E65: Aspire to be an Upstander (ft. Jackson Katz) - Real Men, Real Conversations

This week’s episode of Aspire is a conversation about what it means to be an active upstander in a culture shaped by silence, harm, and pressure to conform. Hosts Alex Prouts and Gabriel Viscogliosi are joined by Dr. Jackson Katz, educator, author, and one of the leading voices in the movement to prevent gender-based violence.

Jackson breaks down why violence against women is not just a women’s issue, but a men’s issue that demands men’s leadership, accountability, and courage. He explores the bystander approach, the importance of speaking up in everyday moments, and how young men can use their sphere of influence to challenge sexism, misogyny, and harmful peer pressure. He also pushes back on narrow, cartoonish ideas of strength, arguing that true strength includes vulnerability, moral courage, and the willingness to do the right thing even when it feels uncomfortable.

The conversation also digs into the pressures facing young men today, from social media and the manosphere to the confusion many boys feel about identity and masculinity. Gabriel shares how aspirational masculinity is being taught in his school community, and Jackson responds with practical guidance for students, athletes, and anyone trying to build healthier peer cultures. In closing, Jackson offers a powerful reminder: everyone has the right to be treated with respect and dignity, and real change starts when people choose to be part of the solution.

Make sure to check out Jackson Katz’s book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue and How You Can Make a Difference https://jacksonkatz.substack.com/p/every-man-why-violence-against-women

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Aspire, an I Have the Right2 podcast, where we amplify voices, share stories, and drive change in the fight against sexual assault. We explore the critical issues surrounding student safety, institutional accountability, and survivor empowerment. In every episode, our goal is to provide insightful conversations with survivors, experts, educators, and advocates, giving you, our listener, valuable information, resources, and actionable steps to create safer environments and cultivate a culture of respect and consent. Welcome back to the Aspire podcast. I'm Alex Prout, co-founder of I Have the Right To, and I'm here with my co-host this evening, Gabriel Viscliosi. Aspire was created by the nonprofit I Have the Right To as a space for honest, meaningful conversations about survivor advocacy, prevention, and what it truly takes to create safer communities. If these conversations resonate with you and you're interested in bringing them into your school or community, we'd love to connect. I have the right to partners with K-12 schools, colleges, universities to provide age-appropriate programming for students, educators, and parents on consent, healthy relationships, digital safety, leadership, and more, helping turn these conversations into action. You can reach us at takeaction at iHatheright2.org.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Today, our guest is Dr. Jackson Katz, an educator, author, and internationally recognized leader in the movement to prevent gender-based violence and promote gender equality. He is the co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, one of the first large-scale programs to engage men and boys, especially in sports in the military, as active bystanders and allies in preventing sexual and domestic violence and a key architect of the now widely used bystander approach. He is also the creator of the award-winning Tough Guys films and the author of influential books including The Matro Paradox and Man Enough, as well as a new book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Woman is a men's issue and how you can make a difference. For more than four decades, Dr. Katz has worked with schools, colleges, the military, and communities across the world to reframe domestic and sexual violence as men's issues that demand man's leadership, not just woman's resistance. His TEDx talk, Violence Against Woman, It's a Men's Issue, has been viewed millions of times and has helped bring mainstream attention to the ways definitions of manhood are tied to patterns of abuse, silence, and complicity. Today, we are honored to have him join Real Men, Real Conversations, to talk about aspirational masculinity, how we engage boys and young men as part of the solution, and how his new book connects directly to the work we're doing with I Have the Right To. So I'd like to start off with a question to you, Jackson, and also thank you so much for coming on this podcast. And so, as I kind of just talked about with the introduction, you've been talking a lot about how to kind of reframe sexual assault as a men's issue. So, with that, and how you kind of communicate with men's about that and kind of making it more about men's issues that require leadership as well, and for kind of all these young boys and men who are listening, how would you explain that shift in language in a way that kind of feels inviting for men and boys so they feel included and want to be a part of that change and recognize it as a men's issue?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Sure, Gabriel. But first let me say thank you very much. Thank you to to to yourself, to Alex, and your all your colleagues to have invited me to be part of your podcast. I think what you're doing is incredible and exceptional. And the fact that you're doing this in high school is is very, very impressive to me. And I'm, you know, I'm just happy that I can be uh uh in dialogue with you um today. Let let me I mean, let me let me just let me just st say say frankly, because you know, I think we need just be to be blunt about this. We have a global crisis of men's violence against women, sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, relationship abuse, sexual exploitation of children. I mean, all you have to do is be, you know, minimally sentient, mil minimally checked into what's happening in the world, including in our own society. And you can see that this is a really big problem. And women have been carrying the load for decades and decades. They're the ones who have been expected to do all the work, you know, all the organizing work, to create the programs, to reform the laws, to institute prevention programs. I mean, and meanwhile, they're the ones who are the most negatively impacted by all this. So we're expecting the category of people who are the most victimized by the abuse to be the ones who are responsible for addressing it and for changing the culture that produces it. This is totally unfair. And so from the time that I was a young guy, I it like I didn't know exactly how to articulate this when I was, for example, 19 years old when I started my activist work. But from the time I was a young guy in college, I was like, why should women be the ones who have to carry the load of doing all the change and the work to transform the society when men are the ones committing the vast majority of the abuse, and men also have the majority of social, economic, and political power. It just seemed to me patently unfair, just in the same way that I as a white person feel like it's my responsibility and other white people's responsibility to work against racism, or how I feel as a heterosexual person that it's my responsibility to work for LGBTQ, you know, rights and justice and fairness. Because if you if you have certain advantages in life, and again, I know that young guys sometimes think, well, I don't have advantages. Well, you well, you do. I mean, in a in a patriarchal society, there are certain advantages that men have. Not all men have the same advantages. And within the category of men, there's a wide variety of social positions. You know what I mean? Like I know there's rich men, there's poor men, there's gay men and straight men, there's, you know, racial and ethnic and religious differences between and among men. And the young guys often don't feel powerful, even if they come from, you know, privilege in, you know, objectively speaking, they often feel like, well, I don't make decisions about my own life, and I'm, you know, I'm being buffered by all these forces that I'm not necessarily in control of. So I think some subjective subjectively, some young men don't feel powerful. But if they can take a step back and not be defensive about this and think about this problem, you know, sort of the from the 30,000-foot view of this global crisis of men's violence against women, and then think, okay, what can I as a man do about this? I mean, if if if if more men were to take that position and young men were to take that position, I think we'd have we'd have solved these problems a lot long, you know, a long time ago, because I think the missing piece in the transformations of our societies that will result in dramatic reduction of domestic and sexual violence, the missing piece really has been men's willingness to engage, men's willingness to lead. And again, I appreciate that young guys who don't feel powerful are not the ones that I'm putting the burden on to be the leaders. I think we and we'll talk, I know we'll talk about what individual young guys can do who are not in positions of authority or influence. So it's not just about powerful men, but I do think it's important to say the burden of responsibility and accountability for leadership on these matters shouldn't fall on the shoulders of young high school guys, even though you're taking leadership, your colleagues are, which is which is exceptional. It should be on powerful men. It should be on men who have institutional power, cultural influence, political uh authority. And those men have been failing. And that's one of the reasons why we're in the sad situation that we're in. So all of us have to figure out how we can play a constructive role. And and I'll get to other things I know through the course of the conversation about the ways in which men and young men's lives have been dramatically affected in a negative way by what some other men have been doing to women and girls, as well as to other men and boys, because it's all connected. And so I would say one of the things that I would say in my work, in my book, Everyman, and uh lots of other places in all my speeches, I always talk about how men's lives have been negatively affected by men's violence against women, by the culture of rape and sexual violence that we live in. And if you it's so it's not just about altruistic concern for women and girls, although it is that, and and fair and fairness and justice, it's also self-interest. I think if if young men and men in general have an enlightened self-interest, they'll work against sexual violence and domestic violence because so many men have been harmed by this on so many levels.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

