got to speak to the people running Movember and what assumptions maybe were certified and what questions were unanswered and answered and so on.
If you're going to hand over, I think they handed over, maybe three million Australian dollars to violence against women, I'm like, well then presumably you're going to give at least that to violence against men.
And as far as I can tell, they're not.There just doesn't seem to be any plans to open any shelters for men or do any programs for men or to help violent women be less violent.I just want to know, what are you doing?
They're just basically making things either men's health or not men's health because one is politically convenient and one isn't.
And the stuff that is politically convenient seems to be more things around eating habits, physical fitness, diet interventions, prostate cancer.
Which are important.Which are important.But men's health isn't just in here, men's health is out there. And like, they're just holding on to an antiquated model of men's health.
Well, I don't know.You say that they've got lots of money flowing in.Maybe they don't have enough money to be able to afford to raise shelters or give your mate Jody some cash so that he can man his one person thousand call phone line. No.
I mean, certainly lots of money flowing in, but a lot less flowing out it seems.Like UK Charity Commission is basically a space where you can actually look at the accounts of all the charities, which is excellent.
And it's quite clear, you can look at Movember's accounts and you can see they have at least 35 million pounds in cash, perhaps up to 50 million pounds.It's difficult because 50 million assets, 35 million in cash at least, And that's not right.
That's not their money.First of all, that's money they were given to help men in the ways I've described.And it's just sat in a bank account, right?
35 million pounds or more sat in a bank account, not being spent, accumulating interest it seems for their own benefit.That is not right.Especially, like I said, I know people that are desperate for just a tiny, tiny percentage
I'm here running like crowd funders, like rattling a tin can for money to help my friends, to help support male victims of abuse.Remember, I sat back on a big mountain of cash.
I cannot explain how much I could do with just 0.1% of that amount of cash.I could do huge things. And yeah, they say it in their own accounts.They say they are at risk of reputational damage if people find out how much cash they are sat on.
And it is a lot.It's 35 million pounds.
Why do you think that would be the case?Because it's not like people can be drawing massive salaries or else everyone will be up in arms.I don't know where that money goes.
I have no idea.All I know is they have a lot of cash.I know that their trustees, there are seven trustees of Movember, Movember Europe, which is basically the UK arm of Movember.And not one of those trustees is based in the UK.
Not one of those trustees is even living in Europe.They're all based in North America and Australia.So I guess difficult questions at November are going to be asked.
I'm now asking, and I'll continue to ask, is why are you sitting on so much cash when the men's health industry is struggling so much?Why are none of your trustees based in this country?How could a trustee
who's not even living in this country claim to know how best to spend men and money for British men?That's a good question.
You used a term earlier on which I'm seeing increasingly thrown around, which is healthy masculinity. healthy masculinity being what I think seems to be the answer to toxic masculinity, or at least an attempted sort of retconning of what that is.
I've heard that there is potentially some footage from guests who've been on this podcast being featured in an upcoming anti-manosphere campaign by Movember.Do you think this is where they should be focusing their attention?No.
I mean, I remember I seemed to be declaring war on the Manosphere.I don't know what the Manosphere is.I'm sure I'm seen as part of it.I'm sure you're seen as some sort of president of the Manosphere.
And the frustrating thing is, I hate the Manosphere.I hate the Red Pool.I'm more than happy to point and make fun of people like Andrew Tate, and I will bang that drum forever.
But I don't think it needs to be talked about in the same way that they want to talk about it.I don't think it needs to be a war against the manosphere.I feel like the manosphere is just burning.I feel like it's gone in many ways.
What is Andrew Tate doing these days?He just seems to have descended into madness.The people that were once sort of symbolic of the manosphere, where are they?It's gone.It's over.Let's move on.Let's actually help men.
Let's spend our money setting a better example for boys so they don't have to go to these sort of nefarious figures. I feel like just fighting the monosphere, you're just fighting ghosts.
What are you fighting?Shadow boxing an imaginary opponent.
Yeah, I always think of it like an angry gorilla fighting mist is how I describe it.Does Movember want to challenge what it is to be a man? Yeah, this is what I mean.
There are certain things that I remember are very keen to encourage all of us to challenge stereotypes about what it is to be a man, which I am on board with.But they don't seem to want to challenge themselves, their own gender stereotypes, i.e.
that men are violent and women are victims.Violence against women, in my opinion, that is a stereotype in its own right.So that ought to be challenged.This gendered narrative of domestic violence is a stereotype.That needs to be challenged too.
So it's not good enough to make the demand that we challenge our stereotypes if you're not going to challenge your own. So yes, I just think it's absurd the amount of time they seem to be spending fighting the Manosphere.
I don't know who's even part of it.I don't know what it is.There's better things to be spending your money on.
It stinks to me as somebody who's at the coalface of internet culture, and I think that you're right as well.I think that whatever the Manosphere was or is,
uh is largely on a decline i mean you're selling your stock like fuck these nfts you're just pumping them you can't can't wait to get rid of them because they're declining by the day i don't think that whatever it was but it stinks massively of um people in the mainstream media
finally hearing a term that is catchy and does catch on and go, this is a big deal.And you go, no, it was a big deal in 2021.It was a big deal, but the internet moves quickly.
But there's, you know, the conceptual inertia of these big fuck off lumbering behemoths that take forever to actually catch up to anything.
