267 - Making a Man Out of GPU - Part 2

The hosts discuss how visible identity affects prejudice and whether men are less likely to challenge toxic masculinity because they can “pass” as traditionally masculine through code switching. They explore the “crisis of masculinity,” arguing patriarchy harms everyone but disproportionately harms women, trans, and non-binary people, while wealth and power shape outcomes most. The conversation covers performative masculinity, loneliness and the incel movement as exploited vulnerability, and the idea of choosing voluntary celibacy to reduce “sex noise” and rediscover identity. They also argue that diverse media representation expands what’s possible and that gaming, through choice, multiple playstyles, and role experimentation, undermines the idea there is only one way to be a man or a person.

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Transcript

Jem 0:14

Can I ask you two a question as, as the representative

Matt 0:19

the token males.

Jem 0:20

When we talk about prejudice a a against certain groups of people, it's often, we often talk about how, how people appear. So if you are. A black woman, then you, you look like a black woman, and therefore people make assumptions. And then within that, and this is just'cause I'm re, I'm reading a, a horror story at the moment about a mixed race girl. And she, and one of the arguments that was put to her was that she, because she could pass for white she had not experienced the level of prejudice that her black friends experienced. Even though she, she is a mixed descent. So, and I wonder about that from, from your perspective, because obviously when we talk about masculinity, there are lots of different ways of being. But as a man, you can pres present yourself as. Potentially belonging to one of these groups if it, if you need to, you can pass for a macho man. So do you think that that, that the fact that you have, that the fact that potential most men are able to do that reduces your desire to push back on it or your, or, or the, not your personally desire, but like men's desire to push back on it because they can kind of get by. It's not affecting you on a day-to-day basis, whereas, like in the same way that being female has, has effects or being black has effects or being disabled has effects, like when you are, when you are visibly those things. I dunno if I'm explaining my question very

Matt 2:19

No, you are. It's the,

Tom 2:20

I understand. Do you wanna go first, Matt, or

Matt 2:22

you go ahead. You go ahead. It's fine.

Tom 2:25

okay. Yeah, it's it's interesting'cause we, we read those articles Matt sent around about kind of the crisis of masculinity, which is a term that's existed for at least 10 years.'cause I remember learning about it in college in my sociology lessons, which was, you know, a decade ago. There's no doubt that men have challenges and. Difficulties because they are men. You know, the suicide rate is often talked about. And that's, that's a big part of it. You know, the repression of emotions and all that kind of thing. The patriarchy hurts everyone, including most men. But it doesn't hurt us on the whole, as much as it hurts women and as much as it hurts non-binary people and trans people and people who don't fit that mold.'cause you're right, gem, I can, I can code switch and I do. I, it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, what the authentic me looks like. Because I have a family with two very different sides economically, I kind of straddle. A family that was quite well off in a family that could only afford RIBA at Christmas as a treat. So I code switch between some of my friends who are more working class and who are more traditionally masculine and my friends who are perhaps more middle class more sort of in touch with things like gender theory and feminism and that kind of thing. And I can, I can be to a lesser or a greater extent you know, smart Tom doing his camera voice and talking about clever things. Or

Matt 4:14

doing is you see the foot, you see the game last night.

Tom 4:17

yeah, I can, I can just about pass as a lad. You know, I've, I've been in enough of those scenarios to figure out how to do it without getting, you know, beaten up. So. And that's very easily and the, the chances of me, yeah, it's, it's getting harder as I go on and navigating those spaces in that way, there's never a chance, even if I get seen through someone's kind of maybe called me like a pencil neck or a nerd or something, you know, I'm still gonna be alive at the end of it. If someone who is passing for something that they're not, and what they are is a much more oppressed characteristic, then if they're found out, the consequences are so much higher. So yeah, the, the weight of the patriarchy does fall on men, but especially, you know, men with other characteristics like gay men, like, working class men. But it would be dishonest, I think, to suggest that. It doesn't hurt others more. Yeah. Yeah. I think the crisis in masculinity is a problem, but it's a problem that's a part of a much bigger problem.

