THE John Amaechi on men, masculinity and monsters. (Re-Release)

28:27John Amaechi:later, even with all of that, all the ideas they have about blackness and size and that combination makes people feel frightened. So it's not useful for me. I'm a psychologist. I work with people in the most vulnerable moments for the most part, usually when things aren't going well or aren't as well as they'd like them to be. So being frightening is not useful. So I have to do everything possible to not be frightening. The truth is that I'm a nerd. That is the most core identity or identity of me right i'm a nerd i love gregs i love star wars um to a lesser extent star trek though if there was a universe i was going to live in it would certainly be the star trek one not the star wars one um i love dr who's um even the woke ones from nowadays and so these are real things about me and are more informative if people want to get to know me which is another reason why this is here to create connections off stuff that's meaningful to me as opposed to stuff that's not really.

29:23John Amaechi:But yeah, I can't use it in the way that some people do because intimidating people is rarely useful. The most bold thing that I'll do with anybody, coach about 20 % of the people I coach don't want to be coached and they don't want to be coached by me, but they have no choice. They have behaved poorly and now they are being mandated coaching in order to keep their job. And these people can sometimes be uncivil. And the most strong that I am is to have them say something to me like when we start our conversation it's and I'll say something like it's clear that you're a bit hot right now so I'm going to go and make some tea and I'll turn my camera off and my audio off and I'll be back in five minutes and that's as strong as it gets I set a boundary I walk away I actually don't need to go away and make tea because I've got my thermos flask right there that's it so it's not like I can just say shut up you what the hell are you doing because everybody loses it's one of the failures of masculinity actually to bring about to that.

30:17John Amaechi:This idea that people don't realize that intimidation and violence, whether it's actual physical violence or discursive violence, leads to a mutual failure almost inevitably. Yeah, you talk about this powerfully in your new book, how you remain calm under pressure and under stress. I just, before we move on to that, I really would love to know firstly, how you process that. You described yourself as people seeing you as a monster. That's a big thing to process emotionally, but also what you would say to other big black men, particularly boys in secondary school who may feel the same, what message you'd want to give to them.

30:59John Amaechi:It's exhausting. It's frustrating. And there were points in my life where I just wanted to rip people asunder. I wanted to become the thing that everybody thought I was. There's this brilliant, it almost won an Oscar, I think. It's called Nimona. I don't know if you've seen it. It's cartoon i highly recommend it it's a it's about a young girl who is a monster in a this mythical environment where everybody's very afraid of monsters and she gets to the point where she wants to destroy everything and then she looks around her at what she's wrought and then tries to to kill herself and i think that is the trap that many young black men who are perceived as big and strong and violent and criminal and whatever else comes with the the stereotypes they want to eventually the frustration builds to a point where they want to to act out and then at some point they see what that they've become and what and that they've validated what these people think of them and they then want to harm themselves and all i would say is there is a core of you that you must hold on to there is a picture of you that is not corrupted by the ignorance and malice of strangers there is a picture of you an image in a mirror of someone's eye that can show you who you are and you have to hold on to that every single day you have to hold on to it for me it was my mom and I used to I used to look at her every once in a while we'd all read books together because we're nerds as a family and I would be reading a book and my mom would be reading a book and And I'd be looking up and I'd be reading my book.

