Speaker 1: I am a Yamla. I had a baby daddy relationship.
Speaker 1: I spent time in a relationship with a married man.
Speaker 1: I had to learn the skills and tools required to
Speaker 1: make my relationships healthy, fulfilling and loving. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: r Spot, a production of shandaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Our Spot. I am Eyambla, delighted, honored,
Speaker 1: and privileged to be your support, your facilitator, your host,
Speaker 1: your teacher, sometime your adversary, because I want to step
Speaker 1: right up in your world and take a look at
Speaker 1: how you do relationships. And we come here to the
Speaker 1: Our Spot to learn how to be better, how to
Speaker 1: do better, how to create better relationships, all kinds of relationships.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about everything, but today we are
Speaker 1: talking about something that is near and dear to my heart. Men.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure every woman out there have a story
Speaker 1: about a man, her father. What's your relationship like with
Speaker 1: your father, your son? What's your relationship like with your son?
Speaker 1: So a few months ago when we were doing I
Speaker 1: was doing a class for men. I just started doing
Speaker 1: some research around you know, what men are saying and
Speaker 1: what men are doing and I bumped into a jewel,
Speaker 1: a jewel, and then I realized I had this book
Speaker 1: doing that research. They sent me over to a tent talk.
Speaker 1: I went over to the tent Talk, which is rated
Speaker 1: one of the top ten talks that every man should see.
Speaker 1: And when I got over there, I fell in love. Okay,
Speaker 1: I fell in love on the ted Talk. Okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, because my guest today.
Speaker 2: Is a New Yorker.
Speaker 1: Okay, I come from the nation of Brooklyn, all right,
Speaker 1: so I'll forgive him for living in between the Bronx
Speaker 1: and Harlem. I don't even know what that is?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: But that's okay, boogie down.
Speaker 2: You know. I got you, Haller, I got you.
Speaker 1: But when I went and pulled the book out and
Speaker 1: saw all the notes I had made in the book,
Speaker 1: I fell in love all over again. My guest today
Speaker 1: is Tony Porter, the author of Breaking out of the
Speaker 1: Man Box, and he talks about men and allieship, men
Speaker 1: being allies with women, men being allies with each other,
Speaker 1: talks about fatherhood and doing his work with men and
Speaker 1: breaking men out of the man Box. Tony said, helping
Speaker 1: to create a world where all men and boys are
Speaker 1: loving and respectful and all women, girls and those at
Speaker 1: the margins of the margins are valued and safe. My
Speaker 1: guest today Tony Porter, creator of The Man Box, a teacher,
Speaker 1: an author, and activist working to advance gender and racial justice,
Speaker 1: creating a more equitable society. A father work with the NFL.
Speaker 1: Welcome Tony.
Speaker 2: It's so good to be in your presence to just
Speaker 2: on a privilege. Thank you for having us. I've been
Speaker 2: excited since I've been told. I was told that I
Speaker 2: was going to have an opportunity to be on your
Speaker 2: show here, So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for agreeing to be here. A call
Speaker 1: two men? Tell me about a call to men? What
Speaker 1: is the call? What is the call?
Speaker 2: We're a national organization and as you mentioned with birth
Speaker 2: out of New York, I'm born in Halem, raised in
Speaker 2: the Bronx.
Speaker 1: I'll forgive you for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But we started the organization about twenty three years ago,
Speaker 2: both myself and the other co founder, Ted Bunch. I
Speaker 2: was a social worker working in a substance use program
Speaker 2: about thirty minutes north of the Bronx and town called Nayak.
Speaker 2: I was in the hospital here at Nayak Hospital, and
Speaker 2: the folks I served came from the boroughs. I met
Speaker 2: Ted who was working at Safe Horizon running there. Back
Speaker 2: in the day, they would be called batteries Intervention programs.
Speaker 2: Today they may be called the Fender classes for men,
Speaker 2: things of that nature. And I was volunteering at one
Speaker 2: and him and I met, and I got to a
Speaker 2: point in time when I realized, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: this stuff that we're talking to men who are abusive about,
Speaker 2: we really need to be sharing this information with all men,
Speaker 2: because while all men are not abusive, and there's a
Speaker 2: minority of men who are in comparison to the rest
Speaker 2: of us, the problem is we're silent to the abuse.
Speaker 2: For me, the question became, what is it about we
Speaker 2: as men collectively that an epidemic of violence against women
Speaker 2: and girls can be happening on our watch? And it
Speaker 2: is that epidemic portion. You know, organization of like the
Speaker 2: Center for Disease Control have said that, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the leading coups is an injury to women in
Speaker 2: our country is men's violence against women. You know, we
Speaker 2: know one out of six women will be raped. We
Speaker 2: know every three to six seconds a women's a victim
Speaker 2: of domestic violence. We know one out of three women
Speaker 2: will experience some kind of assault in their life. One
Speaker 2: out of two, out of one out of five women
Speaker 2: during a four years in college, it's going to be
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted. You know. We know trafficking is a multi
Speaker 2: billion dollar industry and an average AI if a person
Speaker 2: in traffic is a girl, it's thirteen fourteen years old.
