Why Do The Left Not Care About Men’s Problems? - George TheTinMen

Chris Williamson 0:00 You have one of the most interesting Instagram accounts-

George TheTinMen 0:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:03 ... that I've followed probably in the last year, and everybody needs to go and follow @TheTinMen on Instagram. I absolutely love it. These infographic carousel slides that you've been doing, I think, are, they're phenomenal, they're very well researched. I think you're an incredibly balanced voi- uh, voice in this space. So what's the reason that you personally decided to get interested in the topic of talking about men and men's issues?

George TheTinMen 0:26 (exhales) Um, well, I, I work in the creative industry. I create content for a living. I've been doing it, specifically in film for about 13 years now. Um, I've always found it very interesting to c- sort of communicate data to audiences. Um, I also engage heavily in sort of progressive left-leaning sort of pol- political spaces. And as those two parts of my life were developing, I sort of noticed an unwillingness from progressive left spaces to engage in good faith with an area which I was always passionate about, which is men and boys advocacy. And to be honest, like, I was quite naive when I started the journey. I didn't know a huge amount about anything I spoke about, so it was a lot of reading. And I remember just being absolutely shocked at the data. Like, some of the information I was reading, I just could not believe it, and I, I was, I felt like, as a creative with a lot of experience, I was like, "I've been dealt a winning hand here." There was so much interesting information, so many undeniable facts about men and boys. I saw an area of advocacy, men and boys advocacy, men's right advocacy especially, is experiencing what I think is a massive brand identity crisis. It's, like, very loud, very aggressive. It's very sort of in your face. And I thought, "If I can just change the way we present this information," which is compelling, and I'm sure we'll get into, "if I can just change the way we present it through my own experience, I think I can change some minds." And some (laughs) , some minds have been changed, some minds have been entrenched.

Chris Williamson 1:51 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 1:53 But I just had to do it. I just thought I had to do it. I, I just didn't see, in my reality, what I was being told about what it is to be a man, and the facts didn't seem to add up, and I was like, "I just need to try and present these things." To be honest, it wasn't even really supposed to be a public channel. Like, I was engaging so much in these discussions, um, with a lot of feminists, and I just wanted a, a space on my phone, quite literally, to be able to reference information about, like, suicide, domestic violence, uh, violent crime, homelessness, drug addiction. And I just wanted something to be under the table, and I mean that quite literally under the table, so I could sw- like swipe through, and, and following my own beliefs, like engage in this discussion, um, with, like, due diligence. And then people just started to follow, and then some of the wrong people started to follow and gave me some, some shit, which is fine. And then it grew, and it grew, and it grew, and then I spent a bit more time pers- like personalizing the content to make it a little bit more entertaining, a bit more attractive in the way that you've described so kindly, and then I'm here. Now I'm here.

Chris Williamson 2:55 So you are somebody that is from the left, very much so. I've seen

Chris Williamson 3:00 your political compass test.

George TheTinMen 3:01 Yeah (laughs) . Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:01 And yet, you're pro-men.

George TheTinMen 3:04 Oh.

Chris Williamson 3:04 What, what is... First off, why is it such a rare position, and secondly, what's unique about what you've learned being in those spaces, holding those beliefs, and yet talking about the issues of boys and men?

George TheTinMen 3:19 I mean, even saying pro-men is sort of, it makes you wince, doesn't it? It's like, "Oh my God, that's unpopular." I mean, obviously I'm pro-all human beings, uh, including women, of course. I speak, I do speak actively about women-

Chris Williamson 3:29 You're human as well, yeah.

George TheTinMen 3:29 This is like, this is something I've always found frustrating, is that whenever we have these discussions, it always starts with some sort of, like, prospective apology where we sort of get down on our knees and we plead and we have to, like... Someone I just talked to the other day said, "You have to kiss the ring." And you always have to kiss the ring. You always have to acknowledge women and girls. You can't just talk about men and boys. I know, I know you've spoken to Richard Reeves. He does this quite often. He starts everything by saying, "Now, I'm gonna speak about boys and men. That doesn't mean I don't care about women and girls." Uh, and if anything, talking about men and boys is a benefit to women and girls." And I find by doing that you, you sort of undermine your own point before you've even begun. And I, I genuinely believe men and boys deserve a conversation in their own right, not for the benefit of women and girls, although that is a benefit, an indirect benefit, but primarily this is about men and boys. That doesn't (laughs) ta- me have to do it now, that doesn't mean I don't care about women and girls. And I'm not gonna say that again for the rest of the podcast, 'cause I don't think I need to continually have to prove myself. But, um, as for your question, (exhales) I just think... I do think the right has done a better job of talking about men and boys. Certainly not perfect, but the progressive left spaces just seem very intent on blaming men and boys for their own problems. So, uh, if men have poor health outcomes, it's 'cause men aren't going to h- uh, the doctors enough. If men have mental health problems, it's not speaking enough. If a man gets assaulted on the street, we ask who did it, and like we don't actually engage with these discussions in, like, good faith. There's always an accusatory finger. And then we, obviously we get to the concepts of toxic masculinity and patriarchy, which in my opinion, again, speaking as someone who works as a, for a living writing copy, I feel like those words, um, they just place the blame back on men's shoulders and they divide people. And I was just like, "I think I could do a better job. I think I can do a better job." I think I can bring the progressive topics into my account 'cause I, uh, the, uh, the frustrating thing is so many of the issues I talk about are, are, I would say, left-wing issues. If you, if we're gonna classify left wing as social equality, if you're talking about homelessness, everyone wants to end homelessness, which is great, but 80% of homeless people are, are men. 90% of homeless deaths are men. So really, if you stand for homelessness, you sort of indirectly stand for men too, right? We, a lot of people, like, hate war. Like, I want war ended, but then 99% of war deaths are men. Um, and there's so many issues that men, that people care about, including, like, BLM, for example, that are, that are men's issues, men and boys' issues, but are sort of recategorized as something else. So, like, BLM, for example, is certainly a racial issue, but I never really saw it mentioned at all that, like, 95, 96%...... of Americans killed by police are men. And if, if you were to line up like, um, all of the Black Americans killed in 2020, uh, the year George Floyd, 99% of it is Black Americans or Black men. More, more, in fact. Uh, and there's a great database, I think it's the Washington Post, uh, Fatal Force, where they basically have every single American killed by police and you can search by race. And it's like literally 244 Black men killed in 2020, two women. And I, I v- I never saw it brought up personally. That's something I've disagreed with a lot of people in, in my community, but I never saw it mentioned as a, a racial and a gender issue. And really, if, if you deny (sighs) police fatality as a, um, uh, a men, men's issue, I feel like that's, that's even worse than denying it as a, a Black issue, like because it is both. But you can't-

Chris Williamson 6:54 It's way more men proportionally-

George TheTinMen 6:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:56 ... than it is Black, so when we're talking about-

George TheTinMen 6:59 Yeah. Right.

Chris Williamson 6:59 ... what is ... That's such a good point, dude.

George TheTinMen 7:01 Right? So, well, (laughs) it gets worse, yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:03 So, like, the, the, the, the conversation around, um, look at the proportion, how many White people were killed by police versus how many Black people were killed by police, and there may be an imbalance and there may be a, a required redress-

George TheTinMen 7:14 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:14 ... beyond-

George TheTinMen 7:14 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:14 ... simply the, the sort of situational, um-

George TheTinMen 7:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:17 ... e- environments that different groups inhabit. But the real thing would be, look at the 99.45% of-

George TheTinMen 7:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:24 ... people who were male that were killed by police-

George TheTinMen 7:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:27 ... compared with the ones that were female.

George TheTinMen 7:29 Yeah, so like, I think a, a number's something like Black Americans, when you normalize to a population, are about 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White Americans, which is a disparity that's worth discussing, but men, men are 20 times more likely to be killed by a woman. And then when you tell people that, you put them in a very difficult place of cognitive dissonance, because they start reaching for, "Well, men are more violent, which is why they're killed by police," and that certainly would explain some of the disparity. But then are you going to apply that to the racial disparity as well?

Chris Williamson 7:58 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 7:58 And I was like, "Good luck with that one. Good luck with that one." And it, to be honest, it gets even worse, because I feel like not only do the left neglect that part of the problem, but I would say the left actively encourage, encourage it. I would say the left create the very problem they're trying to solve in police fatality. Because a lot of, a lot of these left progressive spaces actively participate in that very dehumanizing fearmongering around men. Like, "Men are dangerous, like, cross the street, watch out, keep your distance." Like, "Men are, men are terrifying, men are d- men are violent." And I'm like, that is actually feeding into the, the, the divisive, um, fearmongering rhetoric. You're sort of creating a cultural fear around men. And I'm like, "Who is gonna pay the biggest price for that?" And the answer is Black men. Like, because when police starting fearing, um, Black men, that's when, uh, Black men get shot. And I'm like, "Are the left creating the very problem they claim to want to end by explicitly fearmongering around men?" And (laughs) like, I mean, that's, that's a controversial question to start off with, but a good one nonetheless, I think.

Chris Williamson 9:00 So what, what do you find when you bring these sorts of positions up with the left-leaning friends that you will have, what's the kind of ... 'Cause, uh, presumably your left-leaning credentials must get questioned at some point.