32:41John Amaechi:And then every once in a while, I'd look up and my mom would be looking at me. And when she looked at me, I knew who I was. I could see it in her face that I am her big, clever boy. And so in the midst of these looks from strangers, in the midst of these fear that radiates off people when I walk by, in my mind, I just remember, my mom's long since gone, but I just remember that I am a big clever boy hold on to that that's amazing so our youngest is um two and a half and she's massive for her age she's wearing five to six clothes like wearing Primark shopping in the primary school it's the thing they don't tell you right about being about big kids they don't tell you it's just very expensive it's very expensive and she's growing very quickly and she's for a two and a half year old she's so nimble and fast on her feet and so we take her to play groups for her age and you can see that other parents are very worried and because they're thinking wait a minute this kid is this kid's four or five years old why are they here and they're black and she's got big hair bunches and and I'm just very aware of that that she's going to be a big black girl and this in a big black woman in this world and that's going to come with you know ups and downs and whatnot and so I think what you've shared here has really just helped me to understand that we need to teach her that whatever comes in her life she is our girl and and we love her and so that's that's incredible yeah that was so powerful I was really really touched by the video response you did to the tv series adolescence And you said, and I'm going to quote you, the hand wringing around the plight of working class, implicitly white men, seems to have more compassionate energy than the conversations about the abhorrent behaviour from young men from other ethnic and minority communities.

34:41I'd love you to expand a bit on that, John.

34:44John Amaechi:Yeah, I found that program problematic. Not from an artistic point of view, I get it. I can see how it's great art. But you just couldn't replace that protagonist with any other ethnicity. You couldn't replace them with what might be considered an oik, right? even if it was a white, really working class or struggling family, you couldn't replace that dynamic and have people feel the same empathy towards the protagonist. I couldn't explain, I couldn't rationalise, even with the dynamic that was at play, how we could go through a programme and who the victim was would feel uncertain. As we went through, there was a victim, and the victim was a girl and her family.

35:39Yeah.

35:40John Amaechi:Full stop. Full stop. That was it. You were called, I don't know what it was, but you were called the name and you murdered someone. There's a victim here and it's one, and to me, it was such an interesting take on the crisis about masculinity, which is a crisis of men's making. And this is not me being cruel. I am empathetic about this, but you can't create change if we don't talk about the status quo what is actually happening and what is actually happening is men are deciding that there are rules that they are willing to follow despite the fact that they are caustic and harmful to them and we've decided that and not on mass not just on mass but individuals are deciding it in their various communities and that is leading to behavior that is harmful to others and yet when we witness that behavior especially with this adolescent show, we're supposed to feel sorry implicitly with that program for the boy.

36:40John Amaechi:And I don't feel sorry for the murderer. I feel sad that we're in a situation where so many young people can make so many bad choices, so many parents be under-equipped to challenge that at an early stage. Because by the time your son is already following Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson and all of these other ridiculous caricatures of even men in any modern sense, in any real sense, by the time they're already embedded in that, you haven't, you've intervened too late. I'm not saying they're a lost cause, but there's an earlier stage where you start watching boys mock girls for things that they can or can't do.

37:21John Amaechi:And you intervene there. There's a stage where they start bulking because one of their friends' families has said that doing the dishes is woman's work and you intervene there there's a stage where people decide that boys can look lasciviously at girls and women and that's okay and you intervene there and that's where you teach people what's appropriate there's this massive differential in in the perceptions of men and women about what beautiful is in terms of relationship building and you intervene there What's always interesting to me as a gay man is the idea that most straight men don't seem to realize that the thing that they're trying to develop to be attractive is for other straight men.

38:06John Amaechi:It's not for women. Yeah. The thing that they're doing to be attractive, the cash being thrown around, the bottles with the sparklers in them, the cars with the very loud engines, those ridiculous gym t-shirts that have got all but like a small fraction of cloth, your nipples are fully exposed. This is not, I don't have a huge amount of experience with women, but I know that that's not for women. I know that. And so this is how we intervene, right? By helping people see the ridiculousness of this performative masculinity and start early with that. So that's why the program really bothered me because it felt like whilst he was trying to give this message about, look how harmful this form of masculinity is, it still looped back to it's not really their fault.

38:55John Amaechi:it's you know and then you hear people talk about even people i really respect i did a response to prof g he's a gallop scott galloway um and and i i did a response to him because even some things he talked about it's not the fact that men have to swipe i haven't been on an app for a while but uh right a hundred times to get one response from a woman is not a woman's fault and even that's a weird framing of it. If you are the kind of person whose profile scares women away, that is the fault of you, not the fault of women. And what we do know from tons of research looking at attractiveness for women, it won't be because you've got a mole on your face.