And this isn't me saying that that's how it is about Movember, but I'm starting to see the manosphere be talked about more online.Toxic masculinity sort of continued.I mean, that's still I definitely put a little bit of cash into that stock.
if I could.That's certainly something that seems to be continuing to drive the stock price up.But it just doesn't seem to me to be on the money about exactly where the conversation around men is happening online.And then when you say, you know,
challenging stereotypes, I would be absolutely fascinated to hear what the world sort of thinks of a stereotype like Chris Bumstead.So Chris is just retired as six-time Mr. Olympia Classic Physique champion.
He's cried on stage during his acceptance speech, I think at least 50% of the time, if not four out of six of the times.Fully broke down crying when he did his leaving speech.
regularly tells stories about how he goes to therapy, regularly tells stories about how he breaks down in his girlfriend's arms before he does this thing.Not one person is calling him soft or weak or vulnerable or like a puss boy.
And on the flip side, nobody would also call him toxically masculine.But my concern is that when you take this sort of rough hewn, anybody on the internet talking about stuff
that is pro-men, in a manner that doesn't concord with our cliches of what people on the internet think masculinity is, which is Chris Bumstead, big hulking guy, must be toxically masculine, there's no place for him to fit.And for me,
I would love, like, make him minister for men.He's just retired from bodybuilding.I'd love to have Chris Bumstead as minister for men.You've got 25 million men, mostly, that follow him on Instagram.
Because, by the way, if you get big muscles, it's not girls that care, it's guys that care.And he would make a phenomenal role model.He encourages me to be a braver, more open, more vulnerable, emotionally attuned man.
But the problem with it is it doesn't fit into an easy narrative, right?Because he doesn't look the way that he presents.He presents in the way of like a sort of wuss guy that's never actually done anything, like a super sort of agreeable dude.
but has made all of the achievements of somebody the type of masculine.And it's not easy enough for people to grasp, I don't think.
But yeah, I just, I don't know, the challenging stereotypes thing is challenging them in the most sort of low-resolution way possible.And I just want it to be better.I want there to be better male role models out there.
I would add Jordan Peterson to that.I mean, he's so often mischaracterized.He's absolutely on the hit list for Movember as, again, some sort of high-profile manosphere elite.I have no idea, but I'm like, he is so in touch with it.
I've seen him crying so many times, like he is so in touch with his emotions.Yeah, some things he says we may not like, and it's easy to quote some of that out of context, but he has done a net good for men and boys in my opinion.
And maybe he hasn't done it in a way that Movember likes or other people like, but people want to watch him.Men and boys have voted at their feet and including for people like you, Chris, like You started from nothing.
You started from your dining room table with a webcam and you got to where you are because people voted for you by watching your content.Same for me, but to obviously a lesser extent.And I'm like, we are people to be learned from.
And so is Jordan Peterson.So is Chris, Chris Bumstead.And like. I feel like that's why we need to work together.I would love to talk to him and be like, I don't agree with the direction you're going in.I think I have valuable lessons to lend you.
I think Chris would pick up the phone and love to speak to you.
If anybody, any organization is really worried about radicalization and men being pushed toward bad influences, the first thing they need to do is correctly pattern match who is and who isn't a bad actor.
Because if they're not careful, they'll just push creators like me away by positioning themselves in opposition to me.Like you're making an enemy of an ally.
You can't see somebody, like anybody that looks through the back catalogue of this podcast and doesn't see somebody that cares about men's issues, Like, you're high.You're high.You just simply are unable to interpret content accurately.
And this doesn't matter whether it's Movember or a feminist organization or anything.I'm not anti-fucking-anything.I'm just pro-men's issues.
And, yeah, being told that men are supposed to talk more, but then also being told to shut up when they say things that you find inconvenient, I don't know, feels like being politically gaslit at a national scale.
Just not even that.Going back to the start of this podcast, you were talking about the man who ran 1,000 kilometers to raise money for homeless people and was mocked for it.
It's like the whole meme of men will fix a steam engine rather than go to therapy or Men will reenact the Holy Roman Empire.
I fucking love those memes.Or like men will dig a massive hole in a beach to avoid condemnation.Maybe they are therapy.Maybe those things are actually therapy to men.Maybe going to the gym is therapy.Maybe taking a dog for a walk is therapy.
Maybe reenacting Battle of the Bulge is therapy for men.Like maybe these are actual therapies.And like who's to say they aren't?Like therapy doesn't have to be being sat down talking to a sort of a psychologist.Like therapy can be anything.
And like, we shouldn't be mocking these men that do these amazing things.We should be sort of seeing them as pioneers in many ways.
Did you see Russ Cook, that guy that ran the length of Africa?
No, but that sounds fascinating.
He's the hardest geezer on Instagram.And I think he ran, it was either in a full year or maybe even over a year, and he ran basically a marathon every day.
And he's the first person in history to have gone from basically Cape Town to whatever the fuck's at the top, Tunisia, Turkey, some shit, whatever's the very, very top.And it took him a year. to do that.
There's videos, there's some really, really raw videos of him.One day he must have drank from a classically unclean drinking sauce and he had vomiting and diarrhea while he's running and he's just not stopping and he just keeps on going.
I can absolutely see a headline that says this is the denial of emotions, this is feeding into the sort of toxic men must always be strong narrative.It's like, no, men want to be strong.
They don't want to feel the compulsion to need to be strong all the time, but they want to be strong.And the difference between telling men it's okay to talk about your emotions, it's okay to not be strong and competent all the time,
And you can't be those things, because if you are being those things, you're not choosing to be them, is denying from men one of the greatest sources of meaning that they have in their life.
One of the greatest sources of meaning is doing a thing that's difficult and getting fucking better at it.
