Adolescence, Netflix, and the War on Boys with George Horne (aka TheTinMen)

Foreign.

From the Tin Man. How you doing?

Not bad, thank you. How you doing?

I'm good, man. I feel like Mr. George could be a good, like either it's like a really good butler's name or like a male stripper, like a male escort, you know. Welcome, Mr. George.

Well, I feel like that butlers become strippers. Can that be. That can be that. Like I come in at the drinks high and then boom, off comes the. Yeah. Away goes the drinks and then. Yeah, yeah.

And the fancy shirt just gets like ripped off and all of a sudden he's, you know, just didn't like.

Well, that's the backup plan. That's the backup plan. If yes, all else fails. Yeah.

It'll be like. Did you ever watch the Gentleman on Netflix? Did you ever see that?

Bits of it. Yeah, but not enough.

That's kind of an insane. I feel like something like that would happen in that movie, you know, like it was pretty, it was pretty bonkers.

Well, a left field way of introducing a podc. That really caught me off guard already talking about me being naked as a butler and it's like, okay. I've come to expect quite a lot on podcasts, but that is got to say, that is.

Yeah, well just, you know, that's how we gotta, that's how we gotta get things rolling. I've had you on the show before and so now you know, we're, we're, we're friends. So there's gonna hold bars.

Right.

Basically I'm talking to you like you just walked into my house.

Goodness. Okay, well, I'm scared. I'm scared.

What the hell is happening in the uk? Oh, what's going on there, man? It seems like a wild climate.

Yeah, I mean every, every six months or year we have like a hysterical sort of pearl clutching backlash. So generally against men, young men, especially white ones. And now you've got it all over again.

Obviously adolescence has come out. Everyone's gone crazy over it. It's really great piece of tv. I mean I'm a filmmaker by trade, so I, I can appreciate it on both sides and I very much appreciate it as a piece of art. As a film it's wonderful, but as a, as the script writing and the research, the story in general, dreadful. Really, really poor. It's a really inaccurate portrayal of incels male loneliness and knife crime. Like it's really far from the reality of all of those things. But nonetheless it's a great piece of tv. And now our Prime Minister Kia star wants to. He's actually going to Give it out in schools so you can watch it for free in schools. And it's been the subject of much finger wagging from parents and just another reminder that we really do not understand what boys and young men are going through and we're not really willing to put in the effort to work out what that is beyond watching a Netflix series. So like we literally got a Prime minister's writing policy based on Netflix. That's like a real, that's not a fake storyline. That's what he's actually doing.

And the TV show is based off of an actual event that happened.

Not really. Well, yeah, there was a young woman killed. Young girl killed in London a few years ago. But it's so far so completely different. Like she was a black woman and a black boy and he was heavily autistic and, and it was a lot of it's around gangs and stuff like that. None of that bears any resemblance to what we saw in adolescence. Like the fact of the matter is like most knife crime and certainly incels are not young white boys coming from like what seems to be quite functional loving families who have a decent enough father and with who has friends with whom he spends time with outside his bedroom. Like, nothing about Jamie was accurate whatsoever to the reality. And it just seemed to be every, every all the concepts of the red pill and in cells and Andrew Tate will mash together and then just crowbarred into the storyline as if like it's just. It was almost like the screenwriter took a dump and then went through his phone on tick tock for 20 minutes and then that was with the research done and I was, there's nothing, nothing is like that. And they're. The frustrating thing about it is that the uk, a year before leading the world in incel research, our mutual friend William Casello I've interviewed wonderful research into incels. There still remains the only research to actually work directly with incels. He was commissioned by the uk, a previous government, the UK government nonetheless. And he looked into Incels and he made some amazing, amazing findings to what they actually are. And none of it was in the Netflix series. And seemingly all of it left Keir Starmer's head as he whines on about his Netflix series. So I mean, primarily Williams work found that the incel crisis isn't, isn't an, isn't a terrorism threat and it can't be fought through counterterrorism measures. It's primarily a mental health crisis and we need mental health interventions, not counterterrorism ones. But literally that's all gone out the window now.

Yeah, I think I saw some of your conversation with William talking about, like, really the mental health challenges that a lot of incel men face or boys face. And that these, you know, these guys are extremely, extremely lonely. They. They almost never have a father figure in their life, or if they do, it's not a good one.

And. And they really have, like, really terrible. I think it was. I think. I think the clip that I saw was William talking about how they were talking with incel boys and found that they had had suicidal thoughts every single day. Every single day.

One in five incels thinks about suicide every day for the past two weeks. Certainly put under context. I think he said 5% of the British population have a suicidal thought once a year. So one in five incels think about it every day. And that's where it's so frustrating that, I mean, I find myself, guess, quite embroiled in the mental health advocacy area. And people seem to talk, people talk very proudly about how they're mental health advocates. But when it comes to things like the incel crisis, which is a mental health crisis, and albeit a very ugly one at that, suddenly they. They're just shaking their fists and calling them misogynists and have no compassion whatsoever, to the point of using incel as a slur, not just for incels, but for every man they don't like. So it's disappointing how people have failed that and would rather radicalize and vilify and ostracize further incels probably making the situation worse rather than better. And it's like, it just shows that we're too. We're not grown up enough as a society to talk about incels for what it is, which is, as you said, a large, growing contingent of mostly young men online, very, very lonely, very, very depressed, high suicide rates, very, very anxious, have a real reluctance to access any sort of health care. They need help. The last thing they need is more like fear, more nonsense Netflix series. And I appreciated Netflix at the time because it was a great conversation starter. But the conversations I had hoped it would have started haven't happened. So therefore, it's just. It's been a big net negative in my view.

It's very. It's very fascinating to see this sort of like evangelicalism.

That's not.

I don't think that's the right way to say that, but like the evangelism against evangelical young men, you know, as like this really toxic, really hostile threat. And I, you know, I kind of walked away there. Was there was great parts of the series that I really liked. You know, the having each episode filmed in one shot. I was like, this is mental. This is so cool to watch. Like, it was brilliant the fact that the father like never touched his kids once in the show, except for one moment where it's after he watches the video of what's happened, you know, and like there was these really subtle things. So I was like, that's really, you know, was really well thought out. But it, you know, I think in one way it was sort of a, a rally cry of there's something wrong with young men. And, and almost like a little bit of it's their fault for 99% of the show. And then at the, at the very end of the show is like, we could do better.

Yeah.

You know, and kind of like, you know, let's, let's go in hindsight, and I found that very challenging because it's almost as though we have collapsed the space for young men to go through the adolescent period where in their own way they're confused, they're lost, maybe they're angry. And that seems to be really villainized now. Like, if you're, if you're a disgruntled young man, you're the fucking enemy of society. That's, that's how I feel at least. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's a perception. But I can imagine if I was 15 or 16 today, I would absolutely 100% feel like society hated me. Absolutely without question. I'd be like, I'm not welcome in this society in the west at all. And so I'm curious about your thoughts on that and why young boys are sort of being positioned in this way. Yeah, I'll just, I'll stop there. I feel like I said enough.

