Is Inequality Really That Bad? The Surprising Research Behind A Shifting Landscape @thetinmen

Most prevalent cause of domestic violence is spanking children. When you hit a child for misbehaving, you're basically teaching them that you can correct misbehavior through violence. And that is exactly what domestic violence is seen as. It's like you are correcting the misbehavior of your partner through physical violence. And that is. That is learnt in childhood behaviour. So at what point does an issue become gendered? Because even the most conservative estimates tell us that one in three victims of abuse is a man. And people use that as a justification for gendered issue. And I'd be like, well, then, in that case, are we going to apply that rule for every sort of social issue, like homelessness, for example? Three in four homeless people are men. So is that a gendered issue? Is suicide a gendered issue? I really wish people would just treat the issue, not the gender.

All right, George from the Tin man, or just George the Tin Man. How are you doing today?

Yeah, not bad, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Why the Tin Man? I sort of had my theories on this, but why the Tin Man?

Well, it's a Wizard of Oz, as you probably well know. The Tin man is a character who joins Dorothy on her journey. And his. His journey is basically trying to find his heart. He thinks he's a Tin Man. He's got no heart. He joins Dorothy on. On the journey to find his heart. And at the end, and it's a spoiler, he already had a heart. He had a heart the whole time. And I was just like. That, to me, feels like a really good metaphor for men. Like, told that you don't have a heart, but when they look inside, they do have one. I mean, I guess the more obvious reason was like, I can't really give you my full name. I can't really have my full name as my handle. A lot for the reason, because, like, I. A lot of things I talk about are just not very popular, so I needed a pseudonym and it was a tin. I wanted the Tin man, but it wasn't available, so I stuck with the Tin Man. I remember one time I got a message from someone saying just quite in a panic, if anything, and he was just like, I don't understand. There is no tea in men. And I was like. I was like, what? And he was like, there's no tea in men. I was like. I just. I was like, slow down. And I was like. He was like, there is no tea in men. And then I realized that he had read it. The tea in Men. Not The Tin Men. And I was like, oh, no, thank you. Don't worry, mate, it's the Tin Men. Few problem solved. But yeah.

Oh, man, it's those types of messages and interactions that.

Brilliant.

You know, it's just. It like, makes it all a little bit lighter and more palatable and easier to engage with when you have those. I remember in. So I started my company in Vancouver, B.C. in Canada. And at one point there was a guy actually making like 8 by 10 print offs that said not man talks, but man talk. And it was a photo of him. And the photo of him was like, like, you know, just the most spammy infomercial photo that you could find. And he was literally putting these advertisements up around the city thinking that he was going to, like, I don't know, like, he was like knocking off what he thought I was doing and he had it around and you could like pull off his phone number and call him for advice. And it was just. It was the funniest damn thing. I remember somebody sending me a photo being like, you should sue this guy or you should tell you send him a cease and desist. And I was like, no, dude, like, that's hilarious. Like, I might actually call him and just see what's up, you know, check in on him, make sure he's okay. Like, if he has this much time in his life, we should probably chat. But yeah, fun, fun stuff. So before we get too deep into the weeds, I don't want to sort of drift past the. The opening that I always lead with, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

I guess the very first step I took on the journey of the Tin mention is that about six years ago, I spent a week homeless in London trying to raise money for women who were trying to flee domestic violence. So women that are trafficked, women that are being abused. We wanted to open up a bakery to give these women a safe place to work and an honest income, I guess, and to give them independence and to raise money and awareness. We spent eight nights and seven days homeless in London in a very busy part of London. And I felt really good. We raised loads of money. We got loads of contacts. We had someone that wants to give us free real estate on Oxford street to open up a bakery. And I came home and the backlash I received on Twitter was bewildering. Like, the amount of hate I got because it was me and another guy, both us white straight men. And that became the center point for a huge, huge Huge backlash. Like, how could two young, good looking. I remember him saying, two young, good looking white men. And I was like, okay, well, thanks for the compliment. How could they possibly understand anything about domestic violence? And at the time, I admit I didn't know much about it, especially not from a woman's point of view. But I was like, we do know how to get awareness. We do know how to raise money. Can we work together? And then the answer was no. And what happened was just the most horrific backlash on Twitter. A whole Twitter storm. The whole thing collapsed. And, like, myself and Richard went into that project with the best intentions and we sacrificed a lot, I think, and it was not good enough. It wasn't good enough. The. The angry feminist Twitter trolls came at us regardless. And at that point where I was just like, there's something. There's something more going on here. There was a growing contingent of badly intended people within the space that I do not associate with and who are treating me and things I'm trying to do in good faith with nefarious perspective. And that was the. I guess that's the beginning of this journey. And it didn't start at that, but that was, I guess, the first step. And then I saw again and again and again more frequently. Then I was like, I, I want to be a better voice in this space. And then I guess I left feminism and I started the T in men. So here I am, I guess. Yeah, that's quite. Yeah, that was quite a big change in my life.

That's a good callback.

I like that.

When you say you left feminism.

I.

Mean, I'm curious about this because it seems like you were trying to do something for the cause. And what was the backlash exactly? Was it just that you were a man and you shouldn't be raising awareness about women's domestic violence? What was the beef?

If you're asking me to give some sort of rational reason to their crazy squawking, then I don't think I can give it to you. But a lot of it was the fact that we were two men and there is a lack of funding in domestic violence. And we were on the front page of several national newspapers. We were. I was on the news, I was on the radio. I was everywhere talking about women who are being abused. And I guess looking back, they probably felt that we were getting put in the spotlight too much. And I can, I understand it. I can understand that knee jerk reaction from them, but it didn't have to end that way. And I would like to have worked together with them, I would like to have used my skills to raise awareness and campaigning and then their firsthand experience within domestic violence to perhaps have the best of both worlds. But a lot of it was the fact that we were men and we were white and straight and it just, I guess, didn't look good. Two men talking about domestic violence on the front page of every single national paper for about a week. As rational as a reason I could get out of them, I reckon. But it was a, it was a really crazy time.

And why domestic violence? Why that cause? Is it something that is like near to you? Is it something that you've just witnessed? Why, why that cause specifically?

I think it's something everyone has some sort of first hand experience of or know someone in their life that has had these experiences. The, the actual issue itself was my, the guy I was with, it was his idea to do it with domestic violence. I was there as like a filmmaker to capture it on camera, but I obviously went through it as well. So it was his idea. But obviously I signed up to it and I just felt it was an important issue. And I was like, why? Why not? Like why not? I'm young, I can do it. I'm happy to sacrifice my body for a week. It could be fun, it could be a real character building experience. And if nothing else, it'll give me a great response to a podcast in about 10 years time. So that's why I think I had a sink. Anyone who knows even a little bit about domestic violence knows how important and prevalent and urgent of an issue is. So I don't know if it needs much more justification beyond that.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, if you're good with it, let's go into some of the pieces around domestic violence because this is something that you've talked about on your page quite a bit. How do you try and approach this subject? Because it's pretty charged. So how do you try and approach this subject? And then what would you say are sort of some of the common misconceptions around domestic violence?

