Redefining Roles and Relationships with Beyond Equality

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0:46Beyond Equality have been working with boys for over a decade, facilitating workshops with thousands of boys around the world in schools and universities, hosting brave discussions about what it means to be a man today. They disrupt expectations and stereotypes and equipped boys and men with new perspectives, kickstarting the process of community change, personal development and gender equality. It's safe to say there are few more people in the UK that know more about the reality of young boys growing up in the world today. From mental health, the manosphere, isolation, gaming addiction and body image, we are going to explore the complex experience of being a boy today and what educators, teachers and parents can do to help.

1:32So we are so glad to welcome Beyond Equality's Managing Director, Dan Guinness and Director of Facilitation, Ben Hurst. Welcome, fellas. Welcome, welcome, welcome. You have been doing this work for a long time. I remember standing on a train platform many years ago when I started Music Football Fatherhood and coming across the Good Lad Initiative. And we connected that. And this must have been over a decade ago now. You've been doing this work for years. And I know the last couple of months must have been crazy for you. Adolescence has come out. It's changed the national conversation about being a boy.

2:07So I just want to start off with seeing how you are. Like how have the last couple of months been for you? How's your well-being? How's your energy levels? What are your thoughts and feelings? What has life been like in 2025 for you both? Well, I'll jump on this one first, because I've had the luxury of having a couple of weeks holiday in April, which was extremely needed and it put me in a much better place. But I think, you know, when things like this happen, where all of a sudden the national attention just gets focused on a particular issue, and you've been there trying to work on it, trying to get other people involved, you know, slowly but steadily building things up for a decade, it both feels really exciting.

2:45it feels sometimes like there's this pressure of like we need to we need to do everything all at once right now because we're not going to have another chance but then it's also about having a bit of experience and saying well no one's going to fix this problem in the the two weeks that the adolescence conversation is really going to be going we got to think about this a bit longer term we've got to build up a bit slower so I I personally am feeling like I'm shifting into that okay like let's get back to that building on those foundations sort of space which for me is a much better mental health type of position to be in but it was a pretty crazy couple of weeks or crazy couple of months really and I know probably even more so for Ben who was like thrust into the limelight and speaking all sorts of different places in some pretty interesting sort of ways yeah I'm tired bro I'm tired man I am tired of it I mean it's been it's been amazing it's been a great opportunity and I think it's weird because you spend your whole I guess in our case anyway this has been a large chunk of both of our careers at this point so we spent a lot of time like building towards this kind of uh moment and then when the moment finally arrives it's super weird because you're like oh what do you like what do you do now I think in my mind I just was working without the expectation that anything was gonna like people actually ever gonna care and and so it's been like very energizing in lots of ways it's been a real exercise in humility I think actually like for me on a personal level I've found that like I can be more gatekeepy than I thought I was and I'm very like precious about like ideas and ways of communicating things and so that's been an exercise in like um allowing things to kind of like happen outside of my control I think the way that we work here is like we're very focused on like quality assurance and making sure that the messaging is right and the tone is correct and I think especially when you're working with men and boys you only really get one shot you know so you've got to be super careful about like which narratives you're putting out and but that's been like it's been amazing to see it to see it grow and to see it happen and and I think also on a personal level it's been very interesting I feel like it's like re-radicalized me in some ways like I feel like I've like we've been in parliament a lot we've been in parliament a lot I mean we're in parliament before but we've been there a lot in the last couple of months um and so I think yeah it's really instilled in me the role of like activists and the role of activism in society as being the opportunity to like speak truth to power um and so lots of opportunities to like sit in rooms with people who I imagine don't hear no very much you know and that'd be the person in the room that's like that's a bad idea which is incredibly awkward it's a strange dynamic but like it's been cool um and yeah more than anything i think just lots of like parents lots of teachers lots of carers who are very very concerned and so like a really important piece of work to just like reassure people that the fact that they're interested or they're thinking about it means that they're in the right place already and so yeah like a very like exhausting challenging but amazing i got to hosts a premiere for adolescents in the uk and so i was chatting to the cast about what they were doing and that was really cool and i made a video essay for netflix which was also really cool and but like that's even that is like a weird thing because you're trying to distill all of these thoughts you know as you know right like the first time you watch it your brain is like pinging off and so it's like chopping all of that down to 11 minutes from like four episodes four hour long episodes is a tall task but it was um it was a cool experience um and yeah really grateful for for the opportunity to spread this conversation a bit further and that's what we want right is we want everybody to take hold of it for themselves and i'm glad it's that it's you guys in the room right i think sometimes when this happens said the wrong people can be in the room again with the platform i was just happy that it was you know you guys have been given the spotlight you know what you're talking about and you add value in a in a in a sensible reasonable way you know the way adolescence took off was crazy i remember seeing an interview with ashaday i still call him yeah yeah yeah i remember him saying oh it's the biggest thing i've done like the week before it came out and i was thinking okay whatever i like dismissing it kind of thing and then jody we got that email from a journalist at the times and we kind of kind of shared our reflections on on the issues and then literally the next week it's like the whole world changing it's the biggest thing in africa in the seychelles emailing being like what do you think about adolescence i'm thinking you're in a different continent how have you seen it yeah obviously netflix is available worldwide because obviously adolescence was a great a great show what do you think about the plan of showing it in schools though what are your thoughts on that yeah no i mean we've had these conversations a lot and in my mind i think it's just a bit of a you have to be so careful when you answer this question because especially because and now in my mind i know the people behind the the idea and i think the way that i understand it coming about was like they were so the the writers of the show um Stephen Gray included were like having all of this attention and people were like looking to them for solutions I think the show doesn't propose any solutions first of all right it's not like a toolkit or a guide to working with boys or changing challenging masculinities and and so I think they found themselves in this very like pressurized situation where people are like well you've raised all of our awareness now what do we do and they like as you would do in that scenario I think they were just like well why don't we show it to kids and so people took that and ran with it and I can understand how that's like a a good idea for somebody who doesn't necessarily know what to do in the scenario but I think when you really unpack it and like look at the logistics of what's going to need to happen and how that's going to work and like I always feel so bad for teachers I feel so bad for educators because I just I always have this image in my mind of like a geography teacher who really loves geography and like they're super passionate about like rocks and so they went to university and did a degree in geography and now they've ended up like teaching in a school I don't necessarily think they're there because they want to talk to kids about this kind of stuff you know and I think like so often as a society we just palm these responsibilities off onto people who are no like they're not equipped to do it they haven't had the training they're not having the resourcing and so I think it's like yeah like maybe maybe a scenario where something is better than nothing but I think in our work what we've also discovered is sometimes like nothing is better than something when something has no plan.

