The. Mother Kind Podcast explores how
to feel happier, more confident and empowered in your
motherhood, even in our world of pressure judgement in
comparison. I'm your host, Zoe Blaski, and
every week I speak to an incredible expert to share
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Listen wherever you get your podcasts, just search Mother
Kind. Beyond 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,
kick starting a 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, game
addiction and body image, we're going to explore the complex
experience of being a boy today and what educators, teachers and
parents can do to help. So we are so glad to welcome
Beyond Equalities 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. We've been doing this work for
it for years. And I know the last couple of
months must have been crazy for you, right?
Adolescence has come out. It's changed the national
conversation about being a boy. So 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 has put
me in a much better place. But I think, you know, when
things like these 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 a trying to get other
people involved, you know, slowly but steadily building
things up for a decade. It both feels really exciting.
It 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've got to think about this a bit longer term.
We've got to build up a bit slower.
So I, I personally are feeling like I'm shifting into that.
OK, like let's get back to that building on those foundations
sort of space, which for me is a much better mental health and
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 is like thrust into
the limelight and speaking in 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 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, I think in my mind, I just
was working without the expectation that anything was
going to like people actually ever going to 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 gatekeeping 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 allowing things to kind
of like happen outside of my control.
I think the way that we work here is like we're, 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. 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.
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.
And, and so lots of opportunities to like sit in
rooms with people who I imagine don't here know very much, you
know, and that be the person in the room that's like, that's a
bad idea, which is incredibly awkward.
It's a, it's a strange dynamic, but like, it's being cool.
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 host the premier for adolescence 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 'cause
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
peeing off. And so it's like chopping all of
that down to 11 minutes from like 4 episodes, 4 hour long
episodes is a tall task. But it was, it was a cool
experience. And, 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 that it's that it's you guys in the room, right?
And I think sometimes when this happens, said the wrong people
can be in the room again with the platform.
And I was just happy that it was, you know, you guys have
been given the spotlight and 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 Ashadi.
I still call him Ashadi. 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, OK, whatever.
I like dismissing it kind of thing.
And then Jodie, we got that e-mail from a journalist at The
Times and we kind of kind of shared our our reflections on on
the issues. And initially the next week,
it's like the whole world changing.
It's. The biggest thing you've ever?
Seen, yeah, 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, well, 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, 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 I'm 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 and Stephen Grain 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.
And 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 a point
of contention is like how Abel is a 13 or a 14 year old to lack
critically engage with this material.
That's like super nuanced, like so, so nuanced and, 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
that. 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, and tool kits
and that kind of stuff. But I think, yeah, it's it's one
of those moments where something needed to happen.
And and that seems to be the the thing that we've gone with.
I mean, I, I told Keir 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.
Because you're talking. About Keir, Yeah, yeah.
Mr. Starmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think, yeah, it's a, it seems like a, a very quick
solution. I think that's what we 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 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 and she said she's having a like a teacher catch up
night. They're having a day off.
I was like, 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 you can't.
Yeah, you go. Some of the parents and the
kidney teacher and the next table.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need your time.
You need your time to relax. 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, OK, So what
does that mean? Well, how do I show up as a man?
Like, how do I, how do I relate to work?
What does success look like for me?
What does it look like for me as a as a parent, as a carer, as a
provider, as a protector? Are those things still valid?
Can they work all at the same time altogether?
And 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 how 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 and then other people are saying like, actually you need
to be something really different from what your father's were
from what your uncles were. So there there is this live
moment where people are coming with 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 what you think
your identity is about Elliot or any other man in this world.
You know, 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 and 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, we just spoke about previously where we're trying to
solve things with really quick answers.
We sort of throw, 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, who they care, what their character is,
how that shows up for the people around them.
And that then becomes this, 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 I with that, like actually,
when we, when we stay, 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
what, 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.
Like, how can we actually have that as a conversation between
US and think about it as as being like, 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. You know, it's, 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 like masculinity that's healthy
and it'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, all 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 they 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? I do want to have children.
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 like many of
us went through periods where our parents were the last person
people we'd want to talk to about absolutely anything at
all, let alone something personal.
I 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 take that part and give them the
support and, and various other things.
So they're 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, hypermasculine or not that
masculine based on how other people are around you.
And I think that 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 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 also watch 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 01 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,
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 modelling. 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 masculine 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 they've ever had kind
of to confront certain conversations.
And 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. And so, yeah, I definitely feel
like we need to create more spaces for men to be able to
have that conversation and also meant 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.
Yeah, exactly. And they do turn up and think,
actually, this was great, like we loved.
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,
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?
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, 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
pace. 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
behaviour. All of that kind of stuff is
very normal for them. 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 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 lack 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 masculine is always been.
