GEORGE from TheTinMen ｜ Why Men Are Killing Themselves
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
42
sentences flagged
Hate speech
35
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of The Order of Man Podcast, host Ryan Michler sits down with George from The Tin Men to talk about why men are checking out, dropping out of therapy, and ending their lives at staggering rates, and what it actually takes to turn that around.
Transcript
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Every day, men are dying. That is not in some strange, abstract, far-off statistic, but it's in your town.
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It's in your circles. It might even be in your own family.
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And they're being told that the very things that make them men are the things that actually need to be fixed.
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And meanwhile, the culture cheers on the idea that hating men is a sign of strength.
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The family courts treat fathers as optional and the spaces that we've traditionally had
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that are built exclusively for men get torn down before they can even do any good.
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And somewhere along the way, we as a society decided that men were the problem.
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My guest today says that's a lie, and he's got a platform to prove it.
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He's from the Tin Men, and he joins me to talk about why men are checking out, dropping
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out of therapy, ending their own lives at staggering rates, and what it actually takes
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This isn't about coddling men or even excusing them.
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It's about telling the truth that men aren't broken, but the system around them is.
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we get into male friendships, the war on masculinity, the family court system, and why
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quote-unquote man up might without any context be very bad advice. You're a man of action. You live
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life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down,
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you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged,
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resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become
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at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the host and the
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founder of the Order of Man podcast. And I want to welcome you. George from the Tin Men joins us
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today. And I'm very excited for this conversation because of the amount of work that he puts in to
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put information out into the world that aligns perfectly with the messaging that we share. And
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just because it aligns perfectly doesn't mean that we see eye to eye on everything, which we'll get
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into today. Before I do, just want to mention my friends over at Montana Knife Company, there's a
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quote and I can't remember it right off hand. It says, man is a tool wielding animal with tools.
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including a knife. If you don't have a good high quality knife, then you are not the man
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with some sincerity because I've got my new Montana knife company folding knife. It's called
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the Montana. And I have quite literally used this probably 40 times over the past couple of weeks
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use the code order of man all right guys let me introduce you to my guest his name is george he
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has founded an organization called the tin men now that's a platform that is dedicated to
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confronting a lot of the issues that modern men are facing, and even boys head-on, from
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the male suicide crisis to fatherlessness, education gaps, and the cultural narrative
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that paints masculinity itself as the enemy to everything that's good and righteous.
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Through his really sharp and poignant commentary and his unflinching look at the data, he's
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built one of the most talked about platforms in the men's space, refusing to let the conversation
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about men get buried under slogans and platitudes and easy dismissals. So his work, George's work
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cuts against the grain of culture that treats men as disposable, that you're valued only for what
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you can produce and provide. And he argues that men aren't defective versions of people who need
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to be reprogrammed, but we're actually human beings facing real and systemic challenges that
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demand and call for real solutions, like commissions for boys and men, reform in health
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and education, a relook or revamp of the family court system, and the rebuilding of spaces where
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men can actually connect with other men exclusively. He brings a lot of conviction.
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He brings a lot of receipts through his work and his research and quite literally zero patience for the idea that caring about men means that you're hating on somebody else.
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George, what's up, man? Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
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I've been following your work for some time now, so I was glad when you agreed to come on the podcast.
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We need to have these types of discussions and you're doing some great work over there.
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Thank you. Happy to be here. Lovely to meet you.
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yeah what um when you talk let's let's give some some framework for the discussion um the tin men
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i assume and i think i've seen you uh talk about it that it's a reference to the tin man from
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wizard of oz correct with no heart is that is that the nod to the wizard of oz that is correct
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apart from he does have a heart and that is the twist of the end of the story which i've now
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ruined but exactly right there's a character in the wizard of oz who joins dorothy on her journey
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and he joins in search for his heart but then at the end he finds out he always had a heart the
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whole time so i felt that was a good metaphor for men men are told the old these cold machine like
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heartless robots but actually we're not and it's got to look a little bit deeper or in a different
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way so we're all the tin men in many ways i think it's interesting because and obviously i would
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agree with you when it comes to the fact that we have a heart and we have emotions and we care
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deeply and we can be romantic but what it's often viewed at as from where I sit is that it's not
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expressed the same way a woman might express her emotions feelings in heart and so therefore we
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must not have one when there's a lot of misconfusion away about the way men show they care and how
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they show up yeah I mean the popular slogan for today's advocacy is men can talk but I mean I
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i think men have been talking for quite a while already and no one seems to be listening to what
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they've got to say or they don't want to hear what they've been saying so it's not it's not
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they're not talking so we've not been listening i mean put to put a number to it i mean male
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suicide is the biggest risk to both our lives right now but in the uk i think 95 of uh doctors
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haven't had any training whatsoever on recognizing uh male suicide like specialist training and
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because men like you said display distress differently generally speaking to women maybe
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more matter of fact a bit plainer not not like heightened emotion the way in which men disclose
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suicidality is very different to what's probably a more emotional side from women and it's easier
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for it to be missed so it's a man might go into a gp and say i'm suicidal but that might not be
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seen in the same way because the way he's delivering it like men might disclose suicide
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when you say we don't see it the same way i think you're talking about collectively as a society
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but how might a man learn to express himself more effectively so that he is taken seriously when
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he's dealing with mental health issues and depression and anxiety and suicide ideation
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i mean i'm not sure if it's down to be giving a set of bullet points and advice i think men
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already taught really well one of the sad bits of data i read not long ago was a study that found
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more than nine in ten men in the uk this is middle-aged men more than nine in ten men who
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died by suicide did seek help so 91 of men who sought help who are middle-aged in the uk uh
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still died by suicide so that's suicidal men did they seek help yes for 91 and they still
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killed themselves didn't save their lives so i don't necessarily think it's about men being
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me me should actually be teaching men how to speak i think that they are speaking up i'd rather spend
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my time teaching everyone else how to listen to men uh without being you know twisted up in
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out like angry pretzels shouting all sorts of stupid insults it's like the issue is that we
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don't want to hear what they've got to say it's the amount of times i try to set up men's spaces
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for only to be shouted down and absolutely obliterated on social media is that's the real
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problem because people don't want to hear what they've got to say men are very good at speaking
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i mean i've always felt suicidal men are some of the most emotionally sort of um eloquent and
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fluent people i've ever met there is wisdom in suicidal men like these are many ways the pioneers
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of mental health because they're living it every single day and i've been blessed with that wisdom
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having access to his men so i don't i don't think i could teach him anything i think of anything
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they could teach everyone else a lot about male suicide male distress and mental health in general
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so yeah i'll turn that question around and we should be learning from them rather than telling
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them how to talk in a specific set of ways that we we'd like to hear well i you know i appreciate
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that too because i guess that's why at least partly why your message resonates but also partly
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why the help that they're seeking, and I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on the 91% of the
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men who are seeking help. What is it about the help that they're seeking that doesn't seem to
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be translating? I mean, that's the biggest issue is why is your, I don't know if I would say
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traditional form of seeking out help. I don't know if I'd use traditional necessarily, but it seems
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to me that whatever we're doing right now is, is not working according to the statistics you just
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shared. Yeah. I mean, there's even bigger studies than that. There was another study in Australia
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that, that asked men who, these are the men who dropped out of therapy. So they talked to men who
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gone to therapy. They looked at the men who dropped out and they just asked them, why did
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you drop out? So I think about half the men dropped out overall, maybe a quarter went to
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one session and never went back. So it's pretty, pretty awful retention rate. And the biggest
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reason which is 50 of all dropouts was uh i didn't have a connection with a therapist
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so there's a lot of learning to be done that's a that's a pearl of wisdom and the second one was
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therapy didn't work so clearly there's a problem with the people giving the therapy and it has to
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be said that 80 of therapists are women i think the majority of men would prefer to speak to
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another man i know i would so there's something uniquely missing about most men i would i think
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would prefer to speak to another man so but those the male therapists are sorely lacking
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and then the approach itself is also doesn't seem to be working because they said it doesn't
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doesn't work i think about 22 percent of many dropped out said therapy didn't work
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and i think generally speaking again as they say in men are from mars and women are from venus that
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men generally want a solution to their problems they don't necessarily want to be talking and
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ruminating endlessly about it they want a solution whereas a woman might want to be heard whilst a
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then my man more often wants a solution to his problem rather than being heard so it needs the
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people doing the therapy i think we need more men in therapy and we need more approaches to therapy
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itself more group therapy more physical activity we talk a lot about shoulder to shoulder time
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now so instead of having face-to-face time like traditional therapy we have shoulder to shoulder
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time which is like men doing group work and stuff yeah i would agree with the shoulder to shoulder
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thing it's it's interesting to me you know the best way i think men relate and this certainly
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applies to me and the other men that I work with over doing this work for 10, well, 11 years now
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is we can begin to solve our problems and work through our issues while we're doing other things.