9:14And so it seems like a lot of pressure. I think there's going to be a lot of teachers in very difficult scenarios. I don't think the show was made for kids. So I guess that's like a point of contention is like how able is a 13 or a 14 year old to like critically engage with this material that's like super nuanced, like so, so nuanced. And I think also I feel for like a lot of the women teachers in schools who maybe are going to be expected to be like facilitating these conversations, having experienced some of this stuff themselves in their own lives and so i just wonder yeah like i think there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen to like buff the plan out and and maybe like a lot of resourcing and toolkits and that kind of stuff but i think yeah it's it's one of those moments where something needed to happen um and that seems to be the thing that we've gone with um i mean i i told kia that i didn't think i didn't think it was a good idea i was like buddy this is not this is not the right the right by kia you're talking about kia yeah yeah mr starmer yeah yeah um and i think yeah it's a it seems like a very quick solution i think that's what we all want right is we want the silver bullet we all want the thing that says if we just do this it will solve the problem and the hard reality is that there is no silver bullets yeah maybe maybe a bit of a silver bullet moment but we will see how it pans out and i think there's hope for some of it to be turned into something that can be quite positive and given the teachers are given the support in the scenarios you know yeah and shout out to the teachers man i mean we're out on friday actually where i live we went to the town and we saw one of my daughter's teachers going into a restaurant and we were just about to go in and we talked to her she said she's having a like a teacher catch-up night they're having a day off we said you know what we're not going to follow you into that restaurant you have your time because you can't be like letting your hair down and then you've got some of the parents and the kidney teacher in the next table.

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11:39This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So the big conversation has been going on around what it means to be a man and what healthy masculinity looks like. It looks like what it feels like. And the reality is masculinity has evolved and is evolving, which is a good thing. But I think there is a lot of confusion about, okay, so what does that mean? How do I show up as a man? And like, how do I relate to work? What does success look like for me? What does it look like for me as a parent, as a carer, as a provider, as a protector? Are those things still valid?

12:11Can they work at the same time or together? I'd be really interested to get your views based on your work, the boys you've spoken to. What do you think healthy masculinity looks like? What does it mean to be a man, a boy today? I mean, this is a question that actually so many young people, so many adults are wanting to talk about now. You've got all these messages coming. You've got, there seems to be this drumming up of this idea that on one side, like men are under attack and we don't know what's going on. And then other people are saying like, actually, you need to be something really different from what your fathers were, from what your uncles were.

12:43So there is this live moment where people are coming with some bigger questions and some confusing questions. I'd say like one of the really core things in our approach is that we would say, I will say, I shouldn't be the one that's defining what you think your identity is about, Elliot, or any other man in this world. I'm not the person who needs to say, here's the three boxes you need to tick. Here's what you need to do. Here's basically how you emulate me or emulate someone else. Instead, what's really important in that space is we're actually helping people to recognize the way that they've been conditioned into various ideas.