Yeah, I mean, we're very happy to talk about how certain social media influences, such as Andrew Tate, who was of course named in adolescence, are brainwashing our boys. And yeah, to an extent they are, but no one, no one seems willing to talk about the brainwashing you're talking about, which comes from a societal level and is rather ubiquitous across the media and even in schools where so called sort of anti misogyny influences come into schools and they essentially treat young boys as rapists in waiting. I mean, the stats I read was something like 1 in 4 boys have learned, I think these are 12 year olds have learned that men are a problem towards society. I'm like, what's, what is that tell a boy? And of course, the natural next Step is for them to go looking somewhere else for a positive discussion on masculinity. And hopefully they'll meet someone like you. But more often they'll meet someone more nefarious like Andrew Tate. And that obviously makes it worse. And he's there exploiting his boys. But are two halves to this coin. One of them is Andrew Tate and then the other one is who's going into schools who are saying these things. I mean, I get, I get sent letters from like parents given out to their children where their, their child, particularly boys have to go to these workshops, have to go, they can't opt out. And it basically teaches them, you know, not to be a predator and it treats them as if they're deficient. And this whole male deficiency model of mental health is permeates every area of society, more or less, or at least that's how it feels. And it's. You learn it from an early age that, you know, we live in a patriarchy and men are here, men are the oppressor class and we're inherently violent and toxic and misogynistic and privileged and fragile, etc, you know, choose whichever catchphrase you want. And it's not nice, it's not kind. It's not kind to young girls either to tell girls that you're, you know, the men in life are trying to oppress you and you live in a patriarchy of male oppression. Like what? I'm not sure if that's a particularly great way to set any child up, including girls, but especially boys. And I think I've not seen anything around that. I see some of the most hostile spaces, feminist spaces must be said that so anti male and even like you'll see an article that's talking about the Lost Boys report came out a few weeks ago, which is a massive report by the center of Social justice in the uk and it basically shone a lot on how poorly boys are doing in school. Everything from like awful grades, exclusion suspensions, and it was just really, really sad. Then you scroll down to the comments and it was just the most horrible, hostile commentary about men. But we're not even talking about men. We're talking about boys here. And just so little sympathy for anything to do with boys in any negative light. And it's frustrating for me because these are things that do matter to me. And then no one seems to care until a Netflix series comes along and then everyone has an opinion. Everyone sort of stomps over all the hard work that I and others have been putting into this, mapping out these issues and then they just fuck off. Like two weeks later, when the next big thing arrives, it's like the circus is back in town and they really, like, they've just ruined another great opportunity to have a meaningful conversation. But we only ever seem to talk about boys and these issues as a means of talking about misogyny, as a way of talking about them in a negative light, never to actually help the boys themselves, who, let's, let's not forget, most importantly, are the number one victim of all knife crime. And incels are not, not a threat to anyone other than themselves. So those are the things that are missing, like knife crime. Like there were two boys stabbed last week. Another boy stabbed in London died a few days ago. I didn't hear anything. And there's real boys, like real boys not make believe Netflix series. Like real children being killed. 90% of them are boys in London that are being killed in knife crime. Never heard anything spoken about them whatsoever. So it's frustrating because it's like these are things that I care about and people want to talk about it, but only in a way in which allows us to point a finger and basically shame boys and men. And it's, yeah, demoralizing.

How do you, I mean, maybe this is an unanswerable question, but like, how do you begin to try and combat that? Because I think one of the things that I've tried to do is always talk about men and boys and masculinity in a very positive light to try and hold some sort of, you know, torch or vision for what we can walk into and what we can be. And you know, I, I see the comments online as well from the sort of the, the like really far right guys, you know, I kind of get it all from all sides. Like on the same video I'll get like, he's such a misogynist. And then on the, you know, they'll comment beneath it, it's like, what a beta cuck. You know, it's like, like what? So how the am I both of those things.

Yeah. Called a misogynist and a feminist bootlic. And I'm like, that is such a compliment. I'm like, thank you. The fact I'm being insulted by both sides, I appreciate that. So, yeah.

But you know, I think one of the things to your point is that something like adolescence come out, comes out, there's a big uproar about it. But then it really does become another sort of stick to hit young men over the head with about patriarchy, misogyny. And I Just see it crushing them, you know, like, I, I work with some young men in, in my sort of like, personal practice just because I want to support some young men and be able to help them. And I hear it and I see it all the time where they're just like, I'm terrified to, to approach women outside of, you know, like the classroom, where there's like a lot of people that can see that I'm, I'm afraid to talk to them, you know, otherwise I'm going to be accused of rape. I'm, I'm afraid to like.

To be assertive or direct because I'll be called an asshole or, you know, a misogynist or a bigot or whatever it is. And I, I just think that we are, we are really taking the boots to young men culturally. And I wonder what you think about what we can do about that. I know it's a big question.

I mean, I'm, I'm interested in what happens to children, even way, way, way before that. I mean, it's a bit of a tangent, but I remember seeing a headline, keir Starmer watches Netflix series, blah, blah, blah. And the next headline down was labor have no plans to ban spanking children in England. So I'm a big advocate of never hitting your children under any circumstance. I mean, easy for me to say, I don't have children, but the science around spanking and how it teaches children to use violence when they become adults of either sex to. So to, you know, correct behavior is so. And you cannot deny it. Like, like if you using violence to educate your child, then that's only going to teach them to do that later in life like children see children do. And the fact that labor can make these important points about violence against women around adolescence and then their next breath, quite literally say they're not going to ban spanking children. It just shows where their priorities really are. And yeah, I think the finger, instead of pointing the finger at boys, we need to be pointing at the society who teaches boys or doesn't teach boys. So parents, teachers, sports coaches, just me, you and I, like adults that have failed boys, have failed to give them the correct role modeling and lessons and compassion. And let's save that accountability for ourselves because they are ultimately children and there's only so much accountability we can force into a child. And I always just think about what I was taught. I mean, I remember another thing I talk a lot about is parents who basically force their children to kiss elderly relatives. I remember my, the first time I learned about consent was being told to kiss Great Auntie Joan on the mouth. And I was, I don't want to kiss. And there's. You have to. She's come all the way from wherever and she's not seen you, and you give her a kiss. And I don't want anything like this. Having my consent taken away at the earliest possible age by my parents, of all people. I'm like, what. Who. Who's talking about that? That is what real consent looks like. That's a real story, not a Netflix series again. And, like, I'm really interested to understand how we can take responsibility as a society and how we failed boys rather than, as you talk about how boys are failing us. So where are these lessons learned or not learned, and who's responsible for teaching them?

