Latest / Honey Badger Radio / Martin Seager on Men's and Boys' Mental Health and Shifting the Conversation| Fireside Chat 250

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Martin Seager on Men's and Boys' Mental Health and Shifting the Conversation| Fireside Chat 250 · Honey Badger Radio

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Honey Badger Radio. My name
0:04
Speaker 1: is Brian and this is the Fireside Chat and I
0:06
Speaker 1: am joined this lovely day by Martin James Seeger. Hopefully
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm pronouncing that correctly, yeah, okay. And he is a
0:17
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, mental health campaigner, author, lecturer and well
0:24
Speaker 1: particularly specializing in I assume men's mental health is it
0:30
Speaker 1: would that be a fair assessment.
0:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, more recently, because I started off training and mental
0:35
Speaker 2: health generally, but as I got older, not until my forties,
0:39
Speaker 2: really really I realized there was a big gap with
0:43
Speaker 2: men's mental health. It just wasn't being covered, it wasn't
0:46
Speaker 2: being studied, taught, and even I wasn't really thinking about
0:50
Speaker 2: it till I got into my forties. So really, yeah,
0:53
Speaker 2: it's still a big gap even today. But people like, uh,
0:59
Speaker 2: you know, people you have on your show previously, I'm sure,
1:02
Speaker 2: but trying to do something to change that and to
1:06
Speaker 2: make men's issues, you know, people often think it's a
1:09
Speaker 2: man as well, but really men's issues are not being
1:12
Speaker 2: thought about a talk, so in that sense, men not
1:16
Speaker 2: take it for granted. So in psychology particularly, there's not
1:19
Speaker 2: much theory out there or you know time given to
1:24
Speaker 2: men's issues and any male psychologists, so it's a huge area.
1:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a market. There is definitely a
1:36
Speaker 1: market for this. So we talked a little bit before
1:40
Speaker 1: the show started, and I asked you if you knew
1:42
Speaker 1: some of the other men involved, some of the other
1:45
Speaker 1: guys doing good work, like Phil Mitchell and doctor John Berry,
1:50
Speaker 1: who I've had on the show in the past, as
1:55
Speaker 1: well as I'm not sure if it counts, but I
1:57
Speaker 1: know there's a woman named Deborah Powney. Yes, yes, you
2:01
Speaker 1: know her as well. So let me ask, how long
2:05
Speaker 1: have you been doing psychotherapy and this kind of work
2:08
Speaker 1: just before you got involved with the men's stuff.
2:11
Speaker 2: Well, I sort of qualified as a psychologist in the eighties,
2:15
Speaker 2: so you know, quite a long time. But I didn't
2:19
Speaker 2: start with the men's stuff till well after two thousand,
2:24
Speaker 2: you know, so it took me twenty years plus before
2:27
Speaker 2: I got into the men's stuff. I was just working
2:30
Speaker 2: with men and women in a gender neutral sort of
2:33
Speaker 2: way and not thinking about men's issues. Thinking back, I
2:36
Speaker 2: must have been working quite well with men, but I
2:39
Speaker 2: wasn't thinking about a specific approach for men. So I guess,
2:46
Speaker 2: you know, I have been qualified a lot longer than
2:48
Speaker 2: I have been a specialist in male psychology. But then
2:51
Speaker 2: a lot of people, you know, I could say the
2:54
Speaker 2: same thing. I guess a lot of people didn't get
2:56
Speaker 2: into it until something kind of triggered them in their
2:59
Speaker 2: career is to think about it a bit more.
3:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.
3:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the reason why I brought it up is
3:06
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, you know, I think that when most people
3:09
Speaker 1: think of mental health and psychology, they don't think of
3:13
Speaker 1: it in terms of the way that men and women,
3:17
Speaker 1: you know, sort of deal with these things or heal differently.
3:22
Speaker 1: So I think most people think of it as a
3:23
Speaker 1: one size fits all, you know, process, right, Like, just
3:28
Speaker 1: mental health is mental health and it doesn't matter if
3:30
Speaker 1: your male or female. But there must have been a
3:33
Speaker 1: point where you started to perhaps question that, or maybe
3:38
Speaker 1: you saw that certain treatments were more effective on women
3:43
Speaker 1: than men or something like that. Can you tell me
3:45
Speaker 1: how you came to sort of find that there was
3:49
Speaker 1: there were still.
3:50
Speaker 3: Things or questions that needed to be answered.
3:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. For me, there was a bit of a light
3:56
Speaker 2: bulb moment in my life. I was already the head
3:58
Speaker 2: of Services and London Mental Health Trust. I was the
4:02
Speaker 2: head of all the psychological services. I was a therapist myself,
4:06
Speaker 2: but also managing stuff, supervising all of that stuff. I
4:09
Speaker 2: had a trainee from the University of East London who
4:12
Speaker 2: was a man who was researching a post nator a
4:16
Speaker 2: depression in men, and he'd read Warren Farrell and he'd
4:20
Speaker 2: read all this stuff. And he was younger than me,
4:24
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen years younger than me, but he read
4:26
Speaker 2: all of Warren Farrell's stuff and he just started talking
4:30
Speaker 2: to me about it, and he was my trainee. We
4:32
Speaker 2: were and then at the same time I started doing
4:35
Speaker 2: a men's group. It was almost coincidental. There was a
4:40
Speaker 2: German psychotherapist I used to work very closely with and
4:43
Speaker 2: we set up a men's group together. So that was
4:45
Speaker 2: the start of those two things happened abo at the
4:48
Speaker 2: same time in my career, about two thousand and five,
4:50
Speaker 2: two thousand and six. And just suddenly realized that meant
4:56
Speaker 2: you know that this male trainee, for example, was the
4:59
Speaker 2: only one in a co of about thirty trainees, so
5:02
Speaker 2: he was kind of struggling with being the only male training.