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So we might be building something. We might be competing against each other.
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We might be training jujitsu or lifting weights or shooting or just active in some way. And the
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conversations organically seem to take place through the activity not the conversation itself
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well yeah absolutely I mean putting a face to that I mean I went to a fundraiser a few years
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ago with an amazing charity called strong men in the UK and they work uniquely and exclusively with
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bereaved men some men who have lost it often it's sadly its fathers have lost children and this is
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charity that supports just those men and i went to one of their fundraisers last year and i met a
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man called chunk and as the name describes this was like a big burly bold man he looked like a
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football hooligan he probably was in a previous life but this is the absolute archetype of
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masculine hyper masculine man he's never going to talk to anyone and it was right like after he lost
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his child he told me for months and months he didn't tell a single person how he's feeling
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and then he went on he met strong men and they're a hiking group primarily and he went on one hike
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up a mountain with a bunch of strangers he never even met and he was bawling his eyes out by the
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time he got to the top and it was so transformative that now he leads the walks so he works with the
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charity now he started off as someone accessing it and now he's the guy that's leading the walk
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trying to encourage more men such as himself to express themselves and yeah the addition of some
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sort of physical activity is a massive benefit especially to men that it just seems to really
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help it really helps men open up and takes the attention away from what we're doing which is
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face-to-face time because a lot of men don't want to go into a clinical environment and sit down with
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a middle-aged normally white woman and then bare their soul they want to they want to go up a
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mountain or they want to do an allotment or they want to you know you see these men enacting these
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incredible medieval battles those sort of things i think are really awesome like and i we have like
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men sheds in the uk and the us actually and it's just as it as described it's just a shed a workshop
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with all sorts of tools in it and then a bunch of lonely men turn up and they they turn up and
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they fix things for local families particularly toys so here we have like a group of particularly
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older men who are lonely coming together to mend toys for the local children and then that's the
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It's a win for the children having their toys fixed.
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And it's obviously a win for the health service
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So those are the interventions I think really do work
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And I'm really glad to see more and more of them
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There was really, we're having a bit of a heyday
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in the UK for these social prescription charities,
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it is interesting because i think also men don't want to hear or or crystallize or codify that
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something is actually wrong with them and i don't think anything is necessarily wrong with
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a man who has anxiety or depression over the death of a child like who wouldn't feel that way
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that's just the human condition but if you didn't feel that way sorry if you didn't feel that way
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that would be what's abnormal in clinical in clinical psychology they say there was no there
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are no abnormal behaviors there's only a normal response to an abnormal set of experiences
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and i mean losing a child to put it bluntly yeah that's definitely an abnormal experience
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and it's totally normal to react abnormally to those that horrifying set of experiences so
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i'd say a man like chunk who doesn't want to talk he was upset and
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it's good to remind men that your emotions aren't
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like these emotions are real they're linked to something
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and now we've got to figure out where they're coming from
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and I also think this goes back to the situation
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uh who might not have ever experienced an aspect of life that that that you have and the same is
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true the the opposite is also true and women inherently understand this and they'll often
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say well you don't know because you're not a woman that's true but if i were to say well you
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don't know because you're not a man she will generally say well that doesn't have anything
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to do with it as if as if it doesn't apply when the roles are reversed which is kind of strange
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to me there is a lot of gatekeeping in the conversation of male suicide i must say less so
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and often gatekeeping by people that aren't even men the very last people that seem to be having a
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say in the conversation for male suicide are suicidal men themselves so as i was saying there's
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this absolute well of wisdom and knowledge that suicidal men have gotten the hardest possible way
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and we're not listening to any of it like our suicide intervention needs to be centered and
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return to the lived experience of suicidal men and bereaved families and rather than had in some sort
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of academic sociology lab by some person doesn't know anything about the man like it needs to be
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individual to so often we just talk about this men as a group as if they're all the same and
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they all have the same needs and they all share accountability for one another it doesn't make
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any sense i don't know who is this men i keep hearing about all i see are individual men with
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individual needs who should be spoken about individually i don't know it's it's odd odd
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concept men i don't know where is this person who is this man i hear so much about that's interesting
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so you know i'm kind of curious about that i would agree uh you know we do have some frameworks that
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i say will well i'll say it this way i think there are traits and characteristics that are inherently
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masculine um i think there are uh certain even roles that we've played historically throughout
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all of culture and history that bring fulfillment and and meaning and value to our lives but i will
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say and this is something that i haven't always been so open-minded to that there are an infinite
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number of ways to fulfill those responsibilities there's an infinite number of ways to approach
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um some of those same qualities and characteristics that we inherently possess
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yeah i mean that's why i mean one of my fundamental beliefs in politics in life is
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that the individual is so much more important than the group like my individual um density
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as george tells you infinitely more than my group identity as straight white man
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i don't like you'll learn so much more by sitting down and talking to me and understanding my
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personal experiences my history and what i want my dreams than you would by trying to boil me down
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into a color swatch and a set of genitals it's not so i agree and i i think only good things come
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from seeing people as individuals rather than members of a group or at least primarily as an
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individual rather than a member of a group particularly especially suicide when it's such a
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complex phenomenon and we we always just want to boil it down to just one single answer one
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solution it's toxic masculinity and or the patriarchy and that's that's the problem for
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every man that's it and anyone that says that just clearly hasn't met any man who's suicidal
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or distressed it's not it's not that they're toxic or patriarchal and it's often not that
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they can't express themselves it's that they're going through something that's very real
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some sort of environmental issue and they see suicide as a solution to that problem
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a lot of it's around like debt or a man losing his job or a man losing his child or a man breaking
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having a divorce i think i think suicide goes up by about seven or eight times if for a young man
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that's recently separated and yeah if you add a child to that child custody battles there's nothing
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he's losing his relationship, he's losing his home
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is fucked so that's why i get i struggle with the whole men can talk because it thinks the
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solutions inside of here but a man who's losing his child no amount of talking is going to bring
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his child back the child is brought back by fixing the family court system which desperately needs
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to be fixed you can't talk your way out of that you can't talk your way out of debt or losing a
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job or having a divorce like it's talking might help you feel better at the moment but it doesn't
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solve the problem that's causing the distress so these are the conversations i'm trying to start
00:22:45.180
man i'm going to step away from the conversation just real briefly
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there's a uh there's a truth from today's conversation so far and that is that men
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are dying because they're alone the statistics bear this out no connection no brotherhood
00:23:03.260
no one in your corner who is going to be hard on you with love and care
00:23:10.420
And if that hits a little too close to home for you,
00:23:37.020
and hold you to the higher standard that you deserve to be held to.