So, Jackson, thank you so much for being here today. This is you know truly a personal pleasure from from my perspective to have you on, um, specifically because you've been you know such an inspiration to me in terms of my learning curve of being one of those relatively ignorant, disengaged, privileged men before my daughter's assault, and then having to learn. And your book, Macho Paradox, your TED Talk on YouTube, these things were uh, you know, there's distinct scarcity value of men speaking out on this issue. And you've been doing this, you know, for decades and decades. So, first of all, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your leadership in this, in this. I can tell you there, you know, obviously we got to know each other, so I can tell you how much you meant to me, but I can tell you there are thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of people um who have been positively impacted by this who have yet been able to say, you know, thank you. Um a lot of gratitude coming from me. And um it it's been one of the true pleasures out of this horrific episode with with my daughter to get to know remarkable people like yourself. Your newest book um is titled, you know, every man. Many in our audience are high school students, uh, Jackson, right? And if a high school student is listening to this conversation, what does every man responsibility look like in his everyday life? Whether it's in the locker room, you know, the classroom, in a group chat, you know, wherever they may be. What what does that look like from your perspective?

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Well, thank you for your kind comments and your gener your generous comments, Alex. It's been great working with you as well and your colleagues. You you've bit you've built an incredible um organization, which I'm totally impressed by. So it's been a it's been my blessing to be friends with you and working with you. So thank you. I would say, I would say everybody has a sphere of influence. So I even if even if you're not you know powerful in some uh in some you know grandiose way, everybody has influence. They have friends, you know, they you know, they have peer culture, whether it's you're on a team, you're in a group of friends, you're in a in a class, I mean, who knows, you know, in some student organization, I mean, family members. In other words, everybody has a sphere of influence. And I would say to think about what your sphere of influence is and then how you can, within your sphere of influence, how you can, you know, uh be a voice for for justice and fairness and nonviolence and and in opposition to sexism and and misogyny and men's mistreatment of girls and and women, which means any way that it rears its ugly head. So it, you know, it could just be a casual sexist comment that a guy makes that's a friend of yours, you know, who just you're just there's no girls or young women present, but there's, you know, maybe three or four guys, and one or two of the guys start making derogatory comments about girls or young women, and instead of just laughing along or saying nothing, say something, you know, say something or make it clear that you're not okay with it. I mean, in other words, not every act has to be some, you know, dramatic, you know, revolutionary uh statement. It just can be, it can just be as simple as that, uh, you know, speaking out. And that's by the way, that's the that's the heart of the bystander approach, right? So the bystander approach, which I'm, you know, one of the architects of, starting, we started in the early 90s, the whole idea of the bystander approach was how everybody in a given peer culture can play a constructive role before, during, or after the fact of some kind of harassment, abuse, violence, or the the the attitudes and beliefs that can lead, in some cases, to abuse or harassment or violence. How everybody in a given peer culture can play a role, not just the person who's experiencing, you know, who it the focus is not just on the person experiencing the abuse or the harassment or the person doing it, but on all the people around the person experiencing it, all the persons around the person enacting the abuse, how can everybody make it clear to the abuser or the person who's making a sexist comment that it that what they're saying or how they're acting is not cool? How can everybody around the person who's experiencing the abuse or the harassment or the discrimination or the or or what have you, can they how can they support that person? In other words, everybody in the bystander approach, everybody has a role to play. You don't have again, you don't have to be in a in an esteemed position of authority. But I do say, I would say though, Alex, that the person who speaks up, like the young guy who says to his friend, who's just, you know, made a derogatory comment about girls, that like a sexist comment or a misogynist comment. The guy who says something to his friend, like, hey, hey, cool, you know, that's not cool, or or you know, could you say something? Can you talk about it a little differently? I'm not comfortable with that kind of language or whatever, whatever, whatever the person says. The act of saying something in that situation is an is an act of leadership. That's what a leader does. A leader is somebody who sees an like, for example, who sees a situation of injustice. And while other people might be reluctant, other people might be anxious, other people might quietly be saying to themselves, that's not cool. A leader is somebody who says, you know what, I'm gonna do something. Even though it might not necessarily be uh uh comfortable, I'm gonna say something, I'm gonna do something because it's the right thing to do. And and and so I would say to, you know, young person, especially a young man, who are you and who do you want to be in the world? Do you want do you want to do you wanna be the kind of person who uh sees injustice and makes excuses for why not to get involved or put your head down and pretend you didn't hear what you just heard? Or do you want to be the kind of person who says, you know what, I'm not exactly sure what to do, but I'm not gonna do nothing because I I don't want to be that person. And and again, I I would say the analogy that I use all the time, because I think some men are more comfortable with this analogy with racism. Again, if you're a white person hanging out with a group of fellow white people and one or two of your fellow white people start making derogatory comments about people of color, if you don't say something and other white people don't say something to make it clear that you're not okay with that, then how can you say that you're not, in a sense, part of the problem? And and how can we flip being part of the problem to being part of the solution? Well, the way to do that is to is to break the silence. But having said that, I also, in my teaching on the bystander approach, I don't say that you always have to, in the moment that something happens, jump in and do the most extreme intervention because that's totally unrealistic. What I'm it what I'm because what I do say though, however, is doing something is better than doing nothing. And doing something either before, during, or after the fact is better than doing nothing. And so when I say before, during or after, the reason why I say that is a lot of times people find themselves in situations where something happens in real time. Somebody makes a comment, somebody acts in a certain way, somebody does something that's really off-putting, and people don't know what to do. And they often freeze, and they often, when they freeze, they often then like retreat. And it's a human reaction. So I'm not, this is not judgmental. I'm not judging this. I I've been in situations like this myself, believe me. Even as an adult who's been doing this work for a long time, I find myself in social situations where, oh my God, I can't believe that this some this person just said this, and and I'm and I'm the guy who goes around the world teaching that you're supposed to speak up. And what am I supposed to say here? Because it's difficult. So I'm not saying it's not. But just because you don't react in the moment by doing something doesn't mean you've forever lost the opportunity. So for example, in the situation where a guy that as a friend of yours or a teammate or something like that makes a comment, you're not sure what to say, you end up saying nothing. Well, you can circle back the next day or a couple days later and say, hey, dude, you know, there was something you said the other day, and I just made me really uncomfortable. I just wanted to say, you know, it's not cool. You know, I know you're my friend, but you know, that's could you think about something, you know, next time before you say something like that about women, could you just think about it a second time? Because I that's come on, you don't really believe it, do you? You don't really believe that, do you? You know, there's something. And even though you didn't intervene in the moment, you still made a successful intervention. You've out you've made it clear that how where you stand, and that's way better than doing nothing. So so I would that there's more to it, Alex, but I think that's these are some of the things that we can do within our own peer cultures, and each time you do it, it gets easier. Each time you've spoken like truth to power, or each time you've interrupted a a sexist enactment or or a comment or or or or something, or stood with a with a with a victim, or stood with a survivor who's being mocked or ridiculed or discredited or disbelieved, every time you stand up and say, hey, she has the right to say this. She has the she's a good person. And I believe her, every time you do that, it gets easier for the next time. And if you're and if you're able, if you're a high school student who's able, I don't mean just you like Gabriel, but obviously Gabriel, but also in the people listening to this, if you're a high school student and you're able to do that, you're way ahead of the curve. Because you know what? There's a ton of adult men who are so-called mature and have adult responsibilities at all different levels who who, when it comes to this subject matter, freeze up and don't know what to say and don't, and as a result, don't say much of anything. And that's one of the reasons, by the way, where we've had why we've had a collective silence around the world from men on this subject matter and why so many women are upset with men and they're upset that men haven't stepped up.