I mean, I guess the biggest misconception is that women can abuse men as well. And not in a small way, in a large way. And then it's not a gendered issue. The way we see it is as a gender issue, as if it's something that men do solely to women, is not accurate and not, not based on any sort of reasonable evidence.

And also the causes of domestic violence are more than just one cause. Obviously domestic violence is very much a poster child of feminism. And for the Patriarchy. And it is seen by these people as the physical manifestation of men's control over women. And our whole response to domestic violence over the past 50 years has been around patriarchy. Whereas, although power and control is one of the factors that causes domestic violence, that power and control is shown just as often by female perpetrators. And it's only one factor of about 30 or 40 different factors that are really, really complicated, and none of them being discussed because we're enamored and obsessed about talking about patriarchy in the context of domestic violence. So it's more complicated than we expect it to. It goes both ways. And also, most domestic violence, or at least half of it, is bilateral, meaning both partners are doing it. It's a cycle of violence. So it starts off with shouting and then shoving, then hitting, and it just gets worse and worse and worse. Both partners are perpetuating it, and the solution is to obviously to break that cycle and to give both partners support.

Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that point up. I mean, I don't know a lot of people.

Who have experienced this, but I remember back in my 20s, I was living. I'd broken up with my girlfriend, and I was living a buddy of mine, and we were, you know, we were living in the party house, right? Like, we were going clubbing on the weekends, and we were like the fuckboys before fuckboys were a thing, essentially. And.

One of his friends I ended up riding motorcycles with, but he was in this relationship with this woman, and they had a really unhealthy dynamic, and they would, you know, they would come and party and they would start drinking. And she. It was very interesting because I saw three or four instances where she would initiate this sort of very aggressive, loud yelling interaction with him that would then lead to him not necessarily trying to engage, and he would start to shut down, and then she would get more hostile and start to hit him and stuff like that, and then he would push her, and then we'd have to get involved. And so it was very, very interesting to watch that cycle. And I think you're right. That's. I think oftentimes the way that it's talked about is that it's just a men's issue that, you know, men are. Are. Are perpetrating this. And I think you shared some research from the CDC that said that 1 in 2 victims of domestic violence in America is male and 1 in 3 victims of domestic violence in Canada are male. And I. That was quite surprising to me, honestly. And so you talked about some of the contributing factors being Much greater than just power and control. Can you maybe just dive into some of that a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, I can, but just to go to the Canada versus America stats, obviously 50. According to the CDC, at least 50 of domestic violence victims in America are men, but only 30 in Canada are men. And a lot of people will say, including Professor Dutton, who is probably the leading domestic violence researcher in the world, who is Canadian. He says the reason is that Statistics Canada who are collecting that data, they use police reports. And because men are less likely to report their abuse, they, they don't show up as much in police reports and therefore they don't show up in statistics calendars, data. Whereas the cdc, they do a survey where they call people up and they basically ask them questions, and that's how they reached 50%. So I would say, although it's true that only 30% of domestic violence victims in Canada are men, I would say that's an underestimate. And there are many men who are being ignored because they're not, they're not showing up in police reports because I think men are about two and a half times less likely to report their abuse than women. Of course, women are not showing up either because not all women who are abused report to the police, but men are even less likely to report to the police. But as for the associated factors of domestic violence, there are plenty. There's like education, poverty, drug addiction, reliance on alcohol, sort of where you live. A lot of it's fatherlessness, A lot of it's coming from broken homes. One of the biggest and one of my heroes, the late Professor Murray Strauss, who is the founder of the field of family violence research. So he like, he literally laid down the, the ground, groundwork of the field itself. He said the most under discussed and most prevalent cause of domestic violence is spanking children. So hitting your children in childhood. And he is basically, in a way, he's saying that when you hit a child for misbehaving, you're basically teaching them that you can correct misbehavior through violence. And that is exactly what domestic violence is seen as. It's that you are correcting the misbehavior of your partner through physical violence. And that is, that is learned in childhood behavior. So a lot of it. And Erin Pizzi, who I also talk to a lot, and she wrote the first book on domestic violence and she opened the first refuge in the world for domestic violence. She says the same is learned family behavior from childhood that is passed down from generation to generation to generation. So You've got the founder of the field of domestic violence, you've got the founder of the first domestic violence refuge and the writer, the first book in domestic violence all saying learned childhood behavior. And even that is only one cause. But I'd say spanking children is a massive cause of domestic violence. So if you come away from this podcast, if there's one thing is don't hit your children under any circumstance because you're just teaching them to use violence to solve problems later in life. And obviously they're going to use that or more likely, to use that on their partners.

Is there any sort of research or data around.

People.

Who enact or perpetrate domestic violence having come from violent households? Sorry, is there any correlation?

You cut out for a bit there, Connor. Can you ask me that again?

Yeah, that's okay. Riverside's having fun with us today. But I think what I was asking was, is there any correlation or connection or research between people who enact domestic violence or perpetrate domestic violence and having come from a domestic violence household?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you're. You're just repeating the pattern you, you learned in childhood. Like Erin, Erin Pitsey, who I mentioned opened the first refuge in the world for, for women. She, she basically polled the first hundred women to come into her refuge and she found 60% of them were violent and had come from violent families. And it's just that you're just repeating the behavior that you learn early in childhood and like, is obviously it's more complicated than that, but the premise is a simple one. And that's like, we repeat the actions of our parents and like children see, children do, I guess, in a way. And like, everyone knows they act in some way like their parents. And it makes sense for a child to come for a violent home to be right themselves. A lot of that is just we need more positive male role models in the lives of children, especially boys, so they can understand and sort of control these impulses and these negative behaviors. Yeah, definitely. More positive male role models would help.

There's a lot of commentary around domestic violence being a gendered issue versus a non gendered issue. Can you just sift through that a little bit for the listener?

Well, I want to know, I want to ask these people, at what point does an issue become gendered? Because even the most conservative estimates tell us that one in three victims of abuse is a man. And people use that as a, as a justification for gendered issue. And I'd be like, well, then in that case, are we Going to apply that rule for every. Every sort of social issue, like homelessness, for example, three in four homeless people are men. So is that a gendered issue? Is suicide a gendered issue? Are we going to be consistent in that? And of course, the answer, in my opinion, is no. There are no things such as gendered issues. And I really wish people would just treat the issue, not the gender, and see everyone as equal, equally deserving of compassion. But I don't really understand the concept of gendered issues. And I feel like seeing domestic violence as a gendered issue hurts women too. Obviously, it hurts men for the obvious reason. But the women who are violent, like the friend you described, she needs help. She needs to be helped, too. She's also being erased by this gender issue. If we're saying that women, all abusers are men and all victims are women, not only we're not helping vulnerable men, but we're not helping violent women either. And we're just allowing the cycle to go on and on and on. It also doesn't help lesbian women, lesbian women who are in abusive relationships. And that the most cruelly ironic thing is that lesbian relationships have the highest rates of domestic violence. So if it is a men's issue, then why are gay women having the highest rates of domestic violence, followed by bisexual women are then followed by straight women, and gay men have their least violent relationships? So really, like, crudely put, like, the fewer men in the relationship, the less violent. The more women in a relationship, the more violent. So I would say it's a very narrow ideological viewpoint that hurts everybody and only allows the situation to continue and get worse.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And.

