The SHOCKING Truth About What Young Men Are REALLY Learning From the Internet! | Were Talking: Masculinity

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0:28Welcome to We're Talking. This week, I'm sitting down with some incredible men for what were some of my favorite conversations on the show. Together, we challenge old ideas of what it means to be a man, what masculinity really looks like, and how we can support young men today. Some of what you'll hear is tough, so we've included links to support charities in the episode description. These conversations reminded me just how vital it is for men to have safe spaces where we can be honest, show vulnerability, and lean on each other. So, let's get into it. Today, we're talking masculinity.

1:19Youngblood. What is so incredibly sad is that whenever I see a violence happening with youth, and it's really a femicide, right, where you're seeing a young boy or young man taking the life of a young woman, you'll find out inevitably that typically it's some type of rejection that happened. Yeah. He was rejected. She denied him. She said, I no longer want to see you. And he didn't know how to take the rejection. No. The hardest thing about being a young man, and especially at the minute, if you don't adhere to the trend, you're a weirdo, you're a freak, you kind of, you're isolated. It makes us kind of terrified to formulate any personality at all.

2:09I feel like what's so strange around kind of young men at the minute is the glamorization of the inability to fail. You can't fail. You can't fall off your bike. You can't, like, I don't know, like, drop plates in the kitchen. You can't cry. You can't, like, it's like, don't fail, don't fail, don't fail. Succeed, succeed, succeed. And then when you eventually do fail, then what happens is the humiliation is ten times or a hundred times. That's what I'm saying. i'm really glad we're talking about this at the minute because i think it's kind of taken me 27 years to fundamentally really kind of like own my masculinity like i'm in a period of my life of 27 where i'm like and that's such a crazy thing to say in 2025 yes isn't it such a ridiculed thing to say i think we have such a duty at the minute to really talk about that makes me really scared for young men at the minute because they have nowhere to turn to you know i'm saying there's such a big anti-men thing happening on the internet and for a 12 year old boy to see that it's like oh who can i be and then you end up finding someone like andrew tate and then you turn towards that and i always get really concerned for my little cousin who's 12 and he's a legend and he likes go-karting and he likes football and he likes blah blah blah and i I really get worried about like, okay, who is he looking at on the internet?

3:35Because if you take this kind of anti-man thing that's going on, which is justified, like take that out of my generation, or my dad, or my granddad, or my great granddad, fine, but this 12-year-old boy, been exposed to this kind of thing, going like, oh, I can't be that when I'm formulating my ideas, but I like this. And then he's on the internet every day, and then he finds, again, like the far right and this kind of position of power. like it's really dangerous because what my point is people like me and people like you are afraid to go I'm masculine you can listen to me and you can and the biggest part black part of masculinity is Ireland in a boxing gym right with boxers I walk in I love it I'm full of testosterone I'm aggressive I'm about to box I like boxing youngblood likes boxing yesterday i'm wearing a skirt on stage said this morning i'm in a boxing gym you know what i mean right and the biggest beautiful kind of thing i learned from that is like i love the the masculinity and respect in in my gym because i'm like everyone goes around each other and says hello to each other and that is the that is the problem you've got this on this side you've got this on this side and that in every regard at the minute like us liberals if you want are afraid to take the gloves off when the gloves need to come off.

4:58Yes. Even what's happening, like, everything regarding, like, trans people in America right now, like, the far right are taking the gloves off. If we're not doing it because we're too scared, they're going to find someone who isn't scared, who is preaching darkness and a step backward in the world.

5:29Jordan. Men, we have a challenge around identifying what the emotion is. Do you feel like there is actually a kind of crisis in terms of men being able to be honest about how they're feeling about life and society in the West? Oh, absolutely. I think all over the world. And what I noticed, and I do this with a lot of the television shows. It's funny enough, I was filming, I guess I could say it, I was filming Married at First Sight yesterday, and there was a gentleman that I was working with. And I asked him, I said, so tell me what emotion do you have in this moment right now? As you sit with your wife, what emotion is it?