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Yeah, I, you know, I really can't wait to dive much deeper, you know, into this conversation, Jackson. It might have to be multiple episodes because there's so much to dive into there. But I can tell you, you said it gets easier from the actor's perspective, right? In in being an active bystander, or we we refer to that person as an upstander within our lingo. I can tell you from a recipient's perspective, whether it was my daughter or myself in our family unit, when we had people speaking up on behalf of victims, on behalf of survivors, it had such an impact. So I do acknowledge that it is so hard, especially for younger people as they're developing their voice, you know, to speak up. But um, you know, we talk about this all the time in our org. You know, students spend thousands of hours studying academics. Why to to perform in the stressful environment of a test or exam? They spend hundreds of hours practicing sports or an instrument or you know, drama, why to perform in that stressful moment of being on the stage or on the field in a critical moment. And this work of being an upstander requires practice as well. And and getting that muscle memory built. So when you're in that situation, it does come more naturally. But also please understand the recipients of it will feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude, relief, so many you know, unbelievable feelings that might help them continue on for another day when they think everything else is is bleak and dark.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Absolutely, absolutely, uh Alex. Can I actually uh just to build on that and this and this particular part of this conversation? In my book, um Everyman, I have a quote at the beginning of the chapter on bystanders from Judith Herman. And Judith Herman for your audience is one of the founding figures in the trauma-informed care movement over the past uh you know, half century. She's a kind of a giant in the field, to be honest. Um, but she she wrote she wrote the following that I quote in my book. I'm just gonna read the quote. Okay, it's once bystanders begin to take a righteous stand in support of survivors, the power of the tyrant begins to crumble. For this reason, repairing the harms of tyranny first of all requires bystanders and the larger community to recognize their own moral responsibility and to take action in solidarity with those who have been harmed. So that speaks to your point, Alex, which one of the things, one of the most powerful things that that ya like a young man could do for survivors is to take a stand publicly and support them. Even privately as well, but but publicly and privately. And also I want to say your to your point about practice uh makes perfect, if you will. So when I started the MVP program, Mentors in Violence Prevention, at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston back in 1993. So for your young listeners, it's like there was colored we had colored TV back then. It wasn't black and white TV, but it was still a long time ago by your sort of life course. But it was it was a it was a it was a blip in time from my point of view. But anyways, in nineteen ninety three, when we started the MVP program in the sports culture, the main teaching tool that we developed, the curriculum that we developed, was called the playbook. And it was the MVP playbook. And the idea, because we're working in the sports culture. And again, we were working in the sports culture intentionally. That was my idea as a way to gain credibility with the dominant male culture in so many schools, which is the sports culture. Again, I know that there's kids who are not athletes, and there's young men and women and others who are not athletes, but let's be honest, sports is an incredibly important institution. Anyhow, the name of the curriculum was the playbook, because the idea was, just to Alex's point, we had we put young men and women and others. It wasn't only, it began as all male, but it became mixed gender. We put young people in these scenarios as real life bystanders, friends, teammates, classmates, colleagues, coworkers, but in the case of young people, it was mostly as friends and peers and uh teammates. And we put them in in real life scenarios where they are asked to think about their role as a bystander, as a friend, as a teammate. What can you do to speak up, to support, to challenge, to interrupt? And we the theory of calling it a playbook was the same principle is that if you in a in a in an educational space have an opportunity to talk about all these different dynamics of what's going on in peer cultures, what are the pros and cons of acting? What are the incentives and disincentives for this course of action or that course of action? And and for the people in the group to not just hear from the experts at the front of the room, but to hear from each other. That, you know, for example, young guys to hear from each other that they've that all of us have struggled, all of us have tried to figure out how to what to do in a given situation. And we often think we're the only one who's going through this process. When we see something or we hear something, we we know of a situation, a relationship situation that's uncool. We often think, you know, I'm not sure what to do, but I'm not really, I'm probably the only one who's really uncomfortable. So I'm just gonna keep it to myself. What the whole, the whole idea of the educational sort of space and creating educational spaces for this is that young people, in this case young guys, can hear from each other as well and realize a lot of people are struggling with, I'm not sure what to do, I'm not sure what to say. And then we help them think through the options of what they can do in that in a given situation. They can hear from each other what people have done in similar situations. But the idea is in a safe educational space, you can have these discussions. Then in real life, when things happen, when the pressure is on, if you're prepared, then you're more likely to make a good choice than if all of a sudden you just have to deal with something that happens and you've had no preparation, you've had no way of thinking through it, talking about it. And I I want to circle back to this, but I, you know, part of my teaching is that it this is really about ethical decision making as much as anything else. Because what you're doing when you're a when you're a bystander or an upstander, you're it's it's really you're going through an ethical decision-making process. What is my responsibility to the person being harmed? What's my responsibility to the person causing harm or potentially causing harm? What's my responsibility to the group, to the team, to the you know, friendship network, to the class, to the school? And ultimately, what's my responsibility to myself? Like, like who am I and who do I want to be? And again, this is an ethical decision-making process that requires contemplation. It requires thinking it through. It requires, you know, some quiet time as well as some dialogue. And I think, I think, you know, the failures of our educational system are such that we put young people in a situation where we know they're going to be confronting all these difficult interpersonal challenges in their peer culture around sex and violence and porn culture and and you know, internet spaces that are, you know, that are both rich in positive connection and also potential abuse. We we know that they are in all these situations, young people are in all these situations and all these peer cultures, and yet we're not providing them systematically with the tools to be able to make better choices. And then we throw our hands up in the air and say, oh, you know, kids have it tough these days, and we're not sure what, you know, and then we're sometimes frustrated when they when they don't act the way that we think that they should. And meanwhile, we were in a position to help them make better decisions, which is what what which is our responsibility. So I would say that to young people too. It's like, it's not on you, it's not on your shoulders to make the institutional changes that have to be made. Although to the extent that you can influence those institutional changes, power to you. It's but is it but people who are educators who are listening to this, people who are administrators, teachers, coaches, those of us who are in positions of creating the spaces for these kinds of dialogues, have to step up our game because we're not doing a good enough job, to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