Speaker 2: Fifty percent somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of female
Speaker 2: homicides our results of domestic violence, and we know women
Speaker 2: are abusive too, but the numbers is no comparison. And
Speaker 2: at the moment, I'm talking about men. So we know
Speaker 2: there's an epidemic of violence against women and girls in
Speaker 2: our society, you know, and I've been I was baffled
Speaker 2: by that and the way that women love us, take
Speaker 2: care of us, live in community with us, and then
Speaker 2: have to protect themselves from us all at the same time,
Speaker 2: and in many cases that love for us, women don't
Speaker 2: even tell us the ways in which they're protecting themselves
Speaker 2: from men on a day to day basis. I became
Speaker 2: really invested in knowing more and understanding more about this issue,
Speaker 2: and the thing that was resonating for me most was again,
Speaker 2: while men, most men are not abusive, we tolerated, was
Speaker 2: silent to the abuse? And how do we then create
Speaker 2: a critical mass of men that say no more, no more,
Speaker 2: not on our watch. How do we normalize healthy manhood
Speaker 2: in a way that it also includes decreasing and ending
Speaker 2: this epidemic of violence against women and girls. So it
Speaker 2: was that vision that led to starting a.
Speaker 1: Call to men, and the call is to not be silent,
Speaker 1: to not not ignore it. As you were speaking, I
Speaker 1: was just wondering how many men even know or recognize
Speaker 1: or understand those statistics that you that you offered, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's easy to think, well, it's just a
Speaker 1: little over here, or it's just a little piece over there.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the world and you know
Speaker 1: one in five women being raped, a one in four
Speaker 1: dieing of homicide in their own home. I know two
Speaker 1: women whose husbands took their lives.
Speaker 2: So again, most men are not violent. But was silent
Speaker 2: to the violence?
Speaker 1: Isn't that a violence, Tony?
Speaker 2: Isn't it is the form of violence? Yes? And I'm
Speaker 2: glad you said that, sister, because we have to expand
Speaker 2: our definition of violence. We have to expand it. It
Speaker 2: has been too narrow focused. Yeah, And you know, domestic
Speaker 2: violence continues to be the number one call for police
Speaker 2: departments across the nation. Right, no particular community or cultural
Speaker 2: group you know, has a lock on this thing across
Speaker 2: the nation. Its remains the highest and number one call
Speaker 2: for the average police department in our country. We know
Speaker 2: that the scariest moment for our daughters, which should be celebrated,
Speaker 2: is when they go off to college. So our work
Speaker 2: with men, when you speak about that call, we are
Speaker 2: and the fact that, as you mentioned that most men don't
Speaker 2: know those statistics, and that's very true because we're the
Speaker 2: first generation of men really having a responsibility to take
Speaker 2: a very active and intentional role in addressing these issues. Right,
Speaker 2: so we don't even have a voice for it many
Speaker 2: of us. A lot of our work is engaging men,
Speaker 2: mobilizing them, but educating them and helping men to develop
Speaker 2: a voice to speak to these issues because it's new
Speaker 2: to many of us, really helping men to understand their
Speaker 2: influence and how they then use their influence to create
Speaker 2: platform platforms, meaning what we choose to elevate to really
Speaker 2: use their voice in this space. See, we believe firmly
Speaker 2: that if women could end the violence on their own,
Speaker 2: they would have already. We also that that only makes
Speaker 2: sense to me. And while as a minority of men
Speaker 2: in comparison to the rest of us here it's still
Speaker 2: a lot of men, but it's a minority in comparison
Speaker 2: to the rest of us. Somewhere twenty twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of menace, so as a minority in comparison to the
Speaker 2: rest of us, are perpetrating the violence. Now, sell those
Speaker 2: men we love and care about, and we also have
Speaker 2: to look into the history as to what led toward
Speaker 2: them becoming who they are. That's also important in our work.
Speaker 2: We know hurt people, heard of the people. We know
Speaker 2: trauma breeds trauma from generation to generation. We actually know
Speaker 2: that eighty percent of men who perpetrate violence against women
Speaker 2: and girls who were victimized themselves as boys. Right, we
Speaker 2: know that to be true. So while we can't count
Speaker 2: on these men right now, when I go back and say,
Speaker 2: if women could end the violence on their own, they
Speaker 2: would have already, And then we have this smaller percentage
Speaker 2: of men we really can't count on right now, but
Speaker 2: we're not throwing them away right particularly in the black community.