6:22he had no words. And he wasn't armed to be able to articulate the words. He doesn't know what an emotion is. So I said, if you cannot tell me what the emotion is, you can't tell me what the feeling is. Therefore, you definitely can't tell me what your partner's emotion is. And you definitely can't tell me what your partner's feeling is. And if you can't tell me what your partner's is, then you can't hold space for them no you that means you can't connect with us like the most important thing it is and you said it it is it it is like do we start like a heartbreak high or you know just some space where you where we can just in get like why at school is that not the utmost priority to be i think it's one hour a week in the uk psc personal social education one hour a week well when i went one thing that all children and young people need to understand is how they feel how they engage with in people interpersonally every day of their lives yes and this would and i bet you you feel the same this will definitely get us both into trouble but i'll say it so it'll get me into trouble is um trigonometry yeah when i was in i used that today right yeah i was gonna say i have not used trigonometry oh what since i was but yeah cute angles though yeah no we i have no idea like i'm not true yeah it's it's it's like it is it is almost pointless yeah if not pointless yeah right however being able to identify your emotion and feeling is everything yeah in life everything everything in life like i'm saying this is what spins me out then at the basis of these huge political social economic shifts is a human being yes like a human that is feeling something and that feeling is a part of the decision yes like how much better would decisions be if we were emotionally regulated when we made them that's all i'm asking yeah yeah and and this is the reason why i think these conversations are so important yeah this is the reason why uh being considerate parenting yeah is so important ah this is the reason why um you know normalizing these conversations with friends especially among men definitely you know one thing that i noticed is is that um you know i think one of the most toxic places for men other than the internet yeah is the barbershop brilliant uncle's telling old stories i know and and you know it's so i mean so funny so clearly i don't have to go to a barbershop right but my boys do one yeah and so it was this is this is this is this blew me away so for years i would cut my my boys hair right and part of it was i was cheap yeah right then the other and i was like they're young they don't care their dad like they don't care right then i brought them to the shop yeah and i was like oh no no i can't keep them in this no way so because they were bringing stuff back so i was like i'm gonna bring them home and i'm gonna cut their then i thought this is bad parenting because they're going to get exposed to it anyway yeah so what's the best to school what's best is okay i need to be there so that we can have conversations around you can chat to the other guys around it oh my god but but but what is said is just and this is not in the uk every barbershop in london but this is in london i'm wearing a barbershop in south london south london you're in south and uh and and once again i'm not throwing all of our um all of these barbershops under the bus but but what i am saying though is that i think that you're gonna get dragged for this yeah yeah i'm definitely gonna get it for this but but but what we do need is we need to have conversations around these topics that we're talking about yes in in in the shops one of my biggest frustrations with with obviously i'm being general i'm generalizing here but with the male community is this internalized homophobia definitely rooted in misogyny where anything outside of this heteronormative framework right anything is just is just it's gay it's you know there's all these kind of phrases that are thrown around like why why feed that or no homo pause like all of these phrases are are and i said gay as an insult when i was a kid which is again hilarious because i was so i was so not homophobic it was just i was just trying to fit in you know um i think everyone did my in my generation as a slur you know and and culturally it was way more acceptable to be like that about it but it doesn't make any sense to me i honestly i cannot get my head around the concept of homophobia so i just ask myself questions what can lead to that and i think there's a lot of issues in society that are rooted in this immediate limitation on boys sense of intimacy you know like i i there's so much in the world that seems to be as a result of boys and men who if not gaining that intimacy from a woman there's no chance that that's happening from their male friends because there's this fear and i remember seeing these these pictures online like there was these photo shoots that used to happen in like the late 1800s or something, I don't know.

11:49And there were men who were best friends, and you can look at the positions that they did. They sat on each other's knee, head on their shoulders. Yes. They were very tactile. And then there was this introduction of heterosexuality and homosexuality as a means of understanding the human psyche. So you're saying that, in essence, society has shamed us... Yeah. ..into performing this script.

12:24Big Zoo. I can see that without question, it was your mother who shaped you. 100%. I am her. You are. Last weekend I had a conversation with my boys, two boys, 11 and 14, around masculine traits and feminine traits. Yep. So do you believe that you embody both traits? Yeah, for sure. because I was raised by a woman. I wasn't raised by a man. So there's a lot of masculine traits I don't have because it wasn't installed in me growing up. You know? My mum is a scandalous lady and she takes care of herself. So I love, like, skincare and stuff, which maybe might not be the most masculine thing. But I think it's super important.

