Joe: There's reality, which is loving awareness,
Sam: unconcerned by the arising and passing away of phenomena.
Ali: And then there are the 10, 000
things.
Sam: Hello and welcome to The 10, 000 Things.
My name is Sam Ellis.
I'm Joe Loh.
And
Ali: I'm Ali
Joe: Catramados.
Today in the show, a long time listener, Bron, sent us a request which was
to listen to a podcast, a discussion between Mia Freeman and Catlin Moran.
They were talking about boys and men in the wake of feminism and
"Are the blokes okay" is the topic today, Ali, do you want to explain
a little bit more some of the ideas?
We were a bit cringe about the Mamma Mia podcast, but maybe
we're not the target audience.
Ali: yeah, so it was an interview for Catelyn Moran's new book, What
About Boys, I think was the title, and and she's obviously written
some fantastic, you know, feminist literature over the years, and I think
what she's really just exploring.
I mean, this is not without, I mean, it's been critiqued quite heavily in
the, the news, her, her take as being simplistic, but fundamentally what
she's arguing is everyone is a victim of the patriarchy, both men and women.
And historically, the only tools we've had to fight the patriarchy has been feminism,
but that has been to the exclusion of men.
And what tools can men use to fight the patriarchy that they can identify with?
Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
And how can we make sure that the...
generation of boys coming through now who don't have the context, who don't
understand what life was like even for relatively well to do women in the 50s
or what was life was like before that and of course even the more recent history
you know what was possible and okay in the 90s and noughties and how much that's
changed and they sort of live in a world where it is just expected That women
would be treated with the same respect that they would expect, for themselves.
but they are mainly, what Caitlin seems to be saying is they're mainly hearing the
message, go girls, go girls, go girls, all the time, and girls propping each other
up all the time, which you want to see.
But they're not feeling like they're getting any propping up and yeah,
Ali: she had this really good example of where you know on social media You
you know a woman will post a photo and all of her girlfriends are like,
Pumping her up and saying like, " Oh, you look great" and it's such an inclusive
way now that it's not just restricted to looking a certain way You can be
curvier and post that photo or you can have darker skin and post that photo
and you've got women championing you.
And what, what do men do?
We don't do that for like, you know, cause the perceived, if you're pumping
up another man, it's perceived to be either feminine or gay, which is
Sam: horrible.
And the normal thing among blokes, Joe, is you show love by hanging shit.
Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
We've discussed that in an earlier episode.
we discussed it in an early episode in youth.
I remember talking about.
Getting quite upset with Because
Sam: I was sensitive.
Sammy, episode nine or thereabouts.
Yeah.
'cause I, I
Joe: mean, I was brought up in a tough school of getting a lot of shit hung on
me by my parents and giving a lot of shit back and then going out into the world.
But also your mates did it too.
Yeah.
But let's not get too sidetracked the, the.
The example she used was, imagine an overweight boy of 13 or something,
and he just goes, fuck it.
And posts a photo of himself in his bathers at the pool.
Yeah.
Now would that, yeah.
Now, if he was a woman or a girl, potentially, maybe teenage girls aren't as
supportive as women in their forties, Ali.
Yeah, true.
That's true.
But potentially they'd be like, you look great, you look amazing, blah, blah, blah.
But, but that boy would be ridiculed, you know?
Yeah.
or shamed or I look.
Like, I post photos of myself on Instagram and I get a bit cringe about
it myself, like I certainly don't get comment after comment saying how great I
look, uh, it's just like a self obsessed thing that I do, uh, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I don't know.
It doesn't lead to a lot of pumping up and love and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, is your experience, Ali, with social media that you do get that
kind of pumping up from the girls?
Absolutely.
Sam: And Ali, just before you answer that, I just want to hasten to add,
for anyone who's not familiar with Caitlin Moran's work or this latest
book or the podcast interview she just did with Mia Friedman on the Mamma Mia
Network, um, recommend you listen to it to make more sense of this episode,
by the way, and we'll link to it.
But...
I just want to point out, they're not just saying boys don't
get support on social media.
There's a whole, there's a larger thesis, but yeah, go on, answer Joe's question.
Ali: Well, in social media, yeah, like, I mean, there's usually a bit
of attention from, in more recent years, I will qualify, from men.
You know, you get like them sliding to your DMs with just little fire emoji or
whatever and you're like, yeah, cool.
And then, but, but absolutely the vast majority of any photo I've ever posted.
The support has been from other women and they're like, you look amazing.
Or you're looking so happy or like, they're genuinely happy for you.
And I do absolutely the same with my girlfriends too.
And I see them happy or they've posted a fabulous photo.
They just, you know, absolutely.
It's all love.
, Sam: and that's largely the appropriate thing, you know, you and I, Joe,
we're not going to rush in to comment publicly on, on a woman's, um, Selfie.
Joe: Oh, I might do what Ali said, like the thirsty dads at Ali's school
and like slide in and make a comment and have some angle, you know.
Ali: And that's because that's the thing.
If you, I had, I would have absolutely no issue telling my
friend that she's hot and she's this.
But even if she's married right, but if you are yeah publicly commenting Oh my
god, you look so hot on someone else's wife or like or husband like yeah It is
why is that perceived to be different?
Why?
Yeah,
Joe: but yeah, like I think what Sam said it wasn't An interview about
social media, that's just one example.
It's the visibility of it that makes it so important.
Zooming out to the whole thing, like what are the, what are the
power dynamics between men and women, where have we ended up to?
I found the thing, the interview a bit condescending because by the
end they were talking about men as if they're like quaint little pets,
like, it wasn't, isn't it cute?
They have little things that they talk about and, and I've tried to
think about, are men all right?
Are boys all right?
What are, what are they into?
Sam: It's funny to get.
It's funny to get stoned and um, uh, look at, look at my husband's
balls and just admire how strange and odd and just validate them
and I'm like, that's kind of nice.
It was a mixture of ... That slightly condescending, but there was a
certain intimacy and respect in it.
Yeah, I didn't mind it, but it was odd to get a pat on the head as a
Joe: bloke, it felt like.
50ish year old feminists.
Yeah, there's a very...
They've reached a point of feminism...
They're both very successful.
Sure, being feminists.
And they've reached a point of feminism where they basically look in
a condescending way at men as like poor creatures with no idea in the world.
Ali: I don't know that, because ... I can't say I'm Mia Friedman's
biggest fan, but, but she was,
her take was similar to mine in that she's got a boy the same age as I do.
And like the, while it's different.
In the context of say, you know, a man that you're dating or that you're
married to, it's what are we doing with our boys, how are they going to cope,
and I think that was primarily like, what am I doing for my son that I'm
not doing, you know, although I'm not doing for my son, that I'm doing for my
daughter, or why does my son feel this way, but my, my daughter doesn't, and
that Certainly what I took from that in that, you know, I have a boy this age
who is sensitive to these things and, you know, and the impact that it has on him.
And I actually did talk to him about it afterwards and, you know,
and got his take and yeah, it's, it's really interesting like that.
Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's necessarily.
Yeah, just poor men.