George TheTinMen 9:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:16 That, that, "You, you, you're evidently-

George TheTinMen 9:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:17 ... not from the left, you must be confused." Despite the fact that being left or being right is fundamentally a, a social issue, right? It's to do-

George TheTinMen 9:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:25 ... with problems of class-

George TheTinMen 9:26 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:26 ... and economics. It's not to do with, are you pro-men?

George TheTinMen 9:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:30 Like, even the, the, the conversation around being pro-life or pro-gun.

George TheTinMen 9:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:33 Neither of those things should really factor into whether you are or whether you aren't. It's just a predisposition that's grouped certain people with a particular suite of beliefs into different cohorts. So what, what happens? You're, you're sat at the pub with your left-leaning friends, some of whom have got blue hair-

George TheTinMen 9:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:47 ... and you bring up this conversation around men.

George TheTinMen 9:52 It's snug, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's happened.

Chris Williamson 9:53 What happens?

George TheTinMen 9:53 I lose, I, I've lost friends. I've lost friends, I've lost like, n- people that, uh, acquaintances of mine. Like family members, like, quite literally stand up and walk out the room. Like, people that I thought were important to me and cared about things that were important to me. And that's fine. Like, I know, I mean, to put it into a case in point, I have a friend, um, a male friend, who, uh, lost, uh, one of his old flatmates to suicide who was a man. And he, he sent round the vi- the virtuous text message to all his guy friends asking them to talk, and, "It's good to speak and share. If you wanna reach out, let me know," which is like, very worthwhile and I think that all men should do that. But then I remember a week later, I posted some information on sexual violence against men and how it's under-reported in America, and there was a significant number of male rape victims. And then the next time I saw him, he pulled me aside and s- like, just basically castigated me and called me tone-deaf (laughs) for saying that. And I was just like, "Mate, do you realize that a boy who has been sexually abused in adolescence, when he grows up is 10 times more likely to attempt suicide?"

Chris Williamson 10:54 (sighs)

George TheTinMen 10:54 Like, sexual violence and suicide are inextricably linkeds. They're, they're, they're a massive part of one another. And so how could you one week say, um, "Male suicide is a big problem, let's talk about it," and then the following week call me tone-deaf when I talk about one of the biggest causes of, of suicide? And I mean, we talk about that a lot, but one of the biggest, one of the biggest things that I've learned is like, if you want to talk about male suicide, we need to go a lot deeper than we've currently gone, which is just surface level, men can talk, men can cry. Which is again, a very valid point, and I, I would like to use, use this opportunity to encourage men to talk about the problems. But if you think suicide starts and stops there, you're wrong. It's, it's not seen primarily as a mental health crisis, but a societal issue. Like, there's a really great paper, I'm going on a tangent now, but a really great report that said male suicide is not, um, a mental health issue primarily. It even described it as, um, a rational decision and a solution-based outcome when men simply cannot deal with the problems around them. And a lot of the men who attempted suicide didn't even consi- consider that they had a mental health problem. They didn't consider themselves as mentally unwell. They were like, "I'm not mentally unwell. I'm in debt, I've lost my job, I'm losing my children in child custody courts, um, I'm, I'm, I'm a victim of domestic violence." Like, that's another, another really difficult-... hip- a bit of hypocrisy from the left, where if you look at male victims of domestic violence, of which there are f- currently three million in the UK, um, 11% of those men will attempt suicide. So it's frustrating when you talk to advocates who are against male suicide and that's, uh, an important issue to them, but then they'll refuse to talk about domestic violence against men. Uh, and then I mentioned child custody and, um, Martin Seeger, who is an excellent psychologist, he, he's linked 20% of the suicides in the UK to child custody battles, family courts, relationship breakdown. And like the family court system in the UK is one of the most heartbreaking, um, institutions you will ever see. And like for a father to lose his child i- in a corrupt family court causes so much pain. And a lot of those men, they're not mentally unwell, they've just lost their child. And, um, if you're a male suici- an advocate of male suicide and you're not talking about child custody, uh, joblessness, male victims of domes- domestic violence, I would, I will question how effective you're being. And if anything, uh, there are people that I genuinely feel like are n- not talking about the real issues, they're just trying to sell things like, uh, if anything, sort of exploiting the issue by not wanting to get their hands dirty, by, you know, playing in the mud like I am.

Chris Williamson 13:29 Mm-hmm.

George TheTinMen 13:29 I'm the one, I'm the one that's in the mud here.

Chris Williamson 13:30 So they want to-

George TheTinMen 13:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:31 They want to talk about the very virtue, uh, uh, virtuous and applauded elements of communicating with men and boys-

George TheTinMen 13:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:42 ... which is you need to learn to open up. You need to get rid of your man box of expectations around what it means to be a man. But when you talk about what are the precursors to this, which are a little bit more politically unpopular, things like-

George TheTinMen 13:55 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:56 ... male, male rape, things like men who are-

George TheTinMen 13:59 Ooh.

Chris Williamson 13:59 ... being mistreated through family court-

George TheTinMen 14:00 Ooh.

Chris Williamson 14:00 ... men who have lost things in marriages, in divorce court-

George TheTinMen 14:03 Ooh.

Chris Williamson 14:03 ... and stuff like that, that is a much more contested area. Uh, I mean, this is, this is a, you know, the absolute rubber meeting the road situation of every social topic.

George TheTinMen 14:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:15 If you hold a belief and say that you're standing up for a maligned group and yet that belief is applauded by most people, that's not really making any sort of a sacrifice. Like you, somebody who is from the left, talking about something that the left absolutely hates, which is men's problems, and not only that, talking about men's problems in a domain which is almost exclusively dominated by women-

George TheTinMen 14:42 (laughs) Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:43 That's somebody, as far as I can see, that is paying the price.

Chris Williamson 14:46 You mentioned before, and this is something I've seen pop up on YouTube quite a lot about, uh, family court, uh, child custody, uh, separations and stuff like that. This is an area that I have done zero research into.

George TheTinMen 14:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:59 I know, I know absolutely nothing.

George TheTinMen 15:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:00 So given that you are coming at it from a evidence-based, research-backed lens, what, wh- what don't people know about how family court and, and divorces and separations-

George TheTinMen 15:13 Well-

Chris Williamson 15:13 ... and stuff works for men?

George TheTinMen 15:15 I would say the fact that you don't, you don't know, and I would say I don't know a huge amount about either, but the fact that we don't know is an interesting outcome in and of itself. Like we don't know because we're not allowed to know. Uh, family court's a secret, a secret family court. So you're not allowed press, you're not allowed public, there's very little oversight. Like parents go in with children, and then a father comes out on his own, heartbroken. We don't know what's going in, going on there. I mean, I would, I'd be very, uh, we looked and talked too much about it, but I know it's something I'm learning about and I, every time I speak to a dad who's fighting for his child, that is probably the most heartbreaking story I'll hear. Like I don't... When we talk about... I feel like when you talk about politics, so much of it's descended into things like women not having pockets or, uh, the sound of my Alexa being a woman's voice, and those are sort of issues that are important.

Chris Williamson 16:04 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 16:04 But you need to put those down on the ladder a little bit. When a man is losing his child, I would just ask any parent like, "What's the one thing you don't want to lose?" And I would say like nine times out of 10 they'll say, "My child." And when you consider how many men are losing their child in a system that is corrupt, I feel like that's a bigger issue than it we, than we pretend is. And, uh, not just family courts but men are discriminated against in many areas of criminal court. Like I know there's been some interesting research by, uh, Professor Sandra Starr and she found like women are twice as likely to avoid prison for the same crime, um, and if they are sentenced, men will get 63% longer sentence, that's in America, f- again, for the same crime, same criminal history. In, in the UK like the Ministry of Justice came out with a report and I think it said men are 88% more likely to be sentenced to prison under similar, similar criminal circumstances. And, um, very little was said and done. That's the Ministry of Justice's own report. And, uh, a similar, similar phenomenon as I said earlier where there is a sentencing bias against Black Americans, 10% is found. So if you're Black in America you'll get 10% longer. Men get 63% longer, and if you're a Black man it's 63 plus 10%, so you've got the compounding of the problem itself, uh, and you see that everywhere, same with obviously BLM we talked about. Men are an at-risk group, Black men are an even higher at-risk group. And, um, I just think that intersectional approach is a really interesting and valuable lens that we should be using, but-

Chris Williamson 17:27 Isn't that fascinating? So if you, if you-

George TheTinMen 17:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:29 ... bring the word up intersectionality, it triggers-

George TheTinMen 17:32 Oh.

Chris Williamson 17:32 It triggers the, the, the base of the-

George TheTinMen 17:35 The brain.

Chris Williamson 17:35 The amygdala goes, right?

George TheTinMen 17:37 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:37 On a lot of people because what they've been taught about to do with intersectionality is that this is a justification for somebody who's got a gluten intolerance and l- is left-handed to be able to claim some sort of a victim card.