13:23And to see when actually some of those ideas some of those expectations some of those those things they think they need to live up to might be massively harming them and harming the people around them you know and then you have this work about well let's actually have some space so that people can figure out who they want to be you know like so often in our society that we just spoke about previously where we're trying to solve things with really quick answers we sort of throw um obviously technology is now ai is going to solve absolutely everything for us. But when's this moment where we actually give people that opportunity to take time and really work through who do they want to be, like do some of that investment in humans and in actually who they are, what their character is, how that shows up for the people around them.

14:13And that then becomes this piece where people need to work out, well, how do my ideas about who I want to be as a person relate to my identity as a man, the sorts of roles I play in my family? How does it relate to other aspects of my identity? How does it sort of change when I'm in different spaces? And with that, actually, when we take a step back from our work, what's really important is giving people those opportunities to actually work through some of the critical conversations about, well, how do I understand and express my emotions you know is that the sort of thing that i'm not doing because i've been told that men can't cry or that i'm not doing because i even though my mates all raise money for movember i don't want to be the one guy who's always asking for help i want to be the guy who's solving other people's problems or or questions about how am i showing up in my family like my wife actually wants to stay home quite a bit and look after our kids but i don't want to just step out of that and go back to this role where I'm at the office all day, every day for the next 15 years?

15:21How can we actually have that as a conversation between us and think about it as being, what are our aptitudes? What are our desires? How are we going to make the balance? In answering all of this, it becomes live questions that are ongoing questions. It's not going to be a simple thing of like, here's one thing or three things you have to do as a man to have masculinity that's healthy and that's good. But it's rather going to be like, here's some competencies that we can build up for you around relations, around relationships, around emotions, around what success is, around how you manage your money, how you manage your time, how you manage your energy, how you look after yourself.

16:01All these so many different things. How can you make sure that that's actually actively getting looked at and men are given that space to think that through and talk to each other and build up for themselves what is like a healthy identity? What is a healthy role that can play? Who should be doing that? Should it be a mix of parents and teachers and people in community groups? Or do you think it really should be focused on the parents and from quite a young age, sitting with their sons and saying, like I sometimes say to my boys, what kind of father do you want to be? Do you want to have children?

16:39And then I say, and what kind of father do you want to be? and they used to look at me like I'd lost my mind and my I said to my eldest recently do you want children and he said I'll let the wife decide but you know I her body her choice yeah yeah I like that it's good it's good but I I try and ask them these provocative questions to like get them thinking but I you know so I guess the question is should it be the men asking the boys does it work as well if it's women asking the boys and and who should be doing that whose responsibility should it be my quick answer because I think Ben will have a lot more here is that ultimately we want to be trying to build up around all young people and any young person multiple adults who are having able to have that conversation who they can touch in with at certain points like it might not be that they're speaking to the same person every year of their life like We know that many of us went through periods where our parents would be the last person people we'd want to talk to about absolutely anything at all, let alone something personal.

17:43I would think like from a societal level, we want to be making sure that we're actually equipping teachers, that we've got more youth workers who are involved in people's lives, that people who are part of community organizations or faith groups or whatever it might be where you're having contact with young people, that there's more of that confidence and competency to have those conversations. But yeah, absolutely. Fathers have a huge role to play if they're there or male carers or other men in people's lives have a really big role to play if we can actually help them to take that part and give them the support and various other things.