These are people we love and care about, not just as partners, but as children.
So,
Joe: so imagine if you had a movement called feminism to respond to incredible
entrenched misogyny and sexism, but then you had a generation come through
after some of the biggest wins in feminism, so people under the age of 20.
As Sam said before, imagine if you didn't see the Chico roll, Chico roll commercials
in the 80s in the fish and chip shop and women sexualized in that way, not
in a positive way, just as objects
Sam: for men.
Or, or, or female teachers in the 70s striking for equal pay.
Like it's so, it's so recent.
It's quite, yeah.
But on another level, that's ancient
Joe: history.
If you have no lived experience of that, and all you see is this girl power stuff.
Yeah.
It seems ridiculous on the face of it to respond to that.
with some kind of like, men ism or something, response to feminism.
I don't think we need that.
and I do wonder, like,
men still have the things that they're into, like sport and ways to show courage
and bravery and violence and there's a whole lot of stuff that maybe Catlin and
Mia don't see that I can see as a man.
When I look at younger, I'll give you an example.
I was down in Port Melbourne yesterday, just cruising around for a walk, and
these two young teenage boys came down and it's freezing cold, this freezing
cold wind, and they whipped their shirts off, and put some shorts on, and just
jumped off the pier into the freezing cold water, and they got back up, and
I was like, How's the water, boys?
They're like, Oh yeah, it was good, we're gonna go for a swim in the freezing
cold water, and I, I looked at them and I thought, That's the kind of shit
that teenage boys are doing, like...
They're maybe not posting it on social media, but there's a
lot of rites of passage stuff that you understand as a man.
That I think is probably still happening, but it might not just be happening in the
gaze of a 50 year old feminist, right?
Ali: Yes, it's possible, but like, I mean, they sort of, they did touch on,
Oh, men are still the beneficiaries of the patriarchy while they're
simultaneously also victims of it.
So they do have a certain amount of privilege.
Like you said, it's the world's tiniest violin.
How can you feel sorry for, you know, People who are benefiting from this
system, but they're also simultaneously acknowledging that there are parts of
it that are negatively affecting them.
And we need tools to fight those things.
Sam: That's yeah, that's right.
And Caitlin's not just making, I mean, look, my number one criticism of the
book, um, not having read it, but just based on what she's saying that the
central element of the thesis is the critique is operating at the level of
discourse, mainly, but she does quote statistics about how men and boys, um,
fare more poorly in certain areas and the statistics are like quite Persuasive,
when you set them out a certain way, and I'm not saying I doubt that case.
Like, uh,
Joe: university degrees, uh,
Ali: victims of violence,
Sam: suicide rates,
Joe: incarceration, suicide.
Yeah, that's good.
That's concrete stuff.
I think that's, I think we should try and get into a bit of the
meat of that a bit as well.
Sam: And there's another one which she didn't quote because it does
vary a lot between countries, but workforce participation for men
is now lower than it is for women.
Yeah, and that is a very serious...
So
Joe: can we declare victory for feminism at this
Sam: point?
Uh, no, because, yeah, but, but
Joe: it's...
Men still tend to control boardrooms.
Yes.
Political positions and control.
The gender pay gap is very real.
Pretty much control all the weapons of mass
Sam: destruction in the world.
This is why I was, I was disappointed that Caitlin mainly focused at...
The level of doing a discourse analysis, and she's basically saying
the discourse has been a bit one sided and it has produced a reactionary
politics, uh, at the level of discourse, and maybe also it's...
Sorry, can
Joe: you define discourse?
I don't really know what you mean.
Okay, so Marxists
Sam: are more interested in economics and who owns what
and class and all that stuff,
and if we do an analysis of, gender in terms of wealth...
What are we going to find, and it's going to vary a lot by age
and by country and the rest of it.
So that's the main thing.
If we're talking seriously about equality, that's the stuff a Marxist would tend
to say we should be looking at, and we should be looking at life expectancy,
and we should be looking at physical, concrete measures, discourse analysis
is looking at what people are saying.
And so in cultural studies at uni, I learned how to do discourse analysis.
I did a literature major, so I learned how to analyze books for their ideological
and artistic content, and then criticize that according to various criteria.
And in cultural studies I learned things like psychoanalysis, and how
to talk about architecture, and space, and gender, and how to talk about
relations of power within discourse.
But then in anthropology I learned...
more bread and butter stuff as well, like economics and family systems.
And so I learned a whole bunch of tools of analysis.
So I'm at a bit of an advantage relative to Caitlyn Moran, who's I mean, she's
a professional comedian and writer.
Yeah.
Um, and she's, she dropped outta school
Ali: at like 13 to, I wrote a novel and then went working for, uh, that's right.
Nme, like, yeah.
She, yeah.
Yeah.
She,
Sam: so I would write writer, I would write a slightly different book,
but I, I still think her book's a reasonable contribution to make.
And she's come at it from a very personal angle, which is just to
notice that the way boys and girls are talked about is so very different.
And I think that is a useful unit of analysis.
The discourse on gender is very visible and audible at the moment.
So that's a good place to start.
But it's possible to lose track of a couple of things, which is some of the
advantage that some men still greatly possess, but a growing number...
An increasingly large cohort of men that are economically disadvantaged, and so
that's getting lost in the conversation.
And so, yes, there are still more men in the top, but it's a curve.
The way that the highest advantage and highest disadvantage is distributed
on a number of measures, including income, wealth, and career performance
and educational performance and just raw intellect, you get more men in
the high end and more men in the low end, and the curve for, women.
Quote unquote is a bit flatter.
So basically it's got a higher middle.
Yeah, but in pure
Joe: economic terms there is a gender pay gap still, right?
Yes.
In most countries.
Sam: Yes, but you have to break it down by occupation.
And yeah, like so it gets incredibly complex.
Joe: Why?
Why can't you just give me a simple number?
Sam: Because it's not illustrative of what's going on in every workplace.
I just want
Joe: simple numbers, Sam.
Well, the problem
Ali: is, like, that you talk about careers that women have traditionally
gravitated towards and those being underpaid industries, which
Sam: skews the data.
Or, women enter an industry...
And then pay rates within that industry decline.
Ali: Or they take time out from work to have babies so that they pay stalls.
Or they work part time to be a caregiver.
But when
Sam: we talk about the gender pay gap, we have to include
a couple of invisible things.
Capitalism only, cares about money, right?
And we only measure things in relation to money.
And so, what happens when...
You fail to acknowledge the growing number of men that are not making
it into the workforce at all.
So then that puts the gender pay gap in a slightly different light.
So if you bring the men that are earning zero money into the
equation, how does it change?
And obviously you'd have to bring the women that are earning zero
money into the equation as well.
And now in Australia, that's going to be different to India.
And that's going to be different to South America.
So the global picture is going to end up being very, very complicated.
So what inevitably happens is the media class full of white middle
class people for the most part tend to focus on what is visible to them.
And it's, they're going to leave out the economic side.
Which is
Joe: basically what's on Twitter,
Sam: what's on Instagram, what's on Twitter, what's
Joe: in the papers.