Speaker 2: I can't speak wholeheartedly for other community, but I could
Speaker 2: speak about our we're not throwing men away. We have
Speaker 2: to address this, but we're not throwing our men away.
Speaker 2: But while we can't count on them at the moment,
Speaker 2: you have this group of men that may be many
Speaker 2: of your listener, the large majority of men or the
Speaker 2: women listeners, the men they partner with, the large majority
Speaker 2: of them don't perpetrate the violence. But we have to
Speaker 2: really dig into the collective socialization of manhood. That's why
Speaker 2: we got that little catchy term the man box. We're
Speaker 2: talking about the collective socialization of manhood. What's in our
Speaker 2: collective socialization that we don't know? Those stats that we have,
Speaker 2: that we have this lack of interest in these type
Speaker 2: of experiences women have because we were interested in the
Speaker 2: women in our family. We love them, we care about them,
Speaker 2: we do all we're supposed to do in those spaces.
Speaker 2: But this general understanding of the experiences of women, we're
Speaker 2: very lacking as men in that respect. And men who
Speaker 2: are abusive at the end of the day, they really
Speaker 2: rely on that because that contributes to our silence. So
Speaker 2: our job is collectively as men no longer be silent,
Speaker 2: to become educated, to teach other boys, other ways to
Speaker 2: be men, to redefine some of these aspects of manhood.
Speaker 2: And you know, from a sports and knowledge, get off
Speaker 2: the sidelines right, get in it, right, get in the mix,
Speaker 2: and really find our place and our role and responsibility.
Speaker 2: And that's a great part of the work of a
Speaker 2: Called Men.
Speaker 1: All Right, I want to talk about the man box,
Speaker 1: but I want to back up for just a moment
Speaker 1: because I hear the women out there screaming. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you know, for many, many years I've worked with women, men,
Speaker 1: mostly women, and my assignment this year, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: what's the work with men? And okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be obedient. So I've offered a variety of things for
Speaker 1: them showing up, Tony. But my question is for me,
Speaker 1: for everybody, what do we say, how do we let
Speaker 1: men know those who are use as those who not
Speaker 1: who are not, that there's work to be done, that
Speaker 1: they have to do and they got to show up
Speaker 1: to do the work.
Speaker 2: How do we do that? That's a great question. And
Speaker 2: over these years of doing this work, these twenty plus years,
Speaker 2: we're constantly reevaluating that when we first started doing the
Speaker 2: work of a Call to Men, we were just talking
Speaker 2: about men's violence against women, and we got to figure
Speaker 2: out how to disruptive stop it, et cetera. And that's
Speaker 2: like you know, you know, that's like preaching to the choir. Right,
Speaker 2: you have those five six men that always show up,
Speaker 2: and that's it. See what we learn, what we learn
Speaker 2: in this this thing we call the collective socialists of manhood,
Speaker 2: also known as a man box. Men are taught to
Speaker 2: define what it means to be a man by distancing
Speaker 2: ourselves from the experience of women and girls. Doesn't mean
Speaker 2: we don't care about the women and girls in our
Speaker 2: circles and our family, et cetera. Of course we do.
Speaker 2: But we define what it means to be a man
Speaker 2: by distancing ourselves from what we perceive to be the
Speaker 2: experience of women and girls. Right. Also, we're not taught
Speaker 2: to be our authentic selves as men. This man box
Speaker 2: really forces us to be a role self rol e
Speaker 2: instead of our whole self whl Right. And so when
Speaker 2: you take this lack of interest we then define then
Speaker 2: as a result, you have distancing and you take this
Speaker 2: inability to be your authentic selves. Right, It could be
Speaker 2: challenging to get us to join certain spaces, right, even
Speaker 2: when you talk about like a healing space. For most
Speaker 2: of us, we've been taught ain't nothing wrong with me,
Speaker 2: that's right, I can't talk about I can't talk about see.
Speaker 2: A big part of this man box is men are
Speaker 2: taught that men are strong, dominating, women are soft, gentle,
Speaker 2: and weak. Yes, that's in the teaching. We're then taught
Speaker 2: to define what it means to be a man by
Speaker 2: distancing ourselves from the experience of women and girls. So
Speaker 2: by virtue of distancing ourselves, we as men don't admit
Speaker 2: it to weakness much at all. The word weak is
Speaker 2: not even in our vocabulary. Even when feeling weak, we
Speaker 2: come up with other ways of saying that, I'm a
Speaker 2: little tired, and I'm a little stressed. I'm not feeling
Speaker 2: too good today, I'm a little wore out on burnt.
Speaker 2: We never use the word weak in association with ourselves.