Yeah, yeah, it's such a. It's such a slippery slope. Because I do think that on one side of the spectrum, when you start to look at the. How is culture and society influencing boys, it really does come back to, you know, bad patriarchy. Men are naturally misogynist, and we need to, like, beat that out of them. And, you know, I think for the average boy, that that's just. It's not inherently in them, you know, it's just. They're just not. Maybe you can be influenced towards disliking women or, you know, I mean, hell, like, in. In high school, I was madly in love with my, you know, teenage girlfriend. My high school crush, right? She was the popular girl. I was this, you know, dude with a Green Day T shirt and, like, ripped jeans, you know, with the chain to the wallet. Uh, and. And, you know, the relationship didn't end well, and I was, you know, I was pissed off. I was a angry young man. But that didn't make me a danger to society. If anything, it made me a danger to myself. And, you know, I think to your point on spanking, I definitely don't advocate for it. You know, I do have kids, and I've seen the research, and I think it's terrible. And. And that's not to shame anybody that has done it and made that choice. I disagree with that choice. But there are ways to discipline kids. Like, my son's 4, and he's unruly. And. And there are moments where I know, like, this would be a moment where a parent who spanks, spanks their kid. And I know exactly what would happen to my son, which is that that intensity and that unruly nature that he already has would not be tempered. It would not be contained. And I would not be teaching him how to actually direct that into the world. I would be teaching him that when you're met with this force, you just fight back. And that's what I did. I was spanked, I was hit, you know, and when I was a, you know, 18, 19 year old guy going to bars, it's like I got into a lot of bar fights because I learned to resolve conflict with violence. And so I think some of these things are, you know, we need to do a better job of raising boys in a way where we're not putting the blame on their shoulders for like, there's something wrong with you. Because I think that's how a lot of young boys are interpreting the cultural conversation around men, masculinity, what it means to be a man. It's like, there's something wrong with you as a boy. And I'm, I'm curious about your thoughts. I'm going to pivot. Well, maybe I'll just pause, I'll pause on what I've said because I said a lot. So share, share your thoughts on what I said first.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean, I don't have children, so it's easy for me to say never hit a child. But I mean, if I was, if I was in Keir Starmer's position, I would just be pouring money into child care for parents. So they shouldn't have to ever resort to that sort of thing because they're properly supported. And that children's lives, especially in the first few years, is like the happiest and most comfortable and safest they could possib be. And that's the sort of investment that will pay itself back dividends a generation later. And then I'd also get rid of the gendered model of domestic violence because I just don't think that's particularly helpful. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I, I was raised, I was never hit by my parents. I, I was, they solved their problems with me, of which there were many, I must admit, through diplomacy and negotiation and conversation. And what do you know? That's how I now solve my problems. And I think that's the conversation we should be having, like actually asking boys, like, what's going on? I saw even in school, like, we continue our failure boys. I mean, I read a survey not long ago and just asked boys, what, what's your favorite thing in school? And the three things they said were nothing.

Why was that even?

That's a, how are you? Fine. What do you enjoy? Nothing.

What'd you do?

Nothing.

Nothing. Number two was substitute teachers. So clearly they hate their teachers and they like it when the new one comes in. And then three is pe. And that is the only time I've ever heard boys actually contribute to that conversation. The rest of the conversations was telling boys what they want. And everyone seems to have had their say around adolescents, apart from boys themselves. I've not had one single boy tell us what his experience is like, and if he would were to tell us, I think we'd be shocked at how sad of a situation they're in and how we failed. So, yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for schools and why so many boys do so badly. And. And obviously you talked about fatherlessness and fatherless homes and how boys often leave fatherless homes to go looking elsewhere for leadership and purpose and belonging in a family. And often that is a gang and that's where they get that sense of purpose from. So, again, it's frustrating to see Keir Starmer talk about how we need to solve this epidemic of knife crime and violence against women, whilst at the same time, the government have basically closed down 30% of youth clubs in London. Like, that is like knife crimes up 23%. Youth clubs are down 30%. I mean, I don't think that's a coincidence. And if you want to solve knife crime, give these boys somewhere else to go, like get a library or sports center or leisure club or whatever. But those are closing.

It's. It's so crazy to me that as we have collapsed male spaces where men can gather, connect, develop.

Interact, build relationships, that we see men declining just in every single way possible. Dropping out of school, not going to college, not entering into the workforce, not entering into a relationship.

And. But.

But we're just taking that away almost systematically because it's like, men's space is bad, you know? And I remember when I started Man Talks, I got so much hate because I was putting on an event for men. It was wild. I was like, what the hell? Like, this isn't a. This is a space for men to come and talk and get support. Like, I thought I. For. I. I was so naive. I thought for sure that women would be happy with it. And then it was just this onslaught of, like, vitriol and hatred and like, why do men need this? And it really gave me a firsthand education in what is happening culturally for young boys and men, that men's spaces seem to be a threat.

You know, I mean, especially at universities. I mean, I get contacted a lot by people wanting to Set me spaces. And they, they, they share similar stories to you where we just seem to hate the idea of men having spaces and the idea of men supporting each other. And I worked with a friend called Rory who tried to set up a, a men's group at Loughboy University Students Union, which is a massive university in the uk, and he told me all about it. It sounded amazing. Like there was like workshops and guest speakers and hiking groups and ment.

Is a lot of hard work. And then literally the Students Union put one post up about it and you would not. But again, the comments, the comments are back like the trolls. All just endless whining petitions set up to close it down. Like credible threats against Rory to the point of he actually had to close it down. They canceled it without having even had one single session. And because people seem to think it's like the patriarchy hq, men plotting to oppress women. Whereas if you actually looked into the group, it's probably just two guys playing ping pong or something, having a great time. It's really not that exciting. And then the ultimate irony is that these men, now deprived of these spaces to support one another, go back to their relationships and they, they have to lean disproportionately on their feet, their partners. And then you get the idea of that man keeping, which is the new craze of the idea that women are paying the number one. Women are paying the biggest price of male loneliness, apparently because men are leaning heavily on them, which is true, but the reason partly is because we're closing men's spaces. So you close the man's space and then we'll complain when he goes looking elsewhere for that emotional support with pseudo concepts like man keeping. So it's just, you literally just cannot win.

So sorry, say, can you just define what man keeping is again? I haven't heard that term before.

Man keeping. Oh, I'm sorry for this. Making the day slightly worse. Man keeping is this idea that like women particularly are paying the biggest price of male loneliness. Number one person burdened by male loners is women. Because those women are doing the sort of the emotional.

Putting the emotional labor and emotional support of these lonely men. So loneliness, which is the biggest contributing factor to male suicide, which is, as you know, the biggest risk to life for all men, especially young men, loneliness is burning women more than men. It doesn't make any sense. And I, I get it that of course it's very difficult for a lot of women to support men in their lives, but it doesn't mean they're the primary burden. They're not paying the primary burden. So yeah, it's this crazy social media concept that thankfully hasn't taken off too much. But I find it so self centered.

It's what I, I mean look, there are, we're in a strange timeline. It's the only way I can, I can describe it is like the timeline that we've entered into somebody. I was, I had Muay Thai this morning and I had do these like, you know, one on one lessons with my coach and he used to be a fighter and, and he was like, have you seen that Conor McGregor is talking about potentially running for prime president or prime minister in Ireland. And I was like, I know man. I was like, that's a wild timeline. Like if that happens, I just, I don't like, we're definitely in a simulation at that point. There's no way that that happens. And then this is real, you know?