And but it doesn't seem as accessible as it once did.
It 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, 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, 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 normalised.
So they don't even know that that's inhibiting or altering
the ways that they're thinking. Can I?
Sorry. Yeah, of course.
Is 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 defence classes.
He's obsessed with the idea. He's going to go to secondary
school and he's going to end up in constant fight.
It's. Going to be prison rules, yeah.
He's going to have to fight, survive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, survival of the fittest.
Yeah. It's 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 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, 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, 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 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 there, 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 so
wildly differently. I mean, I agree with that.
I think those, 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 Covic things like this kind of adding to that
story. And 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 that are happening around people that are
impacting upon upon those perceptions of what's going on.
You know, and that that might be something like adolescence
coming on the screen. And then 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 2 girls and my eldest is 9 and it's like the
flip side, like I'm trying to encourage her to embrace the
violence, not. To to box people in the face,
not. To go around flying people but
more self defence. Then you clarify that.
But you know the area that we're living now, it was nice like 6
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?
What would you do if he ran out 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, I just think about that. If I had a boy, maybe I'll be
trying to tone it down or as with her trying 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. We kind of touched on this with
with the kind of pre empting 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, pen slides make me talking
great. Yes, in certain places and and
in certain ways, absolutely. This is like a an issue.
And it's one that's grown a lot over the past 10 years that
we've been we've been working. And I think one of the really
important things to, 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 the parent depending on where you are and who you're
working with. I mean, I've, 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, I play a lot of sports and I
actually noticed like what's looked up to differs a lot
depending on like what, what activities you do.
You know, when I was a rugby player, it was kind of the, 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, 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.
And it starts to also be like, well, watch 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 how young men and men in general actually
adapting and thinking about those.
Ben's been involved in a study that was just released by
Movember looking at the influence of of 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 flowing following those influences had used to stuff
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 young, 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.
So it's, it's an interesting direction and particular push
that that men are experienced at the moment that I think is
really important for us to 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.
I feel like as, as guys, and especially as young guys, we're
catching up to like 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. I 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 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 6 foot tall and a six 6 inch penis.
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 on some of
the islands, right? Like 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 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, and particularly to men who like, are building
their careers by like working on their bodies, You know, like
professional bodybuilders, professional actors, you 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 at maintaining that. And for the average guy who's
like going to work 9:00 to 5:00 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 put
on muscle and. Yeah, do that like the cruise,
Yeah. Yeah, from the outside, you
don't realise that's their job, right?
That's their nine to five. That's that's not realistic for
for most people without a extreme level of dedication.
That research that you mentioned from November, I think it's
Young Boys. Digital Lives Online also found
that for young boys that engage with the manosphere content,
they are more likely to think that a man's role is providing
was 81% of the young boys who engage with one or more of those
influences. But we still found that 64% of
boys who don't engage in a manosphere 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 3 different versions of like
success money, like where to get the cash.
Like they just kept on giving me the cash.
I just want to talk about that. I'm not 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.
They, yeah, they want to have that conversation because it's,
it's a thing that that they're threatening about.
And I, I think there's this message that's out there that's
strongly pushed in, 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 going to go. And 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 being the provider of the next generation that
there is is something that you know, you can, you can also rest
your, you know, rest on and provide to the people, to the
family, to the community and everything else.
And, and being seen as being valuable for that.
Obviously huge issues with that sort of pressure and on
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 in
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 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 or whatever else it might be.
I was interested to hear what what, Yeah, how this is popping
up in conversations you're having.
I mean, I, 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 I'm, we're hearing it a lot.
Aren't we on this podcast that that the pressure for boys to
be, which now is huge and it doesn't just come from the
messaging they're getting online, but also from other
girls 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 the pressure on boys to have money.
I 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 percent, 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 stepdaughter is 22 and a
couple of years ago we were having a lot of conversations
about 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 black 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, and maybe 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 the cost of living
crisis, which is a crazy phrase in and of itself, like a cost of
living. But that aside, like everybody's
broke, right? Like we don't have, we don't
have money. Like, 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 shoulder.
I think there's some important rethinking for us to do that.
I mean, as a woman who 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, is everything Like we've ended up having great
careers and doing the majority of the care and domestic labor.
And that younger generation of girls, many of them are looking
at us and going, no thanks, I do not want that.
It's not. Yeah, exactly.
So some of this narrative around what they expect from boys
perhaps comes from this push back 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
that this younger generation are translating all of that is
having an impact on boys and them being confused about that
role. But also this pressure provider
is going to stem from the confusion.
But actually what we need is for everybody to 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 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 and where
we have remote working, where we have autonomy and it is a
privilege 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 gender quantity conversations 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, who are interested in
and want to engage 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. And 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 and 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 that 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 in more blunt terms by
by some of the girls in their class or by other people.