13:08So, like, come to my house, you go in my bathroom, I've got bed, this, owner, serum, eye serum, cream, like do you know what I'm saying like and like I find it hilarious and obviously I'm very loving I cook I'm a like cooking is also sometimes synonymous with women in their house you know even though a lot of chefs are men like like the most predominantly most successful chefs are men which is quite weird I find quite weird but like the trait of cooking is normally auntie grandma mum whereas me I'm the chef which is quite weird like because as a guy I'm also this like grime MC he was very tough and I'm big so I'm a big lad and like I'm man them so it's like I've always had this this balance that it's like I'm from the hood like I gotta be tough like you gotta be you gotta be a G I'm also quite a soft tender man which I get from my mum and I think nowadays compared to when I was young that is celebrated I think what we're what we're doing for young men is giving them a chance to express rather than suppress and put them feelings in the box.

14:20So you having that conversation with your young kids is a convo I never had growing up. I never had that convo about feminine traits and masculine traits. I just followed what my friends told me. And that's just what you do because we all want to be in unison. And I feel like young men, when it comes to what you're saying, is that they go with whatever their friends are telling them. Their friends are saying, we're going to go here and do this. That's what you do. If they say this is cool, that's what you do. Whereas now we're realising you can still be part of a group, but you can also be individual.

14:48So I have friends who are so different to me. We don't have to align on everything. We don't have to have the same traits, but we can still be great friends. Whereas I feel like before, we almost felt like to be in unison, to be in a group with other men, you had to align with what they liked. Same way it's like growing up in England, it's like, do you like football? Yeah, yeah, I like football. Who do you sport? Oh, you sport this team? Oh, we're a gang. But then you meet a guy who doesn't like football. you're like, what's wrong with you, bro? You ain't got a team. What? That's mad. Whereas now it's like, yeah, fine.

15:22What do you like? I mean, masculinity is a topic that always pops up on the show. In particular, the relationship that men have with each other. Yes. In particular, because what we see with all the research is that men are having fewer relationships, fewer close relationships. Yeah. And becoming lonelier over the years. So when you think about your social circle, it feels like to me, though, that you're very connected. Yeah, me and my brothers, we're gang, man. We've got a big group of us. We're all really close. We all tell each other where we're at mentally. We're all there for each other. We all support each other.

16:07I'm really lucky, man. I've got a really big group of just really good friends, man. The fact that you just have conversation around where you are mentally is not the standard. Yeah, which is quite mad because for me it feels normal. Like if I'm going through some stuff, call the lads, man. We go sit down, go get a food. We're just, I've got a really, we're almost family. Me and my brothers are family. Wow. So what do you say to the person listening who doesn't feel like they have that family but wants that, needs that in their life? I would say, don't be afraid to speak to random people. I feel like that's what the UK has definitely done to people.

16:46You get on a train and no one speaks to each other. A person can be on fire in front of you. And people are like, read the Metro. That person's fine. Are you OK? Yeah. England's very like that. And I feel like people that are going through that loneliness or don't have that connection, I would say the best thing for that, I mean, it goes back to youth work. Community hubs, man. Type in with your local community. Like, volunteering. Volunteering is a great way to get into a group of people. You know, some people, they move to London and they don't have that community. They don't have friendship around them or they've taken that leap of faith and gone to a new place and they don't feel accepted.

17:25I always say volunteering and going to a local community. If it's not your community hub, I would say, like, sports is a great way to get into it. Like, because I have a lot of friends where me and my lads, we always play football together or we box together. Sports is a great way to connect. So if it's not sports and it's not community, sometimes it's just finding people that are like-minded, that like the stuff you like and going into that, whether it's gaming or whether it's food or whether it's fashion. I feel like that for me is the fabric of society, is people's niche, random things that they love, connecting with people on that.

17:59If you love music, go to an open mic night. Sometimes it's having that confidence to step out your comfort zone, to go lean into what you love. That's the hardest step, I think, that young people or people in general face. And if there's anything, any word of advice I can give to anyone listening who's looking to take a step away from what they do in their everyday life and find something in their passion is, you've got to take that leap of faith. Yeah, how do you? Because at the end of the day, you're going to feel so much better. Hearing from Jordan, Youngblood and Big Zoo really drives home how complex and personal masculinity is.

18:31It's not about fitting into a mold, but about breaking free from it. Their honesty reminds us that vulnerability isn't weakness, it's strength. If we want to support the next generation of men, we need to create spaces where we can be open, connect, and be ourselves without judgment. Thank you so much for watching. And remember, real change starts with real conversations.

19:08Thank you.