Yeah. I mean, and that's not even the craziest of all the headlines. That's like not even front page of craziness. That's nothing.

Yeah, but what, what I was going to say was it. I think with some of these issues, what's fascinating to me is there's kind of this, I think how I would position is like that when men are struggling, it's almost always positioned as an inconvenience to women and something that men need to fix or another reason to smash the patriarchy and misogyny. But when women are struggling, it's seen as a rally for social action.

And for cultural conversation and for laws to be passed and for something to be done to support the women that are struggling. And it's such a. I'm just like, how has that happened? You know, I call this like the liberal Tesla effect, which is Donald Trump got elected and Elon Musk started working with Doge and all of a sudden the, the liberal people in America like lost their mind because they hate Elon Musk now and are vandalizing Teslas that are owned by other liberals. You know, it's like the amount of Teslas that are owned by liberals is probably pretty damn high, you know, because it's like those are the people that have been pushing the cars for a very long time. And I mean I own one, so. But it's like that's such a fascinating thing to me. It's like you are harming the people that are in your camp. And this is almost the same notion that, you know, we are harming the people that we say we want to Support. So how do you. How do you explain some of that? Like, when men are struggling, we almost always position it as, like, an inconvenience to women. Or we only talk about the effects on women versus how we can actually create social change for men.

Yeah, well, women have problems. Men are problems is what people describe it as. And it's very true. In the last few years, we've sort of started to talk a little bit more about men's issues, but we're only comfortable talking about them as either internalized issues, you know, toxic masculinity, or personal failings of mental. Like, we're only willing to talk about it within those two context. Contexts. No one wants to talk about the structural issues or the economic issues or political issues that impact men despite them being huge. We only ever want to talk about men's issues as a means of talking about their own individual failure or internalized problems. And that's as far as we've gotten. Because to actually look, point the finger outwards a bit like we talked about earlier, to actually say men are just the product of their own experiences and their issues are no less systemic than women's is such an unpopular thing to say. But it's so obviously true. I. I always just look at America and, like, men's health, for example, was so bad. And people would say, well, men need to go to the doctors more or, you know, talk about suicide. Well, men need to open up or, you know, a man stabbed, walking. Well, who did it? And it's just like, okay, all right. Is that all you've got to say? And it's not even true. Like, the reason why men's health is so poor is because there's so little funding or care placed into men's health. I think there's about nine or even 10 different offices for women's health and women's health research in America, and none for men. And that's. I don't begrudge those 10 offices for women, but we need to have something for men like, or besides. And just these catchphrases about men need to go to the doctor, more men need to open. That's not. It's not good enough. And it's clearly not working, especially in suicide. We just had the worst year this century for male suicide in the uk. Like, the numbers aren't coming down, they're going up. So clearly our approach isn't working. So let's try something else, shall we? This idea of assuming suicide is some sort of internalized problem isn't true. And like I said, the problem is out there. The reason why men do these things, take their own lives is because they are very real. Structural, economic, political, familial, relational, like, who knows, work based financial problems and suicide is sort of a solution based outcome for them. It's not internalized mental health issue primarily. It's. It's a lot, many a lot of things.

All rolled into one. So yeah, you're very right. We, we talk about women as having problems. We only ever talk about men as being problems themselves. And that's as far as we're comfortable talking about these things, unfortunately.

Yeah. A couple weeks ago I went and spoke at like the largest psychology conference here in North America. And I did a workshop for therapists and psychologists on how to work with male clients, which was the first time that they'd ever done anything like this.

Wow.

And there was. The conference had like 4,500 people, but you can choose different workshops. And so we had I think like 400 people in person and then a couple hundred people online. And it was fascinating because one of the things that. There's two things that came up that I thought were really interesting is that number one, I talked about how for a while men were told this is how you have to be. And now we've been going through a few decades of this is what you absolutely should not be. So men have just been inundated with information of like, don't be this, don't be that, don't do this, don't say that. But it doesn't give them any idea of who they could possibly become. And I think that's part of the shift that we have to make is we have to start to create conversations, narratives, opportunities, real life situations where men can have the experience of trying to decide and discern who they could become, like what type of man they want to be, what type of values they want to have, those types of things. The other thing that shocked me was how many of the clinicians, because again, you know, In North America, 70 to 80, 75 to 80% of, of therapists and psychologists or women are female. But how many of the clinicians. We had this open dialogue at one point. We're talking about, and maybe I should just give some context. I was talking about working with the men who had resistance, who had blocks and barriers, and how to deal with that and how. What I've seen is that the majority of therapists actually do not know how to work with a man effectively when he has any type of resistance. And the same thing that we've been talking about culturally happens in the therapy room, which is that as soon as a man has any type of resistance, he becomes combative or uses humor or he kind of shuts down. The therapist often doesn't know what to do and then blames it on that man. And so it was interesting to hear people that work in these big practices where there's 20, 30 clinicians saying, yeah, one of the biggest complaints that I hear from the majority of the therapists or psychologists is, oh, that man has a big ego. Oh, that man's so hard to deal with. And I think that we're in our systems and our institutions, we're just fundamentally failing men because we're looking at how to work with them, how to support them in the same way that we would oftentimes look at how to support or serve women. And it's just fundamentally different. You know, so can we come back to. Actually, do you want to just say anything on that?

Because I have. Well, yeah, I mean it's, there's a lot to say. I mean, you could, you could have the exact same conversation about boys in school. 75 to 80% of teachers are women. And there's a reason why male teachers are less likely to problematize boys behavior misbehavior because they can see what that behavior more often is. I was a naughty boy, but I don't think I was a stupid boy. I was just bored and misunderstood. And in the same way that as I said earlier, the three things that boys like most in school are nothing. Substitute teachers in pe. There's been similar studies in therapy where they talk to men, like thousands of them in Australia this is. And they said, well, half of them dropped out and about one quarter dropped out on the first, after the first session. So they asked him, why are you not going? And they like, I just don't feel a connection with the therapist. And then that was for 50% of them. And the next one was therapy didn't work so well. Listen to, listen to what they've got to say. And the fact that you and I, to a less extent, I mean, I speak to NHS now. I, I spoke a few weeks ago to about 60 senior clinicians for NHS who work in mental health. And the fact that I'm in that room talking to them really is a damning indictment of where we're at. And I have no, literally my presentation, I'm like, here is my, my qualifications in psychology. And it's just a blank slide. There's nothing there. And I don't I. This is all things I figured out and I guess I win because people have voted their feet and people like what got to say. So they're my qualifications and I can't speak nor qualifications. But the fact that you have got these opportunities to speak to people like hundreds of people shows how desperate and how. How much they failed, that they're turning to people like you and. And I for help. So, yeah, it's just like a. A very damning indictment of the problem itself that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It really is fascinating that, like, our institutions in some way have. I wouldn't. I think saying that they've become anti male is probably too dramatic and too far of a stretch, but I would say at the, at the very least, they have become ignorant of the ways in which boys and men operate, and they've become blind to the strategies and systems and tools and resources that they need to deploy to actually support and serve men. I would say that that's probably more accurate and there's almost like a general not giving a shit that that's even true because it's like, well, patriarchy and men and they're the problem and it just comes back to placing the burden on men and that just sort of like resolves it and we get to wash our hands of it.