It's exactly why I... Men would rather produce 850 episodes of a podcast than go to therapy, but then actually go to therapy during the last year of the podcast.So It always takes me back to Elon Musk.
When he first bought Twitter, he got rid of all the middle management and 90% of the coding team.And there's this famous selfie of him and like 20 Asian dudes behind him.
And it's him basically saying, I'm going to run this entire company with these people.If you want to work harder than you ever have in your entire life on the most difficult and important problems in coding, come work for me.
And he got castigated because it was, this is going back to industrial revolution era, pushing people to work beyond their limits.Are we not, are we not got past this?What about mental health Mondays?And what about holistic Tuesdays?
And what about, you know, smoothie Wednesdays and stuff like that?This is pushing people to go too hard.And it's like, you, maybe true, maybe even true on average for most people,
But there is a huge subset of people for whom you put that kind of a challenge in front of them, or you tell them to run 1,600 kilometers for homeless people, or you tell them to run the entire length of Africa, and they go, yes.
Like, do you think that Russ Cook ran daily for over a year because of toxic masculinity?Or do you think he did it because it gave him an innate feeling of meaning and contribution and conquer and mastery?
Denying that is literally denying him, denying his nature.And we all know how dangerous that can be in the modern world of the LGBTQIA plus community.
So, you know, his, him living out his truth was him running every single day because that's where he took his meaning from.
I have a friend called Sam who walked the length of New Zealand to raise money for boys.He's a survivor of sexual abuse himself and he wants to raise money for male survivors of abuse and he walked across the whole of New Zealand.
It took him I think maybe 70 days.That could not be less toxic.That is so admirable. It seems that men like to value achievement, they like to do something, they like to be productive.
A lot of women, I've written a lot about this, and a lot of women have contacted me and been like, I want this too.I don't like this psychological model of therapy.
I want to do these things, I want to make the steam engine, I want to reenact the Holy Roman Empire.
but we seem to want to vilify these things where men want to do and achieve great things like in the way Elon said like I mean put him into the manosphere as well same for Goggins perhaps to a greater degree and sometimes these people can be enforcing like an unhealthy archetype of masculinity but then sometimes they can just be lifting
Man up.Like I've, I've seen the videos on within Movember and they had been leaked to me, I'm afraid.And I remember the first clip I saw was Andrew Tate and I do not like Andrew Tate, let me be clear.
But the bit, the bit he said, and it's not perfectly quoted, but he said something like.You don't achieve anything by talking about it.You achieve it through action. I was like waiting for the offensive bit and that was it.
You've picked the most acceptable Andrew Tait quote.There's some horrible things he said and I'm like, you've picked something that's actually good?
And I was just like, I can't believe that scene is controversial and what you're saying is really important and true for a lot of people.Men want action, men want change, men want solutions.
It goes back to the classic trope of women want to be heard and men want their problems solved.A lot of the time when a woman comes to you with a problem, they don't want a solution, they just want to be heard.
But sometimes men just want a solution, they don't want to be heard, they want an answer.
That's when you get into the men are from Mars, women are from Venus thing where a man's giving a solution where his wife just wants to be heard and his wife's not giving a solution because she's just talking or listening.
I don't know, I guess at the bottom of it, there's a fundamental difference in, generally speaking, how men and women present distress and how men and women want to be helped.
And sometimes men more often want a solution, or they want to achieve something for a real purpose.
But you know, this is a Richard Reeves-ism to say that a lot of the time men are told that their biggest problem is that they're just too masculine.
that if they were a little bit more like women, if they talked about their problems, if they were less concerned with conquer and mastery and progress, that they would be fine.
And you go, well, if I was to deny women what they want, what their predisposition on average is, That would be catastrophic.That is probably not far off patriarchy, right?You denying the other sexes right to live out their innate, inbuilt desires.
And what do they want to do?Especially if it's not... Running 1600 kilometers is toxic masculinity.Who's that hurting?Shy of the tarmac. Who's that heretic?Who's David Goggins?
Would David benefit from a century or so of a little bit of talk therapy to get in touch with his emotions?Yeah, maybe.But he lives a very important niche, I think, which is someone who doesn't ever stop.
Okay, what is it like if you don't have any quit? any man that looks at Goggins and goes, I can be that in its entirety.
That's not how men, how infantilizing to think that that's the way that men look at that person, as opposed to go, hey, when I'm going through a tough time, I'm going to call on my inner Goggins.
And when I'm going through an emotional time, I'm going to call on my inner Seabum. I'm not going to call on my inner sebum and get in touch with my emotions if I'm going through a really, really rough workout or something like that.
I'm going to use the different tools that I have for the job.What was that Peterson quote about something about being cruel?You've got to learn to be cruel, or you're weak if you're not able to be cruel or something.
That's on the hit list as well, I'm afraid.Yeah, that's one of the... the blacklisted often.It's completely out of context, that's often quoted.But when you're talking about Goggins, et cetera, it reminds me of the words of my mum.
She'd always say, everything in moderation.And if no one sat there just watching Goggins, their eyes like this for several hours a day, and if you did, I'm sure that would be unhealthy.
You're watching a bit of Goggins, you're watching a bit of Jordan Peterson, you're watching a bit of Chris Williamson, maybe you're watching a bit of me.You're having everything in moderation.
Nothing on its own is good, and I wouldn't suggest just watching Goggins.
Who do the powers that be in men's advocacy put forward as positive role models?