I think what you all of what you just said is so important for all of our listeners, but especially that about this bystander approach and how you can really become an upstander through that. And I think especially one of the things that we often talk about on this podcast with a lot of our episodes is aspirational masculinity. And that's also one thing that I like to talk about and be OBI within my own school and try to bring that to different people in my community. And I think one of these main exercises that I often like to do is kind of the manbox, but also what like a real man is versus what a stereotypical real man is. And then when I'm going through that side of what a real man is, who's kind of open, vulnerable, can feel all these emotions, it's still courageous. And then I get to this socially constructive man or the toxically masculine man, and then I get to all this aggressive and kind of dominant adjectives that we use. And sometimes some people are kind of put off by that because they're often all athletes who are playing these sports. Someone's on the football field and being like, but I'm supposed to be aggressive in these fields. So sometimes I receive backlash when I'm talking kind of in that in that way, and then they feel like maybe they're not included or what they're feeling isn't right. So it asks to you, how are you able? Because obviously you've talked a lot with athletes, and kind of framing masculinity in a way that involves them and it doesn't take any like power away from them in their athl athletics and if they're on the football field or whatever field they're on, playing whatever sport, when they're still able to kind of have that aspirational masculinity view on the world without taking away any sense from them.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Sure. No, it's a great question. So one thing I would say because early on, when when I was, you know, working in the sports culture, and again, MVP was the first program, large-scale program in college athletics in the United States, the first program in professional athletics um in the world. I mean especially when it came to football. Okay, so there's other there's other sports than football, but football is by far the most important American sport. Um, American football. People would say to me, like media, like interviews and stuff like that, they would say, How do you, you know, these guys are being taught to be, you know, aggressive. And I you're gonna tell them off the field that they can't be aggressive? Isn't that a contradictory statement? And, you know, and I said, you know what? If a football player cannot tell the difference between the guy across from him on the line of scrimmage wearing a helmet and pads and referees and bright lights and everything else, he can't tell the difference between that, you know, the guy across from him on the football field and his girlfriend. He has no business being on the football field in the first place. In other words, give me a break. It's like these guys have big enough brains. We we Homo sapiens have big enough brains that we can figure out the difference between, you know, football or aggressive sports and our interpersonal relationships. We we compartmentalize all the time. People make those distinctions all the time. And again, I don't, I don't, I don't mean to say that there aren't some complexities at the psychodynamic level, with without getting too deep into this, that when when when you are sort of living in a culture that celebrates a certain kind of physical aggression, that there can be conflicts at some level in your psyche about the efficacy or the success, you know, this successful use of physical, you know, domination. But I again, I think, I think we have to give people, in this case, men, more credit. We are smart enough. We are capable enough of knowing the difference. And if we don't, if we're not capable enough of knowing the difference between the athletic domain and our interpersonal life out off the field or off the ice or off the court, then again, I think we need to rethink whether we should we we're we're mature enough to even be on the field in the first place. You know, that's one thing. Another thing I would say is if we're talking about aspirational masculinity, one way to think about that is we aspire to be many things at the same time. And you can be, you can have multiple skills. And sometimes some of those skills might sound uh to the out, you know, to the external, you know, observer to be contradictory. And you know what? Some of us have contradictions, you know, like the famous great American 19th century poet Walt Whitman said, you know, yes, I am, I have contradictions. I'm large, I contain multitudes. In other words, we all have contradictions. So there are some contradictory elements to our personalities that we have to live with, but that's that doesn't excuse, you know, abusive behavior. Period, end of sentence. The other thing is I'll give you, I want to share with you an anecdote from my experience. And I'm I'm gonna go a little far afield, but come right back to the you know, to the essential point. I was doing a presentation in Edinburgh, Scotland, about 15 years ago, and it was a law enforcement conference, and I was introducing the bystander approach and my work more generally to the to the Scottish audience, if you will. And we've sub subsequently had a long-term, very, very positive impact on and relationship with uh with the Scottish educational system. Um MVP, my program is run runs in all the high school public high school districts in the country of Scotland, funded by the Scottish government. But anyhow, I was presenting my ideas about the about bystander training to this conference. In the question and answer period, a woman raised her hand and she said that her boyfriend had recently been at a at a club and on the dance floor what she what this is a woman talk, the woman talking, she was referring she referred to an alpha male was being abusive to his girlfriend on the dance floor. And this woman was saying that her boyfriend was right there and he didn't do anything, and he said, you know, what should my she said to me, what should my boyfriend have done? So that was her question. And I said, Well, I'll answer your question in in a way, but before I do, I want to comment about your use of the word alpha male. Because I said, if a guy is abusing his girlfriend on the dance floor, he is not an alpha male. He is a pathetic man who's got big problems. And alpha to me suggests something that you admire or aspire to, or at least that that is a positive designation. And if you're abusing a woman on the dance floor or anywhere, you're not somebody who I'm aspiring to or admiring. You're somebody who needs help immediately or accountability immediately. So that so that was one piece of it. So we have to think about what does it mean to be alpha? What does it mean to be strong? What does it mean to be somebody you aspire to be? And by the way, one obvious quality of to me, of a, and not just me, I know it's not just me, but to be a strong man is to acknowledge your vulnerability. That's a strength, not a weakness. And somebody who can't apologize, who can't say, I'm sorry, or I made a mistake, or I don't know the answer, or I'm not sure how to do with deal with this, or I need help, that is that person, the person who can't acknowledge their vulnerability or their infallibility is the opposite of a strong person. That's it, a highly insecure person. And a secure person, including in this case a secure man, unlike, for example, our current president, who's modeling the exact opposite of what all of us have been teaching for the last 40 years or 150 years or 500 years. The exact opposite is being modeled for young men at the biggest stage in the world by the president. But again, the idea here is that if you're secure and strong, you don't have to pretend that you always that you've got it all figured out because no one has got it all figured out. No one is perfectly healthy and perfectly aligned with, you know, their values are aligned with their behavior at all times. No one is it has no anxiety whatsoever, no doubts or insecurities. That's just fiction. And and people who are totally unaware or unself-aware are the only kind of people who might say, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't ever make a mistake or I don't ever admit weakness because that's that's a weakness. That to me is so shallow. So I think we have to we have to ask men to aspire to more, which is, you know, be being more um open to a complex range of emotions and feelings and capacities rather than always pretending that we we're under we're in control, because that's more cartoonishly dominant. And yes, some people can impose their will physically because they're big and strong. But is that supposed to be the measure of your strength? I mean, that's one measure of one type of strength. Your, you know, physical ability to impose your will on your opponent, you know, or your adversary. Fine. Okay, I respect it on one level. That's a form of strength. But it's just one of many forms of strength. And some of the men that I've worked with over the years who have incredibly uh physically impressive, are also some of them incredibly immature and incredibly unformed as full human beings. By the way, others have been impressive. So I don't mean to say, I mean, I think, for example, I think there's a lot of guys on high school football teams who are thoughtful guys and who and and who are, you know, multidimensional and they could be musical and they could be straight or gay, they could be in relationships or not in relationships. In other words, the idea that somehow, you know, like being an athlete or being a motocross, you know, racer, you know, or you know, all of a sudden makes you just into a caricature that you don't have other qualities about you as a human being is reductive and simplistic and ridiculous. So I so I would say just just just let's let's have a more honest conversation. Let's aspire to more, like you're doing in this podcast, honest conversations. And I think just the act, the act of listening to this conversation on the part of your audience, you're so far ahead of where I was in high school. You know, I mean, we didn't have conversations like this in high school. We didn't even use the word masculinity. Let me say, in my college years, I don't even know if I used the word masculinity like five times. In college, that wasn't a it wasn't a common word back then. It was off, it was awkward. Saying masculinity made people very uncomfortable back when I was a young guy because there was so much homophobia that attached to the word masculinity. Now it's totally changed now, but I'm just saying, when I was a young guy, I never I didn't use the language of uh masculinity.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