Yeah, I wouldn't say just not just institutions, but I just think all of us like journalists, politicians, people. I remember I went, I managed to work my way into the VIP private members club party last year in a really fancy sort of members club in soho. And somehow I ended up talking to probably the most powerful journalist in the whole country, Emily Mattis. And then my mutual friend was like, tell Emily about something impressive about men and boys or something interesting. And I was like, here's my chance. This is what I've been building up to. And I was like, emily, did you know, in this country, according to Ministry of Justice data, a man who goes to court, having committed the same crime as a woman with the same criminal background, 88 more likely to go to prison, and her face was just blank. She couldn't have been less interested. Like, she just like, looked at me and I was like, okay, right. I was like, same crime, same. Same criminal background. He's a man, she's a woman, he's 88% more likely. Blank face. And I was like, if I said that about black people and white people, she'd have been like, oh, I've got a phone. I'm probably dialing in some sort of newspaper. And I was just like, like, there's nothing there. I don't understand how that's a systemic sexism against men in this country by that's Ministry of Justice data themselves saying that and nothing. I'm like, what? And I just don't know. It was demoralizing to come home after what you thought would have been quite a scoop for her, but it's. It's clearly not. So do you.

Do you think that. Do you think that men should be punished more harshly?

No, no. I mean, we've got a similar thing happening here where a former hero of mine, James Timpson, has just become the Minister of Prisons in the uk so that he's like the guy that decided he's the top of the pile in terms of prisons. And he's. He built his whole career building a company that employed men who came out prison. So giving men a second chance to, like, repair shoes and fix watches and cut keys and stuff. And he's hired thousands and thousands of men out of prison, and only maybe three or four have reoffended, which is ridiculously low. That's why. And he got made Minister of Prisons and I was like, yes, finally some progressive prison reform. And he announced it straight away, but he only announced it for women in prison. So he wants to close down women's prisons. He wants to give women in prison second chances. He wants to treat women in prisons as potential victims of abuse, which they likely are. Look at traumatic head injuries, which is often very prevalent. And these are great policies, but why would you not extend it to the entire prison population rather than basing on sex? So I'd say anything around sentencing or prison reform needs to be based on me need, not sex.

So I don't think men should go. Should be sentenced more harshly. I think we should look at every single individual case on a case by case basis and make a decision then, like, you're dealing with someone's life, you're going to ruin someone's life if you get it wrong. So.

Yeah, it should be on an individual basis rather than the basis of sex.

Yeah. I think, you know, also being able to contribute within the prison system and men that are incarcerated with real resources that are proven to work with men, not just sort of like talk therapy, which sometimes can be beneficial, but I think for a lot of guys has some very severe limitations, but, like, real depth work that allows them to get into shit that happened in their childhood that probably contributed to them being incarcerated in the first place.

Yep.

Would go an extremely long way. But we, we don't fund Those things, you know, we don't see them as, as relevant.

What would you say is contributing to the sort of en masse rise of men experiencing much more loneliness and isolation and.

And kind of checking out from society? It seems like more and more young boys and young men especially are removing themselves from society. And I look at the data of, you know, less men going to college, less men entering the workforce, less men dating, and my immediate response is like, where are all these young men? Like where, where the, are they going? But what do you think is, I mean, I know we've kind of been talking about it indirectly, but what else do you think is contributing to it? And where do you think these men are going? Like, are they just lost in porn on the Internet or you know, like what's happening?

No, in lots of different places. I mean, you named a few, but yeah, unemployed, out of education, living at home, losing jobs. Not in relationships. Men's spaces closing down. No, not fewer and fewer relationships like with friends as well. Social media doesn't help. Porn, sex, all that stuff is, is sort of the culmination of all of them. But I mean the elephant in the room is that I don't know. Like the fact is no one really knows because no one, no one's caring enough to find out. The people that I do know that are trying to answer that question, they're often self funded, just working like themselves, really, really hard because there's so little ambition from anyone in politics to work out the answer to that question because they're too busy watching Netflix. So I, I would, I would say it's a lot of different things. But yeah, I mean there are fewer men in education, many, many falling out of work. Employment, especially in America is going really bad for men. Like think about where jobs are going. A lot of it's being automated, a lot of it is being around AI, A lot of it's being exported to other countries. And these are jobs that are impacting men. Men are the ones losing the jobs really. I think like if the top 15 jobs expected to grow the most in the next decade, 13 of them are dominated by women. And all the ones like heavy industry, manufacturing, they're the ones being lost to automation and they're the ones that are men. Like think about, you mentioned Tesla. How many self driving cars are coming, how many lorry drivers, taxi drivers, van drivers are going to lose their jobs? They're mostly men, so they're, they need help. They're not getting it beyond catchphrases. So they're going home or they're dropping out or they're killing themselves. But it's not. It's not, sadly, it's not a one. It's not one thing. It's many, many things combined. And then overall, it's a complete lack of help and compassion towards them at all.

It does seem. Yeah, like one of the things that I've thought about for a long time is, can I scale man talks to a big enough space where I can open up in real life spaces for men, you know, where there's like a curriculum or just something for them to do when they get together. Because I feel like that's so important for a man is like, men like to do things together.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be that structured. Just send them off into the woods together and they'll figure it out. It's like we have. We have a booming of social prescription in the uk, which is like a alternative to clinical prescriptions. So instead of a man being given a prescription to drugs like antidepressants, he's given a social prescription and he's sent off to a bushcraft club or a hiking society or got an allotment. We have a thing called men's sheds and they're quite literally the sheds all over the country where men go, particularly older men who are lonely, and they just go and repair and fix toys for local children.

That's amazing.

Like, it's so, like, melts my heart. That's so beautiful. And it's like wins, wins all round. Like, the men are doing something. They got that. They're fulfilling that sense of purpose and they're obviously hanging out in real life, doing so with their hands. The families are getting things fixed for free. And of course, you're lightening the burden of mental health resources on the nhs. So social prescription was what you're describing, really, really important. But again, there's the elephant in the room where the. The birth and growth of social prescription in the UK is also another damning indictment of how we have failed men's health because they've gone out and they've set it up for themselves. A lot of these charities are by men and for men, nothing to do with the nhs. And they just show that how we have failed to tackle men's health adequately to the point of they've actually gone out and sought their own health care in the way you described. And good, good for you. And I wish more we would do it. But, yeah, I think that's exactly what men need, just time, whichever, doing some sort of Activity outside of a clinical environment altogether.