00:23:41.000
Because that's what actual friendship, male friendship looks like.
00:23:47.140
It's not who's winning the World Cup or what team won the NBA championships.
00:23:57.460
But this is the kind of bond that pulls you out of the hole
00:24:04.280
or you found yourself in as a result of choices that you didn't make.
00:24:12.120
so you can see exactly what the Iron Council is about before you commit.
00:24:32.560
that's orderofman.com slash iron council you can figure out when our next preview call is and you
00:24:38.800
can also just go ahead and get signed up we're going to be locking down registration here very
00:24:43.160
soon so if you're interested then join one of our preview calls or get signed up and i tell the guys
00:24:49.600
look if you join us and you figure out this is not for you just tell me and i'll give you your
00:24:53.500
money back i don't jerk around with with people i don't jerk around with their money and so if you
00:24:58.900
decide this is not for you then yeah just message me i'll give you your money back wish you well
00:25:04.580
continue to listen to the podcast and the things that help you but i think what you'll find is
00:25:09.260
that it will help you and it will help you become the man that you have a desire to be so check it
00:25:13.500
out order of man.com iron council do that right after the show for now let's get back to it with
00:25:18.820
george when you say men can talk i actually haven't heard that phrase so that's that's foreign
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to be men can yeah men can talk meaning that's the solution is just talk about your stuff is
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that yeah talk about it interesting cry cry a little you know sure sure i hear that all the
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time but i often think the people that say that are often themselves really bad listeners
00:25:42.500
people say oh men never men never open up men never talk and i'm like no men never talk to you
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they talk to me all the time like i can't stop them talking to me like at the end of this podcast
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i'm going to have a dozen or so dms from really intelligent emotionally literate highly sensitive
00:25:59.520
men so they are talking but the people that say they don't talk often are the people that have
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proven themselves unable to give men a space to be heard where they've proven themselves they're
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not able to listen and they don't want to listen it's not it's like i said it's not about men not
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talking they do talk but we aren't we haven't proven ourselves as worthy listeners or recipients
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of what they've got to say so this point the finger in the other direction a little bit
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it is interesting when i hear people who are critical of the term man up and they always
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assume that man up means stuff your emotions don't share anything don't talk about anything
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don't have friends don't have goals don't be afraid like i don't i don't feel that way i don't
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when i have three sons and i have a daughter as well i don't use the term man up but i use i'm
00:26:50.480
sure similar phrases but there's actual meat and value behind it so when i say something like that
00:26:56.980
it actually has a valuable meaning for example hey you know sometimes you just got to get tough
00:27:03.000
and that's part of life sometimes it's appropriate to express yourself and sometimes it isn't like
00:27:09.800
there's nuance to this conversation but when you break it down to don't say man up it's like no
00:27:14.620
actually teach them what manning up looks like it's like leveling up it's like your i think there
00:27:22.000
is i mean i it really again it depends on context and individual circumstances some people do mean
00:27:26.720
it in a way that is kind of rigid and aggressive some people mean it in a way that is like
00:27:30.800
encouraging men to be powerful and take accountability and be self-improvement i know
00:27:36.980
when i graduated i struggled to find work and i had lots of financial issues and i was definitely
00:27:41.680
struggling in my mental health like 10 or so years ago living at my parents house and i remember
0.97
00:27:45.900
changing my phone wallpaper and all it said was don't be a pussy and every day i woke up and
0.98
00:27:53.980
feeling fucking awful and i look at my phone i'm like yeah that's good advice i'm gonna and then
0.99
00:27:59.160
that started me that got me up at 6 a.m every day and i'd work you know 12 hours and i'd be back
0.99
00:28:04.160
go to bed wake up don't be a pussy and uh well but this is what i was saying sometimes that's
1.00
00:28:10.540
good advice and this is the problem when because a woman will see that and be like oh that's gross
1.00
00:28:16.160
that's so crude he doesn't need to hear that and the other one you hear is you know overcoming your
0.98
00:28:21.360
inner bitch and a woman will hear that and be like i can't believe you're so mean to each other
0.98
00:28:25.520
and so harsh like we're we're not we're actually leveling each other up we're like calling out
0.99
00:28:30.680
improper behavior so that we can all step up and and be better but it's in the nuance it's it's
00:28:37.520
the things that most of the effeminate society we live in skip over they gloss over and forget
00:28:42.620
that we're different than women yeah i mean i i of everything i have multiple opinions because i do
00:28:49.880
i do think there is a time to be like just got to get a grip and just take control of you no one's
00:28:54.980
going to come and save you you've got to go out and get it for yourself i'm afraid we can argue
00:28:58.160
about whether that's right or wrong but that is ultimately what sometimes you have to do however
00:29:02.020
there are also times where no amount of bootstrapping manning up will solve a person's
00:29:06.180
problem we talked about a man losing child custody that i don't think he's in control of that problem
00:29:12.180
in the way in which i'm manning up would solve it i mean i speak to men all the time in situations
00:29:17.260
that just seem often inescapable and they are manning it they are fighting back they are pushing
00:29:22.160
for years to find the child for example but it's not it's it it goes within outside of the realm of
00:29:29.680
personal control and like i said that needs systemic change so i've although there's been
00:29:34.540
a lot of conversation for men men can talk men can cry manner blah blah blah i'm i'm trying to
00:29:39.860
widen that and encourage there needs to be structural systemic change in many ways and
00:29:44.800
happy to talk about specific examples that can't be rectified by slogans manning up yeah i actually
00:29:53.180
would like to talk about that before we get into that though why do you think some of this it's
00:30:00.140
almost become popular I would say probably over the past maybe 30 years even more so relatively
00:30:07.280
recently and I've actually begun to see a little bit of a cultural change based on movements like
00:30:12.320
yours and what we've been doing and literally thousands of others but why do you think that
00:30:16.860
there's this campaign this is what I'm going to call it and you can tell me if you think it's