So, you know, everything that you say, Jackson, is so fundamentally logical. And yet, you know, we we have massive multi-billion dollar industries, whether it be pornography, you know, social media, which has really figured out how to m monetize the manosphere. We've got, you know, uh kids in high school self-policing themselves when it comes to what does it mean to be, you know, a man or manly or whatever it might be. And these definitions tend to veer towards the Andrew Tates, you know, of the world versus the truly sort of empathetic, vulnerable, you know, courageous people of integrity. You know, I I loved what you said before, you know, linking leadership and an ethical decision-making process. You know, how do we get to a point, you know, um recognizing the atmosphere that our young people are growing up in today and the the air that they're breathing? You know, what what can people who are listening to this podcast you know do? Because obviously you've been talking about this for decades. I think we made some progress, but obviously over the last you know, four years of the first Trump administration and then, you know, year one of his next administration, we've we've taken steps, you know, backwards. So what what is it that you think can really sort of help either rebalance things or actually change the momentum?

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Um, well, I think I think a related point. I'll just I'll get to your I think I'll get to the to a specific answer, but the a related point is that young women, on the other hand, have been going in the other direction. I mean, young, you know, so many young women have become more and more not just empowered, but expecting to be treated with respect and dignity. And and, you know, the feminist project has really had enormous impact on so many young women across class and race and ethnicity in complicated ways. And some of this is global, too, you know. So this isn't just happening in the United States, but there's really been a growing gap between young women and young men. And again, not just in the United States, and young women moving more to be more feminist and more expecting to be treated with respect and dignity, expecting more in relationships, especially in this case, heterosexual relationships, more of the men that they're with, you know, sexually, I mean, emotionally, and then as you get older in terms of division of labor and households and families. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. And the young men, but young men, especially Gen Z, younger as the younger cohort of Gen Z has been moving in the opposite direction. And opposite direction, meaning young Gen Z men on a range of topics are actually more conservative than baby boomer men, which is not the way it's supposed to be. I mean, we and not the way many of us thought that we were moving. In other words, many of us, you we used to talk, older guys like me, we used to talk about how you know the hope is the young, young generations are gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna impart whatever we can to them and they're gonna come along and they're not gonna have the baggage that we had. And so therefore, they're gonna be much more successful as men and in relationships and everything else. And by the way, there's some of that is happening even as we speak. So, for example, even with this backlash that's been happening, especially accelerated with the election of Trump in 2016, there has been a generational shift in terms of the acceptance of a certain kind of gender fluidity, a certain acceptance of LGBTQ uh diversity in ways that didn't exist when I was a young. Let's just be honest. It has, we have made significant progress. By the way, the reason why there's such a virulent backlash is because like you know, the right-wing populist backlas and the Trumpist backlash is because of all the progress that we've made and the progress that women have made and that men have made. And and there's anytime if you take a you know a long historical view of things, anytime you have significant challenges to the status quo, to the way that things have always been, if you will, or tradition, tradition, you know, when tradition is being um threatened, if you will, and and new technologies, obviously, technology changes things in a dramatic fashion. Well, I mean, let's be clear. The digital revolution is one of the most transformative events in human history, let's be honest. We have to talk about technology as part of the transformations and the way that humans have to adapt to these changes. Anyways, anytime you disrupt or issue sustained challenges to traditional ways of thinking and doing things and arrangements and families and economic structures, there's gonna be pushback because people are defending the status quo there, and they always want to, there's always this impulse to go back. So that's why make America Great Again, right? It's like, go, let's go back to a time when men were in control, when women knew their place, when white people were in control and people of color knew their place, you know, when gay people were in the closet and they didn't push at us, those of us who are heterosexual, to accept them as full members of society. Let's go back to those times because I feel more comfortable living in that sort of romantic, for me at least, space. I don't mean me personally, but you know, for me, the the person speaking who's who's you know, unhappy about the changes. There's always going to be that impulse to go backwards. I think that what we need to say to young men is you have these agents of exploitation, like the Andrew Tates of the world, who are playing on your anxieties, they're playing on your insecurities, who are playing on the fact that there this is a transitional time for many, many men because we don't know exactly what is expected of us anymore, because we're we're we're pioneers of a new social order and women's women's leadership and women's success in the education space, in the professions, in business, and in politics is so unprecedented. And so young men are having to deal with like, how do what is it, what does it mean to be me? What does it mean to be a man? Am I supposed to be, how do I, how could I be strong on the one hand, but vulnerable at the same time? And and I think a lot of young guys are confused in part because a lot of older guys are confused, and we're not necessarily always providing the best guidance. And then you have these charlatans like the Andrew Tates of the world and the Myron Gaineses of the world, and the the looks max or you know, the clavicular. There's a whole bunch of individuals who are sort of figuring out a way to um monetize the anxieties and insecurities of young men. And because they've mastered the sales pitch and using the technology. Of communication and the echo sphere that so many young men inhabit, right? The podcast universe, for example. A lot of young guys in your generation, Gabriel, a lot of young guys, they don't hear conversations like this. And think about, you know, no matter how good a job you all are doing with your podcast, Joe Rogan gets 20 million people to listen to him, right? So, so Joe Rogan will be having, you know, Jordan Peterson on. They'll have a conversation for three hours and there'll be, you know, 20 million views. And Jordan Peterson has right-wing anti-feminist views, very traditional hierarchical views about masculinity. He says it more articulately than others, than, than, than some others might, and he's not as crude as the Andrew Tates of the world. But there's all these people out there who have the ear of young people young men, and they're saying to these young men, the way that you can solve your problems is take back control. The reason why we've had all these problems in the world and in our society is because women have too much control, men have been too become too soft, and what we need is we need to harden up again and toughen up. And then by the way, there's some guys, like the late Charlie Kirk, who use religion and they use, they use traditional ideas of patriarchal religion as a way to justify men taking back control. So they use the language of Christian religiosity, but they're exact they're doing the same thing, which is telling men the way to solve your problems and the way to heal the society is to take back control that too many men in the in previous last couple of generations have ceded to women and feminism. And by the way, they're also alternately saying to women that the way that you should thrive, that you will thrive and you should thrive is if you reject this 21st century notion of feminist uh advancement and and really embrace the traditional feminine within you. And and so they're trying, and it's so so, in other words, at the same time they have these messages to men, they're also sending out this message to um to women. And part, the reason why they they're so eager to send this message to women is that they're worried, that I'm talking about the right now, they're worried that young heterosexual men aren't gonna have who are conservative, aren't gonna be able to find partners. They're not gonna find women who want to partner with a man who doesn't believe in equality and who doesn't believe in women's equality. So they have to teach women to not expect equality. It's a it's sad and pathetic. But the the so the last thing I want to say, just to wrap this whole thing up, it's a long-winded answer, is I think for young men who want to be successful, they have to figure out how they can not be drawn into the Andrew Tate narrative that you need to take back control, or the late Charlie Kirk's narrative that the true Christian way is to take back control from women, but rather embrace the idea that feminism and that equality between the sexes is a fulfillment of the Enlightenment project of democracy and fairness and justice. And and some of the great, you know, some of the great thinkers of our of the last you know 500 years have been articulating this. And we are the inheritors of this great tradition, and we have to figure out how we can carry it forward. And I think that's that's really exciting. For me, that's really exciting. If I was a young guy and I was hearing this message that I could be part of a generation that advances the Enlightenment project in a way that's it can rescue human civilization from fascism and from you know rapid decline, which is what fascism is, I would be excited by the uh uh uh opportunity uh and the and the potential.