Yeah, I remember when I first started working with my first mentor and I had like just bottomed out, like hit rock bottom, was not in a great place. And I started to work with him and one of the things that, because I didn't have a lot of money and so sometimes he'd be like, okay, you know, pay me. And then when you can't, I'm going to put you to work. And he would get me to chop wood and help farm his asparagus. And it was, you know, and it was a real sort of like strange old school apprenticeship that doesn't really exist much anymore, which I'm very, very grateful for. You know, he had rottweiled that he bred and raised. And so I got to, you know, be around these big monstrous dogs and learn about temperament and, you know, how he raised them. And, and it was a really special time in life because I think in some ways, you know, here's the. Here was this sort of 73, 74 year old man who had taken me under his wing. And yes, we were doing sort of like direct psychological work, but then there was all of this indirect mentorship and apprenticeship that would happen when, you know, we'd be out farming his asparagus and we'd just sort of be chatting or like I'd be chopping wood and, you know, and he'd kind of be directing because he was, you know, he was older and he couldn't really do it anymore. And, and I, I always come back to that because I think that there's such an absence of that in our world, you know, especially in the West. Like, I look at my son, my son wants. My son's 4. My son wants to do absolutely everything with me. Everything. Like it doesn't matter how mundane, how ridiculous. And I'm sure that'll change over time. But these are the types of things that we as men, I think are lacking, is that there's a kind of transmission and modeling of masculinity that has become obsolete within our society. And I feel like we need to create spaces and places and opportunity where the modeling of that masculinity and the modeling of manhood can be reestablished in a healthy way that, to be honest, I think should be completely removed from the political system. Like, God help us if the political system is, are the ones that institute that, in my opinion. But like, anyway, so I, I did want to come back to this notion we were talking about, like suicide. What do you think that most people have gotten Wrong about male suicide and like why men get down that pathway and go, go down that pathway.

Lots of things. Lots and lots of things. I mean, anyone that spent any time with suicidal men or bereaved families knows that it's a lot more complicated than men are toxic or toxic. Masculinity is obviously what most people talk about in the context of male suicide. But there is no one single answer to male suicide. Even the people that love those men most had have no idea why a man would take his life. That's one of the saddest things about it. Like people are left behind with no idea why they did it. And yet people online seem to know everything and they have one single word answer, not just that man's suicide, but to all suicides. And yeah, like toxic masculinity. So any answer that question has to start by acknowledging, I don't know, I will never know. That's the sad thing about it. A lot of men don't. I think most men don't even know. So there's a lot to be said. But what I understand about male suicide is that it's not primarily a mental health issue. It's, it's many of the issues I talked about. A lot of men end their lives because of debt or financial problems or relationship breakdown. You mentioned, obviously even adolescents. You talk about, oh, how dangerous are men to women when they break up in a relationship, but they're significantly more dangerous towards themselves. Like suicide rates are like maybe 10 or 20 times higher than homicide rates in terms of, of relationship dissolution.

A lot of it is child custody. A lot of men and their lives because they're fighting for the child and they've, they're not going to get their child and they're going to lose everything. Like, as a father, I can't imagine you must imagine losing your child and your house and your relationship. Like, that's, I could totally understand why a man would consider suicide in that situation. And I don't think a man losing his child in a custody battle has got mental health issue. I think he's losing the thing that's most important to him. So it's wrong for us to categorize such a situation as a mental health problem.

And that's, like I said, it's a bit like what I said earlier, where we need to stop limiting men's problems to internalized problems, internalized issues, and start to understand that men, like women, are just.

The subject of structural issues such as family courts, such as debt, such as joblessness.

There's loads I mean the biggest at risk group of suicide in the uk, construction workers. Really, really high, ridiculously high rates of suicide in construction, often because of they can only work for so long before their back gives out. And.

This is a massive problem and no one ever seems to talk about it. Another one like gambling, like I cannot believe there's 400 gambling related suicides in the UK every year, which is incredibly high. And no one seems to talk about that. So it's a lot of things I know I talk, obviously I talk a lot about domestic violence, partner abuse. A lot of people turn to suicide, both male and female, but particularly men, as a result of abuse, as a means of escaping it. And it's not, I would not blame that man. I think it's our fault as a society to adequately support a male victim of abuse to the point where his only solution in his world is to end his own life. So 11% of men being abused will consider suicide in the UK. And you know, there's 50 million abused men in America, 700,000 in the UK every year. So we're talking really, really high numbers and our inability to support them and our cowardice to even talk about them is a massive part of the problem and deserves a Netflix series in its own right. Yeah, I mean a lot of things, a lot of structural things, I mean the best way I've heard it described is male suicide is a solution based outcome when a man has a certain number of issues and is unable to deal with him anymore and he sees it as a way out. And it's not nothing to do with mental health. It potentially is moderated by mental health issues. But his mental health issues are a consequence of the things I talked about. So yeah, a lot being missed out and many more things I've got time to talk about. But, but loneliness, I mean, I have a friend, Susie Bennett, who, who, who's writing an agenda on male suicide research right now and she's consulted of hundreds and hundreds of suicidal men and brief families all over the world, dozens of lived experience and clinical experts all over the world. And she's put together an agenda on what are the most important research questions we need to ask and answer. Number one, which is endorsed by more or less every single person she asked at 98% male loneliness and isolation, that was the number one on. So it's clearly a very, very important part of male suicide, loneliness. And yet we are totally unfit to talk about it as a society in a way we described earlier, where we only ever talk about it as a way of shaming men or talking about how it burdens women or mocking those men or depriving them spaces. And then we're closing. Yeah, dangerous. We're closing down men's groups or shouting them down. We're literally depriving men of the antidote to the thing that is biggest risk to their life. So.

And then we frame that as. As positive, as progressive. These people have somehow managed to badge themselves as the. The guardians of morality. They're the. They're the good guys. And it's just. It blows my mind.

Yeah, it's. I mean, there's so many different threads that we could pull on in there. I think the. What you were saying about it almost being like a practical outcome, you know, is I, I think. Because I think last time we chatted, I brought up this stat that you were talking about that like, in 80 of male suicides, they had gone to a therapist or like sought help. And then of those, the majority of them had been identified as low risk or no risk at all of suicide. And I think that's. I think because of exactly what you're saying is that the majority of the time what people are looking for is like mental stability and mental health versus is this man dealing with such consequential things that he cannot control. And he's having his children stripped of him and he's financially being ruined and his ability to provide for his family has been destroyed. You know, those types of externalized things, I think are very challenging for men. I had a guy that I worked with in construction back in my early 20s that I found out this was years ago, probably like eight. Eight years ago, had taken his own life and he had a wife and three. Three daughters. And he ran a construction company. And it. And it ended up going bust and he couldn't pay his employees and he just couldn't find a way out of it. And it got worse and worse and worse to the point where he just. He took his own life. And, you know, that's an example of.

I think it's challenging because some people might hear that and say, well, that's because, you know, he bought into this. This outdated, misogynistic version of masculinity that said that you have to provide for people. And I'm. I wonder what your take is on that. Like, if a man has put himself in a position where he really wants to provide or he wants to protect people and his ability to do so is taken away and he chooses to take his own life, like, is it.