18:16So they're really confident having those conversations. i think it's such a good question i think the reason that i find it interesting because i feel like masculinity as a social construct is policed by other people do you know what i mean like i've heard someone say once that like masculinity or gender doesn't exist in isolation so it only exists as like comparing and contrasting between other people so you only know that you're like hyper masculine or not that masculine based on how other people are around you and i think like the the easy answer is like yeah obviously obviously parents should talk to their kids about that stuff men should talk to their sons about that kind of stuff but i think the hard answer is really that like actually the way that this stuff really works is that every individual just has to have that conversation with themselves as a starting point because i think so often we like turn this conversation into a conversation about saving other people or helping other people to arrive at good conclusions where the reality is like for lots of us we've never had the luxury or taken the time to like sit down and interrogate our relationship to gender for ourselves and I think when you do that work there's so much that like spills out into other people from like having those revelations in yourself or like doing that thinking or like doing that exploration so actually I think the real work is getting guys whether they have kids or not like to do that thinking for themselves and then I think so much of what is distilled or so much so much of what's disseminated is like passed on through this like silent kind of osmosis you know like most kids are not sitting down and having conversations with their dads about what it means to be a man like I always remember being like 14 and thinking oh one day my dad's going to teach me how to shave and he just never did so I kind of like figured it out myself but I think as a boy you wait for that moment of like the passing of the torch or the lessons that you're meant to learn and for lots of us that just never really happens but we kind of just learn it by observing so I think for lots of men if they're able to especially for fathers if they're able to do that like thinking and work in themselves and really think about the man that they want to be and how that shows up in the world then their kids learn that just by observing them and by that role modeling so i think that that's really important and there was also you asked about how we define healthy masculinity i think it's again a really interesting question i feel like we've spent like the last decade kind of dodging the question because i think part of it is that like being prescriptive about masculinity is maybe where a lot of the harm is caused so telling people what type of man they're supposed to be is difficult and and even if we changed it and made masculinity like instead of being strong and being a leader and being dominant we changed it and it was being gentle and being kind and being caring all of those things when they're linked to power can become corrupted and become toxic anyway and so we just have a very different version of what good masculinity and negative masculinity looked like but i think actually for me the place i've arrived at whenever i get asked this question i'm always like it's like a hippocratic oath of of masculinity so just a masculinity that like causes no harm to yourself and causes no harm to other people around you and if you can have those as like guiding lights as like beacons for you of like where masculinity is positive and where it's not positive then i think maybe that leads to to good outcomes because we know that the outcomes for guys themselves are like pretty poor in terms of like mental health in terms of men's violence against men like all of that like drug and alcohol abuse all of those kinds of things so I think if you start with a masculinity that just doesn't cause any harm to you as an individual you're off to a good start and then once you add in my community around me and how do I make sure I'm not harming anybody around me I think you probably arrive at a version of masculinity that exists within community that's maybe quite inherently positive because it's just doing good stuff for people around it and for itself you know I love that really really love that I definitely relate to men having to have that conversation themselves so when I go into workplaces and do kind of masculinity talks and workshops and whatnot for a lot of those men it's probably the first time I've ever had kind of to confront certain conversations these are big men right in their 40s and 50s and 60s sometimes near retirement and they're actually for the first time ever thinking about kind of you know health and and and their relationship and their parenting and their relationship to their emotions and help seeking it's the first time they've ever done that and they're big men so yeah i definitely feel like we need to create more spaces for men to be able to have that conversation and also men to come forward sometimes those spaces are available but because of the ideas of masculinity those men don't come in the room in the first place yeah exactly and they do turn up and think actually this was great like we love this why did i do this earlier yeah yeah we do amazing events in football clubs and you literally get a tour sometimes you get to meet players you get a free lunch and still some men will be like oh i'm not sure if it's for me and i'm like are you all right mate like this is this is an amazing opportunity um boys let's talk about boys in terms of challenges that boys face what do you think are from the you know thousands of boys you've spoken to across the world what are the challenges that you hear coming coming out time and time again and the things that boys are really struggling and battling with at the moment it's the same stuff man it's the same stuff it's always been I think actually and I think this is where it's like a really strange concept it's like nothing really ever changes so I think like for teenage boys they're all going through puberty and the normal brain development stuff that's happening in puberty is taking place so they're experiencing peer pressure they want to differentiate from their caregivers they're trying to establish an identity they're trying to be different to adults they want to not do what they're being told to do they're leaning into risk-taking behavior all of that kind of stuff is very normal for them um but i think also there's these kinds of aspects around developing relationships that are like quite difficult for them and i think i mean i always feel like it's really difficult to like cast your mind back to when you were 13 but if you can get there like you'll probably remember that like everything in the world felt like the biggest thing in the world and it was actually the biggest thing in the world at the time because it was all you'd experienced right but like I think relationships are super difficult I think popularity is a big conversation for them they want to they want to be liked they want to find their place they want to find their community I think maybe in a more pronounced way now probably because of the state of the country and like the state of the economy I think boys are feeling this pressure around making money and being like providers and and they know that that role is like in some ways a birthright that's been promised to them it's what masculinity has always been but it doesn't seem as accessible as it once did.

24:50It doesn't seem like just doing the right things will land you in a position where you can get all of that stuff and be that person. I think they want to be powerful. They want to feel like they have agency in the world. They want to feel like they make decisions for themselves. And I think also something that maybe we don't talk about a lot is like their awareness of violence. I think boys are very aware that there's this like constant threat or danger usually posed by other guys and and usually posed by older guys but they're very aware of danger and risk and they're like often quite wired and it becomes very normalized so they don't even know that that's inhibiting or altering the ways that they're thinking um can i sorry yeah of course it's that a new thing my 11 year old is about to go to secondary school in september is obsessed with this he wants to do boxing classes self-defense classes he's obsessed with the idea he's going to go to secondary school and he's going to end up in constant fights it's going to be prison rules yeah he's going to have to fight to survive yeah yeah yeah survival of the fittest yeah is that i mean that you know i am a woman grew up a girl the threat of violence was not something that consumed my every waking thought it seems to him is that a new thing do you think or has that always been the case i mean i think it's easy for us to think of it as a new thing but like i think i mean i remember being a kid and watching wrestling right and like watching just watching anything that was like violent for the sake of violence like power rangers they were shooting people's heads off and stuff like all of that stuff is so normal i think as a young guy as a boy that you learn to like you come to expect that that's going to be the rules of engagement and that's just how the world works and so i think different kids take that to different extents like there are some kids who are naturally at 11 or 12 the tallest kids or the oldest kids in their year and so they don't feel like as threatened by everybody else but I think especially if you're a small like a a little boy you know and you're waiting for that first growth spurt that usually comes around like 15 like there's a real fear and pressure and a knowledge and then you walk into especially walking into secondary school you're walking into an environment where you've been the biggest and now you're the smallest again and everybody's going to treat you like you're the smallest and so I think yeah in some ways it's probably pronounced by like as many things are by like the social media age and access to like all of these different ideas floating around on the internet and influencers telling us what things are going to be like for us and what things we're supposed to like but I think that that's always been like a bit of a common thread but I don't know Dan if you think the same thing you might think something wildly different rarely rarely do I think um so wildly differently I mean I agree with I think those uh there's those constants that have been there right in that transition moment we can also see some of the impacts of maybe the patient sorry the social isolation that happened during COVID, things like this, kind of adding to that story.