I honestly do not know.This is a question we had maybe a year ago.Who are the positive masculine role models for men? And I don't know, we didn't have an answer there.I have answers, but I'm not sure who they're supposed to be.
Like, I think they, I think these, at least this certain type of advocacy really struggles to present a male role model, a healthy male role model, especially one that is masculine.And I'm still waiting for them to present one.
Like, have you seen one?Like who, who are we supposed to look up to?If not all these manosphere men.
Well, it's the vacuum of any role models has left the gap that has been precisely filled by people that those supposedly providing us with role models say aren't role models, right?
Like it's the issues that you have are laid at the feet of the vacuum.You know, I think very much the rise of the manosphere and whatever version that is, like the DGN internet version of the manosphere, the proper one,
Uh, I think that that largely was laid at the feet of Jordan abandoning his conversation about boys and men.You know, he moved on to other things.He moved on to talking about political issues and religion and faith and stuff like that.
And he'd opened up a market.There evidently was a market.He'd inspired a lot of people to have these sorts of conversations and it showed proof of concept that you can be very popular by doing it, but he didn't continue servicing the market.
So there was demand and no supply, which sucked in a lot of other people.
I think Jordan probably gave up on that because he got so much backlash.He clearly cares a lot about men and boys and he must have been sick about being vilified for it.The same for Warren Farrell.
He could have been a really great role model and champion for men and boys.No one really knows who he is, but he's a wonderful man, very thoughtful and sensitive, a lot like Jordan. And he was, I guess, castigated.
And I don't know, like, I can understand why Jordan would give up.I often feel like giving up too.
And you're right that there is a massive lack of positive male role models, especially when you think about how many boys haven't got fathers at home and how few men there are in classrooms and how bad the role models are on TV, especially like sitcoms.
And people like Andrew Tate capitalized upon that.He just stepped into that vacuum, because he does speak positively about masculinity, whether you like it or not.
He does speak positively about men and boys, and they just naturally gravitated towards it.I always like to think that- Who could have predicted?
I always like to think that his meteoric success, I think he was the fastest growing influencer in history, that massive success is exactly proportionate to our failure.That's how badly we've done.That's how big our failure has been.
So if we need to stop pointing the finger at boys, calling them toxic and misogynistic or oppressive, And start pointing the finger at ourselves for not helping them, not talking to them, only ever talking about them, never talking to them.
That's the real big problem.Like you always talk about boys, always talk about men. We never talked to them.Like I actually spent last Friday on the streets of London just interviewing random men.
And I'll tell you what, every single man I spoke to was fucked.In his own unique, horrible way.Losing his children, addicted to alcohol, his parents are dying.
Every single man was going through something horrific and yet the archetype of men as privileged just didn't, does not line up with my lived experiences.And I get DMs every day from these men.
I really, really struggling often with the issues that we talked about earlier and they're not being helped and they're not even being seen.And they're actually being mocked a lot of the time.
And those are the men that gravitate towards people like Andrew Tate, because we are not doing a good enough job, in my opinion.
And so, like I said, instead of us fighting the man is fear, like this ghost, let's start actually questioning, are we doing a good enough job?Can we do better?And can we bring these men and boys back?Because I think we can.I think you already have.
And I would, I mean, I would give you, I mean, you don't need any more money, but I would give you a lot more support I'd be calling you every single day if I was at Movember, like, Chris, what's the secret sauce?You've got the secret sauce.
For instance, one of the things that I rely on you for is stats.I'm not balls deep in the data.I don't know what the cutting edge most recent CDC intimate partner violence stuff is saying.So I have to pick it up from your Instagram or DM you.
And I feel like if you really wanted to make an impact, you would have a big email chain or some big folder, and Scott Galloway would have access, and I would have access, and you would have access, and everybody would be working collaboratively together.
And that's not to centralise me in this, I'm hardly the vanguard of fixing this problem.
My point being that when I look at important and successful social change campaigns, they work with the people who are already on their side, but the incentives align to push people away. Human tribalism is so strong.
If you make someone feel like an other, they will position themselves in opposition to you.And I think you're seeing that an awful lot.
I relate so much to that.I feel othered so often.I feel let down, left behind, excluded, like shut out of the party so often.And it's so difficult.I have to take breaks, not because I struggle.
I'm not like running out of energy, but I generally feel like alienated.And I'm like, I don't want to become resentful.I don't want to become bitter.I need to step away for like two weeks.And I'm on a break right now, for example.
But tell me this, what does good advocacy for men look like?And what does bad advocacy look like?
Well, I mean, my particular brand of advocacy, I try not to get too caught up in subjective conversations about masculinity and healthy masculinity and toxic masculinity.I just think masculinity is, it just is.It's neither good nor bad, it just is.
What I try to do, my own little part of the pie is just, as you said, presenting data in the most reliable way possible so we can have a conversation about men and women on a foundation of objective truth.
Unfortunately, that truth is often unpopular and difficult to read.It annoys me when people say I'm wrong about certain things.I have Richard Reeves, for example.
said on your podcast that the evidence I present on gender parity, domestic violence, is wrong, completely wrong.And I'm like, it's not though.
If you think I'm wrong, then you are also accusing the CDC of being wrong, because that's all I'm showing you.I'm literally holding a mirror up. if you don't like what's reflected back, that's just not my problem.That's just called science.
So I would encourage those people who think I'm misleading people, such as Richard seems to, why don't you send an email to the CDC and accuse them of the same thing?