0.61
00:30:21.060
different this campaign against just men in general societally yeah yeah I mean I watch
00:30:29.680
it's an organized campaign but it's just it's just people seem to derive value in deriding men
00:30:36.020
like it seems to be like it's the sign of a powerful woman to hate men and it's not there's
0.96
00:30:42.820
nothing weaker than hating a group of people there's nothing more feeble or pathetic than
00:30:48.500
hatred it shows the complete lack of control lack of intelligence lack of ability to like manage
00:30:54.520
one's own emotions and there's absolutely no excusing it whenever i get people saying they
00:31:00.000
hate men all the time and there's totally unjustified and they'll often cite a certain
00:31:04.360
amount of experiences they've had or their friends have had at the hands of men which are
00:31:07.860
obviously awful and i'm like well that gives you the right to hate that man and that man and that
00:31:12.580
man but as a group like no you don't there's no justifying hatred of men and then it gets it just
00:31:18.460
it's more perverse more depressing when it's hating boys like we have uh we have i wouldn't
00:31:24.960
call them campaigns but it's definitely educators who go into school and teach boys horrible things
00:31:32.220
about men so i think i think 41 percent of uk schools have taught secondary schools have taught
00:31:38.780
boys that men are a problem to society so that's their teaching that what's that going to do you
00:31:44.320
know arithmetic and mathematics and science that's just political mumbo-jumbo that's nothing to do
00:31:49.640
like that's so unwelcome in school especially at that age especially towards boys who will grow up
00:31:54.980
to become men who are most at risk to suicide like you don't need to tell them that a problem
00:31:59.280
because it's not true men are absolutely essential part of society for many ways which you know too
00:32:04.300
well and then another i think about one third of students have been taught about toxic masculinity
00:32:08.860
so the the i would yeah you call that a campaign of hate and this is tax funded lessons in state
00:32:17.340
schools this isn't happening in your local feminist book club this is happening in schools
00:32:22.960
nationwide teaching boys that men are a problem are they're going to grow up to become men like
0.95
00:32:28.720
what what sort of life is that and the enter girls like we teach these insane ideological
0.63
00:32:34.540
dogmatic lessons around the patriarchy like that's horrible to boys but also teaching girls that
0.93
00:32:40.420
is also unkind it's an act of sort of abuse in many ways that you're brainwashing children to
00:32:48.540
basically hating each other and themselves so yeah call it what you want well i mean that's
00:32:53.760
definitely yeah well we see it here too you know years ago there was and you've seen this i'm sure
00:32:58.480
an american psychological association study that that found that we're using that term very
00:33:04.420
liberally but that found that the characteristics that are generally attributed to men i think that
00:33:09.240
i think their characteristics they used were dominance stoicism aggression and violence were
00:33:14.960
inherent makes a boy inherently toxic and i can think of many situations where a stoic approach
00:33:21.400
would actually be the most prudent approach i can think about many situations where being aggressive
00:33:46.160
that of course they're going to grow up to be
0.98
00:33:58.000
to say where have all the real men gone you already brainwashed it out of them that's where
00:34:02.880
they've gone yeah i mean it is ironic how a lot of these characteristics we do applaud we do want
0.97
00:34:09.980
people that courageous we do want leadership and even aggression but only from women it's amazing
00:34:15.060
how the characteristics that attach to toxic masculinity are often applauded and encouraged
0.94
00:34:20.740
in women but it's not in men like this whole go get them you know dominate like we want a
00:34:26.840
dominant woman the whole boss yeah but it's just yeah i didn't i don't still know what to say it's
00:34:35.180
just a mess isn't it i mean i read those apa guidelines and that's the american psychological
00:34:40.520
association it's like a fairly revered organization umbrella organization for psychologists and they
00:34:46.400
they did a whole series in 2019 they released their men and boys treatment guidelines
0.99
00:34:50.640
and it was all bullshit it was all just the patriarchy toxic masculinity male oppression
0.61
00:34:57.240
male violence it was just ideology and i think they had to retract it thankfully so it's yeah i
0.99
00:35:04.000
mean there's there's a weird thing going on in the psychological industry where it's increasingly
00:35:08.900
anti-male and increasingly anti-science and i'm seeing that play out in real time we had a we have
00:35:16.440
the british psychological society which is more or less the same thing the bps which is a union
00:35:21.580
sort of that psychologists belong to in the uk in britain and they have different sections for
00:35:26.800
doing work so they'll have a section on children they'll have a section on families a section on
00:35:30.960
parents a section on women minorities lbgt of course but they never had a section for men
00:35:36.720
so there was no section in the bps for men and boys and two of my friends john barry and martin
00:35:42.940
seagull like we'll set one up singers men you know they're most likely to kill themselves most
00:35:46.820
like to die by alcohol most like to die by addiction they need they'd surely that'd be
00:35:51.260
the first name on the list anyway they tried to set one up and the backlash they got back was
00:35:55.200
enormous there was huge campaign trying to stop them from setting up a men and boys section
00:35:59.260
and then it went down to a they had a uh a vote which is unheard of and two-thirds of the bps
00:36:07.520
voted in favor and one third voted against which is good because it meant the section got set up
00:36:12.380
but you can't ignore the fact that one-third of BPS psychologists in the UK
00:36:16.520
voted against there being a men and boys section.
00:36:21.820
So it's the same ideology in the APA as in the BPS.
0.71
00:36:28.180
It's interesting to me, though, because, and this is anecdotal, I know that.
00:36:32.700
This is not a scientific study, so we have to take this with a grain of salt,
00:36:35.540
But I could count maybe on one hand, maybe, how many times I've talked with an individual who has said that the work that we're doing by trying to develop better men is wrong or bad.
00:36:51.840
When I get down into the trenches and I talk with families and I talk with women and I talk with educators, every single one of them says, oh, that is so needed.
00:37:04.680
And that might be an outcome of the environment I'm in. I'm in a very conservative, family-oriented, much largely large and Christian principle-driven culture.
00:37:16.780
But I just don't get the backlash. It isn't until you start seeing big swaths of government or academia do you start running across the issues that you're talking about.
00:37:27.620
I'm saying in the halls of academia, in the government, even in the medical community,
0.97
00:37:32.920
it seems to be prevalent that men are the problem.
00:37:35.840
But individually, no, I think most people want men to step up.
00:37:41.120
Yeah, I mean, it reminded me of a similar story I heard.
00:37:44.120
I have another friend in this men's space called Sonia, and she runs an amazing CIC,
00:37:49.840
which is a community interest company called Lads Need Dads.