I'm like, holy shit. I mean, I didn't know that. And it's kind of wild to think about in my psychology. The portion of my brain that's deeply steeped in psychology starts to go down the rabbit hole of why that might be. And women traditionally having to repress anger more than men, the social acceptance of men expressing anger and having outlets is just very different than women.

Well, I feel like the domestic violence industry, by just constantly raising awareness around vulnerable women, which is an excellent thing, just normalizes violence by women. Like, women don't see other women as violent because we're constantly given this image, this very saintly, virtuous image of women as if they can do no harm, when the fact is women are just as capable of anything as men are, including being violent. So I would say it's a failure of our domestic violence industry, and they're actually now creating the very problem they try to solve. It's an interesting and very controversial theory called Battered Husband syndrome, which is basically looks at the rates of domestic homicide in America and how until about 1970, men and women were killing each other in domestic violence relationships at equal rates. So it was going up like men and women the same. And in 1970, men, men being killed started to come down and women started to sort of peter off. But something happened in the 70s that was saving a lot of men from being killed by their partners. And Erin Pitsey and Susan Steinmetz. Susan Steinmetz wrote the first book on male victims of domestic violence. She said that it's because refuges were opening across North America that were allowing women to escape the household and not have to resort to killing their husband in self defense. And because men were not given refuges, and there are no refuges for men in America, they were then killing their wives in self defense. So battered woman syndrome basically describes the phenomenon of a woman finally lashing out and killing her abuser, a man. Battered husband syndrome is the opposite. But because he was no, he wasn't able to leave. He was left trapped inside of a house and he would react in self defense and sadly kill his wife. So that is a controversial, controversial topic. And it just sort of shows that this binary one sided view of domestic violence is actually causing a lot of pain for everyone. And it's not helping anyone. It's leaving men out in the cold, receiving violent women about help. And.

It isn't backed up by science either.

It feels and sounds a lot like the social narratives.

Are more potent than the actual data in some of these instances.

It's interesting because sometimes I look online, I read the comments on my YouTube and I go on Reddit and the comments and the DMs that I get on Instagram and stuff like that. And, and every once in a while there's sort of like this conspiracy theory narrative, right? Like feminism is out to sort of destroy men in some ways. And while I don't think that that's true by any means, I do think that it's true that there are a lot of women who really have a deep disdain for men, just like there's men who have a deep disdain for women. But it's funny how in our culture it's become taboo to even acknowledge that. Like it's become. And furthermore, what's, what I find interesting is that to out or to point towards or to acknowledge that there are women who have a deep disdain towards men.

The justification is Almost always, well, what did a man do to cause that? And we would never have that same rhetoric or logic when it would come to incel men or men who just deeply despise women. And this isn't to shit on incelmen, because that could be a very interesting conversation to have. But I'm not going to ask you a very broad question and then we'll narrow it. What is your take on quote unquote, the patriarchy?

It's just, it's a very smart concept that utilizes plausible deniability where because it's so vague and semantically doesn't really mean anything. Everyone has their own opinion of it. You can't really pin it down, you can't really disprove it, it's not falsifiable, it doesn't fit into the scientific theory. So obviously the scientific theory is about you present an idea and then, then he rigorously tried to disprove it. And that's how science moves on. Science progresses by falsifying itself. Falsifying, falsifying, falsifying. But patriarchy theory doesn't make itself open to being falsified. If anything, it changes itself to make it unfalsifiable. So when someone says blah, blah, blah, patriarchy, and I say, well, the vast majority of homelessness, the vast majority of the incarcerated, the vast majority of drug addicts are men, they'll say something like, they won't use it as an opportunity to re examine their own ideas. They'll use it as a way of changing the idea so it still fits. So they'll add something on a bit like it's the patriarchy backfiring. And then it's just, it's the same, but it's the same somersaulting you get when you speak to a religious person, for example. So a religious person might say the world is 10,000 years old. And I'll be like, well, this fossil is 10 million years old, so please explain that to me. And again, they won't use that as an opportunity to re examine themselves, to falsify their own beliefs. They'll say, well, God planted his fossils as a trick to trick people like you. And it's just like, it's just dishonest. And patriarchy theory is so broad and subjective, it's just not a helpful term. There's other words we can use. We can say gender norms, for example. Gender norms go both ways and they do hurt and we should talk about gender norms. But patriarchy is just obviously extremely gendered. It quite literally means father, ruler, and like, my dad was not a fool of the family. My dad is one of the kindest people you could ever meet. And it, it makes me so angry that we have this concept that just paints men as the villain for everybody, for all of time and for everywhere. And it's like, it's not accurate and it's impossible to falsify. People seem to think, like, if you say, like the page, show me the patriarchy, how do you prove it? They'll say something like 80% of MPs or 80% of politicians are men. Which is true, roughly. But they're confusing, like laws written by men for laws written for men. And although laws are written by men doesn't mean they're written for men. They aren't written for the average person. And I don't know why a male politician would care any more about me than a woman. And if you actually look at gendered laws, gendered sort of governmental capabilities, gendered sort of campaigns, they're all for women. They're all violence against women, Office for Women's Health and the Women's Bureau, and those things don't exist for men. So I would argue that although patriarchy says laws are written by men, does not mean they're written for men. And real power, I would say, is owned by the people who can put those politicians in office. Real democratic power is the vote, and women are the ones that are voting more than men. Women have outvoted men for 40 years in America, so women can decide who can go in office every single time on their own. They don't need any help. So then I guess you have to ask, are they voting for the patriarchy? Are they just saying one more time, please, and it just sort of, it falls apart. And that's not to say there isn't such thing as male violence, or men aren't more dominant than women in some cases. But I just wish we could have that conversation with a change of view, change of, like, language and a bit more grown up, a little less alarming, a little less scary and spooky at the patriarchy. And I would just say talk about gender norms is probably a way more grown up and effective, inclusive, less divisive way of having the exact same conversation.

Yeah, I mean, I, I agree, I agree. And what's, I mean, you did this whole post a while back about when is the patriarchy smashed.

Yeah.

And I think it's a, it's a very interesting notion because many ways, one of the things that we can very clearly see is that men Young boys are in decline, they're struggling. There's less men going to college than ever before. There's less men in the workforce, there's less men in relationships. Women are in many ways, not entirely, but women in many ways are out earning men. So you have 42% of American households, women are out earning men. And the list sort of goes on and on and on and on. And so I think to your point.

The question then becomes, well, where is the line that the rhetoric or the narrative that men have all the power? When does that narrative start to actually fade? What are the data points? What are the actual clear indicators that men or that the patriarchy is no longer in complete control of society, like the narrative sort of says? Because in many ways, as you're pointing to, I think it's in the next five to 10 years.