And not just me, but the data for that particular claim is so overwhelming we can no longer ignore it.I often like to quote Murray Strauss because Murray Strauss
essentially the godfather of family violence research, quite literally set up the field itself, founded it.He designed the instruments we still use today and he's presented hundreds of papers over maybe three or four decades that show gender parity
in partner violence between men and women, in terms of risk factors and victimization.And I'm like, you can't just ignore him.He is the most influential family violence researcher who's ever lived, and he's presented hundreds of papers.
And I'm like, that is uncomfortable.I'm sorry, but what more do you want me to show you?400 papers, 500 papers?The biggest domestic violence database in the world, which has 1,700 papers, finds the same.The consensus finds it's not gendered.
It's mostly bilateral, and then actually if you look at non-bilateral violence, it's usually women doing it, but it's certainly not gendered.And I'm so sick of being accused of misleading people when I'm simply just showing you the data.
That's all I'm doing.Mason What's the conflict tactics scale? Conflict, we talked earlier about how asking different questions in different ways can give you different results.
So like you said, one in three victims of abuse in UK is male, but one in two in America is male, and one in four in Australia is male.Those are all significant numbers, but you get different results depending on what you ask.
So the CTS, the Conflict Tactics Scale, which was designed by Murray Strauss, and that is the most widely used tool for studying domestic violence, is basically a way of asking people about domestic violence.
So back in the old days, they would do surveys and they would call people up like, hi Chris, how many times have you had a criminal charge for domestic violence?Or how many times has this happened?
Framing talk of domestic violence in a criminal language. But a conflict tactics scale doesn't do that because people find that that use of criminalized language under represents the true form of domestic violence.
But if you do the conflict tactics scale, which is just a series of questions that asks people, how do you deal with conflict in your house?
and through more benign questions about how do you handle a dispute, how do you handle an argument, what do you do if your wife or husband's disagreeing with you, then suddenly you find much larger numbers.
You take away the whole criminal aspect of it and just frame it in a more benign, friendly way.You get gender parity, first of all, and you find that the rates go up by maybe 10 or 15 times.Like I said, it really depends on how you ask the question.
How do you define abuse? And that's similar, a lot of domestic violence data is based on criminal records.
For example, Canada, they find one in three victims of abuse is men, but they use criminal data, and we know men are less likely to file a case of abuse, and they're less likely to be helped by police, so they're underrepresented there too.
So there's a huge margin of error, and I'm happy to say that.But even the lower estimates, like one in four, one in three, is still a significant amount.
But yeah, the Conflict Tactics Scale is basically a unique way of asking people about domestic violence in a way that's framed in a more relatable and accessible manner outside of the criminal language previously used.
I think it's a fairer measure of domestic violence and partner violence.And that's where the controversy begins, because like I said, it finds gender parity.
Talk to me about this issue around a minister for men in the UK.
The Minister for Men, or I'm Minister for Men, is a hypothetical position that doesn't exist, that a lot of people are advocating for.I was asking for this in 2019 and people thought that was hilarious, I'm Minister for Men.
but it's becoming increasingly popular.It's being discussed in the mainstream.It was discussed a lot last year.I think there's a poll and just under 50% of the British public poll supported a minister for men.So it's growing.It's no longer a joke.
Now it's becoming more popular.A minister for men would be a position just like the minister for women. that looks into the various issues that I discuss.
So male victims of abuse, sexual violence, boys being bullied, male homelessness, male drug addiction, of course male suicide, family courts for example, all these different things that are very unpopular.
But also extremely important, and a minister for men is a position that would exist but doesn't, that would look into them.One of the things I'm often saying is that I am often surprised that I'm sat in this seat
I do not think I'm qualified to be here.I don't think I should be in this position at all really.The person sat in this seat should be the minister for men.Someone that's more qualified, being paid and supported.
Some sort of politician or academic or professor.Not me, but unfortunately I seem to be the best you've got. So a millions of men will be doing my job, essentially, and talking about all the things I know I want to talk about, and unafraid to do so.
And I would love to see that happen.I think it will happen in the next few years.It's growing in popularity, and I think, and obviously millions of men and boys as well, let's be clear on that.
There's a lot of issues around boys that need to be spoken about, like education.And yeah, just some sort of position.
Yeah, I worry that given sort of what happens every time that this conversation breaks above the surface in that way, so to speak, it's just another person that annoys you, or it's another group that annoys you.
So I fear that whoever becomes Minister for Men will do whatever it is, sacrifice goat blood over the pentagram of the beak, nose, mask people, and whatever they get indoctrinated into that you don't like.
I think you have such a gold standard and you're very unwavering, you know, not needing to sort of kiss the ring of feminism every time you talk about the problems of boys and men, not wanting to sugar coat the communication because people have been so used to having that happen to them.
And it's such a, you're like the David Goggins of masculinity.Do you know what I mean?Like very unwavering in that regard.And I wonder if anybody is ever going to be sufficiently pure to meet your standards.
Yeah, I mean, I would not want to be sort of a symbolic position and someone that's browbeaten, sort of a number of apologies.I would just want them to have courage.
And that's what I really want people to have, that courage to say what's unpopular and just to be driven by the ultimate ambition of stopping men from ending their lives. And that's the dance we're all dancing now.
There are so many people talking about male suicide, encouraging men to talk, but so few people talking about the things that men are telling them.
The experiences of abuse, experience of losing children, experience of addiction, family breakdown, family courts.No one is talking about them.
So many men are talking about these things that are causing distress and pushing them towards suicide, but then the same people are telling men to talk and not talking themselves about what men are telling them.