Okay.
So can we agree?
I was being facetious before.
But feminism...
is, has, still has gains to make and it's an unstoppable force.
Barbie just grossed a million dollars, like, Ali and her all their mates are
bigging each other up and they got each other's backs, like, I'm a bit terrified
about my teenage daughter and her and her relationships and whether they have each
other's backs and the stats would say they don't and they're undermining each other
in this horrible depression and blah blah blah, but the stats go this way and that.
Whatever, but the vibe, and I think what Catlin is talking about is basically just
the vibe, you would call it the discourse.
The vibe is that boys and men, like I said, by the end of the discussion,
it's like, aren't men quaint?
There was a degree
Ali: of that.
There was a little bit of that.
But I, I, like, she primarily came from, because she is a feminist
writer and had written how to be a woman and how to be a that.
Yeah.
And so, you know, and when she was going on tours for her book tours and
stuff and realizing, you know, when she was talking not just at girls
schools and in front of women, but like in front of boys as well, that,
yeah, there was this discourse where.
You know, what about boys?
And that's how it's come about.
So but...
She's responding
Sam: to the response.
Joe: Yeah.
Basically.
I think it's, there's some onus on people, me and Sam's age, actually, to
provide an alternative that's not Andrew
Sam: Tate.
No, it's really true, Jo.
And I've, there's a dad who's reached out to me recently, and he said...
I really feel like people like you and me need to start posting videos on YouTube,
like not just to make money, like not to do that at all as a public service,
like who's my son going to look up to?
Yeah.
And like, it can't come from me.
Like I need you to say something on there that I can say here, watch what Sam has
to say about all this And he's concerned about the messages they're picking up
and the lack of alternative voices.
Ali: Well, that's the thing, yeah, like it's a bit of a vacuum at the moment and
like that's where these, yeah, the Taits and Jordan Petersons are all stepping
in and rather than having, yeah, like really visible, positive, Pictures of
masculinity and what that can look like.
Joe: Yeah, I think it becomes about what's forbidden too.
Yes.
Because you're always going to want to rebel.
Yes.
So, I'll tell you my little Jordan Peterson story.
Maybe five or six years ago, and Sam would say, remember that I am
economically fragile, paying child support, like a couple of, you
know, like I'm kind of on the edge all the time of financial disaster.
Sam: Yeah, no, you're very much in the precarious.
Joe: Plus, I'm a straight white guy, pretty straight down the line, standard
issue, straight white guy, right?
So just remember that as context, and then a guy who you are
Sam: prime candidate for, uh, masculinist, fascist discourse.
Sure, just setting up the
Joe: context, but like, prime candidate for some of this alt right stuff, right?
Very much.
Even though I was raised very strict socialist, hard left.
Sam: Well who's, who do you think is voting for, what's her name in France?
It's all the old union dudes that have all gotten
Joe: shafted by Macron.
this story can be illustrative of how this stuff maybe works in a
slightly older demographic than teams.
Marine Le Pen, yeah.
Because I've never seen an Andrew Tate video, I really don't want
to be forced to go and watch one.
I've read a little bit about
Sam: it.
No, don't pollute your brain with that,
Joe: seriously.
I don't, I don't really want to know, like I don't...
It's yuck.
hate women, and I don't want to...
You know, say women are responsible for rape.
So that stuff's just way out of bounds and I'm not interested.
It sounds upsetting that teenage boys seem to be interested, but what
I'm trying to explain is maybe where some of this reaction comes from and
this wanting to transgress, right?
Yeah, sure.
So this actor guy I work with in the film industry, he...
Said to me this is before Jordan Peterson was really very famous.
He just had his book out 12 rules for life He said I've been reading this guy.
I found him really helpful for my life And he's someone again straight
white guy who was working with me as just a crew guy But probably ideally
wanted to be a famous actor, right?
So probably a bit frustrated in life himself and he since and I didn't know who
he was and I just started reading his book and And the book, if you ever read it, is
pretty uncontroversial, really, like, it's
Sam: Yeah, he's not getting stuck into women.
Joe: It's just like, make your bed.
I saw it described as, like, advice to mum.
That's right, stand up straight.
Yeah.
Put your shoulders back, make your bed, there's other stuff in there, but it's,
there's nothing too alarming in there.
Then I could jump on my GripChat with my old friends from, um...
I've had since, you know, undergrad, uni days and I said I started reading this
Jordan Peterson book and straight away one of them just attacks me like viciously
like that's sexist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and I'm like It's actually not.
And then what happens is it drives me to be like, hang on, hang on, what
the fuck, I can't read a book now?
There's a book I can't
Sam: read?
Also, they haven't, they haven't read it at that point.
They have
Joe: no idea, like, they have no idea what
Ali: they're responding to the other
Joe: stuff that he's all these...
These things.
Sam: But they're also responding to a genuine alarm and like a
growing number of reports of like him doing these sellout live shows
like fairly early after the book.
Yeah, and after that, whatever, in the And the audience at his shows were not.
It wasn't entirely men at first.
There were loads of women who were on board with the message and were actually
recommending the book to their sons and, you know, male colleagues and so on.
Joe: Yeah, because if you go on, at that point, if you went onto YouTube,
you go back and watch his, his lectures on psychology, they're brilliant.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's like, it's like 200 hours on YouTube of him talking
about, PRJ and, and all that.
That's right.
Like the history of psychology.
He wasn't that shit.
And in a way that kind of...
Hurts your brain as it opens it up.
It's really good shit.
Right?
And then he, he got, he became, as you've talked about before,
he started to become what his audience seemed to want him to be.
He started
Sam: responding to part of the largest
Joe: part of his, but that was a turning point in my life where I
was like, oh shit, what do I do?
Do I stop reading this book?
And I, instead, I thought, well, fuck you.
Like fuck, you should telling me not to read this.
Because I was somewhat looking, my dad had been dead for 20 years, I
didn't have anyone telling me how to be a man, and Jordan Peterson...
Is mostly writing for men saying this is how you be a man and it gets mocked
with like make your bed and throw your shoulders back and walk tall.
You know what's a good thing to do?
Make your bed, throw your shoulders back, walk tall.
Like that's actually really good advice.
And for sure.
If you haven't cleaned your room in six months, clean your fucking room.
Have some self
Sam: respect.
Have some self respect, yeah.
Take responsibility.
Joe: The problem, Sam, of course, is you take...
Uh, have some self respect a bit further and it's like become a fascist, right?
And you only have to turn the knob a little
Ali: bit.
So, like, my psychologist would say, like, that even the worst people
sometimes are capable of good things.
And...
The thing is, we're so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but
he, yeah, he can still have a few good and, like I said, practical ideas
that, you know, people will see value in and actually find really helpful.
But it's also worth acknowledging that all these other things that he said, like
catering to this particular demographic or this, you know, subsection of his
audience, that Yeah, have some deeply problematic views around women, and
that's, and like, yes, some people actually have quite dangerous ideas
around women, and that's, you know, obviously more like the Andrew Tate's.