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Yeah, I just want to go back to what you're saying on vulnerability and how you kind of classified that as a strength and how pe men need to talk about it as a strength. Because as we're just saying, with this whole manosphere, I feel like the main idea is classifying it as a weakness. And as we've also talked about on on podcast episodes before, if we kind of think about it like all these kind of emotions that you feel, but by not releasing them, they're kind of like a pebble that goes into like a chest or into a box that's you that you hold in your inside yourself, and just one pebble maybe isn't that bad. But once you've accumulated 50 pebbles and you've stuffed them all down, that suddenly weighs you down a ton. So by having this kind of vulnerability that you want to express, but all of these kind of outside notions have just been actually no stop, stop, stop, you can't express any of your emotions, that kind of leads up to leads to a buildup of all these emotions that kind of leads to a burst. And often for some men, it leads to some perpetuation of violence as well. And so I would say, like, I know you've talked about how you can kind of classify vulnerability as a strength, but how how can actually men make that into reality? Because for some men it can be hard to maybe take that step and saying, okay, I had a pretty bad day today, or maybe how can they make those smaller steps that can maybe transform themselves into being more open and to really take away those pebbles that were stuck inside of them for so long.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Well, first I love the I love the pebble metaphor and the accumulation of pebbles, you know, because it because it begins to weigh you down. I that's a great uh metaphor. Well, one thing I I mean, related to your point, Gabriel, I would say what ends up happening for a lot of men, and I'm I'm by the way, I'm in the category of men that I'm critiquing right now, so I'm not I'm not saying that I don't I'm immune to these things or that I've grown so far beyond this that I can't relate to it because I can relate to it. Um But what ends up happening is a lot of men are so emotionally illiterate that they identify emotions that are nuanced and subtle and and and things like gr grief and anxiety and disappointment and they often understand them and experience them and then express them as anger. And the reason why they do that is not because they're necessarily angry at the heart of it, but because they don't identify the other emotions and they don't know what to do with those other emotions because they can't in some cases can't even identify them. But the one emotion that is socially acceptable for men in a traditional way is anger. So what you have is a lot of men move immediately from vulnerability to anger. In other words, instead of feeling vulnerable, they get angry. And that the anger is socially rewarded or at least at very least tolerated. In some cases, it's celebrated, but but it but in other cases it's just definitely seen as consistent with being a real man, quote unquote. Whereas vulnerability is seen as undermining a man's uh claims to being a so-called real man. So so there's no there's no magic science here. I mean, there's there there are insights that we have about how you can do both. Like in other words, and by the way, it's it's it's not it's also situational. I'm not like like, for example, there are some situations where what's called for, if you're a young man, what's called for is projections of exterior strength and invulnerability. Like I was a really good football player. You think I was going on the football field and and you know, talking about my vulnerability and my you know family problems? That's not the place for it. The place for it is elsewhere. So so you have to compartmentalize, you know what I mean? So so in other words, there's some men who are really what one of the things that your generation has that I didn't have, and I think it's really good. You have all these men who have been extremely accomplished as athletes who are willing to come forward and publicly do public service announcements and say, you know, I'm I'm you know, one of the best athletes in my sport. I'm a professional athlete at elite level, but I have panic attacks, you know, or I have mental health challenges. I've been struggling with depression. And and it and you know, and I think it's important that you know that I, you know, I I've gotten help and you can too. This is important because because then you the argument, for example, that a real man would never acknowledge weakness, a real man would never acknowledge vulnerability, it's just total BS. It's like there's all kinds of powerful men who acknowledge it all the time. I mean, so so that's what I would say. I would say you can do, you can do all these things, but I'm but I but I would say that you're not saying, I'm not saying to men and young men, at every moment that you feel vulnerable, you have to express that vulnerability. Because that's number one, it's not fair, it's not realistic. And I do think a lot of men are really guarded because they've learned and they've been taught from an early age that if you let your guard down and you express your vulnerability, you literally become more vulnerable. And in some cases, but what you're becoming vulnerable to is often men's violence, other men's violence. And so this is one of the reasons why men's violence against women is so directly connected to men's violence against other men, and it's also connected to men's violence against themselves, which is because suicide is violence turned inward. And all of these, I talk about all this in my book because you know, the concept of a triad of men's violence, they're all connected. Men's violence against women is connected to men's violence against other men, which is connected to men's violence against themselves. One of the reasons why that's a useful concept, the triad of men's violence, which is the original uh author of which is a man named Michael Kaufman, the co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest global movement of men speaking out about men's violence against women. He wrote this essay in 1987, which is almost 40 years ago, connecting all those different forms of violence. One of the reasons why that's a useful concept for men and young men is a lot of young men will say, or older men, well, what about violence against men? You know, you're talking about violence against women, but all, you know, what about violence against men? And I live with violence and I live with the threat of violence, and you know, the jails and the prisons are filled with men who are, you know, victims of violence as well as perpetrators. And it's like, yeah, we've thought of all this. We've thought of all this. You know, this is not like a you know news flash to some of us. We, the same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men and men who abuse themselves. And the the point here is that men's violence is an omnipresent feature. And so men realize that if they allow themselves to either be vulnerable or express vulnerability in certain social situations and certain peer cultures and certain relationships, they do put put themselves at greater vulnerability in a world where men's violence and men's, you know, you know, I hate to say it, but cruelty, and sometimes women's cruelty, because I'm not saying there are women who can be cruel too, and and who, in the face of men's expressions of vulnerability, might not be always 100% supportive of that. So, I mean, let's let's be fair. But so I think I think a lot of men are in a self-protective mode. And so we have to, we have to help give them permission. Like I think that's one of the roles of leadership in this field and in the in the world in general, not just in the field, right? Is that when you, Gabriel, or your colleagues open up space for a discussion, you're creating space for young, other young guys to say things that maybe they wouldn't have said if they didn't hear you saying it and if they didn't know that you were leading, you know, BLB and leading, you know, young men's you know, initiatives. And you don't know in the moment. Sometimes you'll you'll you won't know for years in some cases. You might hear at a at a high school reunion 10 years from now, somebody say, Yeah, back then, Gabriel, you when you were involved with that group, BLB, it's like I would never have gone to one of your meetings, but I made a big difference to me to know that you guys were out there because I was struggling with some issue in my family or in my in my relationship. And you know what I'm saying? You don't always know in the immediate moment the impact that you're having. And that, and that, and that we're all we all know that we're part of a long-term struggle. It's not, this is not going to be solved in one generation or two or three. This is a lot longer-term um work than that. But we're all part of a historical uh transformative uh movement. By the way, just could I just say just one last thing to historicize or to bring into the present this conversation? Today, just today, as we record this, the the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, was defeated in his re-election uh bid. And Viktor Orban is a one of the authors of this concept of illiberal democracy, the idea of undermining democracy by continuing to have real elections, but but controlling the media. And his correct his his uh his administration was very corrupt, and he was an icon for the American right, in part because he's a basically a white nationalist, anti-feminist. In other words, he was he was a strong force against women's advancement in Hungary. And so a lot of American on the Americans on the right really uh supported him, even though he comes from a small country in Europe, um, and he was just defeated today. And that's a really positive thing because democracy, in this case, his notion of illiberal democracy wasn't enough to protect him from the democratic process, you know, working its way for moving its way forward. I just wanted to say that because it's a hopeful thing. Because if people get together, if young men, for example, join with women as their partners and allies instead of as their antagonists, instead of seeing young women as the opposition, but rather how can we partner with each other? How can we work together, young women and men and non-binary people, to advance fairness and justice? Everybody benefits, and not just women, but men too, in that in terms of better relationships and a better sense of connection to yourself and to others.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Thank you so much for all of that, Jackson. I just want to say one final question for myself, and then Alex will have one final question to wrap up. And I know earlier on in the podcast, we talked about this situation. If let's say you're in the locker room and one of your friends makes a sexist joke and how to kind of stand up to that person. But then also I think for some of our listeners, maybe someone has made one of those jokes, but let's say they've stayed silent and they haven't said anything, or maybe one of their friends did something that caused them harm and you felt like you should have said something, but you never did, not before, not during or after, and you feel like now you're a part of the problem. How can you kind of change yourself and feel like you can actually now make an impact and become part of the solution rather than staying quiet and in the background and not losing faith that it's all over and now that you didn't say still stood up once and you can actually do it something now? How can you kind of change that perspective for young men?