27:43And then you have various cultural moments that happen in particular areas or, you know, and you see some of these come through, whether it's getting driven by the media or driven by social media, or actually driven by events that are happening around people that are impacting upon those perceptions of what's going on, you know, and that might be something like adolescence coming on the screen and them thinking about that it also might be them experiencing things with you know with the race riots and then thinking about that and that impacting upon people and that could be really different for different boys across the country yeah i've got two girls and my eldest is nine and it's like the flip side like i'm trying to encourage her to embrace the violence not to box people in the face not to go around fighting people but more self-defense let me clarify that but you know the area where we're living now it was nice like six years ago it's changing a lot now and there are weird characters so every time we're walking around I'm like did you see that guy yeah what would you do if you run up to you what would you do if they came and snatched your bag I'm always trying to prepare her to like be aware of her environment first and foremost and just understand that she has agency and she can defend herself and I just think about that if I had a boy maybe I'll be trying to tone it down or as if her yeah try to dial it up a little bit so she's aware she can navigate in the world you know she'll be going to secondary school in two years and getting the bus by herself so she needs to be aware of of the world yeah we kind of touched on this with with the kind of preempting the violence thinking that you're going to have to protect yourself and i want to talk to you about body image maybe a topic that doesn't get spoken and the focus that it deserves when we're talking about boys i think historically we've thought a lot about young girls and women when we think about body image issues but i think there is so much pressure now to look a certain way to have muscles to present in a certain way as a boy more than maybe we had when we were that age how does that show up in the conversations is that a focus that you find boys are thinking about what they look like their body image is an issue that you're seeing coming up quite a lot yeah ben's eyes make me talking great yes in certain places and um and in certain ways absolutely this is like a an issue uh and it's one that's grown a lot over the past 10 years that we've been working.

29:58And I think one of the really important things to remember here is there's not actually like one physical model of what a man looks like or should look like, you know, or what like the ultimate male or men's body should actually be. Like that changes over time. It changes depending on where you are and who you're working with. I mean, I've seen this a little bit myself, you know, having moved around to different countries and also like sort of moved maybe even more noticeably. I play a lot of sports and I actually noticed like what's looked up to differs a lot depending on like what activities you do.

30:38When I was a rugby player, it was kind of the biggest, strongest, most muscular guy, but as long as you could actually still run, you know, you needed to be able to move around a bit. And that shifts massively. I've got some friends who are into cycling and you're looking for a different body type in that sort of space. so I think some of this is is important to remember because it's it then stops being about is it just that men are getting pushed into thinking about their body image more and feeling a sense of shame and things if they don't look a certain way or a rush as a as a 12 year old to somehow look like you're a 30 year old um and it starts to also be like well what which of those 30 year olds are they getting pushed to look like and I think that's where there's been like a big rise in in the sort of bodybuilding images that have come through and we see that playing like a big part like various aesthetics that sit around there which are not attainable for the vast majority of people without a significant investment of time and probably use of steroids so it's there's there's some concerns around not just the sort of pressures but also the direction that those pressures are going and how young men and men in general actually adapting and thinking about those.

31:54Ben's been involved in a study that was just released by Movember looking at the influence of particular influences online on young men's lives. And something that really struck me there, I'll listen, I should get the exact numbers out, but I think it was 20 % or just short of 20 % of people who were following those influences had used testosterone or steroids. And these are guys who are, I believe, under the age of 25 or anyway, under the age of 30, like the younger men. And then still it was something like 8 % or 9 % of the people who weren't following those online influences were also using or had used those sorts of things.

32:38So it's an interesting direction and particular push that men are experiencing at the moment that I think is really important for us to recognize with our young people. Give them smart information about how to actually look after their bodies, treat them well. Yeah, like fantastic. Learn how to use them in different ways, strengthen them in different ways. But maybe to focus more on that health, that mobility, that functionality, as opposed on trying to fit into somebody else's aesthetic. and someone else's idea about what you should be as a man. It is that hyper-vigilance, isn't it? I feel like as guys, and especially as young guys, we're catching up to the space that women have had to inhabit for a long time, where all of these narratives are being thrown at them all the time about what they're supposed to look like.