George TheTinMen 17:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:51 Whereas what you're saying here is that not using the lens of intersectionality-

George TheTinMen 17:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:56 ... allows us to ignore the problems of boys and men-

George TheTinMen 17:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:59 ... and actually means that a more, uh, politically popular-

George TheTinMen 18:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:05 ... uh, way of segmenting out different cohorts that are having problems-

George TheTinMen 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:08 ... is much easier to do-

George TheTinMen 18:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:10 ... if you ignore the problems of boys and men.

George TheTinMen 18:12 Yeah. Well, if you, I mean, you see the biggest s- the biggest victims of the problems I talk about are, are minority men. We talked about Black men, another good example is gay men.Um, obviously we talk a lot about the historical sort of criminalization of gay people, but very few talk about the fact that it was almost always gay men in particular who were criminalized. So in the UK it's illegal to be gay, and it was, but it was actually illegal to be a gay man. Like, being a lesbian was certainly not tolerated by any means, but you weren't castrated. You weren't sentenced to three years hard labor. The same with the- the Nazi Party when they were sending gay- gay people to, um, concentration camps. But they weren't gay people. They were all gay men. And again, lesbianism was not condoned, but it... you weren't rounded up and executed tens of thousands. And I g- I've seen like popular Instagrammers on, um, talk about what happened to gay people, um, in the Nazi Party. And you look at the photos and you're like, look, they're all men. Like, why are you so afraid to say gay men? Like, that's an important... Like the- the intersection of masculinity and homosexuality is a really, really important point to make. And we are losing that perspective by indulging in this sort of political correctness-

Chris Williamson 19:25 Yeah, it's-

George TheTinMen 19:26 ... by not wanting to talk about men.

Chris Williamson 19:27 I've never, I've never thought about this lens before. I've never thought about the other side of intersectionality.

George TheTinMen 19:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:34 The- the, you know, you use it from this lens that allows you to erroneously fold in unnecessary characteristics in order to, uh, maximize the way that a group is- is being claimed to be maligned.

George TheTinMen 19:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:47 It's not just that you're black, but it's that you're black-

George TheTinMen 19:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:49 ... and you've got a club foot-

George TheTinMen 19:49 And a man.

Chris Williamson 19:49 ... or something.

George TheTinMen 19:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:50 But when you do it on the other side, it allows you to hide-

George TheTinMen 19:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:55 ... what may be one of the biggest determining factors for this, and this is almost exclusively, I would guess, a problem of the left.

George TheTinMen 20:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:04 So this is a problem that is mostly present in and mostly driven by people from the left, which-

George TheTinMen 20:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:10 ... who are ostensibly the group of, uh, uh, tolerance and inclusion and- and trying to raise up maligned groups.

George TheTinMen 20:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:17 But because of this blind spot toward the problems of boys and men, it's actually... It- it- it, the intersection or not using an intersectional lens is a disadvantage.

George TheTinMen 20:28 Mm-hmm. Yeah. I- I- I genuinely feel like some of the issues I discuss offer new- new perspectives that are... You may not have to agree with it, but they're certainly worth discussing at the very least. Like combining what we talked about in terms of men being seen as inherently guilty, not just by society, but by quite literally the criminal court. So like I said, 63% longer sentences for men. If you pro- if you apply this sort of inherent guilt that society seems to see men as, and you apply that to being gay, that, I think explains why we see women as sort of innocently gay. You know, "It's a phase, I'll get through it. Don't worry about it. It's fine. She's just experimenting. It's all innocent fun." But men are, men are guilty of being gay 'cause we're applying that- that inherent guilt onto gay men and ga- they are quite literally guilty of being gay. There's, you know, an abomination as it's called in the Bible and- and like I said, criminalized in the most literal way possible.

Chris Williamson 21:22 I had a conversation that I was doing in- in, uh, Qatar probably about two or three months ago now.

George TheTinMen 21:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:28 Me- me and you were chatting beforehand-

George TheTinMen 21:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:29 ... 'cause I wanted to make sure that I was absolutely on the nose-

George TheTinMen 21:31 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:31 ... of this conversation I was having. And you sent me something, uh, and I've built this out, um, for a project that I'm working on at the moment. I actually would like to read to you a bastardized version of what you sent me a few months ago.

George TheTinMen 21:41 Oh God. Okay.

Narrator 21:42 What do I like?

Chris Williamson 21:42 "A common question is, why don't men just do better? Surely they can try harder in school, employment and health. Well, no other group is told when they suffer with reduced performance or accolades in the real world, that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We don't tell any other group to talk about their problems."

George TheTinMen 22:00 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:00 "Instead, we spend billions in taxpayer money and private charity to set up committees, departments, campaigns and funds to solve the problem. In simple terms, if a woman has a problem, we ask, what can we do to fix society? If a man has a problem, we ask, what can men do to fix themselves? It's a blatant double standard. And people who are unwilling to admit any structural disadvantages faced by men-"

George TheTinMen 22:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:22 "... are standing in the way of us solving the problems that are hurting men and also the potential partners who they may no longer be viable for. What's the point in asking men to talk if we are unwilling to listen or even acknowledge the societal issues that they're talking about? The problems are not in men's heads, but out there in society, and we should not gaslight men into thinking they can solve these problems by just trying harder or being less toxically masculine. If the patriarchy is so powerful, why aren't men flourishing more?"

George TheTinMen 22:51 Oh, why? Yeah, well, I mean that's a excellent rewording of what I- I said. I'm happy to take credit for it, and I hope it went down well. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:58 Hey, there it is.

George TheTinMen 22:59 Um, I- I mean, can I respond with a quote of my own?

Chris Williamson 23:02 Absolutely.

George TheTinMen 23:03 Like, going back to suicide is a really interesting vessel to talk about this. This is... So APPG, Boys and Men is a new organization that's launched in the UK. It's All Party Parliamentary Group. So it's different members of different political parties coming together to discuss an issue. There's one on everything, now there's one on boys and men. They did an absolutely amazing report on male suicide, and this is what they found. Uh, sort of what I said earlier. Um, the APPG heard that the focus has been on viewing suicide primarily as a mental health problem, when in reality, it is largely the outcome of a range of external issues or personal stresses that take many men down the path to suicide. Suicide is a symptom or outcome of a buildup of stresses. Suicide is a choice made by men when these stresses reach a critical level and the stress bucket overflows. It is not the result of either a single cause or men not talking. These stresses range from a combination and culmination of issues such as relationship breakdown, work culture, employment, financial worries, and a wide- and are more widely impacted by social isolation, loss of belonging, the lack of male friendly services and the lack of empathy towards men. We heard evidence that many men view suicide as a rational decision and a solution based outcome based on their failure to fix these stresses. They often do not conceptualize their problems as being mental health problems. So I mean, I- I'll read those issues again and you tell me, Kris, which of these could be solved through tears. Relationship breakdown, work culture, employment, financial worries, like-... being in debt isn't solved by crying. I mean, I'm sure-

Chris Williamson 24:29 Just talk about it, just talk about it.

George TheTinMen 24:30 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, it's like-

Chris Williamson 24:31 The bank will accept that and you'll be out of your own crap.

George TheTinMen 24:34 If you go huh, yeah, yeah. Can you talk about this for a moment? And don't get me wrong. Like, talking is a way of dealing with the problem. But I don't know how much it solves the problem. It certainly doesn't solve it in its, um, complexity. Uh, I, I, I work a lot of, uh, a male suicide research called Suzy, and together we've done some very large studies. Together we did one of the biggest studies into male suicide ever. And she has more experience talking with suicidal men than I think anyone you could ever meet. And what she told to me on my podcast was that she was like, "The more I talk to these men and listen to the life they're living, the more I'm like, 'Fuck, I'm not surprised you want to kill yourself.'" Like, it sounds awful. Like, you don't have a mental health problem. We need to stop pathologizing male suicide and masculinity, and actually listen to what these men are saying. Like, it's, um, no point in them talking if we're not willing to listen. And the three words I, I try to bring in are, um, listen, ask, and act. Like, what's the point in talking? So you gotta listen, you gotta act, and you got to ask. And there's no point, there really is a limited utility to men talking if society is not willing to listen or if we're willing to re-tell people what they can and can't talk about. I get told what I can and can't talk about on my own page. People come into my page and they're like, "You can't say that. You can't say that. Don't say it this way." And I'm like, "I'll say what I want." But-

Chris Williamson 25:55 Oh, yeah.

George TheTinMen 25:55 ... it's strange (laughs) it's strange how you say men can talk, but not about these things. And it's like, well, it's not really talking if you can't talk about the things I want to talk about.

Chris Williamson 26:03 Dude, I love that. I love that insight. You're not saying the right things.

George TheTinMen 26:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it-

Chris Williamson 26:07 You can't talk about this stuff. We want you to open up, but we don't want you to open up in that way.

George TheTinMen 26:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:10 We don't want you to open up in a, a politically, uh, uncomfortable way. Do you see John Barry's Center for-

George TheTinMen 26:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:17 ... Male Psychology? Did you see his new study?

George TheTinMen 26:19 Uh, I still got his podcast to be, uh, ?

Narrator 26:22 (soft music)

Chris Williamson 26:22 Uh, oh, so this is a new one. This is John, uh, DM'd me this a couple of days ago. "My latest research has just been published. It assessed the views of over 4,000 men in the UK and found that thinking masculinity is bad for your behavior is linked to having worse mental wellbeing. Around 85% of respondents thought that the term toxic masculinity is insulting and probably harmful to boys."