39:37John Amaechi:It won't be because you've got a couple of extra pounds on you. It will because of something you say or an image you have in your background that frightens women and do something about that rather than say well you know what's the problem Jolie women nowadays are just too picky yeah exactly yeah the the whole 2080 theory that um 80 % of women go for the top 20 % of men in terms of wealth and in terms of status and in terms of attractiveness has been disproved so many times. Are you empathetic with the notion that the reason why boys are so attracted to these very toxic masculinity influences is because they don't understand what masculinity is anymore?

40:29The idea that we haven't got a role for men anymore because women have moved more into the workplace, because so many more women are breadwinners, because so many, because we have tried to create this equal playing field across the board, men have lost the sense of who they are and what their role is in the world. And so they're attracted to people who are telling them, hey, you can be rich. Hey, you can have loads of hot women hanging off you. You can have a yacht. All you need to do is follow my course and go to the gym 24 times a day. And so are you empathetic with this notion that men don't understand what the world wants for them anymore?

41:11John Amaechi:No, it's bollocks. That's the technical term. It's just, it's utter, utter bollocks, right? It's not real and it's not true. Women tell men all the time, because we are talking about straight men, and this is one of the things I just want to stop with. There are plenty of toxic gay men too, but this particular brand of this, this is a straight male problem, right? Right. And can I just say as well, the data shows it's a middle class problem as well. Oh, very much so. Very much so. Yes, that's also true. And there's a real classism to the to the alpha male type of narrative, because wealth is intrinsically alpha, and anything else is intrinsically beta, right?

41:51John Amaechi:So there's an idea of your personal failing if you haven't somehow managed to own two Bugattis or something. I don't have a car. I haven't had one for 30 years hasn't impacted my testosterone, even a knot. My age probably has, but not my lack of a Dugati. No, the reason, so I'm not empathetic about this because it's not true. It's not real that people don't know what's expected of them. They may not like what's expected of them, but that's different. But the reason that this alpha male nonsense is so attractive to me, to my mind anyway, is because it offers the same balm, soothing balm that reform offers, the same soothing balm that Trump offers in America, the same soothing balm that all of these carnival hucksters offer, which is the fundamental reassuring blanket of, Elliot, it's not your fault.

42:46John Amaechi:That's it. That's why it's attractive. Whatever the other formula that comes with your £400 a week subscription to their special plan. Whatever else is in there, the fundamental truth of it is what's wrong with those women over there. What's wrong with those other men who aren't alphas over there and how it's their fault, just like it's poor people in boats. That's why you can't afford a house. Not the people who've bought up half of Mayfair, but don't live there. right it's that idea of a simple narrative i don't know i don't i wrote this in a paper years and years ago but the idea of one should never underestimate the horrors that seemingly moderate human beings will commit when convinced it leads to the idea that it's not their fault yeah they will do people will do awful things if you look at the people all port is a psychologist who studied the Holocaust and how it escalated.

43:45John Amaechi:He has a scale called the Antilocution Scale, which shows how you can escalate from antilocution saying bad words about a group of people to murdering them. And when you look at how men treat women and the escalation of violence and the hundreds of thousands of people, what is over 1 million violent crimes against women are reported every year, a hundred women killed annually. That stems from being able to say, girls are this, women are bad trash those other words that we use around women there's a there's a there's a logical pathway that elevates to dehumanizing anybody calling people in boats cockroaches yeah to the point where you can burn them in their rooms so this pathway is well trodden we understand it well this isn't about not knowing masculinity is this is about not liking the work of real masculinity and instead buying into the fault of the innocent.

44:41I don't want to be really basic here and say, what do we do about it? But I'm gonna, I know you, to me, you and Elliot are like positive influence, masculinity influences. You talk positively about what it means to be a man. You don't lead with division and anger. you lead with togetherness and hope and lessons of positive strength. Why do you think it is, though, that the vast majority of boys, and the data we're showing this, are listening more to not Andrew Tate anymore, actually, it seems they're moving away from Andrew Tate. They've realised that he's just a horrible pig. but they are listening to the influences that are leading with these messages of division and anger.