You'Re going to have, for every one male graduate from university, you're going to have two female graduates. There are no men's offices within. I think you laid this out in one of your posts, which was brilliant. There's a women's office for Research and Women's Health in the nih. There's a department for. There's four of them. Yeah, right.

Which is great. Which is great. I'm not saying close them down. I'm like, those open. But considering if you take the top 10 causes of death for men. Sorry, top 10 causes of death in America, nine of them are dominated by men. So men are leading nine of the top ten causes of death in America and there are no offices for men's health and yet four for women. So I would just say let's open up four equally effective offices for men's health. I'm not saying close those down. And what sort of patriarchy is that?

It's interesting because I think one of the things I've been saying lately is that when we don't feel like we have a sense of belonging in our social circles or our friend groups or our family systems, that sense, that urge of belonging doesn't dissipate or disappear, it actually needs a place to go. And so where it goes is into ideology, right? And so we just sort of ferociously cling to ideology. And it seems to me that that exit, this sort of mass exodus from social circles, friendships, family systems, really trusting relationships in, sort of moving towards this, clinging towards ideology. Right. Needing to cling on to an ideology and never letting that alter or die or perish has become so strong within our culture. But I'm curious as to. How do you Engage people that. Or do you at all? How do you engage people that have this narrative that like, the patriarchy is, the patriarchy is just evil and, you know, all men are bad. And you know, like, there's, I've seen tons of articles around like, all men are rapists and all men you know are murderers and all men you know, would the world be better without men? Like, those are real questions and articles that get written all the time. And so I always struggle to, like, how would I even engage with somebody whose viewpoint of the world is that I am fundamentally a broken human being? Like, I don't even know where to start. And so how do you think about having discourse with individuals that have that frame of being?

I wouldn't waste too much time speaking to these people. Like, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that pride is a very dangerous bedfellow to stupidity. And when someone's both stupid and proud, they will never change their mind. And often their, their whole life and community, friends, even their job is based on these ideas remaining true. I know people who would lose their job there, they would lose their funding if they, if the patriarchy no longer existed. So they are financially having a financial interest in maintaining this idea. But I wouldn't spend too long talking to them. Some people just cannot change their mind. Some people don't want to change their mind. And I would remember the vast majority of people are undecided. So when I, when I put a post up, there's some pissed off person in the comments coming at me, I remind myself that I may never change a person's mind, but there are a hundred or so people reading what I'm saying every single time. And if I can just set a better example, and I can, I can show myself as more compassionate, more knowledgeable, kinder, more inclusive and this idiot, then I will change. I'll change the mind of the silent listeners, the people that are quietly listening and undecided because the battle is not over. Most people are not like that. The vast majority of women and men are excellent, excellent people and they can have their heads turned, but just that annoying, disproportionately loud in a comment. They're, they're not going to have their mind changed. And I would, I would recommend just leaving them behind and just setting a better example for other people to follow. Like just set a better example and don't become embroiled in angry yelling in the comments and calling them names and just don't engage with them, really. And I would Yeah, I mean, you're right to say, like, when is the patriarchy smashed? If you're going to hold up this social phenomenon, then it's down to you to tell us, when is it smashed? And obviously we talked about men's health, which is a great example, but an education is another one. Like in the 1970s in America, 40% of university applicants were women and 60% were men. And then they brought in Title IX, which obviously addressed that to make it to bring the balance 50, 50. So it started in 1970, in 1981, we were at parity. So half of students were women, half of students were men. I would say the patriarchy was smashed at that point, but we carried on, we just carried on. So now it's crossed over and now we've crossed over so much that boys are now further behind than girls were 50 years ago. And we're still going, we're still going. And it's like you like, at what point do we stop? At what point do we like take our foot off the gas and just let boys get back into education? So I would present facts like that and ask them, when is it smashed? What is their criteria for said smashing? And when does it stop? When did it stop? And yeah, just set a better example. Don't become, don't fall down the rabbit hole of getting into big endless arguments of idiots in your comment section and spend your time elsewhere having conversations such as this one. Not like, get that right. I mean, I do, I do up sometimes. I do get dragged into these endless feuds in the comments, but I try not to.

Yeah, every, every once in a while there's that person that just gets scratch sometimes.

It's like, oh.

Really? I know. I had a man named Stephen Jenkinson on the show years ago and we were talking about patriarchy and he talked about the sort of Latin origin of it and upholding the father to be under the arch of the father to uphold the father.

But do you know in how many states in America fathers have equal rights to mothers? There's like three states and pretty much all states, fathers do not have equal rights to their children. In the whole of the uk, fathers don't have rights to. Don't have equal rights to their children. So fathers are legally and politically second class parents, like literally by law, they don't have equal rights and they're treated as clowns that were seen also seen by society as babysitters or like even predators. Like a single. I get so many messages from men who take their children to the park and they're just getting these like side eyes from a lot of women thinking that they're as pedophiles. And then you turn on the TV and you get these awful, literal, cartoonish portrayals of like men like Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin and Hal, just these dreadful archetypes of fatherhood. So it's just like right across the board we see fathers as secondary to mothers and yet patriarchy theory tells us that the father is the ruler of the family. And I'm like, well, what sort of ruler doesn't have rights to his own children? Even in the most literal sense, it doesn't makes sense to me. And I would, I'd question it yourself. Like, is the fa. Is your father the ruler of his family? And like, just look around you.

I'd say when you say that if a father is a second class citizen and doesn't have rights over his children or doesn't have rights with his children, what do you mean by that? Like when divorce happens, they don't have access or can you expand on that?

So in, I can talk about in the uk. So parental rights in the UK are called parental responsibility. And whoever has parental responsibility decides everything. So they decide on where the kid lives, what the kid's called, where they go to school, what sort of religion they follow, what sort of, you know, medicine, like healthcare, they get vaccinations, all of that, all of that is parental responsibility. And by law, a mother has full parental responsibility over their child in every single circumstance. So if she's married, single, divorce, separated, doesn't matter, full parental responsibility for her, which is, which is quite right. But a dad has to either be married to the mother or be named on the birth certificate. And even then I'd say he's still secondary. But without those two things you have no rights. And both those things are controlled by the mother. So she can just decide not to name him, obviously not to marry him, in which case he is irrelevant, he has much rights over his child than I would. And that's how it works in the uk. It's written in the Children's act. And that's how it's been for as long as I've been alive in America. It's not dissimilar, depending on the state you're talking about, but you see it most when parents separate and they'll go into family courts. And a lot of campaigners are trying to get judges to adopt what's called a presumption of joint custody, which means that both parents arrive into court and it's like it's a level playing field and you presume that they're going to have joint custody and then both parents will build their arguments on there, but that's not happening. It's seen as the mother is the primary parent and the dad has to fight to even keep up with her. And.

In Florida, for example, they tried to bring in the presumption of shared custody and it was actually feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women that stopped it from happening. So organised feminist groups stopping fathers getting equal rights. And it is like indefensible. It's horrific. And like if you meet a father who's lost his child, that is not a pretty heartbreaking.