Speaker 2: Now you couple that with being taught that asking for
Speaker 2: help is a sign of weakness. Now, just mathematically speaking,
Speaker 2: we find ourselves as men. We don't ask for help,
Speaker 2: we don't offer help far to offer, and we don't
Speaker 2: accept help. Right, and then it's amenability to ask for, offer,
Speaker 2: or accept help is healing us as men. So when
Speaker 2: you talk about healing circles and those kinds of spaces,
Speaker 2: they are not attractive to us because they lean into
Speaker 2: that space of help, and we resist anything in many
Speaker 2: cases that look like help because then it starts to
Speaker 2: look having us look or believing that we're weak. And
Speaker 2: if we're weak and that distancing, we're closing up that gap.
Speaker 2: You feel the way I'm coming from. All of that
Speaker 2: we run from as men.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. One of the brothers that I worked with, he said, Iyamla,
Speaker 1: vulnerability and inadequacy are chrystonite to a man.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we don't do vulnerability right, and vulnerability is
Speaker 2: risk taking in many respects, and it's risk taking that
Speaker 2: really leads toward accomplishment, even when you're talking about healings.
Speaker 2: But we're taught to be in control as men, not
Speaker 2: to be vulnerable, right. And you know, as I shared
Speaker 2: with you, the impact is having on women in this
Speaker 2: epidemic of violence is hurting us as men too. Yes,
Speaker 2: absolutely we You know statistics tell us that six million
Speaker 2: men go undiagnosed annually for depression and anxiety because we
Speaker 2: don't ask for help or we try to cover it up.
Speaker 2: We don't go to the doctor on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: We don't practice preventative medicine. Again, this issue around asking
Speaker 2: for the help. Men who are partnered, by the way,
Speaker 2: are much more healthier than men who are not. And
Speaker 2: it has very little to do with the man. It's
Speaker 2: that partner that's constantly ensuring that he takes care of himself.
Speaker 2: Right now, I go for a physical exam twice a year.
Speaker 2: I see my doctor on a regular basis. But I
Speaker 2: wasn't always that person. And as I get older, I'm
Speaker 2: more invested. But my wife has been behind me all
Speaker 2: these years. You know. Look, I got a vitamin box.
Speaker 2: That's one of those big old boxes. I don't even
Speaker 2: know half of what I'm taking. I just do what
Speaker 2: she tell me to do, and in some cases because
Speaker 2: she's a student of it, you know. And so I
Speaker 2: noticed the true that personally and otherwise, that men who
Speaker 2: are partner have a tendency to be healthier, and a
Speaker 2: lot of that has to do with the person in
Speaker 2: their lives. They even tell us that, you know, not
Speaker 2: only does that person in our lives insist upon us
Speaker 2: going to the doctor and all of that, but even
Speaker 2: when at the doctor's office, they asked the questions they
Speaker 2: have to because we will not tell We'll be right
Speaker 2: in the doctor's office because we came for one issue,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to tell them about that pain
Speaker 2: that's been nagging us and decide that we will literally
Speaker 2: this this really you know, we can laugh at it.
Speaker 2: I've seen things every now and then on social media
Speaker 2: making fun of men, but seriously thinking when we think
Speaker 2: about it, very seriously and critically, you're in the doctor's
Speaker 2: office to address one issue, and you've been having this
Speaker 2: nagging pain in your side for weeks, and you leave
Speaker 2: that doctor's office and don't mention that you know, there's
Speaker 2: something about that that really has to be addressed amongst
Speaker 2: us as men. And that's this issue of health, the
Speaker 2: inability to ask for help. So when you talk about
Speaker 2: a mental health crisis amongst men, right, this inability to
Speaker 2: ask to help. Men complete suicide three and a half
Speaker 2: to four times that the rate of women. Women live five, six, seven,
Speaker 2: eight years longer than men on average. So this whole
Speaker 2: issue of really addressing Now we've been socialized to define
Speaker 2: what it means to be a man. We have a
Speaker 2: tendency to call the men to say by addressing this
Speaker 2: disease issues, we will increase healthy, respectful manhoods. And in
Speaker 2: that increasing of healthy respectful man we will also decrease
Speaker 2: this epidemic of violence against women in the girl. It's
Speaker 2: a win all all the way.
Speaker 1: Around, and we'll talk about that when we come back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the R spot.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: You talk about the socialization of men. How do mothers
Speaker 1: play a role in that deficit, dysfunctional socialization of men?
Speaker 1: How do mothers play a role and how do fathers.