45:35Is there anything you feel we're missing? What can we do besides in our parenting and in schools reminding boys of healthy masculinity? How do we get them to listen to positive influences more like you and Elliot?

45:53John Amaechi:I mean, I don't know that the answer is going to be listening to Elliot or me in particular. Oh, I do. I want my boys to listen to you too. No pressure. I'm happy for that, right? If it were to happen, I'd be happy for it. I'd welcome it. But the reality is that we have to, there's a delusion in place that allows boys and men to, in what they think is in good conscience, but is actually some kind of cognitive dissonance, endorse these types of horrible people, right? They haven't moved away from Andrew Tate because they think he's a pig. They've moved away from Andrew Tate because he's wearing, if we were to use another analogy, he's actually wearing the Nazi flag and they need to move to somebody who isn't wearing it, but is saying all the right words, right?

46:42John Amaechi:So he's just too obvious. It's why they've moved away from him, but it's not because they don't agree with them. It's just, he's too obvious and you align with him and you can instantly find yourself on the outs. You align with somebody else who's a little more subtle and you can still find yourself perhaps not publicly pilloried. So we have to delete, we have to defeat this delusion, right? There's nothing to reclaim with masculinity. We should remove this language. There's nothing to reclaim. Masculinity is personal and flexible. if we help young boys to realize masculinity is personal, personalized, and flexible.

47:18John Amaechi:And calls to reclaim masculinity are these mask attempts to reverse hard-earned rights for women. That's fundamentally it, right? It masks the resentment for the rights that women have earned and hard-earned and not completely earned. And then a reorientation around strength, too. The idea that real strength means allowing people choices and rights, and you can't, with strength, ease your own pain by stripping other people of their rights or dignity. These types of things. And then helping men to find ways to genuinely connect with other men in really intimate ways. Because toxic masculinity to me stems from men's choices to be absent of genuine intimacy and instead embrace fear and hatred that is usually towards women and other men.

48:15John Amaechi:It's one of the things that's confusing as a gay man, why I look at so many men who seem to hate women whilst desiring them. They covet this thing that they hate, and that's bound to cause really negative emotional stains, right? So maybe it's back to the beginning and saying at an early age when your boy starts talking about how much they love their friend, endorse that without fear. when they start talking about interests, whether they be deep in the library in books or writing poetry or playing a sport that's not somehow appropriate for boys, I don't know, endorse these things, recognizing that masculinity in its ultimate form in a contemporary sense is personalized and flexible and will evolve over time.

49:07John Amaechi:Because that's how we're all still here, right as human beings we're all still here because we're not still wearing loincloths pretending that they're still saber-toothed tigers how do you see this showing up in the workplace i know you do a lot of consultancy and work with corporations do you see what we've spoken about here in terms of this kind of masculine idea and energy showing up through leaders in the workplace and how does that show up oh for sure uh leadership is still intrinsically entwined with masculinity is remarkable really there's lots of people who think that strength in terms of overbearingness of intimidation are leadership qualities and traits there's lots of people who think independence of thought and i think independence of thoughts can be important right in critical thinking, but they mean by independence of thought, an imperviousness to the evidence or opinions of others.

50:05John Amaechi:And they think this is leadership. And they also think this stems from a masculine patriarchal archetype. And I just think, I want to win, right? So I'm, anybody who knows me, even in passing, I am strong opinioned and willful, and I like to be right. But more than I like to be right. I like to win. And so my certainty is tempered by that. I want other people's opinions. I'm open to being wrong because being right is not as important to me as winning. And masculinity, the opposite is true. Every moment is about a win. Instead of, instead of it's about being right sorry instead of considering this long-term thriving win and so that makes a life that is constantly at battle and never consensual never collaborative never intimate in terms of building relationships and you talk about this as well in your latest book it's not magic the ordinary skills of extraordinary leaders which i was very thankful I got a copy of a few weeks ago.