Or they've 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.
And 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's 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 harasses 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. Like there's not that many
people who who listen to you and give you things when you ask for
them. So that that sort of nuanced
conversation is quite a difficult one that we have to
do. But 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 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, that ability to take
responsibility for themselves and look after themselves.
And 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 it's a nuanced thing. Let alone to get them to think
about. Yeah, we described that
brilliantly. You mentioned kind of getting a
girl's number for the first time.
We always, we all remember that going out, seeing a girl and
approaching her, being really nervous.
But you know, your mate's looking a new one and she you
get rejected, but you get over it and you do it again.
So I bring about trauma here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm married. That was years ago.
Why? Why did she do that?
Deep breath. What kind of conversations are
you having with young people, young boys, about sex and
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, 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 it's very like non in the, in these workshops, we 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 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?
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 that 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 FRYERS acronym.
So consent being something that's freely given, being
something that's reversible, being something that's specific,
informed, he is explicit and 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, 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, 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 that I'm not like a anti porn
person. Like I, 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 that the
critical skills to like analyse 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. And so the conversations like go
in loads of different directions.
You can never really predict specifically with module 2, like
what's going to come up or what's going to come out in
those sessions. But I think one of the things
that you always find is that boys really want to talk about
relationships and they really want to talk about sex.
They really want to understand it.
They're desperate to get it right.
They want it to be good. And then the the prevailing
narrative that they're receiving from the outside world is one of
like it being good looks a very specific way and you play one
role in that. So you have to be the person
that knows everything already. You have to be dominant.
You have to take charge. Women want men who are in
control. Women want men who are leaders.
And so it's like a lot of work to destabilize those kinds of
ideas and allow them to like reimagine what that can look
like for themselves and to hold each other to new standards.
You know, like to to call each other out and call each other in
to lack a higher form of having positive relationships with
other people. So I think there's a lot of work
that goes into it and there's a lot of conversation.
There's a lot of like destabilizing heteronormativity,
intimacy between boys being like, OK and being a normal
thing that doesn't have to be sexual.
But I think in doing that, you also destabilize this idea that,
like relationships are purely a sexual thing and like, it's just
transactional. And so there are so many, like
moving pieces, but we try to get them in a space where they've
already had the opportunity to like do a bit of exploration.
They feel safe, they feel comfortable, they feel like they
can say what they really think. They can ask any questions that
they have. And then we have like a very
skilled team of facilitators who are in there trying to like walk
them through and navigate them through that conversation.
Amazing. And you've inspired me to be
more enthusiastic. Next time in the bedroom before
I go in. Come on, you took one thing from
this podcast. Be enthusiastic.
So to, to end, you know, we have a lot of parents that listen to
this podcast and we like to kind of try to give some maybe advice
is the wrong word, but you know, guidance and just ideas about
what they can do. They have boys, many of them,
many of them are a bit worried about maybe their, their boys
and how they're growing up and the state of the world.
So what would you say to parents listening who have sons or what
would you say to them in regards to how they can help their their
sons to grow up into kind of happy, healthy boys who aren't
causing harm to themselves or other people?
Yeah. And maybe I'll, I'll kick us
off. And I think first thing is if
you're listening to this, you are in the right place.
And it means that you are engaged in the right
conversations and you're thinking actively about how you
can do a good job or a better job of raising your boys.
And I think that's that is the baseline for like any of this
kind of stuff. Is that just people's will to
engage in these conversations? So I think if you're listening
and you're worried or you're you're scared for a young
person, you've watched adolescences freak you out,
you're in the right place, you're listening to the right
stuff. I would say that the main thing
like there's lots of like tips and tricks and techniques.
And I think there's like we have conversations with our
facilitators about non patriarchal methods of
communication and how we destabilize those norms of like
punitive justice in a classroom environment.
Or how we can like have conversations with boys where
they're really explorative and they're honest and they're,
they're really having transformational impact.
But I think the core of it is like keeping the channels of
communication open. And I think as long as you are
able to keep those channels of communication open, sometimes
it's got to be by force. Sometimes it's got to be like on
a Tuesday night. We in it together as a family.
We have conversation and I know you hate it, but that's what we
do as a family. Or it might be like there are
loads of parents who are worried about social media usage.
One of the best tips that I've heard is like sitting down with
your young person and having an hour 1 evening in the week where
you show them your social media and they show you theirs.
And you just watch it together and you have conversations about
like some of the things that are funny and some of the things
that are interesting and some of the things that made you think,
but also some of the things that are maybe a bit weird or make
you a bit uncomfortable. And they're not conversations
where you're policing behaviour, but they're conversations where
you're building that ability to think critically and to analyse,
like information that they're seeing online.