Joe: Yeah, and there's been like incel terrorists
Sam: and stuff, right?
Yeah, so obviously some of, yeah, that's right, this is all unfolding, we have
to remember, this is all unfolding in the context of, you know, yeah, the
extremist incel, you know, inciting each other to commit violence and so
on, so we have to keep all that in mind, that of a kind of early stage.
terrorist movement and that's happening alongside a number of other sort of very
major debates including the definition of gender and you know all of that stuff
so the general fear and uncertainty and a flux going on in the discourse as well
as in legislation and you know of course marriage legislation and also it's a
whole pot of stuff that's all going on at the same time and Peterson comes into
the middle of that but also Obviously, some of his audience were looking for,
including women, who read his books early on with, and weren't alarmed, necessarily,
um, were looking for something that was missing in the popular market.
Now, you can find decent books about how to navigate world as a...
Guy, as a person with a penis, right?
they've been around for a long time, but this was the one that captured the
imagination of a lot of people, and clearly some of the people who read it
just needed a little bit of a pick me up.
And some of the other people who read it...
need a lot of therapy and have deep seated resentment towards essentially towards
their mother and towards women at large based on a sense of powerlessness, right?
So this takes us back to Caitlin Moran.
And that's what she's saying, that a lot of these boys are feeling powerless
and they're feeling despised even.
And I couldn't put my finger on, so, so Joe...
But
Joe: that's why it's back on us, Sam, because it's the condescending
place that Mia and Kaitlyn are coming from doesn't help.
It doesn't help boys.
There's, there's nothing for a 15 year old boy really in that podcast.
Oh no, see, I'll...
Whereas, whereas we have a chance as men to actually be
like, well, like, we like women.
We're attracted to women.
We're friends with women.
Okay.
We sleep with women.
We have children with women.
This is how we approach respecting women, and this is how we approach being a man.
Now, we're not getting it right all the time, of course, but I think there is...
Ali: There's still a place, though, for women to raise the issue, as
far as, in the context not just of, yeah, being the partners, but also
like the mothers of these boys.
I think it's, you know, they're well within their rights to say...
You know, these are people we care about that we're, and
Joe: I mean, these are feminists who are actually worrying about
the problem of men and boys.
I would put it to you that most feminists aren't very concerned with
the problems of men and boys at all.
And Caitlyn certainly has had a lot of the end.
Aww.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, look, there were, there were elements of the, look,
elements of the, I think, I've got some stylistic critique, as does, um, Ali.
Yeah, listen,
Joe: I mean, let's look at, most people want...
Listen to that podcast.
So it's the ideas we
Sam: need to focus on.
I'll give them both a pass on this conversation because despite like a couple
of little gripes I have, the essential thesis is like we can uphold that and
we can declare it to be somewhat useful.
And I think also I think it's absolutely critical that this opening salvo in what
will be a long ongoing conversation that was already happening in an unhealthy
way, what Caitlin Moran is saying.
Let's continue the conversation in a healthier way, and I absolutely
welcome that with both arms.
And it's essential that it comes from a woman who has such a strong track record,
promoting the interests of women and girls, to now be publishing this book.
And it has been viewed as a betrayal by some, some people
have called it a cynical...
Sell out and you know, she's gonna, she's gonna immediately tack right and
turn into some kind of guru or whatever.
I don't believe any of that.
She's just speaking with
Joe: It's not even left right.
It's this No.
Like you said, it's just cultural what's on Twitter.
It's not even left right.
It's just like, what's the vibe?
What's in the culture?
She even says
Sam: it in the podcast, there are some easy things we can do.
Well, she talks about role models, right?
She says, we don't even, she even says, we don't even have
to do this through politics.
We can just do this through culture.
And that was very, very revealing.
This is not a radical platform at all.
They are just suggesting a slight change to the discourse.
They don't want to actually do anything more
Joe: radical than that.
Like, if I, I had to think about this, like, what are the male role
models now, if I wanted to give.
A 15 year old boy, a male role model.
I would probably actually point to someone like Pat Cummins, captain of the
Australian Test cricket team, not only because he's an amazing cricketer and a
handsome blue eyed boy, but he's also very like outspoken on climate change, he's
Ali: Yeah, but what about, yeah, like as Sam said, the boys who have
Joe: absolutely no interest in Sure, but what about the boys who do play sport?
Sam: Or David, or David Pocock for that matter.
But, but
Joe: hang on, doing a bit of what they did, what about
the boys who do like cricket?
Can they have role models?
Of course.
Then I thought about who is Sam's role models, for example, and
the one person you've mentioned to me actually is Bill Burr.
And I meet a lot of older guys who really look up to Bill Burr because the
work he's been doing is like looking at some of the contradictions of feminism
and it's like alright you gotta put up with all this stuff guys because
that's where we're at and it's bullshit and women will get away with all this
stuff because men want to fuck them and let's acknowledge that and there's some
of those risque conversations right?
Yeah.
I don't know if I look up to Bill Burr, but I, like, who would you say are your
role models, or who would you be pointing your son in the direction of in five years
Sam: time?
So I haven't been listening to Bill for a few years now, but I'll say that he's
very, very good on, he's got a lot of female listeners, his shows are half half,
he's got listeners from every demographic basically, and he does well in so called
red states and so called blue states, that's one of the things I like about him.
And He really triangulates a lot of stuff.
To me, he's a bellwether.
He's very good on the contradictions of capitalism.
He's very good on the contradictions of basically good
old fashioned American bullshit.
Everyone's got opportunity.
He's like, he's very good on critiquing the banks and Wall Street.
He's very good.
on the contradictions of the current gender discourse.
Yeah, he has
Ali: a good nuance, it's a nuanced take, which is
Sam: rare.
And basically he upsets white middle class women, and black women applaud him, so...
I like that.
Now, I'll say, I hate to
Joe: see you happy, Sam, but I hate it when you got something
that's just your own thing.
That's right.
But the thing that Bill really, I hate it when you have a
Sam: podcast, they hate it when you've got a thing that you're just enjoying
doing and it's nothing to do with them.
Yeah, that's right.
Um, so Bill,
Joe: Bill, I can't say that.
No, Bill can say that.
I'd be
Sam: scared to say that.
But if I had a wife, you know, that's true.
That's true.
And you should be, but he, but he makes a point.
He makes a lot of good points.
Uh, and he acknowledges the failings that men have.
Right.
But the best thing on his podcast was the agony art section he does on
the, on the Thursday show, I think, where he'll answer an email, uh, or
maybe even a few from women that are in pain, from men that are in pain.
And he just, Oh, I'm feeling I'm a little choked up just remembering
some of the stories and handling them with great sensitivity and
balance and like compassion and, but also firmness and calling men
and women out on their nonsense.
And they're basically, you could say that he operates quite well as a.
sort of pop as a therapist really, like calling people out on their
limiting beliefs and the things that are causing them to get stuck in anger
and that's, and, and in victimhood.
And so he's really good at that stuff.
So what he helped me with was a couple of things moving away from booze slowly.
And the other thing he helped me with was, just accepting that in modern marriage.