51:19So I've been having a book for it. It's brilliant. It explores the mindset and intentions needed to truly influence others. What lessons from that do you think could help us as parents, teachers or coaches when we're raising boys?

51:36John Amaechi:I think the first chapter talks about cultivating authentic presence, right? I think there's way too much out there about this. What's it called? executive presence, which I think is like how to do man cosplay for everybody. How to do masculine cosplay is what executive presence is to me. It's nonsense. But being able to cultivate an authentic presence that's very obviously you, even if it's curated for work, but it's calm and credible. It's such an important thing. Anybody who's a parent watching this knows you're feeling it today in one way. I told you earlier about my sister who sent my niece off to school this morning with a big drama about having the right kind of bag.

52:19John Amaechi:And the idea that we can have an authentic, firm, robust, but calm and credible presence is just important every single morning, right, for teachers, every single lesson, every moment, and for leaders broadly, so important. I think that's one of them to think of. One of the chapters I talk about how to navigate fractious environments. And I think we just, I mean, we could describe the current moment in many things, but it is certainly a fractious environment full of change, full of disruption, full of conflict. Being able to manage that is important. One of the things that men miss out on is reflective practice if they follow the norms of that kind of toxic masculinity.

53:03John Amaechi:because one of the things about toxic masculinity is about having an experience whether it's a bar fight or a knockdown dragger argument with your partner or something else and then it happens and then you it's gone that's that is a tenant of masculinity it happened it's gone why are we still talking about this many women listening will know that phrase right why why are we still talking that happened yesterday two weeks ago a year i cheated on you two years ago why are we still talking about this. And it's this idea. And in the book, I talk a lot about how reflective practice is a key to this.

53:36John Amaechi:And not in this woo-woo way. I'm a scientist. But the idea that you have an experience and then you dedicate time to thinking about it, its implications for you in the future to enable you to grow and adapt and learn and be a better person and to allow your masculinity in this context to evolve. So I think that's really important. Yeah. These are the types of things that help us. And again, the reason the book is called It's Not Magic is because none of this stuff is complex. It is energy expensive. It is effortful. But there is nobody who's currently a capable operating member of society who can't use one or many of these tools.

54:19And I think that's a great lesson for parents as well. But, you know, with my boys, if they behave in a way that I do not like then spending time with them talking to them why did you do that how did that make you feel how do you think that made somebody else feel that instilling that reflective practice in them is something that any parent can do and will hopefully have positive

54:43John Amaechi:influences on them as they're growing up it really by the way it really will it's not even a question it will have a positive influence because even what you just described there which is really it's really it's kind of basic but really clever you know what it does is it helps people to be prescient it helps people to be able to predict the future because once they've examined what led up to an argument it's not just looking at the argument or the disruptive thing or the how he got kicked out of the classroom that day what led up to that the moment you start to examine that you suddenly when you're in the midst of that build-up the next time you suddenly oh I know where this is leading so at least you can say absolutely yes I want all that smoke I'm going to follow this pathway to its inevitable end but you also have another choice yeah we can say this led to an argument that really damaged my relationship with my partner and do I want that and I'm going to avoid it by saying look last time this happened it's led to a really big argument so I'm gonna I'm not walking away from you I'm just gonna I'm gonna go out in the garden I'm gonna take 30 minutes and de-escalate just imagine it's like you can see your life split into the what-ifs and that reflective practice that you just described allows people to do that i'm also gonna make a note that john amici said something i said was basic but really clever um you get tattooed on your on your arm yeah yeah next episode we're gonna see it see now now you said it i'm going to expect it i'm going to tune in i don't know i don't know where it's going to go is it going to be like a necklace around the day right across the chest even even better even better you'd have to come back for um season four john so you can see the the tattoo i might get one myself listen i don't i know i don't know how long i don't have any tattoos i don't know how long it takes to get done but i i can just simply watch the next few episodes and see them happen.