00:37:55.040
it's about taking lads boys uh from homes where there's no father figure and then these aren't
00:38:02.740
necessarily deadbeat dads like one third of the boys that go to this organization they've lost
00:38:06.700
their dad because he's died like he's died he's died young so sonia comes in with lads need dads
00:38:12.480
and she provides amazing male role models like reading groups or bushcraft groups brazilian
00:38:18.160
jiu-jitsu is really big for her and these she sees these boys blossom just by being around positive
00:38:22.800
men and she gets so much backlash she gets so much like people just hate especially the name
00:38:29.440
lads need dads that's crazy and uh what is wrong she's like i don't know but then she was like what
00:38:34.880
you said she's like do you know who i've never had a complaint from not one complaint from any
00:38:39.620
of the single mum she helps not know all the mums that she helps who are thousands probably but not
00:38:45.400
one complaint none of they they obviously love what she's doing she's like this is needed this
00:38:49.980
is desperate i mean this is a life-saving potentially you're transforming my boy
00:38:53.540
because i need help none of them have complained all the complaints are coming from these weird
0.99
00:38:59.280
blue-haired woke feminist idiots online are just whining about it meanwhile sonny is just cracking
1.00
00:39:05.380
on literally saving lives and she won't be changing the name no matter how many people
1.00
00:39:09.380
wanted to change it well why can't it be lads need mums and dads mums and dads yeah yeah that's
00:39:16.300
need parents that's true they do need moms as well that is true but this environment happens
00:39:22.140
to be for dads yeah and it doesn't rhyme it doesn't sound as good but you're right i mean
00:39:29.800
it's like single parent families exist on both sides but it is mostly single moms like i said
00:39:34.960
like if men are dying young let's leave it as a unique problem where lads do need dads like
00:39:40.180
there's no issue with lads and mums being a separate organization and certainly a lot of
00:39:44.540
single dads who would appreciate that but this is lads need dads but my point is that the only
00:39:49.600
people complaining are the people that have elected to be offended by it and decided and
00:39:54.960
then but none of the women that actually use her services have ever complained and i think that
00:39:58.820
says it all so we just ignore the the these hate merchants and let's keep helping people that need
00:40:05.360
us because their opinion matters more they're in fact that's their only opinion that matters
00:40:09.080
so yeah it's interesting how that there's never the people expect to be complaining and always
00:40:13.980
of people that are totally not relevant at all, that have inserted themselves into the conversation
00:40:18.880
and made it about themselves. I think that goes back to what you were saying earlier about
00:40:22.820
listening to men who are dealing with depression, anxiety, suicide. Those are the people who are
00:40:27.180
impacted by it. So maybe we ought to listen more. And the same is true for, you know, I grew up in a
00:40:32.340
house that was predominantly just my mother raising me and she, she was amazing. She did
00:40:38.740
all that she could. She was an amazing mother. And also we had many conversations when I was a boy
00:40:43.760
about why it's important that i have good male role models including coaches and mentors and
00:40:49.420
she put me in environments to have that it would not be the same man i am today if she felt like
00:40:54.020
she could do it all on her own and i haven't met a single mother through the work that we do who
00:40:59.660
has said oh yeah i got this they all know they don't yeah i would i would certainly struggle if
00:41:06.720
i was a single dad raising a daughter just because my lived experience is so i mean i i get some sort
00:41:12.560
some sort of learning through seeing my my girlfriend and my niece live their lives
00:41:17.480
i can see the world treats them differently i can see their struggles that are unique
00:41:21.560
different from mine but i'm i'm not i haven't had any like lived experience and that's why it's men
00:41:28.000
need to spend time with other men boys need to have role models that are male as well as female
00:41:33.240
and they're not the same i can't be oh our mom can just be a dad as well no like they need
00:41:38.560
There doesn't have to be a dad, but there needs to be primary male role models
0.54
00:41:41.140
because there's something unique that can't even really be put into words
00:41:45.700
about the relationship between men and men, men and boys,
00:41:48.740
and that the role modeling, the mentoring, that sort of thing,
00:41:51.900
it's just you can't, it's needed, and there's nothing to be ashamed of.
00:41:58.640
I'm equally passionate about women having spaces.
00:42:04.200
There's much more important things to talk about,
00:42:05.980
more actual conversations that are controversial this one is just let's move on
00:42:11.580
on the subject of moving on you had talked about uh the family court system but you also mentioned
00:42:20.160
that there's many societal structures that need some systematic change in order to address some
00:42:25.240
of these problems so outside of the family court system what are some of those other systems that
00:42:47.360
men have worse health outcomes than women in America.
00:42:55.060
Men are more likely to die at every age group in America
00:43:00.880
men lead in 13 of the top 15 causes of death in america so it's awful i even read that just to be
00:43:12.080
a man is now the single greatest demographic factor predicting early death and if you could
00:43:16.920
equalize male and female mortality rates you would do more good than curing cancer so this is the
0.77
00:43:22.980
level of threat we're looking at we're looking at a cancer level threat where men's men are living
00:43:28.020
less life in every country on the planet and have worse health outcomes by every metric in America
00:43:34.380
and yet if you look at the way in which the government fund medical research for men and
00:43:39.700
women despite whatever your angry neighborhood feminist has to say it's not true that we fund
00:43:45.480
men's health for women's it's actually the opposite men's health gets virtually hardly any funding
00:43:49.880
even for suicide women get significantly more funding than men from the NIH in America and in
00:43:56.460
fact there are there are now 10 federal offices for women's health biden added one 10 and zero
00:44:03.000
for men zero not one single tax-funded federal office for men's health 10 for women and i'm glad
00:44:10.240
it's 10 for women but like i said worse health outcomes by every metric in every group at every
00:44:16.420
age in america and leading in virtually all of the top causes of death like you would have thought
00:44:22.900
there'll be at least one office for men's health federal one i think the first state has just set
00:44:28.440
up the first commission for boys and men that's in west virginia first state to do it recently
00:44:32.240
well done uh education like that's the one i've mentioned that but similar similarly bad boys are
00:44:38.880
behind at every stage of education at every age in every country in the entire western world of a
00:44:43.820
few small exceptions in fact in america men are further behind in higher education today than
00:44:50.600
women were in the early 1970s so this metaphorical pendulum disparity bigger it's worse it's i think
00:44:58.080
18 percentage points difference now men behind in college and in 1971 where title nine was brought
00:45:05.380
in by nixon i think it's about 13 percentage points behind by girls so it's actually quite a
00:45:10.380
lot further behind so if you think we've reached equality in education i've got bad news for you
00:45:14.760
we haven't we're actually further away we've just flipped it around and guess what no one says
00:45:19.100
anything no one cares that boys are falling further and further and further behind and young
00:45:24.680
men and like we have like we have a national well america has a national coalition for women and
00:45:29.220
girls in education that's great is there a national coalition for men and boys in education no it is
00:45:33.220
not so these are the things that we need we need to fund federal offices for men's health in america
00:45:38.760
we need some sort of tax-funded initiative to to bring more boys and men to education and to
00:45:45.060
ultimately change the education system so it teaches children in a way that is more suitable
00:45:49.760
to men and boys because that's that's the big problem i think is that even the way we're
00:45:53.700
teaching children is more suitable to girls than it is to boys and even like even like gendered
00:45:59.420
scholarships i think about 90 percent of gendered scholarships still go to women and like i said
00:46:04.440
women are ahead in education at every level every racial group like but for 30 40 years and yet
00:46:11.440
they're still getting 90 percent of the gendered scholarships like i don't know if that's not a
00:46:15.800
female privilege i don't know what is so these are the conversations that i find more important