No, he's devastated. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's interesting because I think, I mean, I've, you know, I've been working with men from around the world for a decade and the amount of men who have been just gutted and destroyed by not having access to their kids is wild to me. It's really heartbreaking. Well, I mean, and yeah, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, like Martin Seeger, who's a friend of mine and a psychologist, he's, he's done research that's tied about 20% of male suicides to losing children, family courts and relationship breakdown. So it makes total sense. Like a lot of parents, including fathers, would say their child is the most important thing to them and to lose that is, you can see how that would end in so many suicides. And it is causing suicides. It's not like a trivial matter. It's causing deaths of men and not in a small way like 20% in the UK. Yeah.

I mean, when I married my wife, I drove my father in law across the country from New Jersey to Vancouver BC, 3,000 miles because he wouldn't get on a plane. And we talked about, I interviewed him, I said, if I'm going to drive you across the country, you're going to let me interview you. And he, he's in his 80s and he's 100% Lebanese and grew up.

In Virginia in the time of segregation. And so I said, you're going to let me interview you? I said, if you could go back and do your whole life over again.

What would you prioritize? What would you actually focus more in on? And he said, I would probably want to be a full time parent. And he said, being a parent was the greatest joy of my life. And I said, interesting. And he, you know, my, my wife wouldn't mind me talking about this, but she because she's talked about it openly. Her parents got divorced and they went. They proceeded to go through the longest, at the time, the longest divorce battle in the state of New Jersey, in the state of New Jersey's history, because he was adamant that he was going to have equal access to his daughter. And he fought mercilessly to get it. And like, he fired lawyers. He went through. I mean, he, like, really. It wasn't the best situation, to say the least. But I think in many ways there's an example of. I mean, he spent a lot of time and money and energy and, you know, focus to just get equal access to his child. And I think. I think it was like seven years, seven or eight years of this ongoing battle to make sure that he could maintain and retain just equal custody of his child. And that, you know, it's. I think for a lot of guys, they don't have the wherewithal or the knowledge or the, you know, the funds or whatever it is to be able to do that. And so the system comes in and basically says, here's what you're going to have to deal with. And they're put in a position of not being able to actually.

You know, be. Be a parent to the child in the way that they ultimately want and the way that their child ultimately needs. So I think that's an example.

I just thought. Yeah, you pretty much took the words out of my mouth. Everyone talks about fathers should have a right to their children, which is fair enough, but the real. The real elephant in the room is a child should have a right to both their parents. That's what's most important. A child has a right to his or her father and his or her mother. That's. It's not about a child having ownership of the. Of his child. It's about the child should have access to both parents as much as possible. And it's what's in the child's interest that is most important. And no one could possibly disagree with that.

I'm going to switch gears here because I think one of the things that you do a wonderful job talking about is really hard subjects. And one of the things that you've talked about is how male suicide is sort of at the intersection of a whole bunch of problems surrounding men and men's issues. And so men and boys make up around 75% of all suicides globally. It's kind of staggering in a lot of ways. What are some of the misconceptions around male suicide? And let's just maybe sort of enter in that door.

Yeah. I mean, it's the biggest threat to men's life, young men, biggest threat to life is suicide.

I guess the big mind changing thing that I went through is that we are slowly moving away from the biomedical model of suicide, which sees suicide as some sort of chemical imbalance inside of a man's brain and it pushes him towards suicide as if suicide is some sort of mental health issue. And that is a very antiquated and incorrect assumption to make because the causes of male suicide are very real and they're very external. They're external to men, they're structural, they're economic, they're relational. So if you look at the actual associated factors for suicide, they're not mental health related necessarily, although that is part of it. They're primarily things like being in debt, losing their job, losing their children, relationship breakdown, drug addiction. All of these things feed into suicide. Like there's a lot. There's a huge suicide problem in the construction industry, for example, people, because men, they build their whole career in construction. That's how they're supporting their family. They get to a certain age, their back gives out, they can no longer work construction. They are now. They are now they see themselves as a burden to their family and they kill themselves. And that is not a mental health issue. That is like, that is a systemic issue that we are all responsible for helping sort of solve. And if you ask men who are suicidal themselves, the majority of them say, I don't have a mental health issue, I have a. I have a real issue. I have issue like the ones I mentioned. And that's why I really hate the idea of toxic masculinity, because it tells men, this is your problem and the problem is inside your head. And you can solve this problem if you just change your mindset, be less toxic, maybe cry a little bit more. And it's not good enough. It's just not good enough. And like.

If you think about like domestic violence, for example, 11% of men experiencing domestic violence will attempt to take their life. And if you think about like there's about 3 million men in the UK being abused, 11% of them attempting suicide, you can see why it's such a big issue. And it's, it's our failure to help these, in that case, male victims domestic violence and male victims sexual violence, for example. Similarly, like a boy who experiences sexual violence in adolescence, 10 times more likely to attempt suicide later in life. And yet we totally don't even talk about male victims of sexual violence or domestic violence. And yet Everyone endlessly talks about male suicide. Men can talk, men can cry. And I'm like, you're not even listening to the things they're talking about, which are the things like children death, experience of sexual abuse, domestic violence. Those are the things that are causing domestic violence. And they're trying to talk about them and you're not listening. So I'd say it's less about men not talking and more about us and everyone else not listening or not taking them seriously. So I don't even necessarily think male suicide exists as its own issue. Separately, I see male suicide more as a collection of various different issues, some of which I've mentioned when the volume's turned up to 10 and that man has no way out and he sees suicide. I've seen suicide described as a rational solution based outcome. And in a way it is. It solves the problem. But there are obviously better solutions. But it's not primarily a mental health problem and it's not in men's heads. And it can't be solved just by talking or just by crying or just being as toxic.

Yeah, yeah. I wrote, in my book, I wrote about the myth of male vulnerability. And it's something that Chris and I got into when I was on his show. And there is this sort of pervasive notion.

We almost seem to approach men's issues within our culture and our society as women's issues. And it's like, you just need to open up, you just need to talk, you just need to cry more and all your problems will be solved. And we largely miss out on what guys are actually saying, which is like, no, I have a real fucking problem and it's not in my head. It's like there's a logistical problem. And an example of this is I worked construction in northern Alberta and Canada when after I graduated high school, I had shit grades and my stepdad, who was an engineer for the city of Edmonton, got me a job with this construction company. And I ended up working in a gravel pit. And I started, you know, in the winter and it was fucking cold and it was brutal. And I met, I met this man named Mitch. And Mitch.