George TheTinMen 26:46 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, the funny thing is, I put that into a post not long ago, where I talked about the indoctrination of boys. And we talk a lot about how Andrew Tate has indoctrinated boys, and in a lot of ways he has. I don't support Andrew Tate in the least. But we haven't also talked about how there are organizations that are going into schools right now to indoctrinate boys, educate them, just like Andrew Tate, but to educate that them, them that they are violent, like, rapists in waiting. Um, and that, the John Barry research you're talking about, I put that in. Uh, uh, it was like a percentage of boys have been introduced to the concept of men being bad for society, and the percentage of boys being told about toxic masculinity at like 10 years old, and it was really, really high. And the reason why I don't know the actual stats is 'cause that slide was actually deleted by Instagram. (laughs) Somehow that's-

Chris Williamson 27:34 No way.

George TheTinMen 27:34 ... that slide got, that slide got reported and deleted. And I was like, "There's nothing wrong with that slide." So it's a really great example of like I can't, you don't get to talk about ?

Chris Williamson 27:42 Tell you what, tell you what it shows, uh, uh, associated story. You might have seen, I put a reel up maybe a month ago, uh, talking about the fact that I'd once recorded a podcast with Andrew Tate, but never released it.

George TheTinMen 27:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:53 And I was talking about the fact that, um, I'd had the opportunity to. I recorded it maybe three years ago when he was relatively small, and then I could have re-released it or I could have released it-

George TheTinMen 28:03 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:03 ... for the first time at the height of his fame. It would've got millions of plays.

George TheTinMen 28:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:06 Uh, everybody in the comments... A couple of, couple of things. First off, everybody in the comments was saying, um, "This is you, uh, your morality is standing on the shoulders of, of sort of a high horse here." Um, like, I didn't need to know about the fact that you consider yourself virtuous. Well, if I had released it three years after-

George TheTinMen 28:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:23 ... a very bombastic guy was talking-

George TheTinMen 28:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:24 ... in the middle of a global pandemic-

George TheTinMen 28:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:26 ... I would have also been accused of, "Hang on, mate. You've stitched him up."

George TheTinMen 28:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:29 He didn't believe this anymore.

George TheTinMen 28:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:31 And it would have been harsh on Andrew. I did, most of the reason that I didn't release that a couple of years later is, it's a shit thing to do to someone who was making claims when there was a lot of unknowns, and now there are knowns, and you can prove, you can prove false a lot of the claims that he was making. Like, it's just a bad thing to do.

George TheTinMen 28:47 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:47 I don't care who he is-

George TheTinMen 28:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:48 ... or what you think about him. You don't stitch somebody up with a, a three-year-old video.

George TheTinMen 28:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:53 Anyway, that was the first thing. Second thing, Instagram took that down.

George TheTinMen 28:58 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:58 Instagram deleted it, and it had-

George TheTinMen 29:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:02 ... two seconds of him saying, "Hello. Good to be here." That was it. He featured-

George TheTinMen 29:07 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:07 ... in a video for... So that is how tight they are on, um, a number of, uh, topics, especially around boys and men. So, uh, the thing that I've got in my head, you know, that we've got this individual elements here, whether it be suicidality, homelessness, education-

George TheTinMen 29:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:21 ... relationship breakdown. Looking at a bit of a more macro level, why do you think people get angry if you start to discuss the basic truth that boys and men face disadvantages?

George TheTinMen 29:35 (laughs) Have you ever like had it where you, you, you spend the whole day out in town, you're walking around, meeting friends, uh, you know, go on a date or go for dinner. And you get home and you've had like food stuck between your teeth like all day, and it's like embarrassing? That is what I think is going on at the left, where they've badged themselves, quite literally bought the T-shirt about their political ideas. They badged themselves and made their political beliefs a fundamental part of who they are. Some people's jobs are quite literally dependent on certain political philosophies and theories being true. And people will fight to the death to defend them. They'll look in the mirror and be like, "Oh. (laughs) Oh, no." And they'll get angry at everyone else not telling them. And, um, I feel like to overcome that identity crisis, where your community, your friends, your job, your lifestyle is all built around a certain set of ideas, if something comes along that challenges those ideas, it's a very difficult thing to change. It's like changing your skin. You can't really do it. So which is why I, I try not to identify...... with any political movement, neither MRA or feminism. I try to identify as George, and George is a constantly shifting selection of ideas that, and I, I'm able to bring in, take out, as and when I choose. I'm not, I'm not sort of confined to my community. I know there's a, oh, I don't, I can't name who, I can't remember who said it, but he was saying how, he's a psychologist and he talked about how, um, opinions don't exis- necessarily exist in someone's skull. They exist in a community. It's like a shared belief that a community has. It's not like in someone's mind. So to change someone's mind, you either have to, uh, disassociate yourself from that community and lose friends, family, in the way that I described earlier, or you have to change the mind of the entire community. That's how you change someone's mind, and they're both extremely hard things to do, uh, especially when you're talking about very important issues like domestic and sexual violence, where, sadly, a huge amount of men and women have personal experiences of that. And I genuinely, I genuinely try to understand, like when people, um, hate men, I, I try to understand what has happened to that person for them to hate men so much. When I, uh, uh, same, the same principle applies when I look at violent men. I don't just see them as an end product of violence. I also, I try to look into what have they experienced so they've become this way. I truly believe that the vast majority of people are not born bad, they become bad from their experiences and their environment. So I try to ask, challenge people to ask themselves, "What sort of journey has that man been on?" And in the same way, so the, the angry, (laughs) the angry people I get in my comments and DMs, I try to ask like, "What have you experienced at the hands of men that has made you hate them so much?" And I, I al- I try to apologize. "I'm s- I'm sorry whatever happened to you happened, and I hope you give a second chance

George TheTinMen 32:18 for that."

Chris Williamson 32:18 Do you think-

George TheTinMen 32:19 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:19 ... that most people who do hold those beliefs have had firsthand personal experience of being mistreated by men, or do you think that they see a culture online that praises and raises up people who push back against men? 'Cause as far as I can see, it's way more that memetic, I am holding a belief that is currently politically popular to hold-

George TheTinMen 32:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:44 ... which is to, I'm gonna stand up for the, for the dispossessed groups, and I will ignore information that suggests that a group which isn't commonly seen as being dispossessed actually might be. Therefore, men bad, women good, White good, Black good, immigrant, like good-

George TheTinMen 33:03 (laughs) I just, I just think it's not easy. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:05 ... you know, things like that.

George TheTinMen 33:05 We just, if I, if I had a catchphrase, it would be, "Treat the issue, not the gender." Like, just look at the issue. And if that issue in- impacts 80% of women, then 80% of the benefits will go to women. But we need to look at the issue, and like not see just genders. Like if you look at domestic violence, like even in the most conservative estimates, one in three victims is a man. And yet there is n- there is virtually nowhere for, um, men to go. So one in three victims, about 1% of refuges for men. And like, that is not acceptable. If I were to say there was a group of survivors who make up one in three victims, and they are sys- systematically shut out of refuges, people would lose their mind. I try that all the time. I'm like, um, "If you look at homeless people, 90% of deaths are of one type of group." And people get outraged, upset. And then you reveal it's men, and then, (laughs) again, they're, they're confronted with the same sense of dissonance. But, um, (sighs) I don't know. It just, it's just a lot, it's just a lot to overcome for some people. And, uh, I just don't think people are willing to put in the effort. Like, um, it's too much part of their life. And, uh, it's a shame.

Chris Williamson 34:14 It s- it seems to me, uh, I, I learned this originally from Destiny, but I know that you kind of hold a, uh, a similar belief here, which is that one of the reasons that the right has dominated the conversation with men so much-

George TheTinMen 34:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 34:25 ... is because it's largely been evacuated by the left.

George TheTinMen 34:29 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 34:29 That you don't get to tell men that they are a problem or have a problem or need to do better and not hold up any potential role models for them to step into.

George TheTinMen 34:42 Yeah. (laughs) Exactly.

Chris Williamson 34:42 You have to provide a positive, inspirational, aspirational view for what men could become, and that has almost exclusively been dominated by the right. And, you know, for every single person-

George TheTinMen 34:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 34:57 ... every single person, I don't care who you are, that says, "I have a problem with Andrew Tate. I have a problem with Jordan Peterson."

George TheTinMen 35:03 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:03 Okay. Who do you suggest instead?

George TheTinMen 35:06 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:06 And I asked the guy who you, um, helped me prep for th- that debate that I did in Qatar.

George TheTinMen 35:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:12 He, uh, (laughs) I came out and they played this video that was like a bunch of individuals, famous individuals, that might be accused of being toxically masculine in one form or another. The first one was Milo Yiannopoulos.

George TheTinMen 35:25 Wow.

Chris Williamson 35:25 And I was like, "Look, if you've brought me here to defend fucking Milo Yiannopoulos, I'm on the wrong show."