00:46:22.160
more urgent than slogans around be it crying or manning up or whatever it is like these are real
00:46:28.240
these are real things that we need to be telling politicians you need to address this uh because
00:46:34.600
it is interesting because you know yesterday was father's day and as of this recording anyways
00:46:42.440
and my youngest son and i have a good time we play together a lot and uh it was getting into
00:46:47.320
the afternoon he's like hey dad can i borrow your crowbar he's 10 he's like can i borrow your crowbar
00:46:51.860
and i'm like what are you what are you doing with my crowbar he's like i'm gonna go tear apart this
00:46:56.980
fence we had a neighbor that pulled the fence down and it was still together but but torn down
00:47:02.580
and I said oh what are you going to build he's like nothing I just want to see if I can do it
00:47:07.460
I'm like hell yeah let's go do it so I went out there with him and we got the crowbar and he's
00:47:13.280
jamming it in there and trying to pry the thing apart and while we're doing this for no particular
00:47:17.780
reason at all other than just to see if he could do it we're talking about the concept of leverage
00:47:22.520
and why it's important to be strong and we're actually having good discussions that are
00:47:28.260
educational and informative and will serve him while he's tearing apart a fence simply because
00:47:32.760
he thought he could do it but that's what we need in in the educational system things like that
00:47:38.360
yeah you're not going to find that taught in schools but that's the exact sort of way in which
00:47:42.680
boys especially like to learn you're talking about sort of kinospatial learning like physical
00:47:47.360
activity and that is just disappearing from schools like i think i think every day in school
00:47:53.740
there's five hours of quiet reading and writing time five hours i don't know if your son is going
00:48:00.880
to respond particularly well to that especially when he's not going to respond to that like
0.99
00:48:05.040
especially his dad's showing him all this cool crowbar stuff and now he's sat reading a stupid
0.98
00:48:08.680
book like what is this and like that's not to say we shouldn't be reading books of course we should
0.98
00:48:12.860
but there's more than one way to teach a child and it's certainly more than one way to teach a boy
00:48:16.920
and yet we're just sticking to textbook learning
00:48:46.680
climbing trees making whatever soup out of mud that's what childhood's about they shouldn't be
00:48:52.720
sat at home agonizing over homework that literally has no impact positive impact on their outcomes
00:48:59.140
i spent my childhood in all like in the middle of the countryside like my parents were like
00:49:05.000
goodbye don't come back until 7 p.m and i wouldn't and that's what my those are my most cherished
00:49:11.140
memories and i'm glad i got that education but never the crowbar lesson but i would like to learn
00:49:17.540
that one too you can you can teach you can teach yourself do you do you have children yourself no
00:49:22.500
no no not yet but i will pass on the crowbar lesson you do you use that if you ever need
00:49:27.260
any input or insight let me know i've got plenty of stories and some some have gone really well
00:49:31.580
and some of some of them have gone horribly wrong but i guess they're good uh learning opportunities
00:49:36.280
it just reminds me of a similar situation i saw where there's another man who would teach boys
00:49:40.980
in his neighborhood how to mend fences and it was it was framed more as like a mental health thing
00:49:46.160
like to help build help build resilience build social skills with boys and help them feel less
00:49:50.400
isolated getting them off their bloody phones and just teach like i mean that might seem boring to
00:49:57.420
adults but teaching a boy how to mend a fence of a fully grown man is like that's a heaven to a lot
00:50:03.140
of boys that sounds like that's amazing and yet these are skills we never learned i mean i remember
00:50:08.700
I remember my dad teaching me how to change a tire and all these things.
00:50:11.360
And I cherish them so much more than algebra or whatever periodic table.
00:50:17.880
I did so bad in school because the way I was being taught just didn't work.
00:50:24.200
And because I was frustrated and disengaged and bored, I would act up.
00:50:28.800
I would misbehave. I'd be cheeky. I'd answer back.
00:50:34.100
and that's why that's why they found in lots of data including in america that a boy and a girl
00:50:40.940
of equal intelligence going to school the girl is going to get higher grades than a boy
00:50:44.820
even though they're equally intelligent and that's often because the boy is seen as more
00:50:50.160
problematic like i was more naughty cheekier less likes your homework and time and people
0.99
00:50:55.460
disregard those boys as naughty boys or stupid boys like i was discarded but i would like to
1.00
00:51:01.100
tell these boys you're not stupid you're not naughty often you're just bored and disengaged
1.00
00:51:04.960
and in many ways you've been failed you're not the one failing you've been failed by the school
0.95
00:51:09.080
system because they've not adequately engaged with you and you are i can see you're frustrated
00:51:14.140
i can see you're bored and you're acting like a child because you are but that doesn't mean
1.00
00:51:18.680
you're an idiot it doesn't mean you should be sent to the back of the class or excluded if
0.98
00:51:22.440
anything it means we've changed the system of education so you feel more accommodated but
1.00
00:51:26.440
we don't do that we just blame the boy you know it's interesting it's interesting because
00:51:31.440
people inherently know this with with dogs with their pets so if they have a dog that chews on
00:51:37.860
the corner of their couch or closet things or just is a menace what they'll say is oh he's just
00:51:44.760
bored we need to take the dog for a walk or let the dog go run around or let the dog play with
00:51:49.720
other dogs and then lo and behold the dog comes back and it's mild-mannered and it's not destructive
00:51:54.740
and it's a good contributing you know part of the household everybody knows that about a dog
00:51:59.720
but when you start saying that about a boy like oh he's destructive oh he's talking back oh he's
00:52:05.800
he's he's he's lashing out nope he's just a bad kid let's pump him full of drugs and call it a day
00:52:11.580
i seem the same we find it very easy to understand that often dogs become anxious even aggressive not
00:52:19.540
because they're bad dogs but because they themselves have experienced violence like i
00:52:23.360
have a just look at him now i have a rescue dog a greyhound who experienced a level of violence
00:52:28.740
in spain that you just i cannot even begin to describe what they do to these beautiful
00:52:32.460
galgos if you want to ruin your day go google galgos in spain and he is anxious he is terrified
00:52:40.220
of everything and he can be snappy i'm not like he's a bad boy i'm like what he's experienced is
00:52:45.200
so painful and scary he's just like we said this is a normal response to an abnormal set of
00:52:51.380
experiences i might my dog being tied to the back of a car and dragged along the street in south of
00:52:57.420
spain is an abnormal experience for my dog to respond to not want to go anywhere near a car
00:53:01.960
as a result totally normal obviously totally normal and like he deserves compassion not anger
00:53:08.280
or fear or like abuse so that's what i'm spending my time doing and like we understand that of dogs
00:53:14.960
but when you say that about a man who's committed a crime it's like he's inherently bad he's
00:53:19.720
inherently toxic he should go to prison for the rest of his life and we don't see we seem to see
00:53:24.900
more humanity in dogs than we do in men which is obviously horrendous do you think these issues
00:53:33.120
get resolved or at least start working towards resolution through private organizations like
00:53:38.400
sonia who you're talking about or do you think is that the better i don't know i guess it doesn't
00:53:43.800
have to be one or the other but what is the most effective route is it private organizations or is
00:53:48.160
government intervention because from where i sit and this might be more of my political leanings
00:53:52.780
the government is atrocious at solving any sort of problem in fact if anything they create more
00:53:57.700
than they solve if not in unintended i think it's organization private organizations that will start
00:54:03.820
to make these changes would you agree or what's your thoughts on that well i mean i'm i struggle
00:54:09.460
with this because i'm on the left i'm a lot probably a more liberal than you and i i mean
00:54:14.520
i fundamentally agree with things like education all children should have access to the same
00:54:19.120
education regardless of how rich their parents are and stuff like that uh but i i share the same
00:54:25.600
fear about the government that i've been an adult now for 20 odd years and all i've seen is
00:54:31.020
incompetent government wasting money and corruption i'm like the very last thing you need is more