56:38This afternoon, I'm out. Looking back, what do you wish your younger self had known about being a man? It's a big question as well.

56:49John Amaechi:It is. I suppose I was so fortunate to have a different kind of mum and a different kind of family. That was always a weird, emotionally literate kid. What do you mean different kind of mum and different kind of family? I had a mum that never imposed on me anything other than the idea that masculinity was personal and flexible and if I was doing it it must be if I was doing it and it was doing no harm to myself or others it was an appropriate form of masculinity yeah if I wanted to we used to go on holiday to to real it's kind of mandatory for people from Stockport real sub-center for those who've been a certain age right and then we go to rudderland castle as well loved it and i remember going to rudderland castle and ending up being absolutely intoxicated by this woman who was sat there on a bench wearing a big fur coat surely bassy oh wow i didn't know my mom knew i didn't know and i just sat there talking to this woman in a big fur coat about her fur coat and i thought it was perfectly appropriate and my mum didn't say anything about it and it was perfectly appropriate yeah right and it's just like that is the the experience I had I was definitely assaulted from the outside about ideas about me as a person was I really a man if I spoke like I spoke because I spoke like I speak right was I really a proper masculine man if I didn't play sport because I wasn't really a fan of it you know I didn't play until I was 17 I avoided rugby at my school I was assaulted by that externally but the picture I had in my head internally I'm her clever boy okay and finally what advice would you give parents raising boys who want them to grow into kind resilient men tell them early tell them often that masculinity if it does no harm to them or to other people is who they are that it will be personal and flexible and evolve over time show them with your actions with the look on your face that when they do stuff subject to doing no harm to them and others that you don't worry about whether it's normative whether it hits some kind of ridiculous stereotype or marker of masculinity that you just want them to be operating in a way that helps them create connection encourage them to have close friends who are boys encourage them to do stuff in your house not just stuff out of the house don't rely on that idea that many people do that boys can be left on their own to do stuff outside.

59:18John Amaechi:And it's not that they can't ever do that, because I think it's important for every child to be able to do that. But allow them to do stuff in your house, encourage them, whether it's the, my sister loves was jig, jigsaws, I don't really understand what they are, but she likes them very much, and encourage them to do stuff with you that you might think that they no longer want. And then the other thing is, many families in all the best will in the world, they believe there's a point where intimacy for boys with them as parents becomes less important and fathers start shaking their son's hand instead of hugging them.

59:57John Amaechi:And mothers, they acquiesced the first rebuff, you know, that teenage, ah, mom, don't. We're a family, while consent is important, we're a family that shows our affection and I'm going to tell you that I love you and you're going to say thank you because that's what we do when people say things that are meaningful to us. My son left for secondary school today and tried to just give me a wave, bye mum, bye mum, and I grabbed his face and kissed it all over and said, I love you! But know this, know this Jolie, right? He, not today perhaps and hopefully never, but he will at some point experience somebody trying to impugn his identity and tell him that he is awful or misshapen or something else and just at the right moment will flood back into his mind that image with a completely new context not rejected not embarrassed but like sunshine in the dark that's what that's what we can do for each other it's lovely thank you chan amazing what a conversation this has been i'm gonna have to go now because i'm i am a mess go and get your tattoo jolly got your appointment at 10 when the greg's pasting that's been amazing you learned it it's been incredible thank you so much yeah well what a conversation we're so grateful to you and go and buy john's book it's not magic the ordinary skills of extraordinary leaders it is absolutely brilliant and there we go there is a copy of it on the screen thank you John thank you so much thank you it's my pleasure take care hey everyone thank you so much for listening we appreciate you we really really do our community is amazing if there's any other episodes you want us to rerun or topics that you want us to cover you know what to do email us get in contact on social media instagram linkedin and let us know we'll see you next week

1:02:02Thank you.