George TheTinMen 35:31 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:31 Uh, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, uh, the usual, David Goggins, the usual crowd. And I was like, "Okay, um, I understand, my interlocutor." I was, "I understand that you have a problem with the people that have just been, uh, held up as-"

George TheTinMen 35:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:44 "... potential role models for men. Please tell me who you would suggest instead."

George TheTinMen 35:49 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:49 And it took 10 minutes in front of a l- uh, sorry, 10 seconds in front of a live audience of silence for him to say, "My brother-in-law." And I was like, "How about somebody that we all know?"

George TheTinMen 35:59 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:01 And it was, I didn't mean to be mean, but I think it was a really important moment that showed if you are from the left, it is really hard to find a positive image for what men could and should be.

George TheTinMen 36:14 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:14 It's just, it goes back to what you said before. If women have a problem, we say, "What can we do to fix society?" If men have a problem, we say, "What should men do to fix themselves?"

George TheTinMen 36:22 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. Quoting all my work now, thank you. Um, yeah. I feel like it's, I would say a better example is like an example of a masculine man. Like there's often an exam- there's often certain role models by the left of men, but I would say they don't, I wouldn't say they're traditionally masculine in, in the way they present themselves. I don't, they, the strange thing is that the, the things that define masculinity, we do celebrate them, but in women. So when a woman is like confident and loud and in your face and a go-getter and a boss and, you know-... we love that, and quite rightly so. But if you, if you say, "Oh, yeah, a man confidently go getting fierce in a fighter," it's like, "Oh no, we don't, we don't like that. Toxic, toxic, toxic." And I, I, it's a shame 'cause we, we, we just not, don't seem to be benefactors of the lessons of history, 'cause this isn't the first time we've pathologized agenda. Like I, I, uh, part of me thinks that toxic masculinity is just a modern equivalent of female hysteria, where we take female distress and we pathologize it as something to be treated, something that's wrong inside of them, and we subject them to this, this, this, these crazy sort of, um, experiments to, to fix the problem. And we're doing the same now. We see masculinity as a, as a problem to be fixed, and we're subjecting men to the same bogus sort of corrective therapies. Like the, the new masculinity workshops sort of presented by-

Chris Williamson 37:41 What's that?

George TheTinMen 37:43 New masculinity workshops are like really, really expensive, uh, workshops that are about curing men of their masculinity that are extraordinarily expensive and entirely ineffective. Uh, they're done by just really just Instagrammers who have done like a six-week course on somewhere or other, and that thinks they're a therapist. A therapeutic coach, I think they have to call themselves. And it's basically about correcting the problems of masculinity. It's the same thing we, we subjected women to, like 50 or 60 years ago for the so-called-

Chris Williamson 38:11 What's the, what's the female hysteria? I don't know the story behind it.

George TheTinMen 38:13 So female hysteria, um, was basically a phenomenon that looked at women's distress, and it basically pathologized it as a problem to be solved. I think... I mean, I think it was, um, (laughs) part of it was masturbation therapies that were a cure and-

Chris Williamson 38:30 Hang on. Pro or anti?

George TheTinMen 38:31 Pro. Pro, yeah, yeah, yeah. More, more-

Chris Williamson 38:32 Oh, masturbate more and it'll get rid of your hysteria?

George TheTinMen 38:35 More the, more the, more the merrier. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:35 I'm sure, I'm sure that there are many women-

George TheTinMen 38:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:37 ... many women that are like-

George TheTinMen 38:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:39 ... "I'm very, very hysterical all the time actually."

George TheTinMen 38:40 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:40 "I feel like I need this treatment."

George TheTinMen 38:42 Well, it can't hurt to try.

Chris Williamson 38:43 Yeah.

George TheTinMen 38:43 Um, and w- uh, you see the s- if you Google it, you see the same, these black and white photos of women in sort of court being experimented on, and it's, it's horrific. And I feel like we pathologized female distress. Instead of listening to it, we pathologized it as something that's wrong in them. And I, I j- I feel the same about toxic masculinity. I feel like the frustrating thing is that the people that disagree with me often don't realize that the thing we disagree on is semantics. 'Cause I, I do, uh, believe there is s- uh, problems within men. There are violent men. There are men that are just very aggressive, competitive, uh, that are not great at expressing their feelings. Those are the problems that I agree exist that are s- so-called toxic masculinity. But I feel like toxic masculinity as a term takes the problem and stuffs it into men's heads, "And this is your problem. And if you wanna solve it, only you can solve it." Rather than seeing it as a so- as a societal issue. So I mean, I would say toxic attitudes towards men or toxic attitudes towards masculinity, which all of society is guilty of perpetuating, including women. And, um, I feel like toxic masculinity just, again, confines a problem to men's heads. It sort of takes a problem and puts men, puts men into men's heads. In a ci- in slightly opposite, patriarchy where it sort of puts men inside of the problem. So patriarchy puts men inside of the problem. Toxic masculinity puts the problem inside of men. And, but whatever it is, it's like, "This is your problem." And like for-

Chris Williamson 40:03 Mm.

George TheTinMen 40:04 ... uh, for a political movement that's all about accountability, it's like, "Well, aren't we all count- accountable for what's happening to men? Like, what about the way we value men or the sort of dating standards that men are held to? Are they not, are they not part of it?" There's a really great study by a child psychologist in Co- Canada called Crystal Tomlinson, and she found that it was actually mothers who were perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes into their children. Men, the fathers didn't really care either way, but it was often the mother. And I'm like, that's t-

Chris Williamson 40:31 How so?

George TheTinMen 40:32 So, um, they did basically a IAT test, I think it is, where you're looking at different images of girls and boys, uh, exhibiting different behaviors, and it basically measures the response of mothers and fathers to the different, um, expressions of emotion. So a boy crying, for example. And it found that the mothers were, um, a lot more disapproving of like, things like boys crying, so boys breaking the, the gender stereotypes. And, uh, and it found like, surprisingly, fathers didn't seem to have really any sort of preference either way. They are just as-

Chris Williamson 41:06 Why do you think that is? Why do you think there's a sex difference there?

George TheTinMen 41:13 I mean, it could simply be that m- mothers spend more time with children. Uh, I honestly don't know. I don't... I wouldn't wanna comment on something I'm not con- not confident with.

Chris Williamson 41:23 Get out over your skis, George. Let's get some bro science in here.

George TheTinMen 41:26 Yeah, well-

Chris Williamson 41:26 Let me give you one. Let me give you one. Let me give you one from me. So there's something called the Sexy Son Hypothesis, and in it, um-

George TheTinMen 41:33 (laughs) Love it already.

Chris Williamson 41:34 Yeah. And it suggests basically that what women are trying to do is find fathers that are going to give them attractive sons-

George TheTinMen 41:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:39 ... 'cause attractive sons are more likely to have kids, right?

George TheTinMen 41:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:43 I think that what you see here is-

George TheTinMen 41:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:46 ... maybe an in-built biological mechanism that women have, which is a predisposition to make their sons attractive to future women, and they have deep down an understanding that the more prestigious and domineering men, on average, have better mating outcomes.

George TheTinMen 42:04 Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:04 They're more likely... Like, remember what we are. We are grand children optimizing machines. That's what-

George TheTinMen 42:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:10 ... humans are. We're not children optimizing machines. We are grand children optimizing machines-

George TheTinMen 42:14 Mm. Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:14 ... and once you get two generations away from you, away you go. Crack on.

George TheTinMen 42:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:18 But I, I, I think that that could be... that could potentially be a big part of it.

Chris Williamson 42:21 I loved your breakdown when we were talking about that conception of left and right and, and, and how people see it. Uh, "One side is a mindless cacophony of anti-male bigotry, minimization, and erasure. The other, an equally antiquated and equally restrictive world view of alpha males and pickup artistry."

George TheTinMen 42:38 Fucking hell.

Chris Williamson 42:39 So good. So good.

George TheTinMen 42:40 Did I say that?

Chris Williamson 42:40 Oh, yeah. You did, mate. You wordsmith that very well.

George TheTinMen 42:42 Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, well, I say a lot of stuff, don't I?

Chris Williamson 42:45 Fan of your own work.

George TheTinMen 42:46 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:47 Um, but yeah, I, I think... So e- one of the things you-

George TheTinMen 42:49 No, you are. Cool.

Chris Williamson 42:50 One of the things that you're trying to do is, is improve this conversation and improve the way that it's communicated.

George TheTinMen 42:55 Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:55 Given the fact that you're trying to display these ideas, what have you learned about...... the way that it is effective and ineffective, what is missing from the, the communication side of the conversation when it comes to this topic.