Speaker 2: Play a role. Well, there are three aspects of manhood
Speaker 2: that we intentionally address at a call. The men that
Speaker 2: we feel contribute greatly to the socialization that we want
Speaker 2: to challenge and change. As men, we're taught to have
Speaker 2: less value in women, right, And it's all collectively speaking,
Speaker 2: And this is not about individual men. There are individual
Speaker 2: men that will act and operate differently, but what we
Speaker 2: do know this is the collective experience of men. And
Speaker 2: even those individual men that act and do differently, they
Speaker 2: understand this collective socialization as well. In this collective socialization,
Speaker 2: we're taught to have less value in women, right, Which
Speaker 2: is why the easiest way to tell the boy he's
Speaker 2: not playing up the standards in sports? Is it telling
Speaker 2: me he's playing like a girl? Oh my god? And
Speaker 2: he will immediately try hard. Why because when you tell
Speaker 2: him he's playing like a girl, you are telling him
Speaker 2: he's in this place of less value and he needs
Speaker 2: to get out of there. And that's why it works, right,
Speaker 2: because we're taught that women and girls are less value
Speaker 2: than men. We work with coaches all the time to
Speaker 2: help them to learn other ways to motivate boys. Right
Speaker 2: Because coach, every time you tell the boy he's playing
Speaker 2: like a girl, what are you in essensaning about girls? Right?
Speaker 2: So you got to think about the language you're using.
Speaker 2: But the reason why coaches use that language is because
Speaker 2: collectively speaking, we're taught to have less value in women
Speaker 2: and girls. So less value is one aspect of socialization
Speaker 2: we put a lot of tension on. Another aspect is
Speaker 2: the issue of women as the property of men. While
Speaker 2: we know that there was a time that was true,
Speaker 2: it's no longer true today, but it's tolerated throughout our community.
Speaker 2: It is also why domestic violence flourishes. The issue of
Speaker 2: women as the property of men. Third area that we
Speaker 2: put a lot of attention on is the socialization of
Speaker 2: women as objects, particularly sexual objects, which is why we
Speaker 2: unfortunately still live in a rape culture. Those three aspects
Speaker 2: of the collective socialization of manner and if you put
Speaker 2: them in an equation less value us property, thus objectification,
Speaker 2: it equals violence against women, right, this whole thing. If
Speaker 2: you couple that with as I talked about men not
Speaker 2: having permission to be their authentic self finding manhood by
Speaker 2: distancing ourselves from the experience of women and girls, we
Speaker 2: live are still in the state of a binary heteroonormative
Speaker 2: as far as our society is concerned, not a lot
Speaker 2: of room for self expression as it relates to gender
Speaker 2: or sexuality. All of this is part of this collective
Speaker 2: socialization in a male dominating society which we still live in.
Speaker 2: Many men are challenged by the notion that is a
Speaker 2: male dominating society, Well, it is you will find women
Speaker 2: as men. We all have women who are authorities in
Speaker 2: our lives. Right, we have a woman right now running
Speaker 2: for president in the United States. We do know women
Speaker 2: are in leadership. But when we say a male dominating society,
Speaker 2: if you put all the men in our country on
Speaker 2: one side of the room and all the women in
Speaker 2: our country on the other side of the room. It
Speaker 2: then becomes very clear that men run control and dominate
Speaker 2: this nation. Now, women who are raising sons or boys,
Speaker 2: they're raising sons and boys based on what they've been taught.
Speaker 2: That is important in respect to men. So what we
Speaker 2: as men respect is what women will raise their sons
Speaker 2: to be right, So whatever we respect as men collectively speaking,
Speaker 2: And you're raising a son and you want him to
Speaker 2: live in concert with men, to be respected and appreciated
Speaker 2: by men, you're going to teach him what men say
Speaker 2: he needs to know. Now as men, and I've been
Speaker 2: around many men will say, you know, well, this ain't
Speaker 2: about us. You know, women do the same thing, or
Speaker 2: women teach the same thing. Yeah, they do. They do
Speaker 2: teach the same thing. You know why. It's how we
Speaker 2: as men collectively define what it means to be a man.
Speaker 2: To a women's gonna teach that to her son so
Speaker 2: he can be on part with us, and we collectively
Speaker 2: as men begin to redefine manhood. Women themselves would teach
Speaker 2: that to their sons, and boy, it still comes down
Speaker 2: to us as men, in my estimation, we can blame. Now,
Speaker 2: there are many women who are going against the grain
Speaker 2: of that and saying, I'm not teaching that to my sons.
Speaker 2: I know it doesn't work, I know it's not cool,
Speaker 2: but they'll find themselves at times that are disadvantage because
Speaker 2: they'll be teaching their sons one thing in a home,
Speaker 2: and then when he hits the community, it's the door.
Speaker 2: We got a whole him, and we're putting a lot
Speaker 2: of pressure on him not to really conform to what
Speaker 2: he may be learning from his mother. Right, and then
Speaker 2: there are the women who are teaching him exactly what
Speaker 2: we are saying it means to be a man. So,
Speaker 2: because it's not my most important point here would be
Speaker 2: it's not so much about blaming women. And that's where
Speaker 2: we will get off on as men. You know she's
Speaker 2: teaching it to her son, Yeah she is, But let's
Speaker 2: let us as men redefine or reimagine at least what
Speaker 2: healthy man who looks like, and that she may have
Speaker 2: the opportunity to comfortably teach that to him because in
Speaker 2: her mind also it's safety, right, What are we going
Speaker 2: to respect? How is her son going to be saved?