It.

Is. It Just about that. Like, is that a bad thing that a man wants to be able to provide for the people? Because it feels like we've kind of demonized that in some ways.

Everything in moderation, I would say. I mean, I think, I think, I agree. A lot of men get purpose and happiness and satisfaction of providing for people and almost being like a servant to their family. I know my dad was, and I feel like that was a source of happiness in it that he was providing and supporting a family and he was there for us.

I think that's a very noble and important part of being a man and something that men should, you know, hold on to. But it does become a point where if that is, if that is going to lead you towards suicide, then it, it's like I said, it can become an unhealthy, unhealthy thing. And we talked about gambling, how many suicides are result of gambling? But I mean I, I gamble, but I do it in moderation every now and again maybe, but it can get to a point where it's, it ruins your life and can end your. So I think it's important to establish that men do get purpose from certain things, often from different things to women, one of them being being a provider. But that can get to a point where it's an unhealthy, unhealthy obsession that, that can lead a man to take in his own life. Going back to what you said about.

The men, the suicidal men being seen as low risk and no risk. It was 91% of middle aged men who died by suicide had sought help, help and of those who had sought help and had been seen by a clinician, 80% were seen as low risk or no risk. So these are men that died by suicide and 80% of them had been seen as low risk by clinicians. So again, that just shows that we're failing to see men's distress. And that's often because therapy, as you said, is based around women. And a man that goes to see even a gp, he might communicate his.

Wish to commit suicide or kill himself. And he does it in a very matter of fact way, often like quite a plain way, without the heightened emotions that often come with women. And it can easily be dismissed because the way men communicate their distress is not, is not, doesn't register in the same way as women does. So it all points towards the idea that we as a society need to educate ourselves and do better to listen to the things that men are already telling us rather than just endlessly telling them to Talk. Because they are talking. Like I said, 91 of them did talk and still died by suicide.

So, yeah, there's just a lot not being said around something that's so, so important.

Yeah. Yeah. And I found that oftentimes men, when they're in that space, it's.

It's almost like a mapping out, you know, it's less of, like, emotional turmoil and it's more of a. I'm in a calculated position of thinking about how I should do this. And that's usually the space where. Because, I mean, I've worked with so many men over the years who have had suicidal ideation at one point or another in their. In their life. And one of the most common things that they talk about is I just kind of moved into this space where it wasn't. It wasn't this big emotional thing. For some men, it was. It was a very big emotional thing. But for a lot of men, it was like I just started. I found myself starting to think about how I would do it, and I couldn't stop doing that. And that was. That was a big sign for me that something was wrong. And that I think to some people can sound, you know, almost like calculated or.

Or pragmatic, you know, And I think for some men it is. It's like this is a practical solution to an impossible challenge. You know, it's like if. Like we were talking about, it's like if you've lost everything that you hold dear to you and your ability to see your kids and yada, and you find yourself in this brutal position in life, and of course, there's probably depression and sadness.

For a lot of men, it's like there's this very linear process that unfolds. It's like, well, then maybe I shouldn't be here, you know, And I think. I think I always struggle with having these conversations in this way because.

I get pushback a lot of the times of, like, well, you shouldn't talk about suicide. You should. You know, only people that have attempted it should be allowed to do that. Or if we talk about it, then we're going to encourage more of it. And what I found is that with men especially, it almost destigmatizes it for them to be like, oh, my God, like, like, I had those thoughts too, at this point in my life. And that's. That's wild. I'm so glad that somebody else has gone through that, because I find that as men, we have this very strange thing happen to us that when we feel like we're Struggling with something, we almost never feel like somebody else has ever gone through it before. You know, whether it's sexual abuse or some type of depression or whatever it is. And I do think that part of how we shift this, this cultural conversation with men is that we, you know, we talk about the realities of some of these very hard conversations for men, even if they're uncomfortable for some people to enter into.

Totally. I mean, yeah, I've had those conversations too. I mean, I, I talk a lot about suicide. And we're doing a panel about how many men die by suicide as a result of losing children. And I got questioned at the end and basically accusing me of saying that a man should kill himself, he loses his child. And it's like, okay, that's not what I'm saying. Of course I don't want anyone to attempt suicide. All I'm trying to say is that I can see that as a, as a fair reason. I can understand why someone would want to, would consider suicide if they were losing their child. What I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to validate as men in many ways. Why not by saying you're not mentally unwell, you've not got some sort of brain problem to be medicated away, some sort of chemical impact. I'm not trying to pathologize your pain. I'm saying what you're going through is horrible. And I, I'm not surprised you don't want to be here anymore. And I feel, I hope the men that going through those experiences, hearing those things, they, they feel validated that what they're going through is very real and they're not toxic or problematic or defective or patriarchal. They're losing things that are very, very important to them. And I'm desperate for them to stick around and please stay around, don't, don't enact these things you're thinking of. But I'm also trying to say I can understand. I'm not surprised you feel this way at the same time. And I just want to get out of this biomedical model of suicidal pain where we just assume it's something to be talked or medicated away rather than looking at the structural issues that are causing men, so many men to do these things and, and actually address the structural problems rather than so called internal problems within men.

Yeah, yeah. Like how do you get through this divorce? How do you.

Yeah.

How do you get through having your kids taken from like. I think, I think those things are, as you're saying, because sometimes men come in, they're like, what can I do? Like, I actually want to start with that. Don't, don't talk to me about how I'm feeling. Talk to me about like, what the can I actually do to change this situation or to deal with the situation. And I think sometimes that's what the therapeutic model really misses out on because it's so conditioned to just have men sit in front of me, like, well, tell me how you feel about it. And they're like, of course I'm angry, but what do I do? Right? Like, help me try and figure this out. And, and you know, half the time, not half the time, but a lot of the time that's what men are really looking for, is somebody to guide them in sifting through the, the legitimate problem that they're having. I'm going to shift because we're going to have to wrap up here soon. But I wanted to talk to you about one or two things before we, before we end.

Is, is there data or evidence that shows that.

Men who have experienced sexual abuse is underreported or men that have experienced domestic violence is underreported? Because the amount of men that I've worked with that have experienced especially sexual abuse growing up is way higher than what I think the data often shows. And maybe, maybe those men are just the men that naturally, like, reach out and want support. But I find that it's usually one of those things where they've gone to therapy for five or 10 years and not talked about it, or it hasn't come up, or they haven't worked through it in some capacity. So I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Yes, sorry, it's a motorbike going past. Yeah, totally. I mean, of course.