George TheTinMen 43:14 Uh, I just think a really... People just want to live in denial a lot of the time. Like people don't, don't want to believe. It doesn't matter how much information you present to them or how compelling an argument you make. Like, uh, some of the studies I've presented in domestic violence especially, like we're talking about s- a meta-analysis of 200 surveys taken across 30 years, collected by probably the greatest expert ever on domestic violence, the man who inve- the man who founded the field of family violence research to the study. And he found that it's not a gender issue, men and women abuse each other at more or less equal rates. Professor Murray Straus, the late Murray Straus. He's like, I don't know if it is... He literally invented the instruments we now use to study domestic violence, and he's saying that. So, if I'm given that data and I still can't change someone's mind, I really (laughs) don't know what hope there is. But I have learned, I've learned... I mean, I, I still find the issues extremely interesting, but more and more, I'm finding it even more interesting how reluctant people are to listen to what I'm saying. Like, especially when it's so compelling. Not only not listen, but not even want to discuss. In any discussion of it makes you a misogynist or an incel or some sort of virgin, I don't quite know. Um, I've learned that... The way I described it was, um, minds aren't changed through like cells of a spreadsheet. It's changed with the cells of a human heart. Which by that, I mean that it doesn't matter how many pie charts I flick around or how many spreadsheets or diagrams, it's very dehumanizing way of talking about very important issues. Because one single story from like one single person is way more powerful than any pie chart. I, I o- I mean, I don't want into the habit of quoting Stalin, but he said, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." And I've really learned the power of personal anecdotes. And that's something we can all learn from feminism, where they're saying, "The personal is political," and they are framing these important political issues as personal problems. So I try... Creatively, I try to combine different s- types of information, like I like to see some data, I like to see some personal quotes and stories, maybe some expert testimony. I try to mix them around in different ways and present them in, with different sort of perspectives and strategies. Sometimes I take the same issue, remix it with another. Honestly, overall, it's been very difficult. It's been kind of frustrating. But at the same time, it has an added benefit, because so many people are not willing to talk about these issues. It's excellent for me as a content creator because this means there's so many topics that I can talk about that no one else wants to talk about. It's like... I, I described it once as like, uh, eating from the garden of forbidden fruit, where no one wants to talk about these issues and I'm there gobbling it all up.

Chris Williamson 45:56 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 45:57 I'm like, "Yeah, this is great. No one's talking about this. No one's talking about that. This is a great perspective that no one..." And I had n- no doubt my chickens will come home to roost eventually.

Chris Williamson 46:04 Yeah.

George TheTinMen 46:05 But, um, I feel it's a combination of many different things. I do feel like there's a brand identity crisis within men and boys. But I also feel there is a, uh, reluctance to actually give a shit from people. Like, because people always talk about, "Why don't men talk? Why don't men cry?" And it's like, well, maybe because no one cares. Maybe that's why. Maybe we simply don't care. Uh, there is a d- there is a division of inner space about whether that's a biological thing or an environmental thing. Uh, normally, like most things, it's both. But I do feel like we seem to care more. An empathy gap is, or, um, male gender blindness, I think John Barry talks about in Gamma bias, yeah. (laughs) Gamma bias <|agent|><|en|>

Chris Williamson 46:42 Fuck yeah. John Barry, two for two today. I got you.

George TheTinMen 46:45 Sometimes you... Yeah, sometimes you read stuff and you're just like, "That is so true." Like we do, we do like erase male... So gamma bias is how we highlight and minimize gender, depending what we're talking about. So we highlight male privileges. In the area of privilege, we highlight the male sex. And in the area of victimization, we highlight the female sex. And by that, I mean, like if you look at newspapers, any, any of your visitors that want to go away and do some homework, look at how the news reports social issues. If it's like 100 people killed and two of them are women, it would be like, "98 passengers killed, two, including two women." And what we're doing is we're highlighting women when they're impacted and we're erasing men when they're, when they're, when they are impacted. Like another example I can give you is in London, where I currently live, uh, last year we had the worst year in history of knife crime in terms of the amount of teenagers killed. Um, I mentioned earlier how we talk about, um, gay people historically and we don't talk about gay men. Same for this. We, we use the word teenagers. Teen- another teenager stabs to death, 30 teenagers, 35 teenagers. And then I looked at the data, which no one's gonna do apart from some nerd like me, every single one was a boy. Not 90%, not 95%, every one, all of them, every single one was a boy or young man, mostly inner city Black boys. And we were reporting them in the newspapers as teenagers or children or like 15-year-old like... And I was just like, "You should be saying boys." If it was just women, if it was just women, that would be headline news. And what I know... Another more recent example was a, was a, another investigation that shocking results came out from a study into the Metropolitan Police. And it found that they were, they were strip searching children as young as eight. So if you... Again, Google it. Children as young as eight strip searched by police. That would be your headline you find again and again and again. And then here's me digging (laughs) into their data and I found that 95% of those children were boys, Bla- again, Black boys. And sometimes race is brought into the title. Sometimes it's like Black, Black children. But never 95% boys. And it's just like, we wouldn't put up with that if it was the other way around. If it was 95% girls, people would lose my mind, including, including, lose their mind, including myself. Like, we wouldn't put up with that. But when it happens to men and boys, we erase it. Another place we highlight, um, gender is in perpetration. So obviously you have like gunman and henchman and knifeman and conman (laughs) and it's like, again, man, man, man, man, man. And then like a... If we look at like 9/11, for example-... we very much highlight the fact that all of the terrorists were men, all of 'em. But no one highlights the fact that every single firefighter, and when I say every single one, I mean 100% of the firefighters killed running into those buildings, were men. I think it was like 340-something firefighters killed, and I'm like-

Chris Williamson 49:28 Firemen.

George TheTinMen 49:28 ... call them firemen. Like, I get it, I'm all for firefighters, but when it is all firemen, (laughs) please say firemen. Like, and that's, I feel like the f- when we erase men from those situations, the heroism of men, bravery and sacrifice of men, we, we also erase our ability to construct the very role models you talked about, 'cause we're not seeing, uh, 300 men sadly lose their lives s- dragging innocent Americans out of buildings. So that is, that is something that is tragic, and it makes me, it upsets me that maleness, masculinity is often defined by sacrificing the loss of life. But it is, that is something that we should all be proud of, and that's something that men can look to and be like, "Wow, those men gave their lives for others, and they're heroes f- from now until forever." And, like, I g- I guess that feeds into what you said about where are the male role models? And the answer is we've raised masculinity. We highlight the bad bit, we erase the good bit. And, uh, and I'll give you one final example is that the year after George, um, George Floyd was killed, uh, there was a, a really, really shocking murder of, uh, a young woman called Sarah Everard in London, uh, and it was awful, by Wayne Couzens, who is just human filth. And again, the headlines were the same, male violence, male violence, male violence, which is fine. We'll talk about male violence. But the following week, a young man dived into the Thames to save a woman he didn't even know, and he died. He lost his life saving a woman, and there were no headlines about male heroism, male sacrifice, male bravery. And we just start again, highlighting the bad, minimizing the good, creating a very warped, one-sided perspective of, of men and masculinity that really does hurt everyone, including boys, 'cause they're growing up in a society that doesn't show the good of men and only shows the bad. And that's what leads people back to Andrew Tate, who I don't appreciate, and I feel there's- I don't like him for my own personal reasons, 'cause I think he brings a very bad brand to the sort of area I talk about. And he's a poor role model, but he's a result of the left's failure, in my opinion. He's a reflection of our inability to talk about boys and men in good faith in a way that isn't toxic this or patriarchy that, and all this other nonsense. We're not giving boys the space to talk in good faith, or men, and they're going to other people. It makes sense. And if we don't fix it, it won't be Andrew Tate, it'll be someone else. It'll be someone worse, potentially. And, um, he is our failure, and our mess to clean up, and, um, I just wish more people would see that. (sighs)

Chris Williamson 51:52 Well, think about it this way, man. Being... Your political leaning

Chris Williamson 51:57 is very highly heritable, right? Whether you're from the left or from the right.

George TheTinMen 52:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:01 It is very, very highly influenced by your genetics.

George TheTinMen 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:05 Which means that there are going to continue to be people from the left, and there are going to continue to be people from the right, and some people can move between two, but there are a large cohort of people who were born to be on the left and-

George TheTinMen 52:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:17 ... born to be on the right.

George TheTinMen 52:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:20 Is there maybe a little bit of a gender skew one way or the other? There might be. There might be-

George TheTinMen 52:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:24 ... a few more, a- a- a small percent more women on the left, or maybe women on the right, I don't know. My point being both cohorts have massive, massive numbers, billions of men and women inside of-

George TheTinMen 52:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:38 ... both of them.

George TheTinMen 52:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:39 And if one side decides that they're going to abandon the conversation, they are ceding ground to a side that they don't agree with. And here's the other thing, people are more politically racist than they are racially racist. People, uh, f- parents of children, a huge proportion, nearly 50% of Democrats fear their child marrying a Republican.

George TheTinMen 53:03 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 53:04 They fear their child marrying a Republican.

George TheTinMen 53:06 I hate that. I hate that. Uh-

Chris Williamson 53:08 Right? And that's way more people than fear their child marrying a, a Chinese man-

George TheTinMen 53:12 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 53:12 ... or, or, or, uh, uh, marrying, like, a- an African lady or something.

George TheTinMen 53:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 53:16 Like, do you know what I mean? Like, way more.

George TheTinMen 53:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:18 There is much more bias against the other political party than there is against pretty much anything else.