It is a bit uneven and strange in all kinds of ways and that there's, there's
give and there's take and it doesn't always make sense and you're just
gonna have to, you know, and he gives countless examples of like, his wife
will just fling him errands without a second thought and he flings her an
errand one day and she's like, excuse me?
Yeah, yeah.
He just does, like one.
Yeah.
And he said, and you know, I make Nia a sandwich like every day,
like I do the cooking and cleaning because it's beneath her pay grade.
But hey, she's doing a lot of other great stuff.
And then one day she made me a sandwich and I realized it had been two years
since she made a sandwich and I sat there and I just cried like a baby.
Joe: Yeah, and I think that's actually a much more interesting discussion
than the one they were having on that podcast because it actually
puts women in the frame a little bit like, are you guys maybe getting
some of this a little bit wrong?
God, you can't say that because women are fucking perfect.
Sam: That's right.
Well, and so I think that there's a, there's a, I should
Joe: probably let Ali speak.
Ali: Yeah, yeah,
Sam: yeah.
Well, there's, I think there's a patronizing.
He has
Joe: that joke about like, I make all these mistakes,
but clearly my wife is just.
Preserved, you know, behind glass as the perfect human
who never gets anything wrong.
And yeah, God, that I can relate to that from having partners.
It's like, what's this double standard here where
Ali: I get pummeled for everything I get wrong.
Putting women up on a pedestal and then being patriarchy, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Because we're imperfect creatures.
We're all imperfect to be imperfect is human.
Yeah, we don't get it right all the time.
Sometimes women and, you know, even like watching, you know, the news
this week and watching some really famous women who've utterly fucked up.
And...
Are you talking about Lizzo?
Yeah.
And it's...
Did she do it?
I don't know.
But it's, it's, it's, that's, it'd be heartbreaking if she did.
And, but that, but that's the thing.
You see, like, yeah, people make mistakes and, and being
perfect and similarly with men.
And I just, yeah, we, we...
It's actually finding that sweet spot of being able to call, gently call
each other out on that, but also within the context of why are we doing that?
Why, you know, what can we do better?
Joe: So you don't want to be on a pedestal?
Come on, you love it up there.
I've never been on one, I don't even know what the views like.
No, you know
Ali: what, it's actually, it's exhausting.
When someone's got this like, perception of you that's, you know,
a projection of their fantasy, and it is absolutely impossible to
live up to, and It might feel nice
Sam: here and there, but ultimately it gets you on the back end.
It
Ali: absolutely does.
And so there's no room to make a mistake.
There's no room to, to fuck up and yeah, like I said, we all fuck up and I've
certainly been in that position before.
And you
Sam: better keep up with the hair removal if you want to keep up
Ali: with the goddess thing.
Like, you know, and there's like, speaking about the Barbie, like, you know, that,
um, America Ferrera's, uh, you know, monologue, which has got, you know, which,
you know, it's talking about, you know.
All of the things we're expected to be all the time and being on
that pedestal is actually really fucking hard and exhausting.
Yes.
Yeah.
Joe: We'll save that for our Barbie episode.
Once Sam does, I think we will genuinely do a Barbie episode because I think
I actually need to re watch that film because what I need you to woman
splain to me, Ali, is how do I suffer or not benefit from the patriarchy?
Because I just thought as a straight white guy, it was a pretty square deal
and, uh, I was benefiting and I just had to make some noises about, oh, I
feel terrible about this, but yes, I'll take that job, or yes, I'll take that
pay rate, or, you know, I just had to play along with like, oh yeah, it is
terrible, um, I hope you fix it one day, meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage
of it, right, but you're telling me that I suffer as a man from the patriarchy,
and Barbie seemed to be basically, let's not get sidetracked with Barbie
just yet, but it did seem to be a film about how men suffer in the patriarchy.
Yeah.
And I thought, I still don't understand.
I would not be able to define for you what the patriarchy is.
and I certainly wouldn't be able to explain what is negative
about it for me as a, as a man.
Sam: Well, I mean, there's one way of looking at it, which is that it's a
relatively small number of men owning all the stuff and defining the conditions
in which the rest of us spend our lives.
So,
Ali: Ali?
Yeah, no, it's, it's a, yeah, very concise definition, yeah.
Sam: And there are some women that are members of the patriarchy.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like Gina Reinhardt.
Joe: Yeah.
Hang on, women can be members of the patriarchy?
Ali: Absolutely.
They can benefit
Joe: from it.
becomes, the concept breaks down when you tell me a woman can
be a part of the patriarchy.
Because then I don't have a concept of what the patriarchy is.
Basically,
Sam: well this is Marxist feminism.
Joe: What you're describing is uh, like oligarchy, yes.
Sam: Capitalism.
This is a class based analysis.
Fundamentally.
Joe: Patriarchy is class based, isn't it gender based?
I mean, come on.
Ali: But you can't, you can't have it without class, without
Joe: race, those things do need to be the only person listening
to this who doesn't understand exactly what is meant by patriarchy.
Look, we
Sam: have to do Feminism 101 here, but like, it, I do have, like, some ability
to talk about it because I've done some of the reading, but ... The second wave
of feminism was basically proposing a class based position for women as a whole.
So it was just a simple kind of innovation there to just say women
as a whole are like a second class and, you know, what follows from
that and the politics that followed.
And so a lot of useful things were accomplished through that analysis.
So now what Caitlin Moran is...
Joe: What wave of feminism are we up to now?
Sam: 3, 3.
5, whatever.
Joe: Right.
Yeah.
And you've read your feminist theory too, Ali?
Yeah.
And is it common amongst you and your friends to have a decent
theoretical understanding of feminism or some of them are just more vibe?
Ali: Uh, I think there's a mix, a mix.
Yeah.
But no, definitely, you know, I'd say women are, well, within
my, you know, the context of my friends, pretty across it, yeah.
Joe: So what's the project right now?
What's the priority for feminism?
Is it pay still, or is it education, or is it cultural domination, or getting hold
Ali: of the mental load, it's the mental load, and we were going to talk
about that as another topic, but the exhaustion of being, you know, a woman.
Again, similarly, like being on that pedestal, the expectation
that you have to have it all, do it all, and have it all without, yeah.
Without the capacity or the supports to be able to actually...
Joe: And what happens if you just went on strike from the mental load?
Well, everything, well, it'd
Ali: be like in, was it in Iceland?
It all just fell apart and so you'd have some meaningful changes.
Um, yeah.
Sam: Because, because the ultimate, the original gender pay gap was
the unpaid work women do, right?
And so we, we...
. This is, this is what capitalism does.
So that's when, that's when you said we, it keeps railroad
us in to certain narrow areas
Joe: of debate that's distract.
When, when we all started doing the dishes and the washing, we
all became equally oppressed.
Yes.
Sam: So, no, it's, so it wasn't really a victory, was it?
Yes.
Well, that's right to, well, to the, to the extent, to the extent that,
let's say to people that happened to be a heterosexual xx and XY with,
you know, uh, kids and jobs, right?
They're both in employment, so they're both.