All domestic violence and sexual abuse is underreported by men and women, but it's about two or three times more likely to not be reported by men. So there's a massive problem. And of course a lot of stats are based on police reports. So that then leads to under reporting in the statistics and it leads to gendered models of domestic violence that then only make the situation worse. It's like the snake eating its own tail. So there's definitely a social problem where men don't feel seen. And like, why? I totally understand why, like you never see men in campaigns on TV who are being abused. So as Gloria Steinem said, to be it, you have to see it. And I think it's important we talk more about male victims of abuse, especially by women, and to show that these, these, they exist in significant numbers and encouraging them to come forwards and seek help. But there's also a more systemic problem where in the UK for example, it's not even legally possible for women to rape a man. Like by law. It's like you literally cannot do it. A woman cannot be found guilty of rape in the UK. It was the same in America until about 10 years ago, but you've changed it thankfully. And that is, it just erases. Yeah, it's crazy. So nothing a woman can do to you in the UK can ever be, can ever constitute as rape because you have to have a penis to commit rape in the uk, it's that, that's, that's like you have to have a penis and that's, that's it. So if you haven't got a penis, you can't commit rape. Which means that we don't actually know how many men are raped by women because no one's collecting that data. And it's because it's not just the law that uses that definition, it's academia and research. And we just don't ask that question in America. The same deal. It was a gendered model of rape. What is rape? And the FBI found out that 40 of all these offenses were not even being captured. So they changed, they changed the definition, rightly so, to a non gendered definition. And suddenly all these, these men are appearing like literally one year, I think it's about 7 or 8% of rape victims were men. And then the next year it was about 38, 39. So a lot of research was scratching their head how the hell has that happened? And they realized that was the year they changed the definition in America to remove the gender narrative around it and to actually just capture these instances as they are. So there's certainly a lot of under reporting which I would argue is certainly made worse, exacerbated by a very one sided narrative. We feed society around domestic violence and sexual abuse. But then there was also an even larger systemic framework that just completely excludes men from being these things like completely by law. And in academia it gets even more wild in America. In the UK we, we categorize domestic violence as violence against women, which means that a man who's being abused by a woman, he's considered a victim of violence against women to the point of we have like political papers saying.

Like a paper saying like a strategy to support male victims of violence against women. So a man is being seen as a woman, he's a victim of violence by a woman, but instead he's been seen as a victim of violence against women. And of course he's erased too. We've become infatuated with his ideological political models of sexual abuse and domestic violence that just completely exclude men across the board. And then, and then we use those to basically reinforce the narrative that oh look, only a few men have been raped. And it's like, well you'll see the stats saying 99 of rapists are men. And that's like. Yeah, because women can't do it by law, that's the reason why. And then like it goes round around and it just gets less and less accurate and the problem is never solved. And of course that domestic violence is reciprocal. So not only does it harm men in the obvious way, but it also leaves women open to retaliation. So I'd rather just break the cycle and see both those things as non gendered and just deal with people on a case by case basis, on the, on the basis of need rather than sex.

So in, in the uk, but a woman could be charged with sexual assault or sexual abuse or harassment, but just not rape specifically?

Well, yeah, it's categorized elsewhere. It's, we often call it being forced to penetrate, which is a kind of strange concept. And when it's just rape. So yeah, and sentencing is similar between the two. It's not like you get off for free. Like you can still be found guilty of those things, but it's more how invalidating that feels as a man who's a victim of these things. And then also in stats like the Office of National Statistics which is like the government's database will research, they don't, they can they use the same, the same definition. So you just, we just literally do not know how many men are being forced to penetrate by women. We just do not know. And like that's not, that's not right.

There was a, there was a story here in the States recently of this like 32 year old female teacher who had been sleeping with her 15 year old student. And it was very fascinating to see how different news outlets wrote about it.

Right.

Like teacher takes advantage of her student.

Yeah.

You know, married teacher caught having sexual relationships with her student. It's like that is a 15 year old boy. You know, if this was a 32 year old man and a 15 year old girl, he would be getting charged with probably, probably rape or at the very least like you know, sexual assault of a minor or something like that. But, but just the languaging because it was a woman was totally different. And I don't know, I, like, I, I think that we as men sometimes contribute to some of these things because it's like the high fives of like, you know, I was like, wow, that, you know, that kid was like, I can hear some of my buddies back home in, in good old Alberta that I grew up with being like, good for him getting laid at 15, you know, like the Cougar, the MILF, you know, I do think that we play a part in that because it's like, well, what does that 15 year old kid know about relationship? And that woman is married and sort of taking advantage of him, you know, and while that might be fun and exciting in the moment, it's like, how much social awareness do you have to be able to make that decision because you're not an adult, you know, so. But it's very interesting to see how it's framed.

I mean, I think, I think I read something, something like 1 in 4Americans think a man is.

Enjoys being raped by women. One in four. And I, I get, yeah, men absolutely contribute to that narrative. I'm not trying to absorb men of anything. I'm saying these are societal points of view and men as a part of society share accountability too, but as do women.

Those are, those are, those are probably the guys that think that they can, they can defeat a grizzly bear with their bare hands. You know, it's like 1 in 10, 1 in 10 dudes think that they can kill a grizzly bear with their bare hands. It's like, no, you can't. You absolutely cannot.

Yeah, yeah, I've, yeah, I, I've seen those surveys too, and it's hilarious. Like chimpanzees. It's like, people, have you seen a chimpanzee? And yeah, it's just there's a lot of very stupid people out there, but I feel like we don't help it by these ridiculous headlines around. Yeah, I've seen them too. It's sort of like, oh, sexy cougar seduces. For my. It's more like pedophile grooms and rapes. Boy, that's the headline that you're looking for. And yeah, I think we all contribute in our own ways to that. And there's a. There is, it feels like every, every week I'm reading another headline about some young, often attractive teacher who's done that to a young boy. And it's a serious problem. And like no one never seems to give a crap apart from writing about it in some weird sort of pseudo pornographic way.

Yeah, no, I've definitely noticed that too.

Yeah, well, I Feel like that's probably a good place for us to rap. There's a lot of stupid people.

Certainly are. Yeah.

Contributing and creating stupid problems.

Yeah.

But where. Where can people follow along with your work, Man? I love your Instagram account. I do not. You should have way more followers than you do. I'm just gonna, like, say that I think I said it again last time. But, like, your content is so fucking good. Like, the stuff that you put out is so damn good. So thank you for doing that. But where can people follow along?

Yeah. The tin men on Instagram. And yeah, I agree.

I know. That's the thing that I find most frustrating, that I've been incrementally in trying to increase the quality of my content for years to the point where it's like, I'm not sure where else I can go. And I'm like, it does. It's like, again, that's another indictment of the problem. It's like, I've produced this stuff that's really credible, backed up by evidence, looks great and is original, and it's just not getting the I don't. Exposure that I want it to get. But more so. So thank you, Connor. I appreciate that. And you gotta enjoy it. And. Yeah, follow me at the Tinman on Instagram, there's YouTube, there's a Discord, there's a Twitter account and a Reddit as well. But Instagram is the main point for now.

Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for joining and everybody out there that is listening, don't forget to man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. Have a conversation about everything that we talked about. Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree, maybe there's different perspectives, but these are the types of conversations that I think we need to share with friends, with families and then actually dialogue with them about their perspective. So a worthy conversation to share. Thank you so much for joining. Till next week, Connor Beaton signing off.

Thank you.

Sa.