George TheTinMen 53:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:23 So given, given the fact that we have this, if you are from the left, if you-

George TheTinMen 53:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:30 ... refuse to have this conversation with boys and men-

George TheTinMen 53:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:33 ... what you're doing is condemning all of the boys and men that are from the left to not be able to hear-

George TheTinMen 53:40 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:40 ... any positive role models, which is why the right dominates masculinity. Not just the conversations of boys and men-

George TheTinMen 53:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:46 ... but masculinity as well. Because let's say that people from one side aren't necessarily always prepared to hear the ideas from the other. If one side isn't speaking to them, and you can't cross the streams to be able to understand what the other side says, you basically have maybe 50% of all men unable to hear what another side is talking to them about, because they don't have anyone from their own political party that wants to engage.

George TheTinMen 54:10 Yeah. I mean, uh, for the left more than all, its talk of diversity, never seems to wanna talk about diversity of ideas, points of view, perspective. Uh, it's only sort of things like, I'd say things that are kind of arbitrary, which is like race and gender, which really don't mean that much, but diversity of opinion is what I'm interested in. I mean, I've, I've seen, I've seen what you talked about, the unwillingness to sort of date or s- be romantically involved with those of other political opinions. I know when I, when I was dating, uh, in my dating profile, it was like, "I'm a Labour member, but if you're a Tory, I've still got a date with you." Like, I'm not-

Chris Williamson 54:44 Uh, OK.

George TheTinMen 54:44 ... I'm not a baby-

Chris Williamson 54:44 Right.

George TheTinMen 54:44 ... I'm not a baby. Yeah, yeah. And I've got so many people that were just calling me, like, uh, you know, all sorts of stuff, and I was just like, "It's not gonna work out. It's not (laughs) gonna work out for us."

Chris Williamson 54:52 Yeah.

George TheTinMen 54:53 And, uh, yeah, I mean, we all know it, we're sort of engaging very much in like a very tribal, sports team style, let's defeat the other side at any cost sort of politics, where... I mean, I, I support Leicester City Football Club, and they've just been relegated, but I will support them for the rest of my life, no matter how badly they do. That's how a sports team works, but we're doing that in politics now, where it doesn't matter how much we fuck up, we will still support the left or the right, and we don't, we don't look at it the same amount of balance.Um, it is interesting as well how you talk about voting. I always find it interesting how women have outvoted men in America every year for about 40 years. So every year, women vote way more than men. And if you look at power, we always talk about power dynamics, and people talk about whoever's in office has power, which is true, but there is also power held by those who put that person in office. And ultimately, women can choose who goes into office because they outnumber men every single year, every single, sorry, election. And I wish more men would vote. I don't think it's any... Women not doing anything wrong. Like, they, they have every right to exercise their democratic, um, vote. But it's interesting how we talk about women as these sort of, uh, powerless people when in fact they are the biggest voting bloc in America. (laughs) And that's why so many policies are for them. That's why you have the Biden agenda of women and Obama's sort of review of women's issues, and we have the White House Cu- Commission of Women and Girls, which don't exist for men and boys. Like, there's a dozen or so, 15, I think, states now have commissions for women and girls set up by politicians, none for boys. There's four offices of, uh, women's health in America, none for boys and men. There's like a National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education. Doesn't exist for men. Uh, like even like the, the Bureau of Labor has a women's, Women's Bureau, not for men. And it's like, if you consider the fact that thousands and thousands of men die at work every single year in America, more men die at work in America every year than th- all of the American military deaths in the entire Iraq war for 20 years. So all the, all the deaths in the Iraq War in America, that's how many men die every year at work. Massive issue. No men's bureau in the Bureau of La- in the Bureau of Labor. And I'm like, come on, like going back to men's... Th- there's no office for men's health, four for women, and I, I'm, I'm all supportive of that. I'm not saying let's close the women's ones down. I'm just saying let's make some for men. Like, if you look at the 10 top causes of death in America, nine of them are dominated by men. Nine... Men lead nine of the top 10 causes of death. No office for men's health. And not only that, but like, men are more likely to d- men and boys are more likely to die at every age group, like every age group from neonatal to old age, more likely to die. And not just America either, but, um, across the world. Every, in every country, men live shorter lives on average. And nothing is said and done. There is no... I don't understand this structure of male advantage. Why does it have so few commissions, committees, departments, offices to actually solve these problems? So, I guess that's a criticism of the patriarchy theory for you.

Chris Williamson 57:50 What do people get wrong about the gender pay gap? I know this is something that you've looked at quite a lot.

George TheTinMen 57:55 Yeah (laughs) . Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, there's, I mean, there's so much to say. I mean, I guess first of all, I'd say it's not a gap between men and women. It's a gap between mothers and fathers, and there's some really excellent... I mean, I love graphics. There's a really great graphic about different countries, and you see men and women's salaries going up like this together over time, and then women's comes down and men's carries on going. And it's like, well, what, what happened there? It was all going so well. It was all going so well, and then suddenly, boo, and it's like child, they had a child, and the women have taken time off work to have a child. They get longer paternity, maternity leave in the UK. And, um, if they do go back to work, they go back part-time, if at all. So, I'd say it's better seen as a child penalty paid by mothers, and the solution to that penalty is probably something to do with equal pay parental leave for fathers. So, if we can give fathers equal leave to mothers, uh, mothers will be able to return to work sooner and then return to their sort of, um, career journey and the pay gap will be closed through more parental leave for dads. And that's a really good example of like a, a approach I like to take where we look at men's and women's issues as symbiotically linked. The problem of one is the problem of another. And like any equation, you've got to look at both sides. So I'd say one side of the problem is the pay gap. The other side is, uh, parental leave for fathers. And you've got to solve them both. I mean, there's also a lot of evidence where men work longer hours, men travel further, men work w- more dangerous jobs and work in industries where, um, are just more higher paying. Which is true, but then I guess you've got to deal with the discussion of like, well, why are men choosing these jobs? Why are women not working in engineering? Why are women not working in STEM? And there's so much to say about that. But it really comes down to the, the individual differences of men and women in general. Like, do we have different interests? Do we have different behaviors? And if so, are they shaped by our biology? Are they shaped by our environment? Is it both? And I mean, it's both. It's surely both. So, I guess the answer to what you're saying is that men make different decisions, men behave differently, they go for different jobs, they don't take equal parental leave, they, um... They're just different people in general and a lot of that has an impact on salary. There's a really good, um... The biggest study ever on the pay gap, I think it was done by Harvard, and, um, they basically looked at Uber drivers in America. So the big reason it was the biggest 'cause they had so much data. Uber obviously has so much data, and men and women both drive Ubers in America. And they, they looked at th- the paying, and they were like, "Well, women are getting paid less at Uber." So how does that make sense? 'Cause it's obviously all automated. So they're like, what a great ex- great way of studying male or female behavior to, to work out what is in this gap, and there's three things in the gap. The first was men drove at different times of night. So men who do the graveyard shifts, the early mornings where you're getting paid more, they would want to do that. Women less so. The second was that men were l- more likely to stick with the platform for longer, so they had more experiences and they benefited from the experience. Makes sense of any job. And the third reason, which is 50% of the gap, was that men just drive faster.

Chris Williamson 1:00:52 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 1:00:54 Just drive a little faster guys, and you'll close that gap, 50% gone.

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 (laughs)

George TheTinMen 1:00:59 Yeah, I mean, I guess it's... I mean, yeah. That's Uber-

Chris Williamson 1:01:02 It is so funny.

George TheTinMen 1:01:03 So, that just shows it's not... it wasn't discrimination that was causing the pay gap in Uber. It was just different types of behavior-

Chris Williamson 1:01:08 Heavy right foot.

George TheTinMen 1:01:09 Different types of behavior. And I guess we can have a discussion of what shapes that behavior, but we need to start that conversation with it's not discrimination, at least in Uber, different types of behavior. And if you factor in, you know, w- men and women, same job, same experience, same level, same hours worked, the pay gap's like 99 cents to the dollar.And in fact, Asian men are paid even more than white men. And Asian women. And it's like, "Well-"

Chris Williamson 1:01:30 Asian privilege, baby.

George TheTinMen 1:01:31 Yeah. It is. Like, what does that mean? Come on, man. Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:32 That's what we're about, that Asian privilege. And do you know, I, I really, I, I loved learning about this, um, from some of your infographics. And what I love is the conception of the difference is between asking why are women paid less and when are women paid less.

George TheTinMen 1:01:48 Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:49 That's the conception, right?

George TheTinMen 1:01:50 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:01:50 It's not about, it's not about a reason, it's about a time. And the time is motherhood.

George TheTinMen 1:01:56 Hm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:56 The time is becoming a mother. And here's the thing, man. You know, you, you've seen this in the Scandinavian countries. This was sort of Peterson's big break, whatever, five or six years ago, when he was talking about as you make countries more egalitarian, you see gender differences between the sexes increase, not shrink-

George TheTinMen 1:02:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:10 ... because you open up the, uh, ability for your biological predisposition-

George TheTinMen 1:02:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:15 ... which isn't predetermined, but it is a predisposition, uh, for you to be able to go and do the things that you want to do.

George TheTinMen 1:02:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:21 Now, the interesting thing is, I wonder if you were to say, um, a f- a, a mother and a father ha- how much is... Uh, leave in the UK is, like, nine months, usually, right, for a mum?

George TheTinMen 1:02:32 Oh, d- I mean, it's 12 months, but it's sort of split between government and the workplace for it.