33:29I feel like the privilege of being a guy, or one of the privileges of being a guy, used to be that you just didn't really have to care. And it was like, even though there were still criteria, the criteria was really money. and that was the only thing that mattered so like no matter what you looked at or no matter what you looked like as long as you had money you'd be fine but now I think boys are like super aware and like in the same kind of like tornado of ideas that's whipping around about who you're meant to be and what you're supposed to be like and and we do like a man box activity at the start of one of our workshops where we get the boys to write down or like throw words at us about what they think society says men are supposed to be and there's always this like 666 idea which is i think it's like a six pack six foot tall and a six six inch penis that you're supposed to have to be like viewed as an attractive man and so i think they are super aware they know that there's this pressure on them i think what you said was right dan that like actually depending on where you are in the world that can look very different like if you're living off the coast of australia on some of the islands, right?

34:32Like there's a very different image of what masculinity looks like and what a man's body is supposed to be like. And as opposed to like, if you're living in East London, there's like, again, a very set image of what, as opposed to if you're living in the North of England, right? I think it changes depending on where you are. But I think the big difference is that as men, we are now all very aware. And a lot of us are like comparing ourselves to other men and particularly to men who like are building their careers by like working on their bodies you know like professional bodybuilders professional actors who have trainers and nutritionists and that's their job to dedicate their time to like body like change in the way that their body looks and maintaining that and for the average guy who's like going to work nine to five every week you don't have loads of time to like invest in that kind of stuff as well as other areas of your life so i think there's a lot of work that needs to be done in that space yeah yeah a lot of people get paid to count calories and right put on muscle and yeah Yeah, do their macros.

35:29Yeah. Yeah. From the outside, you don't realize that's their job, right? That's their nine to five. That's not realistic for most people without an extreme level of dedication. That research that you mentioned from Movember, I think it's Young Boys Digital Lives Online, also found that for young boys that engage with the man-as-of-a-fake content, they are more likely to think that a man's role is providing. It was 81 % of the young boys who engage with one or more of those influencers. but we still found that 64 % of boys who don't engage in a man's fear still feel like one of the primary roles as a man is to provide does that resonate with the conversations you're having with boys on a day-to-day basis absolutely yeah a lot yeah yeah yeah the most recent most recent focus group that we came back we just asked them one question it's like you had our workshops like what would you actually like to talk about more and like there was like three different versions of like success, money, like where to get the cash.

36:24Like they just kept on wanting to get the cash. I just want to talk about that. Not that they probably wisely, not that they thought that we could provide the answers about where the money came from because it's not been our strong point. But we don't know you. Yeah, they want to have that conversation because it's a thing that they're threatening about. And I think there's this message that's out there that's strongly pushed in lots of different avenues in different ways. And it's kind of like for a man to be of any value to anybody, like to his family, to his community, to anything, he's got to go and create something and he's got to go.

37:04And that creating, it means like providing for the people around him, bringing the money in. Whereas I think often the message that there is around women is, well, you've got this, you know, with many negative sides to it, but you've got this intrinsic value of being the carer, being the provider of the next generation, that there is something that you can also rest on and provide to the people, to the family, to the community and everything else and being seen as being valuable for that. Obviously, huge issues with that sort of pressure and pigeonholing of women and also massive issues, as I know you talk about, around men not actually being able to really jump into that deeply satisfying work of caring for their friends, for their family, you know and maybe later on their lives for for their children or or other young people in their lives and it's it's a real shame and it's a real issue so we think having that conversation about money is crucially important you can't just tell people no you're stupid for wanting to get rich or you're stupid for for thinking that your friends will respect you more if you you could pay for some stuff that's not going to help anybody but you can do a slower bit of work of actually trying to open up and allow people to see that they've got other things in their life that they find rewarding, that they know is special about them and other people actually value and connect with more, whether that's trust or friendship or whatever else it might be.

38:27I was interested to hear how this is popping up in conversations you're having. I mean, I'm not having this conversation yet with my kids who are 11 and 9. The provider and money stuff hasn't come up yet, but we're hearing it a lot, aren't we, on this podcast that the pressure for boys to be rich now is huge. And it doesn't just come from the messaging they're getting online, but also from other girls. Right. That actually there is a pressure now on girls to marry a wealthy and to look at the bank balance of the person that they're dating. And so, you know, no wonder there is a pressure on boys to have money.