That'S making me emotional. There it is. Mitch. I would go and play beer league hockey with my stepdad and this guy Mitch every once in a while. And he was like this 6 foot 3 guy. He was very gregarious and outgoing and charismatic and he worked for the company that I was working for. And he was sort of this touch point for me. And as I was going through and I was in a very. I was in a very hard place in my life. You know, I didn't have any direction, I didn't have any prospects. I had shitty academics, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And he would just constantly check in on me. And we developed this, you know, wonderful friendship. And he sort of became a mentor for me in this, you know, in this business that I really didn't want to be in. And he would go off to start his own company within the construction industry. And I remember when I first, you know, I would go on to do everything that I was going to do. And when I first moved to New York, I had lost touch with him for years. I hadn't talked to him in, you know, eight or nine, maybe 10 years. And I get a call from my stepdad and my stepdad very rarely calls me. And I get a call from my stepdad and it's like 4 o' clock in the afternoon, so it's 3 o', clock, 2 o' clock his time. And he tells me that Mitch has taken his life. Mitch has committed suicide. And I was shocked. And the reason why it had happened was he had four or five kids and he had built this business where he had 80 employees, and behind the scenes, he had struggled to make it work financially, and the company had basically fallen apart. And he had, you know, the company was in a tremendous amount of debt. He was going to have to file for corporate bankruptcy and personal bankruptcy. And it seemed like the only way that he could see a way out was by taking his own life. And it would wipe all the debt clean, and his family wouldn't have to carry that debt, and his wife would get his insurance policy. And I was heartbroken, you know, and there's an example of a man who, as far as I could tell when I knew him, didn't have mental health issues, you know, was pretty happy with his life and. But faced what seems like a very real problem in his life. And.

There's a part of me that wonders if we as men could do a better job of having the conversations about the real logistical problems. I don't think that many people in his life knew that he was actually, you know, that his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. And so I do think that that's a part of the equation, but I don't think that it's the only answer and solution to the equation, you know. So anyway, I think I just wanted to give an example and also just sort of nod my head to him because he was a Big. He had a big impact in my life.

Well, thank you for sharing.

Yeah, of course, man. When you talk about some of these issues, do you have men reaching out? And if you do, what are they saying to you about their experience with suicide?

Very similar to what you said about Mitch. Very similar. Like, they don't consider themselves as being mentally unwell. They consider themselves having legitimate and external problems that they can't seem to solve. And suicide, like I said, is seen as a rational solution based decision for their problems. I mean, I worked a lot of a suicide researcher called Susie, who you should talk to, and she, she has done pretty much on her own about any sort of funding. She's done like the biggest qualitative analysis of male suicide in history. So I would struggle to find a better expert in the field than her. And she's a good friend of mine and she asks men routinely to share their experiences of suicide, suicidality. And then through my account, I help get those men to contribute to those discussions. And the survey that she sends out is like, it takes a long time to fill out. It's like half an hour of their time. And it's not. We don't just get short answers like, oh, I feel bad, I feel good. This is a sad day, this is a good day. We get long, huge paragraphs of heartbreaking text, like a huge waterfall of emotion, like, written from men and boys from all over the world sharing their experience of such eloquence and emotional intelligence that this is totally dissimilar to what I'm told about men. Are you told that men are just not capable of such emotions, but if you actually ask them and then have the guts and time to listen to them, you'll realize that's not true in the least. And that was one of the things that definitely opened my eyes and how much men are willing to share and talk. A lot of men contacted me after sharing that survey and they told me that's the first time I've ever being able to tell anyone about this. The first time anyone's actually showed an interest or listened to me. And I was like, that should not come from a random on Instagram. And a survey like that, that should not be the first time you've talked about it. And I'm, I'm glad you have talked about it. I'm even more glad you've told me. But that really highlighted, A, the fact that men are emotionally aware and are emotionally eloquent and B, that they're not given the output to share and when they Are they fill up your DMs. I tell you that much. Like, I get messages every single day and I'm grateful, but I just wish there were people in their lives that are willing to give them that space.

And it shouldn't be me and it shouldn't be a survey. It should be like friends and family and partners.

One of the things that you have talked about is the. Because I kind of went through and was going through a lot of the posts that you have shared and some of the research that you've shared around this topic and one of the pieces was you broke it down into.

The three areas. Male suicide is caused by three intertwined issues. Personal stressors, universal issues and new life events. And I thought that was really interesting, right? Relationship breakdown, family courts, not having access to your kids, childhood trauma. And then universal issues, loss of social connection, purpose and meaning. And I think it was, it was the first time where I've actually seen a robust breakdown of some of the contributing factors that men are experiencing when it comes to them taking their life. And so I just wanted to more so say thank you to you for putting some of these things together because I think it's, it's challenging. The narrative that was from the APPG.

On men and boys, which was doing a study into male suicide. And it is excellent and it talks, it talks in depth about the various different issues and how they intertwine and how they're very idiosyncratic to each person and they talk a lot about an overall lack of empathy towards men is one of the causes as well. The lack of male friendly services and the lack of empathy towards men and that is all around us, like men and boys are marinated in a culture that despises them in many ways and that obviously cannot, this does not help. And the services are just not necessarily suitable for men. If you talk about, you talked about how men are told to talk and it's important that they do, but often they don't want to talk. And a lot of our suicide intervention strategies, a lot of therapy, the entire psychological industry is dominated by women. Like 80% of clinical psychologists or more are women. And naturally, and I'm not saying it's an intentional thing, but naturally, an industry that's dominated by women is going to create concepts and theories and frameworks that are of more benefit to women than they are for men. And we need to address that. We need more male friendly services, especially in psychology and therapy for men. And often a lot of men don't want to go into a Clinical space and sit down often with a woman and bear their soul and talk about it. Often they want to talk with their friends who want to go on, like walking groups or bushcraft societies. And then you have. That's why we've seen the emergence of these men can talk spaces, which I'm extremely supportive of. And men, men seem to gravitate more towards group therapy. They need to see other men contributing, to learn from them and do it themselves. And they like to be a bit more practical. They like to do stuff, like I said, bushcraft groups, Men's sheds is very popular. They like to go on, like, walking holidays and do stuff and that'd be more physical and some women want that as well. But we need to diversify the way we help men and the way we see male distress. And again, that's not a problem men can do on their own. That requires funding and it requires a political discussion and it requires action from everybody, including men, but everyone else as well.

Yeah, I agree with all of that.

One of the things I'm curious to get your thoughts on is I've been talking more about this notion of male vacancy that, that 1 in 4 kids are going to grow up without a father in the household, that there's less men in the education system, there's less male teachers, there's less male psychologists, et cetera. And so there's sort of this vacancy of male modeling, not even necessarily role model, just modeling in general. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how you think that that feeds into some of the challenges.

That specifically young boys, but also young men are facing in our. In our climate today.