You know, putting up with that and all the disadvantages that come with that,
essentially, like, Sure, you get a pay packet, but you need two of them to
afford what one pay packet could buy you a generation ago, so whoop dee fucking do.
Now you've got two busy, tired people with low libido and High cognitive burden,
and let's say they even managed to split the house, the domestic work between them
evenly somehow, which is a difficult task.
Well now you've just got two miserable people.
Well done capitalism.
Ali: Well done.
And, and, and, but I suppose like we're still very much where this is.
The difference is that, that, that split is still not, and there's a
lot of evidence to support that there is not, that split is not equal.
But for a variety
Joe: of reasons, you get your two weeks in Bali though, where someone
else does all the housework and you get along really well for that.
Sam: It's not, that's just it.
It's a window into how life could be.
What's really needed is not two weeks in Bali with third world slaves.
What's needed is.
An easier life on average and a better work life balance.
We need a three day, four day working week.
Joe: I wanted to say Sam,
Sam: what could benefit most women is what could benefit most
men, like it's as simple as that.
Joe: I think we'll wrap it up soon, but um, I wanted to say something
you said to me a while ago, cause you and I, as soon as you say the word
Marxist, I kind of tune out cause I feel like you're trapped in the 19th
century and it's like not that relevant.
I'm a pretty retro dude.
But something you said a while ago is that to understand the world you
decide to understand economic history.
Yes.
And then I took that into my personal life and I looked around and I, I
thought about my life and I thought what really defines the decisions I make?
And it's, and it's economics.
Yes, it does.
And then I can extrapolate that out to the whole world, and suddenly, I do
have a better understanding, because I think I've always been a discourse,
cultural kind of guy, you know, like, I went to film school too, and learned
how to dissect films using different ideologies and methodologies and whatever,
turns out it wasn't that good a way to understand the actual real world.
So I think that, I'm going to say on the record, I think I agree with you,
and I think that I need to understand my own economics more, and understand
the pressures that I'm under, because then I'll understand culturally
why I'm drawn to a Jordan Peterson.
Yes.
Whereas if, instead of going to art school, I'd go on to law school, when
I was now on a hundred and fifty grand a year, I might be more drawn to, I
don't know, Read the Guardian, and think about, the voice referendum more, right?
But instead I'm kind of stressed, and trying to...
Make a living, and I have less time and capacity for things that I don't see as...
Super essential, right?
I'm not saying that about The Voice, by the way, it's just an
example of a middle class issue.
Sam: The highest support for it is among the upper middle class.
Well, it's
Joe: that kind of Guardian Saturday paper kind of thing, right?
It is.
And I, surprisingly to myself, but I have ended up not that.
We're all voting yes, by the way.
Yeah, I'm voting yes, of course.
Like, God, we fucked up.
Whatever we can do to make it better.
It's pretty simple, but, I'm not in that discourse anymore, uh, I'm very
much a working class person, and,
Sam: yeah, it's about, I'm absolutely frothing my dacks right now, but anyway.
About what?
Oh, just everything I'm hearing, yeah, anyway.
But
Joe: it's like So, to tie it back into that podcast we all listened to and
that book and stuff, I think I'm going to agree with you that it probably
needs to focus more on the political, the concrete and looking at that stuff
like, are there too many men in jail?
Are there too many men committing suicide?
Are there too many unemployed men?
And then
Sam: you don't stop there.
What you do is you go, are there too many people in prison?
Why are there so many people in prison?
Why do we have prisons?
Yeah, but
Joe: if you go too far,
Sam: then it becomes too abstract.
I'm not saying we can ever do without, like, some form of incarceration
will probably be necessary sadly, but the systems of genuine oppression
that are being built up currently around the world are no joke.
Joe: So I'm going to say, I've decided from being somewhat conservative, from
being a conservative centrist, I think.
My economic circumstances lead me to having to be open to more radical...
Yes.
Sam: Otherwise it's fascism, bro.
I'm telling you like, that's it.
We either make big changes and create more justice or we're going to get fascism.
It's as simple as that.
Joe: As will, I think the changes that come about with climate change, where
it's like, are they going to go and force me to work when it's 43 degrees?
Fucking oath they are.
And in the film industry, the answer will be yes.
In the building industry, no, they knock off at 35 degrees
because they have a union.
So like climate change comes back to that stuff as well.
as well, actually.
So it's, it's, it's been interesting spending over a year in this dialogue
with you, Sam, and with you, Ali.
And it's like, for as much as I get wrong, the one thing I, I have a good
ability to do is open, open my mind again.
Yeah.
And take
Sam: on stuff.
But I also think you're an excellent weather vane.
Like you do point.
Where the winds are blowing like I see it.
Well, I'm
Joe: glad I didn't back down on exploring Jordan Peterson And then I
Jordan Peterson himself went somewhat off the rails Yeah, cool completely
ended up in a coma in Russia trying to get over a benzo addiction Well, yeah,
Sam: but but he got destroyed by the algorithm
Joe: He did.
Yeah, he did.
And if he had a stuck to doing his academic psychology stuff on YouTube
it would, he would have been making a small but positive contribution to the
world instead he became a nasty right winger and so in that sense my friend
who warned me off him was right but my reaction I'm glad I had that reaction
and stuck to my intellectual guns and be like no I'm going to explore this
you and the question that's unanswered for me and you, more than for Ali, I
think, is how do we either become role models for young men and boys or, uh,
find them some role models, you know?
Sam: Yeah, really fair question.
but you know what I think would be interesting?
Let's hear it from Ali.
What?
Joe: Yeah.
What I want to hear from Ali is, you've got a teenage boy.
When you look around the cultural landscape, who do you see as role models?
Ali: Ooh, I think like when you say sort of gentle masculinity
or sensitive masculinity.
And you know, and if we're talking about like celebrity sort of, you know,
Sam: yeah, I guess it needs to be someone, at least some public
profile, you know, like they
Joe: mentioned Keanu
Ali: Reeves.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, well, that's what she's saying.
Like Keanu Reeves, the Pedro Pascal's like that this, you know, sort of more
gentle, masculinity that I feel like.
Particularly they would still
Joe: throw you around a bit in the bedroom, right?
You still got to have a bit of bulk and a bit of like, no, it's,
Ali: it's not, it's not that it's, it's, it's, it's, it's actually, I
think it's really finding people that you can individually identify with.
And that, I mean, that goes for everybody is being able to have a role
model that, you know, that, that suits the things that you, that you value.
And so, you know, in the context of my son and what I would want for him and.
You know, I would like to see more gay, you know, sensitive, you know,
gentle role models out there to, you know, that he can look up to
Joe: and...
What about someone like a Harry Styles or whatever?
Ali: Oh, he loves Harry Styles.
We all love Harry Styles.
So, so,
Joe: so...
But Harry's a more feminine masculinity...
Sam: No, but Harry's a bit of a...
Blank Cypher.
Really.
Joe: I don't know who he is other than see photos of him.
Exactly.
Ali: Yeah.