Matt 5:38

That's such, it is such an interesting question, Jim. Yeah. The, the, the, it is just completely true. That pa crisis of masculinity hurts everyone. The only people, the only people who are winning in the world overall and have been winning consistently are the wealthiest people. Who do you think, do you think Jeff Bezos gives a shit? What other, like what, what, how masculine people is. People think he is. He goes, I've got so many yachts. I couldn't care less about what anyone else thinks. Thinks, because I've got, I've got, I've the wealthiest man in history and all, and like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, they couldn't, they wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. They would piss on themselves and laugh at you as you burned because that's, you're a peasant to them. It, and that's, that's the truth. It's not about gender. It's about wealth and resources and the ruling cars and peasants. That's the truth of it. And the, the people who, who fit the, who fit that archetype of masculinity better. And I think this is a lot more prevalent in like the school, school period. There are people who can, so, like most men can. is a, is a great word. I think of it in terms of so many of these masculine traits are purely performative that they, people who might fit them really well on the outside can absolutely not fit them internally. They can feel, and again, the thing that the patriarchy fosters in men is hatred of themselves for not fitting that stereotype. You're going, oh, you, you don't make enough money. Men make more money. Your, your wife makes more money than you. That's humiliating. Even though you might, you might work a, a job that you love. That is, you might, your wife might be a lawyer and you might be a hairdresser, or you are, you are some kind of, you're not, you can't be a hairdresser. You're a barber if you're a man and these. These, these, the external masculinity is completely incompatible with the human soul. It the soul. The soul is what the soul is. And then the, the biggest, the the best thing you can be is like, that's that. Well, this is my perspective anyway. The soul is your authentic self. And the closer you can have your external expression of yourself match that, that's how, that's like as yourself as you can be. And the performative masculinity teaches you to push that down and repress that and go, that, that part of you is wrong. You are meant to be ticking these boxes. And so there are, there are, there are things that you can't help. Like Tom, you are, you are 6 1, 6 2.

Tom 9:06

Yeah, maybe even five 11. I haven't been measured in a while. It depends how long my hair is at the time.

Matt 9:12

See. Yeah. So basically you are, you are probably half a foot taller than me, and being tall is one of those, one of those masculine traits that I don't know how it's, it's one of the biggest stereotypes and it still is that women only, only, they have a height limit that overpowers even like the, it can still overpower anything else. And that, that's another part of like, it's either convincing you to hate yourself for not having something or hating someone else for, for like not accepting part of you. So if you go, oh, I, it doesn't matter how short you are and, but you go, oh, I'm short and so women hate me. You go that's not, probably not. Probably not true. And if someone, if someone doesn't, won't date you,'cause you're short, they're probably not worth dating

Tom 10:13

dating. Yeah,

Matt 10:14

because if they're gonna judge you based on that, what else are they gonna judge you based on? And it reminded you just, you reminded me of, we were talking about, I can't remember what the, it might have been the last masculinity topic, talking about raw dogging flights. Do you know what raw dogging flights is?

Tom 10:36

yeah. I think I read about it once and thought that's astoundingly odd, and then never thought about it again until this

Matt 10:43

Yeah. So, so it, so

Tom 10:45

is that a masculinity thing? Is the idea that it's like, I'm, I'm so hard that I don't need to entertain myself?

Matt 10:53

Yeah, it's the, the, the, the 12 hour flight, the intercontinental flight, where you just sit there with your thoughts and nothing else for hour, after hour after hour. And that

Jem 11:11

I feel like in some scenarios that would actually be quite a positive. Thing that people are entering into, sort of like, you know, going into a meditative state, being alone with your thoughts, giving you an opportunity to kind of get Yeah, exactly. It feels like, and yet they managed to make it sound like the complete opposite of that.

Matt 11:29

It's about

Tom 11:29

Yeah, I

Jem 11:30

I'm not gonna think about anything.

Tom 11:32

I think the way you can tell that it's not about that is that people are. Telling other people that they'd done it. They're like, oh yeah, I managed this the other day. You're like, oh yeah. You got in touch with your inner self, did you? No, not really. I was just bored.