00:54:36.920
money more control so i kind of i like the idea of nationalizing certain things but when i remind
00:54:43.960
myself how incompetent our government is i'm like you know what maybe having this in a private
00:54:48.480
company is the less of two evils but yes i i have no faith whatsoever really in the government to
00:54:56.400
make any meaningful short-term changes to address any of the things i talk about all i've seen them
00:55:01.480
is be the luddites the conversation as they just drag their feet and just delay everything and
00:55:07.880
betray men and boys meanwhile i see amazing private organizations or even just individual
00:55:13.340
people doing amazing work i have a friend of mine andrew in colorado and uh he he's on his own made
00:55:22.620
a three and a half hour documentary about male suicide male loneliness for virtually no money
00:55:27.700
whatsoever and that sort of work on the grassroots just good like good young people working hard
00:55:34.640
in groups or individuals just doing what they can is where the change i told him that i was like
0.96
00:55:40.880
just so you know like our government's doing fuck all you and these sort of documentaries
0.77
00:55:45.620
and these sort of efforts are what matter like chunk for example i mentioned walking up that
0.96
00:55:50.640
mountain andrew making this documentary sonia setting up a charity organization that hemorrhages
00:55:57.020
money but changes lives these are where the changes and we need to support them like forget
00:56:02.740
about the government they're not going to do anything but we can start today to make these
00:56:08.280
changes in our own communities and of our own friendship groups so yeah no i totally agree i
00:56:13.860
have no faith in the government less and less and less every single day and i think this is why and
00:56:20.820
i often advocate for men congregating you know whether it's your church group and putting a
00:56:24.460
men's group together or going down to the local community center and volunteering to teach a
00:56:29.780
skill set like mending fences or changing tires i mean this is part of the reason why it's a bit
00:56:34.300
ironic because the way we started this conversation is that much of society will say well don't tell
00:56:40.800
boys to man up don't tell them that don't tell them this don't tell them that and then but they
00:56:45.800
then they won't to go back to the point that you're making earlier advocate for any sort of
00:56:49.780
group that exclusively benefits men and the prime example is the boy scouts the boy scouts was an
00:56:56.960
amazing don't you mean scouting america isn't it isn't it scouting america now yes no more boy
00:57:02.700
scouts go on it was an amazing organization i personally benefited from being around male scout
00:57:09.760
leaders being around other boys that i would not have been around otherwise i loved it when i was
00:57:15.500
it was like one of my favorite nights of the week where i could go and just be with other dudes and
00:57:19.720
build pinewood derby cars and shoot guns and dig holes and go camping and i loved it and then all
00:57:27.060
of a sudden you know you get you get women in there who are like hey you know we really don't
0.57
00:57:31.800
want boys to have their spaces exclusively for them and also boys don't man up like which which
00:57:38.260
is it yeah you got to pick a side you don't get the best of both or the worst of both yeah i mean
00:57:44.120
i as a graduate of the scouts as well i mean i loved it and we've gone down the same route as
00:57:50.380
you where girls can join the boy scouts in the uk but boys can't join the girl scouts and i don't
00:57:55.920
right what's the point i mean i went to boy scouts and i remember learning digging holes and building
00:58:00.680
rafts and climbing trees and it was amazing incredible but i remember my sister was in the
00:58:07.240
brownies which is the feet the girls version of the scouts and she was learning she was just
00:58:12.260
learning like ironing and like sewing and i and she hated it and i was like i totally agree i was
00:58:17.380
like you should be doing the canoeing you should be doing but you should not be coming to mine
1.00
00:58:21.360
like i think they need to bring some of these so-called boy skills to girls because the girls
1.00
00:58:26.440
they want to dig a bloody hole sometimes but that's and then they should that is a problem
00:58:30.320
and they have addressed that problem but i still think the boy scouts should be for the boys
00:58:34.240
like i wouldn't i don't just don't think i would go now if i was a boy and there were half of the
00:58:39.660
boy scouts are girls i don't i don't know i mean it's basically like school yeah yeah well i mean
00:58:48.200
i'm in favor and i'm interested in single set schools because boys have such a unique learning
00:58:53.080
style to girls i think i would like to see schools i'd like to trial schools that purely
00:58:58.840
teach boys and purely teach girls or like some sort of diamond formation where they start off
00:59:02.840
together they split up in secondary school and come back together in college or something like
00:59:06.740
that but there's something unique about single sex spaces especially the scouts and it's just
00:59:14.160
shameful shameful that such spinelessness has led to both you scouts america and the boy scouts in
00:59:20.940
uk sort of giving up on the very thing that they're named after and i mean i've been put under
00:59:25.980
pressure i've set up men's groups and they've been absolutely picketed and blown up by various
00:59:30.880
protests i've never successfully set one up i don't think and i know people have tried somewhere
00:59:35.920
but oh i've set up this whatever group this for just for men and i'm like what are you going to
00:59:42.460
do when women start knocking and start to demand to be brought in and oh yeah we'll tell them it's
00:59:47.440
not for you and then they always sort of roll over they always let they they oh actually my
00:59:53.640
sister wants to be part of it and now she's actually the co-host of my pod i know in my
00:59:58.480
hometown of loughborough and in uh leicestershire we have men sheds in loughborough i told you about
01:00:04.520
it's like a shed for men right and it's a lot of lonely men a lot of like one of the stats that
01:00:10.000
shocks me is that a man in america who's over 85 is one and a half thousand percent higher chance
01:00:16.880
of dying by suicide the suicide difference between older men and older women over 85 is
01:00:22.000
absolutely shocking anyway that's why men's sheds are so important because a lot of that's down to
01:00:26.580
loneliness a lot of it's bereaved men who want who are feeling like they need friends so men's
01:00:31.200
sheds is for that these are men that can go and make friends but the problem isn't that my hometown
0.54
01:00:36.260
one they've now made it women's and men's sheds because all of the wives basically bullied their
0.70
01:00:42.580
way in and there was like national news about it was like we successfully forced our way into
01:00:46.660
men's sheds and it was like some old lady holding like a piece of and it's like that's i'm all for
0.63
01:00:52.280
having women's sheds have your own shed we'll fund it but leave the men's sheds alone like it's so
01:00:58.560
it's life-saving stuff this is it's not like truly literally life-saving yeah like i don't know
01:01:05.820
my one of my one of my biggest regrets when my dad was alive was not encouraging him more to go
01:01:10.820
to men's sheds because i know he he was very handy with diy and he was also very lonely i think
01:01:16.260
and i really oh i can't i've struggled to even forgive myself for not encouraging him more than
01:01:22.280
i should have because it would have just made his life so much happier and there's many men that
01:01:27.640
should learn from that lesson and go they're great they're everywhere but i don't they shouldn't be
01:01:32.560
i think about 30 or 40 percent of all men's sheds are now men's and women's sheds and it's you've
01:01:37.820
just got to resist the pressure like obviously they're putting the pressure to let women in but
01:01:40.860
you've just got to like no i think it i think it would be interesting if more women understood that
01:01:47.620
when men get together and congregate over a righteous activity it actually provides the
01:01:53.040
solution that women say they want a more tempered level-headed intelligent just uh just and righteous
01:02:00.320
courageous bold guy the kind of men that they advocate for if at all is found in groups or
01:02:07.700
I should say, built in groups of other men. There's something about getting a team together
01:02:14.160
or a crew or a gang or a tribe or a brotherhood, whatever you want to call it,
01:02:18.860
where we all begin to work together and we start to round up our edges. And I teach you something
01:02:24.080
you don't know. And you teach me something I don't know. We call each other out. We lean on
01:02:28.760
each other when we need it. And it makes us better men. I think if more women understood that
01:02:32.900
they would be much more supportive and downright advocate for exclusive men's spaces.