No, yeah, no, I think, yeah, but actually having people who like, I
think that's where Pedro Pascal and like the, the fandom around him has
really, particularly after The Last of Us and seeing like the way he speaks.
Isn't it like daddy stuff though?
There's a bit of that, that, that daddy energy, but at the same time,
it's, you know, I mean, that's just more people thirsting after him.
But the, the, the, I think the, the fandom has been created because he
Projects this lovely, sensitive, warm, genuine, you know, sort of what it
is to be a man without all the, the, yeah, the toxic, negative bullshit that
it's actually incredibly appealing.
And that's why a lot of, you know, women and men are just
like, bring on Daddy Pedro.
What about
Joe: outside of, uh, Hollywood actors?
Sam: Well, I was going to say, there's Taika Waititi, um, before he, like...
just if you just hear him talk about like growing up with a single mom and
like stuff like that like he's really like he he's very he's very good on
he's and he's a gentle but also like funny and relatable but i actually
think we need closer to home like yeah um and it's good to start with the
public sphere you know the media sphere
Joe: and it's got to be someone everyone has access to it's going
to be a role model but if we're
Ali: also talking about yeah like people within his life i look at his
dad who is a really excellent example of, you know, what it is to be a man.
And even though they are very different in a lot of ways, like
I think his dad's always really...
Reinforce the message that there is not one way to be a man and whatever you,
that looks like to you, we will support you and love you for what that is.
And I think, his dad is, you know, done an amazing job in that way in, in
embracing the things that, you know, are perceived to be either feminine
or whatever it is, because he has a genuine interest in it and that's okay.
Yeah, his dad's done a really fantastic job in that.
And I think he's also got some really excellent teachers at school,
like some, you know, men in there.
Joe: I'm sensing a huge like dearth of anyone in the public sphere other than a
couple of Hollywood actors or pop stars.
Like, I don't know if there ever was.
You know, like, I probably should never have looked up to Jack Kerouac
if I hadn't been his contemporary, he was an incredibly flawed person, all
the beats were, but when I was 16...
I got handed on the road and read that book and that changed me, you
know, or I have Bob Dylan to this day.
I have a Bob Dylan poster on my wall above my bed and he's like my God.
Yeah.
Those, those sort of people.
Again, incredibly flawed.
I'm sure when it comes to say relationships with women,
but an artist, you know,
Sam: incredible artist.
Also the role models you need change through your life.
Yes.
And so, yeah.
So for me at one point it is Dylan and Kerouac.
Joe: And you can still have Dylan and Kerouac as a 16 year
old now and they probably do.
Sam: Yeah.
And like, it was good to have Ginsberg in the mix because he was like, he
gave me a window into something.
And like, yeah.
And he helped me understand my own sexuality a bit more, but like,
there's, but there's so much beyond just like the radical icons of the
past or the present, moving into my.
So, even in my early thirties, I needed role models that helped
me move my career forward.
A lot of them were actually
Joe: women.
Yeah, and Che Guevara's not that helpful with that.
No, that's right.
But when you're 21 and smoking bongs, and, oh, I had like a Che Guevara
banner from Cuba hung in my window in...
Yeah.
A flat in North Melbourne.
That's right.
That
Ali: is the most Melbourne thing.
It was
Joe: so cool.
It had horses on it.
It was cool.
But like Che Guevara was one, but I didn't know what he really did.
I just knew he was cool and a revolutionary.
I had one really famous cool photo of him and that was enough.
You know, you're not
Sam: super deep at trotting.
But you're sensing an opportunity.
To like, cause you know, Shai,
Joe: Shai Govar is not going to be a politician, it's
not going to be Albo, is it?
No,
Sam: I mean, maybe it is for some blokes, but like, I don't get that feeling.
Joe: Centrists don't become
Sam: icons.
And in this country, it's tended to be cricketers and people like that.
Or Bob Hawke,
Joe: I mean, Bob Hawke.
Bob Hawke.
See, in the 80s you had a Bob Hawke.
You don't have that now.
You have a very beige, yeah, you have a very beige
Sam: elbow doing the same job.
I would say, I would say Max Chan Lamatha, good male role model
in lots of ways from, um, good
old
Joe: Max.
He's not going to get anywhere with a hyphenated name, mate.
Yeah, whatever.
Um,
Sam: and but, you know, fair enough.
But no, there is an opportunity and a responsibility, uh, here, Joe.
So maybe it's something we can look into more.
Uh, but there's a couple of things that I've, not said so far.
So I couldn't quite like I've, I welcome Caitlin's
contribution to the conversation.
I think it's very important.
And I think it's it's going to do a lot of good.
Wait till she hears about ours.
Yeah.
Actually, no, I'll, I'll send this to her.
I'll send this to her.
Joe: She will not listen to it.
Sam: Yeah.
Anyway, you never know.
You never know.
But like the.
She's done a lot of useful stuff already, and there's more to come, obviously, and a
lot of women are going to really continue to look up to her, some are going to feel
disappointed by this, um, but I think a lot of them will come on board eventually.
But I was trying to put my finger on like, I was trying to
put aside all my little gripes.
And go, what's the big thing, the really useful thing here, and I was trying to
find a way to put it in my own words, and it only just came to me last night when I
was doing the dishes, and she's basically saying, I think the core of it is this,
that this new generation of boys coming through, and to some extent older men,
we've ended up giving them the feeling That their feelings don't matter, except
as it relates to the well being of girls
and I would, and I was like, go on, sorry.
Joe: I would say it's almost a feeling of men aren't really wanted.
Sam: Yeah.
And the only time we're going to discuss your feelings is when
they've become a problem for us.
And then I was thinking about this and I was like, Oh, this is the inverse of
the emotional regime that was in place.
A hundred years ago, like that's what she's describing.
Women's feelings didn't matter except as they related to the prerogatives,
well being and desires of men.
Oh man.
Joe: Wait till you see Barbie.
It's going to blow your mind.
Sam: And women's feelings, if they went against, if they got in the way
of what men wanted, hysterectomy.
If they were in line with what men wanted, great, but irrelevant,
essentially, at that point.
And if they don't affect what men want either way, then not worth discussing.
But I think maybe that's where we've ended up a little bit in the,
maybe in the middle class discourse.
It might be different in the outer suburbs or in certain communities.
In certain religious communities in particular, it might be very different.
Uh, and boys might still be enormously privileged.
Um, but I think she's right that what we're, the message...
The younger boys are getting, your feelings only matter when
they cause problems for women, and I think that's not going to
Ali: work.
And so, yeah, the, the issue is like, yeah, if your feelings don't matter also
within the context of the patriarchy, that it's not okay to express your
feelings if you are having them.
It's not okay.
Yeah.
So it's a
Sam: double edged...
They're your problem and you're alone to deal with them.
And where does that lead?
Ali: Gravitating towards Andrew Tate's and that sort of stuff, because
yeah, you can't express your feelings because of the patriarchy, but also,
yeah, your feelings don't matter
Sam: because of the patriarchy.
That's right.
Or you go, or you externalize them and put them onto others
and seek to make them victims.
And that's obviously not okay.