Matt 11:47

And the, and then that, that's what it comes. That's a, it's the perfect sort of express, like microcosm of the the toxic masculinity because no one is happy, sat for 12 hours doing nothing, esp no one's happy, sat for 12 hours on a plane, no matter what you've got. I could be playing, I could be playing a game meal on my laptop for 12 hours and I'd get bored of, of it at some point. So you're having a, do the, the process of doing the thing that you are, you, you are, you are doing, you are having a shit time. You tell someone you're doing it, they don't care. They'll, they'll either go, you're a moron, or they'll, they'll go, oh yeah, I've done it too. And they haven't done it. Or they tried doing it once and they didn't do it. Then it becomes this, this, this like endless circle of men going. One of them goes, ah, but I did this thing. And then the others go, oh, I've, I've thought about trying that thing, but I've not been on a flight for a while. And it just becomes that, that rolling thing of men going, oh yeah, I'm a real man. Yeah, I'm a real man too. And, and it just, it it's bad. It doesn't, you raw don in your flight makes your life worse and it doesn't matter to, to most people. Concept that, I dunno if I'm the person who've come up with this, but I, I've, I think it applies to me, is so the, the, one of the biggest like problems and like brandings of a problem is the incel movement. It's, it's like, it's another one of those instant buzzwords that is meant to, like, it's a, a stab in the guts for men and boys to hate women. It's going, I'm not having sex. Women won't have sex with me. So I hate, I hate women because they, I, they won't give me this thing that I'm a man, so I am, I am, I am owed it. That is a real, a real, such a, a baked in problem narrative that, that men are bombarded with and boys have bombarded with. But I want to, I want to offer an alternative to that that can fit into. A more positive version of masculinity because if you're saying, you owe me this thing, but you won't give it to me, that means that you are, you are not, you are not a man because you're not taking it. You're not getting what you think you deserve. So you are, you are, you are giving your power away to someone else because you're saying it should be within your power to get this thing. Why don't you take, take a take, like people go on like retreats in Tibet where they go and they go and chill out in the mountain for six months and they leave behind all their, all their pressures and their, their expectations of themselves. You can have a, I'm gonna call it vol cells, which is voluntary celibacy. So you take a period where you go, right, I'm going to, I'm going to put aside the idea of sex for. Six months. Do that completely. Take it out of your mind and just stop with that mind. Just, just move that, that pattern of thinking out and then see what fills that gap. See what occurs to you in that space in your head, where that, that pattern of thinking is'cause then you can find, you can relax and that's what I want most for, for men who are stuck in these dark places, is help them find a way to relax about themselves.

Jem 16:19

You want an injection that reduces instead of food noise. Sex noise. Oh, that sounded a lot better. That sounded better in my head than anyway. If you could have an injection, like the diet injections, that, that just reduce the food noise and instead they reduce and then like Yeah.'cause then you would have all that space and as you say, like what could men do if they could spend less time thinking about sex? I dunno. I dunno how much time men really do spend thinking about sex. I think all of that information is probably biased.

Matt 17:02

it would surprise you. But yeah, it's the, the extent to which you, it not being about your masculinity. You're not saying I'm going to become a euch and chop everything off. So that's, I, so that's, that's the only option you can go, right. I'm. I am secure enough in my masculinity that I'm going to, I don't need sex. No need sex. It's fine. It's nice. It's, it's, it's great. It's fine, but it's not the best thing in the world. It's not always the best thing in the world. There are, there are countless things that you might, you might discover that you love doing that don't fit with, fit with what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to like football and cars when you can, like computer games. You can like playing animal crossing. You can like playing cozy games. You might go with your mates, oh yeah, I'm a gamer and you play, yeah, animal crossing and any num and yeah, literally any number of things. There has never been more stuff. To try with more ways to try it than there is it now in history, ever. There are, and you can find on the internet a community of anything for any, like Star Trek, the original series. There's a, there's a, there's a fantastic Facebook group where I can go on there and talk about Spock and talk about the, the, the saddest endings to episodes, talking about captain Kirk as a masculine role model. Literally, literally anything. And if you just taking, take the, taking control of going, I'm going to, you can go back to it. If you go after six months and go, actually, I like being an incel, then you can do that. But just take, take a, take a break from masculinity. Take a break.

Tom 19:18

Well, I think, I think you've, you've hit the nail on the head towards the end there, Matt, in that I don't, I don't think anyone likes being in cell. I don't think anyone's waking up and thinking, I'm so glad I hate women. It's, I think it comes, it's weaponized loneliness. It's people exploiting people who are lonely, and I think the solution might be simpler and than a kind of Tibetan retreat. I mean, actually, in macro terms for all of society solving, loneliness is hard. But on an individual basis, the solution is. For this person who for one reason or another has become isolated, become lonely because they don't fit the mold. We need them. They need to interact with people, interact with women, yes. But interact with just anyone. If you had a social circle that was strong and you had a support structure in place, you wouldn't listen to these weirdos for a second. You wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're totally right. These, there's a sort of feminist conspiracy to stop me from having sex. That sounds likely. You, you wouldn't give it the time of day. It's because people, people desperately need each other, and when they don't have that, it's easy to exploit because they're hurting and they're sad, they're depressed, they're easy, easy prey. And I don't want to, to victimize them too much because they have. To take some responsibility for this ideology that they've taken on. But it's, it's an ideology that wouldn't get a foothold if other societal problems didn't exist and people didn't desperately need contact. And so communities build up to give them that contact based around exploiting them and selling them. I remember hearing at university someone talking about a, a pickup artist was selling DVDs to help you out. And it was like$50. You are having a laugh as they're not even hiding the exploitation. You can spend$50 going on a date. You can spend$50 going to a speed dating thing. Just anything other than these grifters.