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Well, I mean, I think there's no better time than the present. You know what I mean? If I had to, if I had to go back throughout my life and think about all the situations that I didn't do what I wish I had done, I would be paralyzed and not doing anything. So I would say, don't be too hard on yourself. You be, maybe you maybe you didn't live up to your best uh sense of yourself at one point, but you're a young guy. You like, you know what I mean? Like everybody screws up, or everybody fails at different times to do what they think is the right thing to do. Um, but you you get it, but you grow. That's what growth is, right? It's like, it's like if you if if somebody, for example, somebody who changes their mind, changing your mind on something doesn't is not a sign of weakness. It could just be a sign of I know more now than when I had a previous position. Now I know more, so I don't have my previous position because I'm smarter, I'm more knowledgeable, I'm more, I my I my depth of understanding is you know is greater. And so then I'm gonna make a better decision next time. So I would say don't be be too hard on yourself. You know, brush it off and figure out how to do better the next time. That's what I think. And and you know, and there's a you know, there's a famous quote that I often use from Heraclitus, uh, you know, ancient Greek philosopher historian. He said, you know, can never you can never enter the same river twice, which is profound, isn't it? Um but it's true because the river is flowing by, right? But even though you can't ever recreate the exact moment that something happened, there's a new moment right in front of you, right now. It's like the time to to take that step forward is right now. You know what I mean? That's what I would say, and give yourself a break if you if you feel like you should have said something and done something. And by the way, this is happening, as I've said, it happens to me even now in my life. So there are situations that I find that I don't rise to um, you know, to my own aspirations for myself. And I and I and I and I and I sometimes, you know, get harsh on myself for for that. And then I remind myself, I didn't pretend that I'm not human. We're all human. And if you're pretending, I mean, if you're acknowledging that you're human, you're acknowledging that you're vulnerable. You're acknowledging that you don't have it all figured out and that you're just doing your best. And I think women have been asking this of men. The w women aren't saying they want men to be perfect. I think they're saying we want men to be trying harder. I think we they they want men to be more present. They want men to be uh and young men to be, you know, more strongly allied with them because they want to just be treated with respect and dignity and they're and they're frustrated that are not not enough men and young men stand with them and they're in their struggle to be taken seriously and treated with respect and dignity. Uh, but they're not, they're not expecting you to be Superman. You know what I mean? That's not, by the way, one thing that I let me just say this because just to get it on the record, because because of your audience and your generation's experience, I know, believe me, that when men do speak up and say some of the things that I've been saying, matter-of-factly, like that I've been articulating matter-of-factly, that there is going, there is going to be pushback, right? I have a whole chapter in my book called Pushback because it's so predictable. I know exactly what the range of possible critiques are of the things that I've been saying. What what social media has done in your generation that didn't exist in my generation is that it's given a lot of really insecure and sometimes abusive men a platform to bully and mock people and have a voice in doing that. And so, for example, it's easy to sit at your computer or sit on your phone and say, what are those saying, that simp, that beta male? You're gonna listen to that beta male, give you give you his BS about feminism, feminists hate men, then this guy's a cuck. It's like that's the kind of language that you're gonna hear, right? That you're that your generation of young men hear when you challenge some of these, you know, uh traditional ideas about quote unquote manhood from the charlatans of exploitation like Andrew Tate. I I hear it all the time, you know, and and I I end I'm but I'm not a 17-year-old guy anymore. But even when I was 17, I was pretty confident about some of this. Well, not some of this stuff, because I really wasn't in this discourse at 17. Like when I was 19, when I was in college, if somebody, some guys had called me the names that that are you you you know used on social media, I would just laugh in their face. I was like, you're an idiot. Like, am I supposed to take you seriously? So I'm giving you an argument that the enlightenment values of democracy and fairness and justice are what these women are are asking. And you're calling me a cuck and a simp and a beta male. I'm I'm supposed to take you seriously? It's it's embarrassing to me. And I'm I'm saying that because I know that that's the kind of pushback that some guys get on the first level. And I think it's important that men like me and Alex and other, you know, adult men who have some influence say, because we're, I want you want to strengthen your ability to fight back against that idiocy. And it is idiocy. Let's just be on, let's be honest. It's embarrassing to me. And it's embarrassing to me that adult men are exploiting the insecurities of adolescent males to make a to make a buck. It's embarrassing to me, as well as outrageous. It's outrageous. It's also like I'm embarrassed for them. Um, and and and and a culture that takes them seriously.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