And so, but the second thing that is like, Caitlin and Mia are not.
I'm not at all interested in where I would like to take the conversation, I
don't think, which is, I, I'm, and Ali and I may be closer to a, an agreement on
this, I want it to be that we don't need, boys don't need to go looking for male
role models, because anyone Who offers the right things would be a suitable role
model and like I and same for girls Yes, and I would like to think that I can be
a role model because I've got Female students and I think that I have served
as a role model and I think really cards on the table I want a post class, post
gender society, post race, all of that, like, I want to move past all of this.
I think that identity is the number one thing that keeps
us trapped within ideology.
And that, I think ideology operates on the level of feeling and sensation and ego
Joe: and identity.
And zooming right out, the reality is that we're loving awareness and
the illusion is that we're separate.
Different
Sam: individuals and that illusion creates so much harm.
Joe: And yeah.
And the discourse, the hyper identitarian discourse that took over the progressive
left is focus on race, gender, and
Sam: stuff.
And it's created a lot of perverse outcomes.
Joe: Like it created this, it's reinforced the illusion that we're separate
individuals, uh, at war with each other.
That's right.
And it's not true.
Like we're actually just one.
It's a whole thing happening at one time.
Suffering, and suffering a lot, under the illusion of being alone,
separate, vulnerable, and at war with each other based on skin, gender,
class, all of that stuff, right?
So that's the big Zoom ride out.
But yeah, I think that's probably a good place to leave it.
Ali, do you have anything more to say on, uh...
Are the blokes okay?
Ali: Oh look, I, I think they are and they aren't.
Like, we, but there's a lot we can, yeah, like a long way to go.
Sam: Some of them are doing far too well for themselves.
Yes.
And some of them are in absolute dire straits.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Like, and
Ali: that's just not okay.
No, and we, and we all need to, we all need tools to, to dismantle the
Sam: patriarchy.
That's right.
We all do.
Joe: Alright, well, I'm looking forward to our Barbie episode where...
Ali, you can woman splain the patriarchy to me at greater length.
And Sam, can Sam splain it to me?
Sam: No, no, no.
In the Barbie EP, I'll be given a time quota.
And Ali will be given a minimum time quota.
Joe: Yeah.
It's a funny thing, because it's not a feigned ignorance.
Like, I have some, not emotional, I struggle with the emotions,
I'm working on that in therapy.
But, I have some cognitive horsepower.
But then there's some things that I come across, like the patriarchy,
which I read and I talk to people and I try and understand it.
It just doesn't get in, and I don't then walk out.
I don't walk out onto the street in Thornbury and see
the patriarchy everywhere.
I don't.
I just see something like what I've always seen.
That's the point though.
The lens doesn't ever drop into place.
That's why
Sam: it's so insidious.
Yeah, so it's operations are
Joe: invisible.
I think it doesn't have to be a feigned ignorance.
I think it's a good discussion because you two get it and I don't.
So I think hopefully for the listeners, it can be something we come back to.
Um, because what I'm not questioning is that everyone else is right
and they, they know what it is.
I'm just saying, I don't fucking know what it is.
And I only ever knew.
Enough to think that it benefited me, but where I've ended it up, quite
economically vulnerable and Yes, kind of unhappy in areas of my life.
It's like some of this is because I don't understand the patriarchy Oh, I certainly
don't understand the pitfalls of it.
You know,
Sam: we're operating in well This is what Gramsci would call false consciousness
where you're like you know, you're like the worker that doesn't realize you're
underpaid And you're like the bloke who doesn't realize that You've got this
tiny, you've got this like, little bit of pointless privilege, but look at the dis
privilege that, like, that comes with it, that you're ignoring, and that the, the
same system that's like keeping down your wife or partner is At least indirectly, if
not directly, also keeping you down as a
Joe: consequence.
And when I look at the line, it's like my grandfather mercilessly beat my father.
My father mercilessly belittled me instead of beating me.
But with my daughters, I wouldn't belittle or beat them.
And that's what's happened.
That's how we're getting better.
Yeah.
Well, as a society, you, I mean,
Sam: there, there is good news here that the patriarchy does
not have the stranglehold at
Joe: once.
Yeah.
And I agree with you.
I wanna kind of be role, I'm terrified for my teenage daughters just 'cause of
the stats around self-harm and, and yeah.
That's not great depression.
Yeah.
So I want to try and be a role model for them too.
But the best I can come up with is to be a pretty stable,
steady, calm, sober presence.
Big time.
Right.
Big time.
Um, but, so actually my work won't be really with.
Boys and young men my work's gonna be with you with girls and young women
because that's what I've got That's your primary unless I turn around and become
a teacher one day I'm not gonna be doing a lot of that or you know Volunteer
at a junior cricket club or something which I could do so you'd make a great
Sam: teacher.
Joe: Yeah But there's a lot Yeah, I hope Bron who sent us this idea.
Thank you for that, Bron.
Yeah, really, cheers.
We all kind of, sorry if you're a massive Mia fan, we all found
her a bit annoying, but there was a lot of good ideas in there.
Joe has a crush on her though, too, so.
And yeah, Bron, I'd be interested to hear your feedback because, um.
Yeah, Bron's a woman who I think has some really interesting perspectives on this.
Oh, I want
Sam: to know what she thinks about Caitlyn Monroe.
Yeah,
Joe: I think she's an older woman who thinks men have copped it a
bit hard in the last 20 years, even though she's a feminist.
So,
Sam: well, it is, it is often older women who are not, that are no longer
in the thick of it with child rearing and balancing work and all of that.
They tend to be able to see it a little more easily.
Sorry,
Joe: Bron, if I'm putting words in your mouth, but that's always the impression
I got from you was that you have a...
A bit of a sympathetic view of, yeah, yeah.
Ali: I was just going to say, yeah, like when you say in the thick of it,
you know, like the things that the second wave feminists were fighting
for were like, you know, you know, reproductive rights, equal pay, you
know, or being Access to the workplace.
All those sorts of things.
They've fundamentally achieved those things within their lifetime
and it's now these other things.
So, yeah.
Sam: And, of course, the second wave that is still among us would often
be the first to point out that the benefits they managed to win were not
an unalloyed benefit to women after all.
And there were other feminists at the time who were saying, we need to
go way past workforce participation.
We need to go to ownership of the means of production, and there were
people saying that from the beginning.
But we're not going to sneeze on those achievements, but we are going to
say It, you know, gaining workforce participation has ultimately just meant
that now everyone's under the pump.
Yeah.
In a different way to before.
Yeah.
You know, like imagine, I mean, like, but the idea of like Jordan Peterson
and the rest of them, like the idea of women going back to just not.
Viewing that as an option is just like, what the hell?
It's clearly a nonsense.
But the idea that you get, everyone gets to slave their guts out and
barely keep a roof over their heads.
Well, that's just nonsense.
That's also not good.
Yeah.
And yeah, and so I, I, so thank, anyway, thank you to Caitlin
Moran and thank you to Bron.
Yeah.
Thanks
Joe: Bron.
See you next week, guys.
Sam: See ya.
See ya.