Jem 21:38

Absolutely. I think that's the thing. It's, it is it, it's assholes playing on vulnerable people. It, it's, it's, it's abusive at the end of the day, you know, and, and as you say, you know, people, these are usually adults, but I mean, quite few of these men have been groomed since, you know, 13 years when they have, when they didn't have that defense mechanism in place and.

Tom 22:06

and I don't have fully formed brains, but we can all jump on YouTube and see a million shorts telling us, you know, that women had a problem. And we don't have to take any responsibility for that. Sorry, Jim, I interrupted you there.

Jem 22:20

No, no, no. I, that was, that was I finished.

Matt 22:25

man. Yeah. The. This is why. So this the reason why I think like China has been a good sort of like the, the, the, the root of me thinking about bringing this topic is, and why I mentioned how globally the Chinese people have integrated into into the, the global, yeah. Global population. So they are seeing you could, if a Chinese person comes. So I met plenty of Chinese people in Birmingham at university. They were seeing the second biggest city in. The uk, which again, the, the most diverse place in the country apart from London. And that's, that's just one thing, just Netflix. They don't have YouTube or Google. And think of the, the sheer China controls, the entire internet in China and in the rest of the world here. The stuff you can watch on Netflix, it's, it's wild. Absolutely wild. The, the, the, the sheer variety of, of representation that's there and that's, that is why diversity is, it is a responsibility for places that have the freedom to use it, to do it because. There's, so I, I've been watching the gladiators series so it's so, so good. And the, the representation among the gladiators and it not, it not rather than, so with men, it's, it, like, it's, it's mostly about race. That's, that's like as, that's the box that is simplest a tick for men. But for the women, it's the body type. The, the different like physical appearance and attributes that these women have is, is so utterly different to the, the two body types that have been like women have been being told they're meant to fit into. Forever. And the women and girls who watch this, especially young girls, they go, oh, she's amazing. I want to look like her. And rather than it being like, Margot Robbie really skinny, or Laura Croft or boobs and asrs and everything, they go, oh, I want to, I want to look like this ripped muscle bound six foot two awesome woman. And the little, little girls love different, like each of the different gladiators for different reasons. And that's just female body types. China's pretty good with that in because, just because of their dominance of the athletics world.'cause you can't have a, you can't have a five foot two. 50 kilogram Olympic weightlifter. So they, they kind of have to do that. But then with stuff like sexuality and different genders is one of the biggest responsibilities that, that countries like UK America, places that have the, the space to, to populate it with the greatest diversity as we can, so that whenever some, whenever someone from another country interacts with ours, it is impossible not to see the diversity of life that is possible. So if you, if you are raised in a place where it's not over, you can't be gay, or it's illegal to be gay, and then you come to the UK for university and you watch gladiators and you see, these women of different types lesbians you see fortunately LGBT people are, their representation has been growing and growing in media, which is wonderful. And then you go onto YouTube and you go onto Netflix and there is just, just the entire universe of each of these denominations for society and the trying to force cram us back into these two molds of one particular man or one particular woman. Is to the, it's the, the equivalent of you visualizing, crushing every single one of those, those people that you can see represented, taking them as they are now and crushing them back into that mold. And that, that is where society has been most of history. It's not that men have always been like simpler or aggressive or any number of these, these traditional masculine traits. It's because they were crushed into that box and all that, that other stuff about themselves was just held, held down. And that's the, the biggest tragedy of. Toxic masculinity because it is, it's not just you going, oh, I'm, I'm, this is how I'm meant to be. I need, I'm going back. This is the common sense, the inevitable me. It's the real you is compressed and it's still there, but it just, it doesn't have any, doesn't have any space. And that is, yeah, just, it's a very sorry, state of affairs.

Tom 29:03

It is, but Pandora's box is open. We all know

Matt 29:07

Yeah.

Tom 29:09

and as long as we don't forget that all these possibilities exist, then that box is gonna be very hard to close.

Matt 29:17

Yeah. I think there, I think there, hopefully there's a, a positive version of Pandora's Box that

Tom 29:23

Yes. I can't think of a I suppose, giving fire to the people, stealing the fire from the gods and giving it to the people is a bit closer.