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 Right, okay. So let's say that you-

George TheTinMen 1:02:37 Uh, yeah. Two weeks' tax.

Chris Williamson 1:02:38 Let's say, let's say that you inc- let's say you increased it, and let's say-

George TheTinMen 1:02:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:41 ... that there was, um, 18 months, and that had to be split between the father and the mother, right?

George TheTinMen 1:02:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:48 So you have 18 months, and that's the household. And you can choose to split this however you want. Something tells me that would be making the system more egalitarian, right?

George TheTinMen 1:02:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:57 The decision is now completely in the hands-

George TheTinMen 1:02:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:59 ... of the family. Something tells me that there is a lot of mothers that would just go, "Looks like I'm getting 17 months and one week of leave."

George TheTinMen 1:03:10 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:10 Like, "Crack, crack on, honey."

George TheTinMen 1:03:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:12 Because it fa- it completely fails to account for the fact that women who are mothers, a lot of the time, love being mothers, for the most part.

George TheTinMen 1:03:21 Yeah. Oh, my ... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:21 That's the reason that they chose to become mothers. And-

George TheTinMen 1:03:23 Don't say it too loud. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 Yeah, presuming. (laughs) Presuming that, um, presuming that women actually enjoy the, the experience of becoming a mother, which for lots and lots of my female friends who are writers, who, uh, work in offices, who are high-powered, lean-in career-style boss bitch women-

George TheTinMen 1:03:45 Mm-hmm (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:03:45 ... it's been the mo- it's been the single most transformative thing that they've done.

George TheTinMen 1:03:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 It, they absolutely adore it. And if I was to tell them that they had to get themselves back to work earlier-

George TheTinMen 1:03:54 They wouldn't want-

Chris Williamson 1:03:54 ... they would feel like they've lost a part of their life.

George TheTinMen 1:03:58 Well, I'd, I'd say, like, the, I'd say the ideal choice for both fathers and mothers is part-time parenting, part-time work. That's what the data says both parents want. Women want it more. Like, I've looked, there's been some interesting studies where, like, I think it was The New York Times, they asked parents what they wanted. Do you want, like, part-time work, full-time work, full-time parenting? And, um, and then I, I found some interesting, um, Bureau of Labor Statistics data on what actually happens, like, what is the reality? And it was, like, the biggest difference between what a parent wants and what they get was, uh, full-time dads. So, like, the vast majority of dads are working full time, but a lot of them want to be sort of part-time parents. Whereas, if you look at the, the data for, like, full-time parenting, full-time motherhood, that was actually the closest. That was where the cl- the, what mothers wanted and what mothers got merited it the most. So, you've got, like, working dads over here, lots of them working full time, but lots of them wanted to be parents as well. So, I'm like, if, I don't know why we don't see work as not a choice either. Like, everyone talks about, "Mo- motherhood isn't a choice," and it isn't, but then dads don't get that choice either. Like, they have to go to work. They can't be like, "I'm not gonna go to work today," 'cause they do. That's how it works. And, um, I don't know if we talk about the sacrifices fathers make in that way. Uh, we do, we do talk about mothers not enough, and we could talk about them more. But, I mean, my dad, he is a career father, and he was very successful. He spent his whole life traveling the world, going to conferences, speaking at large events, like, really smart guy, but w- we never saw him. He was out earning money. And my mum took time off from her career to raise my sister and I, and as a result, she's built a massive network of friends. Like, all her girlfriends around the village all, she, I imagine she met them when she was going to, like, play school and going to the playground to pick us up. My dad has none of that now. They're both retired, and he, I guess he's not got that same network of friends that my mother, my mum has. And I'm like, the price of his sacrifice is being paid now, but the price of my mum's sacrifice was paid at the time. Now she's enjoying, she's enjoying retirement. She's got all her friends. She's got, like, a, a family. She's got a great connection to me and my m- my sister 'cause we spent so much time with her. And I'm like, I don't know if my dad has that same benefit, 'cause he spent his life working, working for us, and he didn't have a choice. He had no ... (laughs) Like, if you met my mum, he would not ... She's like, he had to go to work. And, um, I think we should see the benefit of both, and we should uplift women to become mothers if they want to. Like, we should give a woman CEO as much value and respect as a, as a mother. Like, both are, like, just as respectable and just as valuable. Um, and it's like, when you talk about a lot of the left, they, they talk about how we sort of empower women to do whatever they want, uh, women's autonomy. But then it's like, the autonomy ends when it's her decision to do something they don't like, like be a mother. Like, what if a mum wants to be a full-time, full-time mum? And it's like, "Oh." Well, now she's internally oppressed, or she's like-

Chris Williamson 1:06:54 Like, she's been conned by the patriarchy-

George TheTinMen 1:06:55 (laughs) Yeah. Of course.

Chris Williamson 1:06:56 ... into being a domestic housewife.

George TheTinMen 1:06:57 She's a proponent of the patriarchy, of course. She's brainwashed. She has to be brainwashed. Any woman that has a different opinion to me has to be brainwashed. And it's like, again, with like, with, you know, in a darker sense, like, abusive women. Like, that's a decision women make too, but we, we ignore that. We don't accept that level of autonomy. When a woman chooses out of autonomy to be abusive or violent, we have a really hard time seeing that and accepting that. Like, a woman who becomes, a woman who wants to become a CEO, excellent. We love it. A woman who wants to be an abuser, less so. And I know-I mean, I'll quote Margaret Atwood to you, but she, she talked about, "My fundamental position is that women are human beings, capable of both saintly and, uh, evil, evil doings." And, uh, I think that's true. Like, they're not perfect. They're just as flawed as men are. Like, they're no better nor... or worse. And we need to sort of see them in the full sort of color of their beauty, and good or bad, that's what autonomy is. And, um, I don't know if we extend that autonomy to that breadth in motherhood or anywhere else. And, um, God, that was a real

George TheTinMen 1:07:59 tangent, uh ...

Chris Williamson 1:08:00 What, what have you learned, talking about, um, women and, and how they communicate and interact with men, what have you learned about what men want from the women that are in their lives, the kinds of conversations that they wish that they could have, or the things... I know you ask your audience a lot for feedback.

George TheTinMen 1:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:21 And, you know, you get these stories from men talking about what they wish that women would know about them, what they wish that women would understand. You know, what, what is it that you think men want women to know more about them, whether it be in terms of relationships, sexuality, mindset, mental health, career goals, lifestyle goals, any of that?

George TheTinMen 1:08:45 I've, I've, I've felt that for women to understand what the male experience is like, we need to go back to the lockdown of coronavirus. And I was in London at the time, and it was awful. But that feeling you get when you're walking around locked down, right in the midst of the coronavirus, was how I feel like it is to be a man. Where people are afraid of you, people avoid you, people cross the road. Like, you go to a supermarket and someone steps back. That feeling of unease and unfriendliness and fear. And I even like the fact that your emotions are masked. I feel like it's such an interesting reflection of the male experience, that feeling of unease and fear, and same... And it's just like, it's frustrating how the male and female experience exist on opposite ends of the spectrum, in a sense that men have so few things nice said about them. Like, the m- vast majority of normal men never receive a compliment, and go weeks, months, years without anything kind being said about them. But women have compliments shouted at them from car windows, like in the street, like t- like just catcalled. And it's like, ugh. Like, men walk through society just completely ignored a lot of the time, just ignored, doesn't matter, and there's benefits to that and disadvantages. But women have like a spotlight of society burning down on their shoulders at all times, especially if you're an attractive young woman. And I'm like, whatever the differences are is not for me to say, but surely the answer is just through talking about them. Not identifying men as toxic or violent or patriarchal, but actually just listening to what men are like. Like we talked about men, man boxes. We talked about how we're lifting men out of the boxes of like career, provider, uh, status, which I think are, are, are, can be harmful boxes to be in. We're taking those out, take men out of those boxes, but we're just putting them into another set of boxes, like male privilege, male violence, patriarchy, male virgi- these are just more boxes, and I just... (laughs) We don't wanna go in a box. We just wanna be given the chance to live our lives, and, um, any-

Chris Williamson 1:10:40 Talk to me about-

George TheTinMen 1:10:40 ... any answers, through listening, basically.

Chris Williamson 1:10:43 Yeah, talk to me about fragile masculinity.

Chris Williamson 1:10:45 I've seen you bring this up-

George TheTinMen 1:10:46 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:47 ... a couple of times. It's a really interesting conception-

George TheTinMen 1:10:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:50 ... when you think about that. I remember that you, you, you used this example on one of your posts about, uh-

George TheTinMen 1:10:55 The razor.

Chris Williamson 1:10:56 Yep. Gi- g- girl products and, like, Ellen DeGeneres, f- like-

George TheTinMen 1:11:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:01 ... snide incarnate-

George TheTinMen 1:11:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:03 ... took the piss out of Bic making a For Her pen.

George TheTinMen 1:11:06 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:11:07 Uh, so yeah, e- explain fragile masculinity and how that's interesting and through the lens of ruthless capitalism.

George TheTinMen 1:11:13 Well, I, well, I, (laughs) I, uh, I lifted that idea