But I think the main thing is them just knowing that you're
the person that they can come to and as long as you've got that
in place, which is not an easy thing to do.
And I think for lots of parents, that's going to require a lot of
work. But I think that that's the core
of it. And everything else is like
supplementary. Like there are some books that
you could probably recommend and to your kids, there are some Ted
talks or like videos or documentaries that you can show
them. But really the core of it is
like that feedback loop of conversation.
You genuinely being interested in their internal world and
what's going on for them and not trying to police their behaviour
because policing behaviour only pushes it into the shadows where
you can't see what it is and you have no idea about it.
And I think when you do come to those points of like the need to
challenge, another thing that's really valuable is like being
able to send yourself, like regulate yourself and then send
yourself in your own emotions and the impact something's
having on you as the like means for conversation rather than
just a moral conversation about what they should or shouldn't be
doing. So if you see a video that makes
you feel uncomfortable, you see they're liking something or you
look at you check their WhatsApp and they're having a bad
conversation in the, the WhatsApp group with their
friends to be like, oh, I saw that.
And it, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable or like, I like,
I, I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Like I, I didn't expect to, to come across that or whatever,
But like, rather than that conversation being like, I'm so
disappointed in you. And I can't believe that you've
done that for the conversation to just be a bit of an
exploration of like what the impact of that stuff is on the
people around you and the people that you care about.
And, and maybe how they can start to like change some of
those behaviors or what they could try in order to explore
it. And Movember also came out with
a really good resource in collaboration with us for
parents is like a page long guide of it follows like a a
framework called Alec, which is about asking questions, actively
listening, encouraging them to like make changes and then
checking in with what actions they've taken.
So a really easy framework to follow and for parents.
But Dan, I'm sure you've got some some other advice.
And that was pretty fantastic advice.
It was solid. Wasn't it great?
Job for me, maybe emphasizing some of Ben's messages here,
like as a, as a parent, as a carer, as anyone, and you're not
going to have all the answers, like you're not going to be the
expert on everything that comes up in young people's lives.
And I, I think it's just better to be focusing on trying to
build that trusting relationship, that open line of
communication and, and then being curious about actually
what they understand about things.
I mean, I know a lot of people's reaction, for example, to
adolescence was, Oh my God, there's this whole universe that
I didn't understand there of secret emoji messages and
whatever else. What the hearts mean, Yeah.
And I think that the danger with that sort of reaction is when we
speak to young people, quite a few of them have absolutely no
idea about those messages. Either they're having very
different conversations online, or they maybe get it, but then
actually in a completely different group, those things
mean something very different to them.
So if you try to be an expert about young people with your
young person, you're going to fail because they're one person
and they're they're situated in all these different microcosms
of culture and friendship groups and everything else.
It's much better to just like try to be building that
relationship with that young person and have them as being,
you know, they can come and bounce their ideas off you or
check in or just know that there's going to be that dinner
on Tuesday where they can sit quietly.
That's what they have to do. Yeah, awkward.
Yeah, families, their family is going to be there.
Even if it's not what they want to do, their family is going to
be there. And I think that can be like a
really amazing gift that you can set up for for a young person
that will hold them in in good stead for the rest of their
life. If you're a parent and you would
like Beyond Equality to come into the school that your kids
go to, what's the crack? How does that work?
We'd love to be there. You can send us an e-mail or I
guess the best kind of route is to encourage the school to ask
them what they're doing about masculinity education, to ask
them what conversations they're currently having with the boys,
and to suggest that you've come across an organization that
might be really helpful or runs these workshops that are really
good that you'd recommend. And you can also contact us
directly. You can reach out to us.
You'll find emails on the website for the right people in
the right departments, but anything on beyondequality.org,
have a look and maybe forward like we've got schools
brochures. We've got different brochures
for different products. So you can forward some of that
stuff to the school that your your kids are at.
Also anything else? Right.
I mean, socials work as well. Yeah, we'll, we'll pick, we'll
pick it up and we can provide you with something to pass on
the school. Amazing, amazing.
And of course, we'll link all the all the contact details in
the show notes. This has been incredible.
One of my favourites. I was looking forward to it.
I think I enjoyed it. It was so good.
You're I love the work that you're both doing.
I have for many years. So just massive thank you for
staying on a bit longer, eating into your lunchtime and sharing
your wisdom with us. So thank you so much, Ben and
Dan, love the work you're doing. Take care.
We'll have you back soon, hopefully.
Take care. See you soon, you guys.
Thank you. Mother Kind podcast explores how
to feel happier, more confident and empowered in your
motherhood, even in our world of pressure judgement in
comparison. I'm your host, Zoe Blaski, and
every week I speak to an incredible expert to share
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