Matt 29:34

Yeah. And maybe the Pandora's box in the God of war games.'cause it was it was hope. The thing inside the box was hope,

Jem 29:43

that was in the

Matt 29:44

cause they took that away from, that was the power that the gods had.

Jem 29:48

I mean, I think, I think when, because I was thinking about like, how does all this link into gaming and like, and I think one of the things that give, that gives me hope is that if you game then. I think that games are sort of proving that these systems are not inevitable. There's, there's sort of a whole nature of games of the sort of just gaming in general, not specific games, is that, you know, like that, that the rules shape the behavior that all of the stuff that we've talked about today is, is something that we can see h how it's laid out in, in, in the games that we play. And we also know that like, when you have like a dominant strategy that usually ends up with like an, an unbalanced game, we, we know as gamers that that's not how a good game plays out, you know? And the same with like, if you just have like. I know one build is like, the only way you can go is

Matt 30:59

That's a great

Jem 31:00

character build. Yeah. We, we know that that's a, that doesn't work either or that doesn't make a good game. And, and also games with just those, like the, the single ending, you don't have any replayability in those kind of games. We are looking for more from our games. You know, like Boulder's Gate three, one of the most popular games of all time had like hundreds of different endings. I I can't remember how many, but it was like ridiculous amount of, of poss potential endings because everything that the individual players chose to do had a different impact on the way that the story plays out. So, you know, bringing us back to like what we were talking about, this idea that there's a one, one way to be. 1, 1, 1. Whether it's one China, one man, you know, one capitalism, you know, or, well, there is only one capitalism, but one finance system. You know, this idea that that's true is so undermined just within the games industry, within the way that computer, you know, a good game doesn't work if it, if it follows the rules that we are being asked to believe in for this, this fiction really.

Matt 32:22

Yeah, because it.

Tom 32:23

Yeah, because games require input from the user. There's not a, a full autonomy there, but there's a chance to put yourself into it and live out other possibilities. Real me is probably never gonna date Elle, but actually in Border's Gate I'm struggling as well, so

Jem 32:46

She's terrifying.

Tom 32:48

she's hard to please. But yeah, no, there's. I think video games over the years have gotten more and more involved in the idea of player choice, and that can only be a good thing for our ideas about our own autonomy and our own agency moving through the world.

Jem 33:08

Hmm hmm.

Matt 33:10

and there's also the fact that it is play. You're playing, playing, doesn't have a place in in masculinity. You're supposed to be hustling, making money, having sex,

Jem 33:24

Winning.

Matt 33:26

winning, winning, winning. And I was just you saying about different builds, Elden ring, you can be, you can use magic, you can use holy, you can use range. There are any number of things, and that's just for a single player game. But then for games like World of Warcraft, you can be a healer, you can be a tank, you can be a maid, you can be a, a warrior, and you can't just all have warriors. Otherwise you're gonna lose. You

Jem 33:56

And even within those smaller categories, there are multiple ways of being, you know, like if you're gonna be a maj, you're a fire maid, you're an ice major, you're a, you know, I mean, there's, and the games that I think are increasingly popular are those games that, that, that have more autonomy for the player and that where you feel like your choices and your play style is having an impact on the way the game plays out. So it gives me hope because I don't think that that would be so popular if we, if humanity didn't want that. And I think, so if humanity wants that, then I think that they will push back against being told there's only one way to be a man. This is what, this is what a man is. And this one narrow

Matt 34:48

Hm.

Tom 34:49

And there's, there's, because it's art, there's space to explore other ideas as well. I

Jem 34:56

Hmm.

Tom 34:57

you don't get loads of it in the AAA space, but thinking about I've forgotten the name of the game, the one with Sands the. Where you can do a genocide run or a pacifist run.

Matt 35:09

Sands.

Tom 35:10

yeah, SANS, it's, it's the indi Under tail. Under tail. So the, I haven't played it so I don't want to try and get into the specifics too much, but my understanding is that you can do a genocide run, which involves fighting every enemy you come up against and killing them. And the idea behind that isn't for the player to be like, check me out, I've killed everyone. But rather you come up against a boss at the end who's like you, you know, that was a choice, right? You didn't have to kill everyone. And even as far back as nice of the old Republic too, the Star Wars game, one of my absolute favorites, you get to the end as a kind of light side hero. If you've made the good choices and the bad, he says to you, you know, you killed a lot of people up white here. So there's, there's. Even though video games might have started in one place, which involved like a gruff male protagonist killing waves upon waves of meaningless enemies and getting to the end.'cause he's the biggest and strongest. We, because gaming is art and there are these indie spaces and these new ideas, space to explore those non-traditional ideas that may be being the biggest, biggest and baddest and good at killing people isn't the be all and end all. Having said that, I think a lot of AAA gaming, and I'm, I'm not gonna lie, a lot of Triple K gaming I love does just involve being the strongest and killing a bunch of people. But there's, there's room in there for problematizing those ideas and for coming at it from a different perspective. And I think that's growing.'Cause we've all. Played Call of Duty. We've all played these games countless

Jem 37:01

Yeah. GTA.