Speaker 2: She might already feel like she's a disadvantage, particularly if
Speaker 2: she's a single bomb raising a boy. She may already
Speaker 2: feel like she's at a disadvantage by not being a man.
Speaker 2: Safety is always paramount for her. That he got to
Speaker 2: go out this door, go to school, go here, go
Speaker 2: here on his own. He got to be able to
Speaker 2: handle it right, handle what handle what we collectively has
Speaker 2: to find what it means to be a man. So
Speaker 2: it's really really not about her. It's about us that
Speaker 2: we begin to reimagine what healthy man who looks like
Speaker 2: she would gladly teach that to us.
Speaker 1: Son, Now you have raised so many things. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be here for the rest of the week. But the
Speaker 1: couple of things I have to say, because I really
Speaker 1: want the mothers to get this, the women to get this,
Speaker 1: because we are raising sons, many of us are raising
Speaker 1: them alone. And I always say to women, you are
Speaker 1: raising somebody's husband and somebody's father. So when you're talking
Speaker 1: to that child, that boy, that young man, you have
Speaker 1: to remember that this is what he's going to hear,
Speaker 1: this is what he's going to expect, this is what
Speaker 1: he's going to respond to from his wife and his daughter. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go on and talk about the man box
Speaker 1: what's in the box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we use the box again. The man box
Speaker 2: is actually the collective socialization of manhood. But to teach
Speaker 2: it to men, particularly the teacher to boys. When you
Speaker 2: say the man box, you know that that sounds kind
Speaker 2: of cool. Actually, you know you can get men. You know,
Speaker 2: we was talking earlier about getting men to pay attention,
Speaker 2: to have some interest in what we're talking about. When
Speaker 2: you say the man box, a lot of men will
Speaker 2: sit up and say, well, that's interesting, what's that? And
Speaker 2: it will ask men, you know, what are all the
Speaker 2: ingredients that define what it means to be a man?
Speaker 2: All right? And every time they define one, we can
Speaker 2: just drop that in the box. And so actually, when
Speaker 2: you're engaging with men, they themselves will fill up that
Speaker 2: man box. And you get men into a space to
Speaker 2: have the conversation, we will gladly have the conversation. The
Speaker 2: challenge is, and you alluded to this earlier, is getting
Speaker 2: us into the space. But when you talk to men
Speaker 2: about the man box, in the box a men a tough, strong, aggressive,
Speaker 2: dominating in control. We don't do vulnerability. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: in earlier, we're taught to have less value in women.
Speaker 2: Women is a property, amendment of women as object, particularly
Speaker 2: selfual objects. We're taught to be protectives. We don't share
Speaker 2: our feelings any emotions, with the exception of anger is
Speaker 2: the only emotion we give each other permission to express.
Speaker 2: We're not our authentic selves with more of a role
Speaker 2: self than our whole self. These are all the things
Speaker 2: that make up this box. We also say that homophobia
Speaker 2: is the glue. Homophobia, meaning the fear of being perceived
Speaker 2: as gay, is the glue that keeps this man box together.
Speaker 2: Many of us are being held hostage to this box.
Speaker 2: We've had enough of it, but we may fear more
Speaker 2: being outside of it than in side of it. You know,
Speaker 2: many of us are picking, choosing our moments to be
Speaker 2: outside the box and be comfortable and free. And then
Speaker 2: there are other times where we find security in the
Speaker 2: box based on what's going on in our environment, and
Speaker 2: we might it might be safer for us to be
Speaker 2: in a box, and that's where we become more performative,
Speaker 2: because in our art, this is not who I am,
Speaker 2: but based on my situation, this is how I have
Speaker 2: to be right. So this is how this box pretty
Speaker 2: much operates. The box teaches men don't be too nice,
Speaker 2: don't be too caring, don't be too loving, don't be
Speaker 2: too concerned, don't be too any of that, right, All
Speaker 2: of that can be viewed as weakness. Right, And for us,
Speaker 2: you know, it's very, very important to never appear weak,
Speaker 2: even though there are many, many times when we are weak. Right,
Speaker 2: And this piece around limited emotional intelligence. The only emotion
Speaker 2: we give each other permission to express his anger. Most
Speaker 2: of us don't even know what anger actually is. You
Speaker 2: know that anger is a secondary emotion, is a response
Speaker 2: to the emotion. Every time you get angry, you were
Speaker 2: either scared or your feelings hurt. But as men, we
Speaker 2: don't do fear. No fear, right, And we don't talk
Speaker 2: about feelings in a way to say my feelings are hurt.