You need to talk, but not like that.Not about those things.Don't bring that up.Tell us that you get sad sometimes and that you wish that you could talk to your friends more about it.
Well it reminds me of what happened to our friends John Barry and Martin Seeger when they tried to set up the men's section of the British Psychological Society.So the BPS is like the sort of the national group of psychologists in the UK.
And they have different sections of research for minorities and gay people and women of course.And Martin Seeger and John Barry wanted to set up a men's section in the BPS to look into things like male suicide for example.
There could not be a bigger priority, in my opinion, for the psychological industry in reducing suicide, especially male suicide.That seems to be an uncontroversial thing, except it wasn't.
There was a massive backlash when they tried to set up the men's section, to the point where the BPS actually had a vote.
They actually put it to their members to vote on should we set up a men's section, and then one third of members voted against it.So one third of BPS members voted against a section being set up for the group most at risk of suicide.
And it's like, I just don't understand how that could happen.And that's just a brand of advocacy I am not on board with.And that is just like a red line I won't cross.
What do you, what do you wish that Movember would do more of?Or if you were to step into Zach's shoes for a little while, the guy that runs, I'm sure it's not just him, there's like a million people that run Movember.
But if you were to step into all of the people that run Movember's shoes, what would you, what would you do?
I would be distributing that money like nobody's business.There are people that are desperate for that money, that £35 million, just dishing it out straight away.
I would then appoint a significant number of trustees who are based in the UK and are aware of British culture and European culture. The idea that none of their trustees are even here is no good.
So give the money back, spend the money, change the way it's governed.And then more broadly in terms of the philosophy, I'd be like, you need to be more courageous.
You cannot be browbeaten behind the scenes by women's organizations into dancing to their tune.You are here to help men and boys, and that is the first, second, third priority.
And anything that gets into that, in front of that, you need to confront with courage.Like me.And like, I just... I would just remind them of their priorities. The fact that they're talking about Vogue is sort of like the canary in the mine to me.
And it sounds like this Movember Institute is also going to be distributing their money on feminist frameworks, which doesn't make sense.You're here for men.Most men aren't feminists.Most women aren't feminists.You're not a political organization.
You should be helping people doing research and not just playing this silly sort of political nitpicking and semantic wordplay.How powerful are Movember?How much do they control the narrative?Yeah, really powerful.
Like the most powerful men's health and male suicide charity on the planet. And they are the ones that should be pushing back, not the ones that are just waving the flag, the white flag of surrender.
Be like, no, I'm sorry, but men who are abused, that is a men's health issue and they need to be protected by us.We need to stand up for them.
We need to actually do at least as much for male victims abuse as we are doing for women and not buy into this political narrative of violence against women and gendered violence, which actually erases the very men. that they're obligated to help.
How much are they shaping the narrative, really?I don't know, because as soon as you tumble into degenerate internet mode, you kind of forget what it's like to be a person that watches TV and does sort of the normal things.
But I don't know how much the conversation around boys and men is curated or crafted by Movember.
I think most people don't even realize they are an organization.People just think that it's a meme.And so many people have been like, hang on, there's an organization called Movember. Yes, there are.
But to answer your question, I don't think they have much resonance.I don't think their messaging really has much impact on men and boys.
I hate to boil it down to social media engagement, but if you look at their social media accounts, there's very little going on there.It doesn't seem to be reverberating the same way that your content is, and to a lesser extent my content is.
I feel like they're just talking to the void.
And because they've got so much money, and because people are afraid of saying what they really think to Movember because they have so much money, they're also getting a disproportionate sense of their own entitlement.
They have a disproportionate sense that they are leading the conversation, and they just are not.They're just not.They have the money. And people, like I said, I know people that don't want to stand up to Movember.
I've had loads of people contact me from within Movember and outside of Movember.What are they worried about?They have the money.They have all the money.I cannot describe to you how little money there is in these different areas.
I've been doing this for five years.I mean, I've received some money just from kind donors, but Very little.I've hemorrhaged money.Absolutely.You would not believe how much money I've lost in this account.And that's fine.That's fine.
That is a sacrifice I made, I knowingly made, and I will continue to make for as long as possible.But there are people far, far worse than me.People doing absolutely seminal work into male suicide, especially, that are literally got nothing.
And the money they do have is money that I helped raise through my community.And it's not my job.So those people do not want to stand up to Movember because Movember have the money.I have people like
just not say what they think or not do research they want to do because they're afraid.And that is just not good science.So I would say just having the money in one place rather than distributing it more broadly is just a recipe for disaster.
Would you sit down with someone from Movember, Zach, or somebody else?Maybe we could do it on the show if someone's interested from the camp.
Yeah.I'm an open book.I recognize my limitations.Where were you most wrong? I think I have a lot of blind spots in the psychology.I try not to get into talking about different psychological models.I have not got a PhD.
I have a Bachelor of Arts from a very middling university.So if we're gonna talk about clinical psychology, you win.You win every day of the week.What I do know is communications.That is where my expertise are.
Tone of voice, communications, how to present these difficult issues in a way that makes them palatable and resonant.I would say you have that skill too. So I clearly know how to get these messages out there to make them shareable.
I've built a whole career.The reason why I can do this for free is because I built a whole career doing this within various different scientific fields.Cause guess what?Academics are not great communicators and I've made a career out of that.
And now I've turned my skillset to this area of advocacy where it's desperately needed. So I have a proven track record of making academia palatable and interesting, dynamic, sexy, as sexy as it can be.And I am happy.
