In this informal, conversational video, Christoffel Sneijders (joined by Amanda) critiques the way society immediately labels a newborn as a boy or a girl based on superficial cues like clothing color. He argues that traditional gender socialisation—masculinity defined as strong, competitive, emotion‑less and femininity defined as caring and supportive—instills rigid, limiting expectations from early childhood. Sneijders proposes a new framing that discards the masculine/feminine binary in favor of a "gut" versus "heart" model. The "gut brain" (likened to a seagull) is described as an ancient survival system focused on competition, self‑preservation, and a "me‑first" mentality, while the "heart brain" (likened to a Labrador) embodies compassion, connection, and love. He uses vivid metaphors (seagull fighting over chips, Labrador’s wagging tail) to illustrate how these two drives communicate poorly when forced into gendered roles. The talk also critiques competitive schooling, political leadership, and broader societal structures that reward the gut‑driven traits, suggesting that recognizing and balancing both drives could improve interpersonal communication and reduce mis‑understanding between genders.
Chapters
Because there's not just imagine. How can you see if a little? Isn't it just imagine? You're walking down, walking down the street, walking down the street. You see a couple coming in with a new baby. Say, and there's I see there a lady who has a grandkid. And you see that happy couple coming in. How do you know it's a boy or a girl? It's wearing pink. What do you think it is? A girl. It's wearing blue. What do you think it is? A boy. Actually, then the socialization starts. Because what is now— when you think about masculinity, what are the traits of masculinity? Strong, competitive, no emotions, just being a big fuck. Oh, sorry. We call masculinity all those strong points. What is femininity? Femininity is caring, supportive, those kind of stuff. From early age, you get educated in that. Just imagine the boys who are here, guys who are here. Do you like to become more feminine? Yeah. Okay, but you see some guys here says, well, you know, let's be— let's join the sound of silence. That's okay. But girls, do you like to be more masculine?
Sometimes. Sometimes.
Sometimes. Yes, you hear not a lot. But most people will not really embark them because we get labeled. We just now imagine guys. I would say, would you like to have a little bit more Hard brain, a little bit more compassion, more understanding. How would your answer be then? And if I asked you, ladies, would you like to have a little bit more of the gut power, taking care of yourself, sometimes kicking ass if you want to have kicking ass, and just think about yourself and don't give a fuck about somebody else? Yeah, yeah. And that's actually what I also like to embrace with this book as a sub-message. Let's kick out masculinity, femininity, and let's talk about gut and heart. Because the moment you label it differently, we can just communicate with each other and we can say, hey, you know, really dig in your gut. And it makes sense because our gut— what does our gut like to do? This amazing brain, 500 million years old, it only wants to do one thing: survive. And as Amanda said, it does 3 things. Survive means fight, flight, run. That means we like to have a drink or we like to have some food or we don't survive. Or we just like to have the good fuck. Otherwise we don't get new kids on this earth. And, and don't talk about lovemaking. It makes it extremely rude because lovemaking is not a gut experience. Lovemaking comes from the heart because our love— our heart just likes to make love, likes to make connections, like compassion. And where does communication go wrong? Because we as boys are socialized to be strong. So we've got the gut training. Boys normally get the gut training. Be strong, be competitive, be the best, do whatever. In school you have to get a 10. The amazing thing of school, pass or fail is good enough. So you come home with a 6, you pass. Why don't you have an 8? What the f— Why should you? I've got an A, Mommy. Oh, are you the best in class? No, Peter is better. Oh, so you're actually not the best. Oh, why does that matter? So you can educate, compete, and compare. That's all gut brain training. So we train most of our boys to be competitive. How do we train girls? To love our gut, to love all the dickheads. That's actually how we train them. And then you ask me, how can we have miscommunication? Just to mention, I love to call— sorry, I love to call the gut brain the seagull. Because what's the characteristic of a seagull? Do you ever go to Cottesloe Beach? So you go to Cottesloe Beach, nothing happens. You go to the fish and chips shop, and you have a lot of friends. We call those seagulls. You give one seagull a piece of chips, En ze allemaal starten vechten met elkaar. Seekers kan alleen denken aan me, me, me, me, me, me. Everybody who saw the movie Nemo knows that. When Nemo flies away in that beak, then all those seekers go behind. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. That's actually our gut brain. That's the only thing it does amazingly because it makes us survive. It's the rainbow or an scratch necker. It's the CEO of the company. It's also the Olympic gold winner, because you cannot be number one in sports if you're not a narcissistic Einzelgänger, unless you're in team sports, if then you like to win. So it's an amazing brain. Also, it just does not take hostages. It's about me, myself, and I. And if it's needed, it will lie, cheat, kill. Just look at the President of America. Never a beautiful example. Or look at the politicians we have here who just backstab their own party members. You don't do that if you really have compassion. While this— what I love to call the Labrador— who does not love a Labrador? They're cuddly, they're sweet, they're whiskery, you can waggle their tail. So now just imagine you have a Labrador and a seagull trying to communicate with each other. What is the chance of success? There is no one's Wow, Chris!
Oh, it's so— it's delicate. So yes, this is, um, actually by hand. Yeah, Amanda came up with the idea that it would be much easier to digest Chris's