Speaker 2: We never say that to each other. But when I
Speaker 2: get upset with you, I'm upset with you because you
Speaker 2: hurt my feelings. Right, But we can't talk in that
Speaker 2: kind of language. As men. We've been taught to define
Speaker 2: what it means to be a man. Okay, by distancing
Speaker 2: ourselves from what we perceive to be the experience of
Speaker 2: women and girls. Women and girls do all of what
Speaker 2: we're talking about ten times better. Than men. Women and girls,
Speaker 2: selectively speaking, are much better representative of how we would
Speaker 2: define emnity. By distancing ourselves from the experience of women
Speaker 2: and girls to the fine what it means to be
Speaker 2: a man as men, we are, in essence, distancing ourselves
Speaker 2: from our own humanity. We are when you say why
Speaker 2: we are simply on remote control doing tradition, We're just
Speaker 2: passing tradition down from one generation to the next. And
Speaker 2: we're not doing enough questioning of what we're passing down
Speaker 2: to our sons and other boys. We're not doing enough
Speaker 2: critical thinking of what we're passing down to our sons
Speaker 2: and boys. We're just doing tradition on remote control. And
Speaker 2: our job is to get men off the remote control.
Speaker 2: And let's be more critical in our thinking. What we
Speaker 2: were doing as men one hundred years ago is not
Speaker 2: necessarily what we should be doing today. And that's why
Speaker 2: we talk about reimagining manhood. Let's reimagining men and at
Speaker 2: a call to men, our bagline is the next generation
Speaker 2: of manhood. And so while there's an urgency of now,
Speaker 2: we have a huge focus on the next generation of
Speaker 2: manhood and getting off of remote control. And that's our
Speaker 2: work right now. Of their men listening. My hopes is
Speaker 2: to get them off of remote control and start thinking
Speaker 2: more critically about what we're doing, what we're teaching. Every
Speaker 2: time you tell a three to four year old boy
Speaker 2: to stop crying, you are, in essence telling him to
Speaker 2: stop feeling. We can have we can have a discussion
Speaker 2: around why you're crying, right, but to not even have
Speaker 2: an investment in what's going on when you just stop crying.
Speaker 2: By five years old, the average boy has already been
Speaker 2: taught that crying is off the table, and sharing what's
Speaker 2: going on with you is off the table. What is
Speaker 2: he doing with all that and.
Speaker 1: With that peace? It's not the crying, it's that what
Speaker 1: is going on with you, what you're feeling, what you're experiencing,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, it's not important or you know, cannot be shared.
Speaker 1: And then when he gets a wife and kids, he
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to share what he's feeling. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that right after this break. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: R spot. Let's get back to the conversation. I want
Speaker 1: to go back for a minute. Women ask property of men.
Speaker 1: Here's a question, no heat, no judgment, I promise you,
Speaker 1: and women particularly as sexual objects, is that what is
Speaker 1: leading to the just the astronomical rate of men creating
Speaker 1: children and then walking away from them because the woman
Speaker 1: was just the sex object. You don't have any connection
Speaker 1: to her and therefore no responsibility for the gestation of
Speaker 1: his seed. What is that, Tony helped me. What part
Speaker 1: of manhood is that?
Speaker 2: Well, you nailed it, right. If we look, if you
Speaker 2: look at less value, property and objectification, it's in its
Speaker 2: a tirety is a dehumanization process or a dehumanization issue
Speaker 2: or experience as it relates to men and women. Right,
Speaker 2: If she's of less value, we can see what that means.
Speaker 2: She's a property, So she's not really even a person,
Speaker 2: even though we know, but she's not in our socialization,
Speaker 2: and she's an object, particularly a sexual object. Right. Well,
Speaker 2: that's why when men break up with a woman, we'll
Speaker 2: tell them in a minute, you know, just let's go
Speaker 2: to the club. Right. I mean, when I was a
Speaker 2: young man, I remember that term they should have, you know,
Speaker 2: it's more efficient to see or something like that. Get
Speaker 2: over it, right, get over it and move on. We don't
Speaker 2: even allow men to grieve. Right, Women will say to
Speaker 2: other women and nothing's one hundred percent here right. This
Speaker 2: is not an exact science. I don't want anybody to
Speaker 2: think that. But women will say the other women, a girl,
Speaker 2: take a time out, get yourself together, take a break,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna be right here with you. We don't
Speaker 2: talk like that as men. It's like, let's replace her
Speaker 2: right now. Put some clothes on, We're going to the club.
Speaker 2: That's what we get your behind uh out of this house.
Speaker 2: Stop laying around here crying and carrying on like or whatever,
Speaker 2: whatever whatever. Get yourself together. You know, I introducing you to
Speaker 2: my girlfriend's cousin. We want to do something right, and
Speaker 2: we and then that's just what we're gonna do this.