Wow. Okay, so what a I just I've loved this episode. This this content has been amazing. Before I make my editorial comment, I want to wrap up with one last question that we ask all of our guests, uh, Jackson. You know, the name of our org is I Have the Right To. And we like asking all of our guests to complete that statement with their own I have the right to statement. So I will give you the floor here to complete an I have the right to statement for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

Well, geez, I should have done my homework, Alex. I should have, I should have, I should have not to put you on the spot. It's all right, but I should have listened to like multiple episodes to hear the range of choice uh you know of choice responses to that. Um I have the right to. I have the right to be treated with respect and dignity from the morning to the night, and from from the time I was young, which I when I did not receive it, to the time that I die. Everybody has the right to be treated with respect and dignity, and I have that right as well. And that's that's what I want to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

That that is beautiful. And actually the motto of our org, you touched on it, is safety starts with respect, because we do believe respect is a fundamental, one fundamental that needs to exist throughout our society. So that was a beautiful comment. Thank you. And Jackson, what what a powerful conversation. I I love the passion that you bring to the table on this issue. And you are um one of the beacons for men in our society, and you have, and I say a beacon because you have the content, you have been doing this for such a long time, you've been so consistent over the decades with the messaging. And I certainly hope our listeners can be activated by uh what we've discussed today. The this issue of of aspirational masculinity is really one where we're looking to help. Other men be the best versions of themselves, right? We're not looking to give up anything, to take anything away. Jackson, I love the way you deride this whole comment of male allyship. I agree with you a thousand percent on that, that men should help, you know, others with this. We need to help ourselves first. It's like, you know, put on the oxygen mask for yourself before you put it on for someone else. And I think men have been structurally neglecting themselves for decades, for centuries, because I think it is the function of the patriarchy and the structures in place and by the powerful, because it means men can be the fodder for many goals that, and we see some of them being acted out right now across the globe in multiple, you know, locations, right? In Iran, in Ukraine, you know, etc. And I think this is a movement for men helping men and us being, you know, better versions of ourselves. So I definitely want to ask you to come back because we not even touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can cover. But we've already gone past an hour of conversation, uh, which I knew would be easy. But to our listeners, please go out and buy Jackson's book, Every Man: Why Violence Against Women is a men's issue and how you can make a difference. We will have a link to Jackson's website and how to um obtain his book. It's available on all the platforms for purchase. And it is such an excellent read if you have any curiosity about how to be the best version of yourself. If you're struggling with your own concept of masculinity, how do I be the person that I know I am deep in my soul? Right, Jackson lays out a beautiful blueprint for you. Um so, Jackson, any last last words for us before we close out?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

Thank you. Uh, and thanks for giving me the platform to, you know, to to say all that I've been able to say, even though time goes by quickly, at least from my point of view. Um yeah, one last thing, Alex. It's it's this it's this notion of strength, right? And it relates to what Gabriel, you know, was bringing up earlier, and you know, keep keeping it grounded, like what do we say to young men, you know, who are struggling with some of these dilemmas about w uh where and when to be a leader, where and when to speak up, uh, you know, et cetera. From early days of my activist work, especially incre increasingly in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years, I would hear from people and read, not just hear directly from people, but read and and hear this discussion in in podcast on podcasts and other places, um that that men like me and doing this kind of work is somehow making men weak, right? That we're that what we're doing is we're undermining men's strength and that that that's the opposite of what we need in our society. I mean, so that that's essentially what I was saying earlier, that the the right wing or the sort of the conservative uh approach to this subject matter is we need men to be stronger, not weaker. And and that what what this kind of conversation does is it helps to weaken men. And my argument is no, that's not what with what we're doing at all. We're not weakening men. And I think we need men to be strong. And I I I feel like I'm a strong man, and I have a 24-year-old son who is a a young a strong young man. I don't think this is about making men weak. I think it's about, I think what we need we have to do is redefine what it means to be strong. And you you talk about aspirational masculinity. We need to expand the definition of strength. And instead of strength being cartoonishly described and defined as imposing your will on others and dominating, you know, it's like and not acknowledging vulnerability. That is such a an uh old, outdated, tired, and wrong and cartoonish definition of strength. I think of strength in much more expansive terms, like moral courage, you know, the courage to do the right thing even when there might be risks involved in doing the right thing, social courage, speaking up when your friend tells a rape joke that you think is inappropriate and saying, I don't think that's funny, even though you know it's gonna be socially awkward to say that, you know, or resilience in the face of disappointment, you know, because disappointment is part of life, and being resilient is a form of strength in the face of uh of loss or or or or or even grief, you know. There's in other words, there's a there's a a a whole range of ways of of defining strength. And I think by by expanding the definition of strength and then saying that we want young men to be strong, but we want them to be strong in ways that are more uh complex and less cartoonish, we're giving them something to aspire to. We're saying we want you to be strong in these ways. Um and it's not we're not taking something away from men, we're giving something to them. And what we're giving them is an expanded definition of being a good human being. And and if you're a man, being a strong and good man. And and and by saying it like that, it's a reframe. All of so much of what I've been saying in this conversation is reframe. It's reframing and thinking about it from a different, you know, optic or using a different optic to observe and think about this subject. And so I think this is what I think I do in my work, or I try to do in my work, is to try to um, yes, you were challenging men. We were saying we need more from you. We're not getting enough, and we do need more. We need more from white people. We do need more anti-racism from white people, we do need more uh support for LGBTQ from heterosexual people. Yes, we do. And I don't feel I don't feel at all constrained in saying that. But that's not, it's not because I'm anti-male or we're, you know, I'm harshing on guys or or white people. It's because I expect more, because in a positive way, I think you're capable of more. We're capable of more. So I think but framing it this way, reframing it this way, as a positive challenge to men and young men, I think, I think we have some hope. I think there's hope that calling men into good behavior rather than calling them out for bad behavior, the world can change within that reframe. And I think what we, those of us doing the work, Gabriel, at your level in high school and do your organizing work, Alex and I at our level in our lives and our professional lives or whatever, we're we're helping to create the space for this reframe. And I and I, you know, I applaud you for that, and I and for and I and I appreciate that you gave me the opportunity to be part of it. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:54

Thank you so much for that, Jackson. I thought those were some great last points, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to this episode. I think, as Alex and I often say after every episode, I think this definitely was the best episode yet. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and we're looking forward to another amazing episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:16

Thank you so much for listening. Like and subscribe to the podcast on all platforms. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please give us the five-star rating and tell your friends about us five. Follow us on social media at IHaveTRight to learn more about our student and executive programming at our website at IHAFTH2.org.