39:11I think, yeah, such an interesting point. like one of the things i mean we avoid as an organization we avoid talking about what women's role is in the conversation because i think actually that's probably a conversation that women just should have with women you know like i don't know if they i think it's maybe too easy of a scapegoat for us to as men to be like well women do this as well but i think actually there is a reality there that like these norms and these narratives are socially constructed right like and that means that it comes from every direction it's not just men who are creating content online i think the interesting thing with that movember research was that it was like felt like almost like some sometimes people are looking for something to blame so we want to blame the manosphere for the state of men in the uk today but actually the percentages are over 50 64 of guys who are not accessing this content who still believe that thing about men being providers so that norm exists outside of these internet kind of spaces and it is perpetuated by all of us in lots of different ways right like my um stepdaughter is uh 22 and a couple of years ago we were having a lot of conversations about um what she believed the role of a man was in dating and that was a really interesting space because i think she'd picked up all of this stuff from online and and didn't realize that like it was it was like in opposition to what she actually believed as a person and so these ideas of like men should have money and they should pay for the privilege of your time and they should do all of these things I think again provides a lot of pressure but I think there's a real space there for us to reimagine what provision looks like for men and I don't think it means that we have to like tell men that they should try not to be providers but one of the interesting conversations that I find we have with men especially on like some of our longer form programs is around like when we get into this idea of men being providers for men to go back and reflect on their childhoods and think about what provision they received from their fathers and what provision they feel like they wanted to receive and so often for lots of men it's like my dad did he was financially supporting the family and that was great but he didn't talk to us he didn't spend time with us or he didn't teach us how to do to do things or have fun with us or play or do any of that kind of stuff and actually all of those things are also valid forms of provision that we can strive for and may be really important right like in the ways that we carry ourselves in the ways that we engage in community and with family and all of that kind of stuff so i think there's a lot of space there for boys to and for men especially to start reimagining what provision is and what provision looks like and why it's of value and grounding that also with the reality of like in the country we're facing a cost of living crisis which is a crazy phrase in and of itself, like a cost of living.

41:57But that aside, like everybody's broke, right? We don't have money like we used to have money. And so maybe some of this is about creating models of returning to like community care and provision where we all chip in and we all like help each other out. And some of us know how to like lay flooring or some of us know how to paint walls. And that's how we care for our community rather than one man being an island and having to do everything by himself and all of that responsibility just resting on his shoulders. I think there's some important rethinking for us to do that. I mean, as a woman with two kids who spent the last 10 years campaigning for the rights of mothers in the workplace, you can feel like, I think, you know, younger generations of girls are sensing from our generation that what we've ended up doing is everything.

42:47We've ended up having great careers. and doing the majority of the care and domestic labour. And that younger generation of girls, many of them are looking at us and going, no thanks, I do not want that. That's not a period. It's not, yeah, exactly. So some of this narrative around what they expect from boys perhaps comes from this pushback against the changing role of women and seeing that it's really not working for us. And so you have the trad wife phenomenon of them completely pushing back against everything that's been achieved over the last 60, 70 years. And you can see the way that this younger generation are translating all of that is having an impact on boys and them being confused about that role.

43:29But also this pressure of provider is going to stem from the confusion. But actually what we need is for everybody to be involved in the caring and the domestic labour, everybody to be involved and have an opportunity to make money and have careers if that's what they want and we sort of feel like we've lost that narrative a little bit with this generation yeah I agree I think we need to stop defining roles as masculine and feminine and just understanding that everyone is different everyone has strengths and desires and a large part of my work is encouraging dads to be equal parents at home you can still provide you can still make lots of money you can still rise to senior roles at work that's all good right that's nothing wrong with that we should encourage that but we live in a world now where we can work flexibly where we have remote working where we have autonomy and it is a privilege and and for many people but if you work in a kind of job that allows that then why not do more at home why not be equal parents do your load of the domestic care that's where the joy comes from in the long term yes it can be difficult on a day-to-day basis and it's bloody exhausting doing it all but if you're a partnership and you work together as a team it's incredible and you both get the joy of working and earning but you both also get the joy of having a really strong relationship with your children and that's what I think life is all about for people who are parents and caregivers I want to talk about some of the research from the Global Institute of Women's Leadership found that 44 % of men think that gender equality has gone too far and that now men are being discriminated against does that resonate with the conversations you're having with boys do they feel like they are being discriminated against and that the general quality conversation has gone too far one way what i what i like to start with with this question is also recognizing like the big chunk of men that didn't answer the question that way you know because what i see what i see in in the workshops that i run and more importantly because there's far more of them the workshops that other people run and feedback is that so often there's a young person or an adult who's in that session who without having like done lots of our workshops or other people's workshops before is really completely already wanting to push for more equity and is embracing you know all of the moves around gender equality you can see the progress and loves it and wants that to be there more so i think it's important to sort of say there's a big chunk of young people as well who are like that and who are interested in and want to be engaged like that and then to understand the the large number who do feel like things have gone too far I think we need to start looking actually like what is men's or what has what has been boys experiences who've grown up during this period and what have been the sorts of narratives they've heard about themselves or they've heard about the world around them and if you start doing that work then you can start to understand well what do they experience but also what do they actually understand gender equality as being and I'll just pick out one example, say the Me Too sort of movement or the Everyone's Invited movement might be a better one to think about for young people.