0.98
01:02:39.620
Yeah, I mean, I do agree. Although, again, mixed feelings where people always do that little twist
01:02:46.460
where, oh, they try and present these issues as to the benefit of women. And I understand,
01:02:51.920
and it is true, a man that has access to these spaces probably will be a better partner. But
01:02:56.120
I feel like we're misleading people from the main point and the main reason for doing this
01:03:02.120
for men themselves this isn't about making better husbands and fathers it's about literally saving
01:03:06.460
men's lives so i although i agree and you are right some people lean so heavily into that
01:03:11.360
that they actually undermine themselves because this is about men this is men deserve this in
01:03:16.600
their own right it's not about making better husbands although that is true it's about
01:03:20.840
keeping men living happy healthy lives for as long as possible uh well i think it's i think
01:03:27.340
it's approaching it from both because i don't think they're mutually exclusive i think and
01:03:31.840
and I don't have any data to support this. I'm sure it's out there. Um, but I think a man who
01:03:36.560
is a more capable father is going to live a more fulfilled life. I think a man, and we know this
01:03:42.880
from, from the scenario, from the statistics of, um, longevity, uh, lifespan for men who are
01:03:51.000
married. It's longer when they're married. Um, and so I really do. I think, yeah, I don't think
01:03:58.980
you have to separate the issue, but I do agree. It's not that we're doing it for other people.
01:04:03.120
And men, men actually run into this problem too. They will burn themselves into the ground
01:04:08.080
for other people. They'll change themselves. They'll burn themselves into the ground. They'll
01:04:13.760
wear out because of the, the, the sense of duty they have. But I found that it's for men, it's
01:04:20.460
easier to maybe easier is not the right word, but it's, it's much more sustainable when you're
01:04:28.640
becoming the man you want to be because that's the right, being the man you want to be is the
01:04:34.580
right thing to do. Not because your wife wants it or your kids need it, but because it's what
01:04:38.400
you want inside of who you are. Yeah. I suppose helping a man to be a better father is also
01:04:45.840
helping a man directly because a man, like you said, they get, a lot of men get reward and
01:04:50.860
happiness out of feeling needed out of feeling purposeful it's just it's just my only my only
01:04:58.440
thing I was raising is that a lot of people lean heavily into that where it seems to diminish the
01:05:01.820
fact that men also deserve to be helped directly for no other reason other than it's the right
01:05:05.840
thing to do but I mean it reminds me of one of the groups I set up in Loughborough or tried to
01:05:11.020
Loughborough University Students Union that was all about helping supporting men like a men's
01:05:16.620
network for young men because like the suicide rate in students for men for young men is a lot
01:05:20.560
higher as is addiction drinking violent crime it's all bad so we're like let's set up a men's
01:05:26.140
network to mirror the women's network that already exists to help give men a space they can go to on
01:05:31.220
a weekly basis to hang out to talk just get help to do these things you mentioned anyway the student
01:05:37.640
union were very supportive and then this again like as soon as it was announced like the the mob
01:05:42.820
came and absolutely obliterated the whole student union in the social media just all the comments
01:05:47.600
were just horrific and they canceled the event immediately they didn't even have a single
01:05:52.160
they literally canceled it on the spot because of the safe they were fearing for the safety of the
01:05:57.640
guy who was running it he was a friend of mine called rory and i said you've kind of misidentified
01:06:02.400
the problem there if someone's making threats the problem is the person making the threats you don't
01:06:06.420
take away the person being threatened but the absolute irony of that is that god knows how
01:06:12.220
many hundreds of men would have accessed that network over the course of a year and they would
01:06:16.320
have benefited having felt more supported and learned to be better partners potentially in the
01:06:21.520
way you described but now that's not going to happen and they're instead going to go back home
01:06:25.880
to maybe their girlfriends and they're probably going to be worse partners they're probably going
01:06:30.760
to be miserable and they're probably going to have to lean more so on the partner and then we get
01:06:34.840
into this insane idea that women aren't free therapists there's something i constantly hear
01:06:38.900
or why does why do men ask women to do all the work it was probably because you cancelled the
01:06:43.400
network like like if you want men to support each other and not to be free therapist to your
01:06:50.160
boyfriend then you have to allow them to do it themselves and set up spaces for each other
01:06:55.800
you can't have it both ways so yeah we do need men's spaces because it does benefit women too
01:07:02.240
but it's so annoying when people shout them down and get them cancelled for no reason whatsoever
01:07:05.980
and then they pay the price for that themselves and then they complain about that so yeah it's a
01:07:12.620
mess and uh it happens all the time i know i've seen it happen so many times and it's just always
01:07:19.500
heartbreaking well i think you're doing great work and i think the the work that you're doing
01:07:24.820
and many others too is the solution to some of these problems where we're actually proud of being
01:07:30.200
men the people around us are proud of us of of us being men and stepping up and i found that most
01:07:35.080
people want guys to step up anyways so yeah yeah george tell us where to connect with you
01:07:50.520
and the research that goes into what you put out
01:08:10.040
on instagram so all one word the tin men uh lots of conversations in the comments lots going on
01:08:16.040
it's very vibrant community of 90 000 people now but if you don't have instagram you still want
01:08:20.540
access to content it's now all available on a new website called the tin men dot blog and you can
01:08:26.580
actually categorize different posts so if you're only interested in education you can just look at
01:08:31.440
that if you're only interested in male role models you can click that or domestic violence which you
01:08:34.740
haven't spoken about like there are so many different topics i've now organized it on the
01:08:38.820
tinmen.blog. But if not, I'll see you on Instagram, the Tin Men X, the Tin Men blog,
01:08:44.640
or YouTube where I have my own podcasts, which is also the Tin Men blog.
01:08:49.660
Excellent. George, we'll sync it all up. I appreciate your work and I appreciate you.
01:08:54.360
Absolute pleasure, mate. Let's do it again soon.
01:08:57.720
Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with George from the Tin Men. I hope you enjoyed it.
01:09:01.860
I really liked this one. This is a little different than I might have done in the past,
01:09:06.540
but I'm really fascinated with the work and the depth of his research and what he's done to draw
01:09:14.040
attention to the issues that men face. Now, clearly we didn't agree on everything. We come
01:09:18.860
from different cultures and we also have different political affiliations, but you can see in real
01:09:24.340
world scenarios, even different cultures, different political affiliations, we can still have
01:09:29.660
meaningful discussion that actually moves the needle for men in the right direction. And that
01:09:34.060
is my goal to move the needle in the right direction for you as an individual, not even
01:09:38.080
this movement, just you as an individual. So if you also want to band with us with other men who
01:09:45.360
are growing and learning and developing and building and holding each other accountable,
01:09:48.880
check out the iron council at order of man.com slash iron council. All right, guys, we'll be
01:09:56.520
back next week or excuse me, not next week. We'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until
01:10:02.440
then go out there, take action, and become the man you were meant to be. Thank you for listening
01:10:07.580
to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man
01:10:12.440
you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.