I'm happy to lift up other academics.
I wonder if Richard, you and someone from Movember, I wonder if we could get that as a round table, because I'd love to have that.
conversation and it's easy again, you know, even in this I can feel the temptation to sort of tumble toward some kind of them and us the powers that be that have got the money and the young upstarts that did it themselves doing the thing.
I nothing would make me happier than to genuinely impact the conversation around boys and men to actually make a real impact like bullying. Childhood bullying, to me, I got an invite to go to a very prestigious British school.
Lots of people go and speak at these sorts of places because it's great for media, because there is this sort of reverse positive, some brand thing that you get where a person who's famous goes and speaks at somewhere that's famous and everybody gets to win or whatever.
And the first thing that came to mind was, why do I need to go and speak to them?
I can go to a primary school or a secondary school in Stockton-on-Tees where I grew up, where I felt alone, where I was bullied throughout the entire time I was at school, and I can go and have a conversation with those kids because I actually know their experiences.
I don't know the experiences of someone that's paying 20 or 40 grand a year to go and get their education to become a future politician.I don't know those people, but I know my people.So
Let's just linger on the bullying thing for a while, because I know it's something that you've been working on a good bit.
Well, bullying is a really important issue to me.Both you and I have experienced the bullying, and it destroys your life.
Totally destroys your life at the earliest possible age, and it's a really good vessel through which to look at toxic masculinity or just problematizing of men in two different ways.One way is to see bullying, for example.
Well, let's look at things like violent fantasies, for example. Violent fantasies, in my opinion, are massively correlated with experiences of bullying.
There is a huge amount of research that finds that boys who are bullied, especially the most bullied boys, almost all of them, 97% of them, will go on to have violent fantasies later in life.
So now you have a man who's having a violent fantasy, some people will see that man as toxic.A man having a violent fantasy is seen as toxic. needing of correction or needing some sort of healthy masculinity workshop.I don't see that.
I see a bullied boy that's grown up and a bullied boy develops violent fantasies as a means of coping with violence to come.That's literally what a violent fantasy is.
It's a coping mechanism because that boy is basically fantasizing about violence so he can deal with more violence.
So suddenly that violent man is no longer sort of a toxic perpetrator but he's just a bullied boy that's grown up and he is deserving of sympathy.
And I just think, in that case, men who have violent fantasies, we need to see them as victims in their own right, deserving of sympathy and support, not condemnation.And yeah, bullying is one of the root causes of that.
And if you want to solve so-called toxic masculinity, in this case, violent fantasies, then you need to look at bullying.
You need to hold accountable boys who, sorry, schools that allow bullying, which in my opinion is institutionalized abuse of children.
And unless you're going to talk about schools and what you're doing for bullying, you're going to need to support boys who are being bullied.And you need to look at the long-term impacts, especially in violent fantasies.
Those are the things you need to talk about.Going on about toxic masculinity, you're sort of, it's too late.It's too late.You need to get to the problem a lot sooner than that.
It's nowhere near as sexy though, right?Because it's much easier to say, this man with his overly aggressive approach to life, they are the problem, there's something in them.Or if it's not in them, it's in the expectations around them.
Because at no point does that lay at the feet of the person, somebody else who is to blame.Something that's not systemic, that's like sexy, but something which
something which can be fixed, which is if only he was made to feel like he needed to be less masculine, everything would be fine.Because you can't go back and un-bully him.You can't go back to school and un-bully you or un-bully me.
That's not going to happen.But yeah, I've got a couple of different people that I've had on the show with evidence-based interventions for bullying.Dr. Tracey Vaillancourt is the head of anti-bullying in Canada,
And I've got a couple of other episodes, Tony Valks as well.So I'm going to do a lot of work on this next year.Hopefully I'm going to get to go and speak in some schools and stuff like that.And pump money into those.
I mean, you asked me what would I do if I had Movember money.I'll just pump money into that.I would just be throwing money at those.I did interview Don Dutton recently, who is, in my opinion, now Maurice Strauss has passed away.
He is the leading expert in the world on domestic violence.I asked him, what would you do?So I'll give you his answer.
Uh, and he said, I would spend as much money as possible making a child's life in the first two years of life, especially as comfortable as possible.
I'd be supporting parents, both mothers and fathers to make sure that child is living a comfortable life.And he's like, that would be expensive, but that will, you'll. you'll get that back long term.Now that is a massive investment that will pay off.
Because you've neutered a ton of dysregulated parasympathetic and sympathetic balances.
Closed down half of prisons perhaps.And then second, he's like, I would not indulge in this gendered violence model of deprogramming violence men.I would look more at sort of couple's therapy where you're treating both sides of the coin.
So I would do that.I would do more couple's therapy and I would definitely do a lot more to support parents and children early in life.
I mean, I talk a lot about spanking children and how damaging that is long-term, for example, because it basically teaches children that they can solve misbehaviour through violence.
If you don't like what your child's doing... I saw some research that came out recently, Rob Henderson shared it about, which you may have seen as well, pushing back against the damaging nature of, I think it was a meta-analysis, saying that the physical interventions for disciplining kids isn't as damaging as previously thought
there's a lot of evidence that it doesn't work long term.
But I would love to read that research because intuitively it makes a lot of sense that if you're a child who's a very formative age, if you're saying that if you don't like behavior you are able to enact violence upon that person, that is essentially what
partner abuses.You don't like what your partner's doing, so you can hit them if you don't like them.That's basically what you're teaching children.If they misbehave, I can be violent towards them.