Well, I mean, the correlations between fatherlessness and sort of violent crime just sort of delinquency are impossible to ignore. There's a really interesting story involving elephants, which I really like, and it's a true story. And basically, in Kruger national park in Africa, a lot of elephants have been killed by poachers. So they decided to sort of take some elephants out of Kruger, put them into a reserve and then repopulate the elephants. And it was very successful. The elephant population, like, boomed. And then they were like, great, let's bring the elephants back to Kruger. So the idea was to have a helicopter that lifts up the elephants, winches them, drops them down, and the helicopter couldn't lift up the big male bull elephants. So the male fathers, because they're so big, so they were like, whatever, we'll just take the mothers and the children and we'll bring them back to Kruger and That was a problem solved also, they thought. But then about six months later, the park rangers in Kruger started to find rhinos and other big game animals just dead, like gored to death. And there aren't many predators that can kill a rhino. So the park rangers were just amazed at what's going on. So they basically set up cameras to watch. And they saw what they expected, which was young, marauding bands of juvenile male elephants going around just killing rhinos for sport for no reason other than sport. And they basically hypothesized that they are the young male elephants whose dads have been left behind. So the dads who weren't brought by the helicopter, these are the young male juvenile elephants that are not being socialized in the way they need. So they basically got a bigger helicopter, brought the male bull elephants, the father figures, and then the goring stopped. Like, it stopped. Like the violence of elephants stopped completely. And then the elephants live a happily life ever after. And I was like, you can easily draw parallels between that fatherlessness and knife crime. For example, like, the majority of violent criminals, especially in gangs, come from fatherless homes. Because a lot of boys who join gangs are just looking for a new family, a sense of belonging and leadership. And because they've not got one at home in their father, and they may not have one in school for a male teacher, they find gangs and gangs prey on them. And their gangs know that they know full well who the vulnerable boys are. And it's all too often fatherless boys. And that's a problem for which we all pay the price. And we're really all suffering from not solving that problem or not taking it seriously.

Yeah, I agree entirely. I mean, it's. When a young boy doesn't have a male. I mean, I even look at my son, he's two and a half years old, just a little over two and a half years old. And, man, he's got. I mean, he's got some gusto, he's got some spice, you know, he's got some heat. And. And there's times where my wife is like, okay, you need to step in, because.

He'S just got that. He's very physical. And I can just imagine that going untempered, untrained, and just sort of set loose into the world, and that's going to cause all kinds of chaos and havoc. I'm curious. I'm going to switch a little bit again. And then I want to get to one topic that before we end, I'm trying to get some things in here because There's a couple things that I really wanted to talk about. Do you see this playing in at.

All.

To this notion of young men leaving the left? Because you've talked about this and I know it's sort of a heated subject and I know that you talk about being on the left beyond the political left, and I don't necessarily want to go into policy and stuff like that, but there has been, there has been a sort of big shift within men and specifically within young men in leaving the political left. And so I would love for you to just speak to this a little.

Bit, I mean, I guess in simple terms, but young men are leaving the left because the left doesn't offer them anything apart from catch like phrases and insults about being toxic and this and that. And like I'm seeing shocking policies coming in, especially in Australia, of like five year old boys having, being exposed to concepts like toxic masculinity, like politicians putting trainers into school, teaching five year old boys about what toxic masculinity is. And I'm like, I like, what is that? That's just more indoctrinating of boys. But the left have absolutely failed men and boys. And they are contributing directly to the rise of misogynists such as Andrew Tate and his band of bloody podcast bros who I despise. I despise them because of what they're doing and I also despise them because they make me look bad. And like the left have failed. I mean, I, I put it down to four fundamental reasons. The first being the left seem to think that men's issues are purely internalized, rather than recognizing, as we've discussed, that there are sort of broader structural problems. Like men's issues are not just caused by individual failings, they're systemic, just as women's are. The second failure, I would say is just a complete denial of any sort of biological sex differences between men and women. Of course the differences between men and women are partly cultural and socialized, but they are also biological. Like men and women are not the same completely, the distributions overlap. But men and women are different and part of that is biological. The left does not want to have that conversation.

The left also the third thing I'd say they pathologize healthy parts of masculinity, innate parts of masculinity as so called toxic masculinity. So pathologizing masculinity as something that's wrong inside of men, as if they're dysfunctional women. And again, if only they acted more like women, everything would be fine. That isn't true. And I don't like the term toxic masculinity. I don't like pathologizing masculinity as something that's wrong inside of men. And I suppose the fourth thing that they're left, I would say get wrong is that they seem to think that disadvantages go one way. So gender inequality goes one way, and that is to the disadvantage of women and girls. And there are certainly many disadvantages faced by women and girls, but it's a two way street. And there are significant structural failings of boys and men too. And I would say those four things are pushing men and boys away. Like I'm, I'm still on the left, like I, it's in my bones, like I simply can't change who I am. But I do feel betrayed and let down by my peers and how gutless they are to even accept any sort of accountability. And it's just like, it's just painfully ironic that people that dish out lessons on accountability are unwilling to take any sort of accountability for themselves. And I'm like, I described it recently, like they're giving out all these hard to swallow pills to everyone, and then someone gives them a hard to swallow pill like the four I've just given you, and they just spit them out. I'm sure there's people listening to this right now that I've probably switched off because they refuse to accept any sort of failing for their own. And the left just seem to want to shovel men's failings, men's issues at the feet of other men as if they are the beginning and end of all solutions and they have complete power to fix things on their own and they don't. So again, that failing hurts everyone because it leads men and boys to look for leadership elsewhere. And they go to people like Andrew Tate, who, as I said, is a misogynist and a horrible role model for boys and he's exploiting them. Not just him, but others. And he is our mess. We created him. And we're still not confronting that failing. And next it won't even be Andrew Tate, it'll be someone else, someone worse that we gravitate towards. And I can totally see why boys are leaving the left. And it's happening more and more over time. I'm waiting for some sort of politician to realize that it's a growing contingent of disenfranchised boys and men on the left that are willing and waiting to be scooped up by whoever dares advocate for them, because no one is really, at the minute but there are votes to be had, including mine. And it's in the interest of politicians and increasingly so to actually talk to these boys and men in a much better way than they already are, if only for their votes.

Yeah, I agree entirely. I mean, as somebody that grew up liberal and progressive.

I certainly in the last however many number of years have been like, what the fuck?

I don't even know what else to say. Just like, what the fuck? This is.

The vitriol towards men and masculinity. This sort of.

Complete.

The sort of complete unwillingness to acknowledge sort of basic biological differences. When I hear stuff like that, I'm like, you clearly have no reference point for what it's been like to be a man. I mean, holy shit, People think men.

And women are exactly the same and we all start life as some sort of blank slate that's filled in by I'm like, you've just not met any. You can't have met any men or any women. Like, there are certainly women that are more manly than men. There are certainly men that are more womenly than women. But in general, it's just impossible to deny that men and women are different. And part of that is biological. I don't understand how that is so either offensive or b, difficult to believe. And like, even if our brains are similar, the way hormones interact with our brains is not similar. And men and women do not produce the same hormones. And women, if anything, they get a front row seat to the emotional roller coaster that are hormones and they go for that roller coaster every single month. And I'm like, well, times that by about 10, that's where men are in terms of testosterone. And I was like, what? Are you going to deny that hormones have any influence on male and female behavior? And are you b going to deny the fact that men and women produce different levels of hormones? And I'm like, that's when that conversation no longer has any sort of meaning to me because that person is just anti science. And they're just totally enamored by their own voice and totally entrenched in just ideological, political. And I'm like, I'm done with that conversation. And that and that conversation I have with the left often all the time. But I'd say the right go the other way. The right seem to think there's no sort of cultural influence and no sort of socialization. But the fact of the matter is it's both. Is obviously both.

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's one of those things where I think For a long time, I avoided even having some of the conversations that we're having today just because they're often charged. And I wasn't really too sure how to speak about them for a long time. But I think it's kind of gotten to this point where.