46:39And I think both of those things have been critically important, have made huge progress. It's vital that actually people, especially women who've been experiencing harassment or abuse or all these sorts of things, actually get a voice to express that. And then we hear that and we see it also as being like a systemic societal thing. But if you imagine probably how this was communicated to a 13 year old boy in an assembly yeah a lot of that wasn't getting through the the message they might have heard would have been like men are doing this all men are doing this this is a problem of toxic masculinity and the boys being broken and that that might have been said in slightly more eloquent terms by the head that might have been said to them in more blunt terms by some of the girls in their class or by other people, or they've been online into some of these forums that have been picking that out and saying, well, actually, we've got a feminist conspiracy here.

47:36And this is all about taking away power from men, giving it to women and turning men into the disposable others in our society. And I just think that that perception or that putting yourself into the boy's shoes and understanding, like, what are they seeing? What are they feeling? What are they thinking? What are they hearing? as they go through those processes that we've already been talking about of trying to figure out who they are in the world how you actually have a relationship with someone you know like to before you've even asked a girl for a number like ever in your whole life to hear that you've been lumped in with the people who are the sexual harassers of the world it's a pretty tough pill to swallow or if you're a 14 year old sitting in the back of class and to be told you are part of the powerful group in society, again, it doesn't really feel real.

48:24Like there's not that many people who listen to you and give you things when you ask for them. So that sort of nuanced conversation is quite a difficult one that we have to do. We can't shy away from either reality, that experience that they have, nor the reality that there continues to be power structures in our society that are oppressing, discriminating and allowing harassment of women and girls. So how can we address those power structures and those social systems and those cultural norms that reinforce them, but also give boys that hope and that understanding and that ability to take responsibility for themselves and look after themselves.

49:02And even to see that a lot of the changes we're talking about are going to be really positive for them as well. It's a nuanced thing to talk about, let alone to get them to think about. Yeah, you've described that brilliantly. In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify.

49:38Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012. You mentioned kind of getting a girl's number for the first time. We all remember that, going out and seeing a girl and approaching her, being really nervous, but, you know, your mate's taking you on. And you get rejected, but you get over it and you do it again. So I'm bringing back trauma here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm married now, it's years ago. Why did she do that? Deep breath. What kind of conversations are you having with young people, young boys about sex?

50:12and relationships in our schools program we run a free module program so the first session is around gender stereotypes and gender norms and that's because we want to surface like we want to the entry point to this conversation has to be for the boys this is about you like it's not about anything else other than you who you are how you feel who's putting pressure on you and what they're putting pressure on you to do so they unpick all of that stuff they unpack all of the different bits of it and obviously sex and sexuality comes up in that first session but we put it on ice and then we come back in the second session and we talk to them about relationships we talk to them about sex and we talk to them about sexuality and and in that session i think the the real learning pathways are like firstly we start with this idea of like healthy relationships what are the the good components of a relationship what are the things that are like fundamental for a relationship to work well and and so the boys will like explore some of those things and then we'll compare and contrast it with the man box that we made in the last session and ask them are there any things in this box that make any of these things difficult so are there any things about what society says men are meant to be that makes being trusting in a relationship or being honest or being open or caring or loving or fun or any of those things does it make it difficult more difficult as a guy and and so we unpack that conversation and then we dive into like a bit of an exploration and And it's very like non-linear in these workshops.

51:34We like ask them loads of questions about sexuality. We ask them loads of questions about like whether they would treat their friends differently if they were gay or what these expectations are around how boys are supposed to carry themselves. And kind of land at this space where the conversation really fundamentally becomes about consent and about whether they understand what consent is and how that works for them in their lives. So first of all, do they feel like consent is something that exists for them? and do they feel like it's like a thing that they get to access and they get to say no when they feel uncomfortable what are the things about being a man means that you might not do that if you feel that way like should men be vulnerable should men feel uncomfortable what are the societal expectations around sex and then we talk about in the context of other people and maybe where we might not understand that where we might be getting it wrong we like look at the fryer's acronym so consent being something that's freely given being something that's reversible being something that's specific formed e is explicit um or no enthusiastic which is also super important so i always give the example of like if you ask someone if they want to have sex and they're like yeah i could have some sex then they probably don't really want to have sex whereas if they rip their underwear off and are waving it around they're like i've been waiting for this for the last four years then you know they want to have sex right but like informing them of these kinds of things and building frameworks where they can understand what healthy relationships are supposed to look like and then how that translates into sex and then therefore what sex could or should look like and also i think raising awareness around porn because we know that lots of young people are accessing porn and i'm not like a anti-porn person like i consider myself to be sex positive but i think that porn wasn't made for informing children about sex right it was made for adult entertainment and so giving them like the critical skills to like analyze that material that they are accessing and think about whether it's made for them or what they might be learning from that that's not real or not accurate.