Tom 37:02

market grows. Yeah, yeah.

Matt 37:05

And like the, the original God of war and the, the reboot God of war. Same retos, same, unbelievable, like physical combat, unbelievable. And people, people evolve, characters evolve. And another, another. Kind of representation that games like Bowlers gate give, which I think is like is in the same sort of vein as my Vol Cell movement, is a safe place to imagine different ways of being different, different ways of interacting with the world. And games where you can choose your own appearance are very good games where you can

Jem 37:58

Play across genders

Matt 37:59

gender. So many, so many, like just playing as a different gender and seeing, just seeing things through a different pair of eyes, choosing ways. So I, my, my chosen play style for things is talking my way out of things. I love that. I like talking my way out of things and I like stealthily. Incapacitating everyone along the way without without them noticing. I've been playing the dishonored games and my, my instinct is to, yeah, rather than kill everyone, which is messy, I like to no one to see me and no one to, and just go and, and hide him in the bush somewhere. And that is, gaming is a safe place where you can, you can play bowls gate on your own and play as a woman. You can play as a gay, gay person, lesbian person. And you're safe in that world'cause everyone's pansexual in it, which is great.

Jem 38:56

Hmm.

Matt 38:57

It'd be great if everyone in the world was safe, felt safe enough to, to pick experiment. I saw a very funny article recently about, I think it was called picking Up Mums in the. On the school run. And it's about middle-aged mothers who have just been divorced having lesbian relationships with other mums in the school queue. And the tagline was fed up with men middle-aged women experimenting with lesbianism.

Jem 39:31

I feel like I missed out now.

Matt 39:35

Yeah, I just think

Jem 39:36

Damn, Daniel.

Matt 39:38

Yes, he could have, he could have waited, waited a bit longer. And I just think that that is women are safe to, to experiment with other women in a way that I don't think men are safe to explore that. That potential part because you might, you might, you can go, oh, I'll try it. And you go, oh, that's actually quite good. Or you might go, nah, that doesn't suit me. But be being able to try and feeling safe trying is, it's just another thing that is denied. Denied us.

Tom 40:10

I think, I think there's a flip side to that in that I think a lot of kind of jokey or playful kind of experimentation between women especially kind of in the clubs and when they're younger and things is probably okay because it appeals to the male gaze. And the people in power are like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. You know, we haven't got any reason why we would enjoy that. Whereas men, the patriarchy as it exists, has no reason to say, oh yeah. Experiment with other men. That's, that's cool because it doesn't, you know, excite them. It doesn't excite the people with the power.

Matt 40:53

And it's one of those, one of those things that is taught as, that the, the most humiliating, anti masculine thing is to be had sex with by another man. That, and that is a, that's another area where it is using the idea of women as the, you compare bad things to women and the, the worst thing that you can do as a man is be effeminate and sissy and like a woman,

Jem 41:28

Yeah, being a man is not being a woman, you know? That's basically what it is. Like a, a, a man. Everything about being male is about not being anything that's associated with being female. And that's because the female is, is negative. You know, you don't wanna cry, you don't wanna, you don't wanna have feelings, you don't wanna care about your children, you know, all of those things. It's just. It. It's so problematic. It's so problematic and so horrible.

Matt 42:08

Yeah, but fortunately it means that we can come and talk about it in a way that I rarely hear people. about it like, like we have today for the extent of time, for like, from this specific angle that we are, this is a safe space for us to, to explore and have fun while we're doing it as well, which is, which is wonderful. And if it's, if it's negative, then we can commiserate and if it's silly, then we can laugh about it together, right? That is a mammoth session. Thank you both so much. That was a fascinating topic. And yeah, we'll bring it to a close there. Hope you enjoyed everyone, and we'll see you next time.

Jem 42:54

Thanks

Matt 42:54

Bye bye.

Tom 42:55

much.

Jem 42:56

Bye.