Speaker 2: We're simply gonna replace her, right, That's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: So we don't even have a recognition collectively as men
Speaker 2: that you actually need degree this is a loss in
Speaker 2: your life. We don't. It doesn't. We don't see it
Speaker 2: that way. So yeah, yes, And I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: we're not in pain and hurt as men when we
Speaker 2: make those decisions just to walk away, whether it's from
Speaker 2: children or partners or whatever. But based on what we're
Speaker 2: todd's easier to do it right. And I'm not here
Speaker 2: demonizing man. There's a lot of men who are sticking
Speaker 2: and staying and doing the right thing. And brothers, we
Speaker 2: are not talking about you in this moment. We're just
Speaker 2: talking about the impact of this collective socialization that will
Speaker 2: make it easier for us to walk away. And I'm
Speaker 2: a big fan. You can be a great non custodial parent.
Speaker 2: You just got to put time in, right, You got
Speaker 2: to put time in. It requires time. It also requires
Speaker 2: you to have an appropriate relationship with the mother of
Speaker 2: that child. Right. You can't demonize her. You can't. You
Speaker 2: cannot demonize the person that you're yow loves more than
Speaker 2: anyone in the whole wide world and have a good
Speaker 2: relationship with that child. You've got to figure out a
Speaker 2: way to be in conctant with her, to be kind
Speaker 2: and in some cases to be loving and caring. Is
Speaker 2: a level of maturity that's involved in doing that, and
Speaker 2: then you can be a great non custodial parent.
Speaker 1: Let me say this because I want to go back
Speaker 1: to this object again. You know, there's a man box,
Speaker 1: there's a woman box too. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that concerns me right now that I see growing and
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the collective socialization of
Speaker 1: women or I really don't know what to call this,
Speaker 1: but how women are objectifying men meaning what can he
Speaker 1: give me? What can he do for me? What can
Speaker 1: he buy me? And he's got to come to the
Speaker 1: table with, you know, X amount of dollars or X
Speaker 1: kind of job because that's what I want.
Speaker 2: How is that.
Speaker 1: Either keeping men in the box or creating a new box.
Speaker 1: I don't even that's a collective socialization of women. My
Speaker 1: question to you is how is that impacting men?
Speaker 2: Well? I think what comes up for me is when
Speaker 2: we say women see them ass, there may very well
Speaker 2: be a selective group of women that see them ass. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I would say more in general, it's a lot of
Speaker 2: things that in front of us when we think about that,
Speaker 2: when we think about capitalism, right, I got mind, you
Speaker 2: get yours. When we think about living in a capitalist society,
Speaker 2: when you think about the impact of gender on women.
Speaker 2: You know, right now today women makes eighty cents to
Speaker 2: the dollar for men doing the same job, and a
Speaker 2: black or brown woman makes a sixty five cents to
Speaker 2: a dollar doing the same job. When you think about
Speaker 2: issues of equality, issues of equity, when you think about
Speaker 2: trauma that women have experienced at the handsome men, and
Speaker 2: now you got women trying to figure out and so
Speaker 2: might be doing a little sideway, but I'm still not
Speaker 2: gonna be but so mad at them trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how to have some power, yeah, right, and some
Speaker 2: respectability in this world that if you're a woman, you're
Speaker 2: going to have less. If you're black or brown women,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have less if your dark skin could we
Speaker 2: live in a society rooting an anti blackness, if your
Speaker 2: dark skinned black women, you're gonna have less. Right, if
Speaker 2: you don't fit into the box of how we have
Speaker 2: society to find what's physically attractive, you're going to have less.
Speaker 2: And within all of that people are trying to find
Speaker 2: way to make it right. So, yeah, you're going to
Speaker 2: I have those experiences. Maybe, and maybe it is more
Speaker 2: of a a younger woman's game than an older woman's game.
Speaker 2: Maybe younger women's saying I ain't doing what putting up
Speaker 2: put up with right, you know, So I get it,
Speaker 2: and I can see the challenges it creates. But I
Speaker 2: can also see how they got there. And most of
Speaker 2: the time, when you look at how they got there
Speaker 2: is less their responsibility in all ours more hours collectively,
Speaker 2: unless say people don't have any responsibility for their decision
Speaker 2: to live. Course they do. But there's something going on
Speaker 2: within our society that's also fostering orstering that as well.
Speaker 1: Tony, we are about to run out of time, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to end this conversation, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to stick around and we're going to
Speaker 1: do a part two. So to all of thesteners, if
Speaker 1: you heard something today that's helpful, if you've got more questions,
Speaker 1: I want you to be sure to tune in next
Speaker 1: week for Part two.
Speaker 2: I'll see you then.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, stay in peace and not piece fine.
Speaker 1: The R Spot is a production of Shondaland Audio in
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