I often say that, and no doubt people are going to be writing comments now, like, you don't have children, George.You don't know what you're talking about.And guess what?I know I don't.
That's why I feel like we should be doing more to support parents, so they don't have to resort to violence.I mean, I would love to read that research.It's not research I've read, but I mean, if I were to quote Maurice Strauss, who's
who is the expert, he said spanking children is the most prevalent yet most ignored cause of partner violence later in life.So it's hard to ignore.
So it's your belief that there is a expectation, something unpleasant in an intimate relationship, parent-child, husband-wife, something occurs and one of the acceptable ways to deal with that is with
physical violence because that's what happened to you when you were a kid, therefore that's what you can do as you grow up in later life.
Yeah, well I mean my parents would try their best to reason and talk to me and negotiate and I... Little did they know how unreasonable you were. Well, I try to do that now.If I disagree with someone, I'll sit them down and I'll talk to them.
I don't resort to violence.I'm not a violent person.I think part of that's because that's the model I was shown growing up, that my parents weren't violent towards me.
But had they been violent towards me, that would have increased the chance that I would then use that same model in people in my life.
And I guess the point I'm trying to make is that instead of indulging, spending so much money on like vogue strategies, which no one really knows what that is,
We should be doing it on things that we do know what they are, like spanking children, which is an objective thing that we can all talk about.I've never seen spanking children mentioned in a single domestic violence campaign.
And yet, at least according to Maurice Strauss, it's the most prevalent cause of domestic violence.So I'd be throwing money into that as well, to be honest, and bullying.
You're a man from the left and a pro-male advocate.What were your thoughts on white guys for Harris as a campaign?
I mean, what is that?You didn't see White Guys for Harris?No, but educate me.
Okay, so White Guys for Harris was a 30,000 person Zoom call that happened where, as you can imagine, I mean, Scott Galloway spoke briefly.I think maybe Reid Hoffman did as well.I imagine that Mark Cuban was on there.
It was interesting hearing a bunch of what to me amounted to a pretty obvious struggle session
talking about how we need to recognize our dot dot dot and we must be aware of our dot dot dot and it is it it is apparent that we must etc etc um i'm like hey if you're having this conversation with potentially the future president of the united states maybe you should use this opportunity to try and speak up for the group that you're supposed to represent which is in the title of the zoom call which you've joined
But it was very much, we understand that we come from a position of blah blah.I just thought, this is fucking lame.Like this sucks.
At no point does it present a hopeful or positive expectation for the people that you're supposed to be resonating with.It just sounds like I'm going to have my head, it's the equivalent of being dunked in the toilet over and over again.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised there's these virtuous shows of men supporting Kamala Harris.I think the bigger picture is a lot of men, young men, especially on the left, such as myself, feel totally alienated from politics.
There's no one talking about... Oh, I've just got, sorry, no, I've just checked.White Dudes for Harris, I called it White Guys, shows how much of an impact it had on me.
White Dudes for Harris is a group of voters that supports the 2024 presidential candidate. Ross Morales Rochetto and Mike Nellis have been credited as the group's organizers.
July 2024, a fundraiser with approximately 190,000 participants raised more than four million dollars.
I mean I'm less interested in what white men can do for Kamala Harris and I'm more interested in what any president can do for men as a group in America. That's the way around I want to see it.
And I would like to remind whoever that president is that men are more likely to die at every age.Boys are behind at every stage of education.
Men die more in 13 of the top 15 causes of death and are behind women in health outcomes across every single racial, economic and ethnic group.So I'm more interested in what can the president do for men and the many more issues besides that.
I mean, I don't care about these virtuous signs of There's no submission, it seems.
I mean, I think there's far more men that are totally alienated from politics, such as myself, and I just wish politicians would write policy for them, like the Minister for Men, or any office for men's health in America would be nice.
Men's health in America is dreadful, just as bad as it is here.Same deal, there's no sort of federal office for men's health, and there's about eight for women and not for men.
So I'm more interested in how do we help men rather than how can men help Kamala Harris or whoever's going to get into the White House.
What do you think the future of or the next couple of years for men's advocacy has got in store?
I mean, like I said, I feel like we're at crossroads now.I'm here, obviously, to make some criticisms to certain organizations, but I'm also here to listen.My inbox is open.
I would like the question for that to be a positive one where we can work together, where individuals like yourself and me can work with people in politics and academia to put our best foot forwards on the same side, to work together.
And there are just things I will not do.I think there are red lines I will not cross and I will not treat domestic violence through a VORC framework.
I will not distribute funds underneath a feminist framework and I will not support any organization that does not openly support a minister for men. Those are the red lines I have.
If you can actually work with me within those lines, then I would absolutely love to help.
So I would love to say in five years, the problems that we're talking about in terms of education being so poor, men's health being so bad, perhaps most of all suicide being an epidemic, like I would love that to be less bad, improved.
Improved because we've actually taken meaningful political action and we've actually, um, put our money where our mouth is and work together to feature a solution.So, I mean, I want to solve these problems and I want to work together.
I mean, I'm only one side of that.
I would like that too.I would like that too.And in whatever way I can help, I'll be trying to facilitate.George, I appreciate you, man.Where should people go?They want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing.
Well, I mean, I'm expanding to my own podcast now, so I'm starting to interview different people in this space on YouTube, so the Tin Men on YouTube, but still Instagram, the Tin Men, and I'm expanding out now, but yeah, the Tin Men on Instagram is where you can find me.
Heck yeah, I appreciate you, man.Thank you.
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