I also think about the, you know, the type of culture and society that my son's going to grow up in. And you know, I remember when my son was born, I put up, you know, I didn't. We haven't really shared any photos of him online. You know, we just, we just don't want to do that. But I shared a photo of me holding him. You couldn't see his face and you know, announcing, just sort of saying like, we had a, you know, here's my son and I'm so excited to be a dad and da, da, da. Somebody wrote me saying, you know, basically, shame on you for gendering your son. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He was, he's born a biological male. Like, there's just, I didn't like if that some, you know, if that changes at some point in his life, if he's, you know, if he goes through something like, we can have that conversation. But, but you, like, you know, you and I are just living in two fundamentally different worlds if, if that, if that's your belief system because you have to just ignore biology almost entirely to get to this place. And so it's, it's a very interesting time. And I think a lot of young boys and a lot of young men, you know, I have a lot of young men that follow me and I get comments from them all the time. And I think one of the things that really is, it really is feeding their exit from the left is the disdain and the vitriol towards anything male related from the left. And there's just this, there's, I think there's just such a huge volume of men aren't wanted, men aren't needed, men are the problem. Masculinity is harmful and toxic. Men are harmful. And it's just like, it's exhausting. And so guys, guys are kind of just like, well, why would I be here? You know, it's like being in a restaurant or a bar where people are standing around your table telling you that, you know, you're like, you're just, you're toxic and harmful and et cetera. And so you're like, why the fuck would I want to be in that restaurant? Like, you're just going to leave. And when there's no conversation to be had. It's. It's very, very challenging. So I would love to dive into that topic more. But there is something that I want to just shift and get into one last piece. We've talked about some really big pieces within our culture and our society and what's happening with men right now. And I've loved, I've been really inspired by the way that you talk about these issues, and it really has caused me to think about how I can talk about these issues differently. And you and I had this just brief dialogue before about this notion of creative communication. And so I'm curious if you can just maybe give some insight into how you think about creating this content, how you go about creating the conversation and communicating some of these things that are insanely charged because you do a very good job of sort of staying neutral, in my opinion.

I am the beneficiary of the people that shout stupid things at me in the comments. When I first started off, I used, I got a lot, a lot of, a lot of hate. A lot of people just going through everything I said of a fine tooth comb and trying to find any sort of inaccuracy, any sort of mistake I could. And obviously I'd make mistakes and I'll get it wrong, but you're sort of walking on a tightrope. Everyone wants you to fall from it. And that was of benefit to me because I got really good, got a really good balance in that sense. And because people wanted me to fail, I had to make sure my content was just the most watertight it possibly could be. And whereas people like a lot of feminist spaces, they'll just throw up a tweet and people take it for granted. Whereas I have to present data and citations and direct quotes and multiple sources and meta analyses for people to believe me. And no one benefits from that more than I do because it means my content has to be really, really, really good. Like almost perfect. Otherwise people just poo poo it. And now, thankfully, I don't get really any hate in the comments.

I guess the second thing is like walking the line of wanting to be accepting of other people, people that disagree with you without being overly apologetic. So one of the things that a lot of people do in this space, and I talk about Richard Reeves doing it, who you, who you've had on, and he probably did it on your podcast, is that they all, they start these conversations by saying, now I'm going to talk about men and boys. And that's not to say women and girls don't have their own experiences. And also the issues that impact men and boys also hurt women and girls. And often people start this advocacy with. With like, a prospective apology, almost like you're paying penance to feminism and women and women and girls. And also you sort of have to trick people into caring about men and boys because it's of benefit to women and girls. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. Like, men and boys deserve a conversation in their own right for their own benefit, primarily. Obviously, it's worth mentioning how the secondary beneficiary are women and girls, but men deserve this conversation. And I'm not going to apologize for having this conversation, and I'm not going to kiss the ring, and I'm not going to bow down, and I'm not going to pay penance. And I really think, like, Rich Reeves is an excellent person and a brilliant man, but he does it too much, and he basically undermines himself before he's even gotten started. He's given himself a sense of, like, shame. He's sort of giving himself, like, a shaming himself before he's even started undermining his own points. So I don't think there's anything to apologize for. I think men and boys deserve this conversation in their own right. And I speak proudly about these issues. I don't round off my corners. I don't wear it down so it's more palatable. They are bitter pills to swallow, and a bit like eating your vegetables. It's good for you. You need to eat your vegetables and you need to follow my account because it's not very nice sometimes, but it's worth doing nonetheless. That balance is difficult because you don't want to be too much bravado. You don't want to be too overly confident. You want to be thoughtful. You want to be mindful. You want to be sensitive to other people. So that's a balance. And it's obviously, I'm always tipping left and right, left and right. And the second is, like, one of the things I've learned from feminist spaces, and it's a very popular feminist slogan, which is the personal is political. And that is, at the end of all of this, we are all human beings. And like, it doesn't matter how many citations or meta analyses I present, it doesn't matter how many pie charts I show you, that one single story of heartbreak is way more powerful than any data set because we are human beings. And I know Stalin said it. He said, one death's a tragedy, a Million deaths is a statistic. And it's like often you find a personal anecdote from one person is just way more impactful. So I try to present information on domestic violence, and then I try to present a personal story or a submission from someone that they've experienced, like an anecdote. And getting that balance is a challenge I'm sure I'll be grappling with for the rest of my life. And it's impossible to get right. But as long as I'm trying my best and people grant me good faith, I'm happy to keep going. And it's. It's just a very difficult subject to navigate because it's seen as, like, we talked about offline, how men and boys advocacy is sort of seen that's parallel to, like white supremacy or the alt right or even Nazis. So when I entered the space, I knew that was who I was going to be compared to. And there is really no, there was no one worse to be compared to. So it's very much a rebranding of important issues to say, no, it is not like white supremacy, and no, I'm not a Nazi. And in fact, these are very important issues that you should be listening to. And no, I'm not going to apologize. So the rebranding of men and boys advocacy away from that very loud, aggressive, shouty tone of voice is also something I'm experimenting with, with lots of different tweaks. And I'm learning all the time. I basically remix posts all the time. I present things in different ways. I'm on a continual journey, creatively and politically, and I'm sort of learning. I'm sharing what I learn every step of the way, and nothing's ever perfect, but as long as it's getting better, I'm happy with that.

Oh, I appreciate that, man. And I appreciate your work and what you're putting out in the world has inspired me. And yeah, we're going to have the links to your page in the show notes. You can just go follow George at the Tinmen. Not Tinmen, at the Tnmen, the Tin Men. And listen, man, I really love this conversation. I'd love to have you back on and jam a little bit more in the new year, because this was phenomenal. So thanks so much for your time and for everybody that's out there. As always, man it forward. Share this episode with somebody in your life. I think this is probably one of those conversations where you listen to the podcast, you have a conversation with your friend, with a buddy, with a partner, and to discuss some of these issues because they're big ones and they're challenging to talk about. But I think that's part of the mission in life, is to have the hard conversations. So thank you so much for tuning in. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.