5:05
Speaker 2: And then he started sharing with me some of his
5:08
Speaker 2: ideas on and his thoughts about the training and on gender.
5:12
Speaker 2: There was no recognition of men's lives, even suicide. It
5:18
Speaker 2: wasn't really covered from a male's lived experience. You know.
5:22
Speaker 2: Lived experience is the buzzword now, isn't it.
5:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, But that men's.
5:27
Speaker 2: Live experience is not in evidence in psychology at all. Really,
5:32
Speaker 2: men are sort of thought about from an up from
5:34
Speaker 2: as another you know, almost a feminist lens quite often.
5:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that so okay, you said that there wasn't
5:42
Speaker 1: anything that was approaching the male perspective. Were you saying
5:45
Speaker 1: are you saying that it was mostly or almost exclusively
5:50
Speaker 1: from the female perspective, or are you saying that it
5:53
Speaker 1: was sort of gender neutral and in the assumption is
5:56
Speaker 1: that it would apply to both.
5:58
Speaker 2: It was a bit of both. It was ender neutral,
6:00
Speaker 2: like because you've got a medical model, particularly clinical psychology
6:04
Speaker 2: in those days and still today, really people think depression
6:08
Speaker 2: is just a mental illness, so you know, if you're depressed,
6:12
Speaker 2: it's you're real it's not your gender that's the issue.
6:16
Speaker 2: So it's a kind of a bit of that. But
6:18
Speaker 2: also when you looked at gender studies, gender studies meant
6:22
Speaker 2: women's studies, So the the the implication was that men
6:28
Speaker 2: are sort of the default privileged. It's a man's world men,
6:33
Speaker 2: but gender issues means we've got to help women because
6:35
Speaker 2: they're disadvantaged. So based on the idea that men were okay,
6:41
Speaker 2: they were there, they were the kind of secure or
6:46
Speaker 2: you know, it was a men's sort of world. And therefore,
6:50
Speaker 2: if you study gender, you've got to study the vulnerability,
6:54
Speaker 2: the vulnerable group, inequalities of women and there. But otherwise
6:59
Speaker 2: it was the neutral you know, just depression is depression,
7:02
Speaker 2: whether you're a man or a woman. Have a bit
7:04
Speaker 2: of CBT, challenge this, challenge that, do this, do that,
7:07
Speaker 2: take these medications. So the idea that gender had a
7:11
Speaker 2: different impact based you know, you know, on your mental state,
7:15
Speaker 2: the way you would experience your life, which is pretty
7:18
Speaker 2: obvious to any artist or writer, isn't it. If you're
7:21
Speaker 2: a playwright or a filmmaker, you'd be pretty rubbish if
7:24
Speaker 2: you didn't account for the nuances of gender differences in
7:28
Speaker 2: your characters. But I didn't seem to bother with that. So, yeah,
7:34
Speaker 2: I came a little late to the party, But in
7:36
Speaker 2: the UK, I suppose I was quite early think about it, you.
7:40
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, no, I think that you know, everywhere that
7:45
Speaker 1: the male uh sort of aspiration of male psychology is
7:51
Speaker 1: very new at least to treat it as something that
7:55
Speaker 1: has its own unique challenges and facet So I think that, yeah,
8:01
Speaker 1: I think that, like you know, you and and the
8:04
Speaker 1: others I mentioned, they're they're basically pioneers. You guys are
8:07
Speaker 1: all pioneers really, because I I wonder, because you know,
8:11
Speaker 1: we we talk about on the show how men's well
8:16
Speaker 1: to to a to a degree women's as well, but
8:19
Speaker 1: men's mental health is really in it's in a bad
8:23
Speaker 1: shape right now. There's uh, you know, male suicide is
8:26
Speaker 1: very high. For example, I don't know about the UK,
8:30
Speaker 1: but in the United States it's extremely high, uh, in men,
8:35
Speaker 1: and especially white men, you know, and so and I
8:40
Speaker 1: wonder if the part of this is, you know what
8:44
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we hear a lot is
8:46
Speaker 1: that you know, men don't ask for help. They tend
8:48
Speaker 1: to suffer in silence and solitude, and they probably assume
8:55
Speaker 1: that either they don't need it or they're no one
8:58
Speaker 1: is going to give them, you know, sympathy that are
9:01
Speaker 1: going to look out for them. Men are are I think,
9:05
Speaker 1: most likely to be depressed when they don't feel as
9:07
Speaker 1: though they are serving something like being useful in society
9:13
Speaker 1: and things like that.
9:14
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say?
9:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of truth in what you just said.
9:20
Speaker 2: There are you know the way John Bowry and myself,
9:23
Speaker 2: I mean we got together in about twenty ten, started
9:26
Speaker 2: working together. I mean we formed the sort of male
9:30
Speaker 2: psychology conferences in London and how to that came the
9:33
Speaker 2: British Psychological Society Section of Male Psychology with other people,
9:40
Speaker 2: Luke Sullivan particularly, so a few of us, but we,
9:43
Speaker 2: you know, most definitely we were recognizing this gender. We
9:48
Speaker 2: were talking about gender schemers in the early days using
9:51
Speaker 2: a concertive language. But gender archetypes is where I'm at
9:54
Speaker 2: with that. Now. There are archetypal differences between male and female.
9:58
Speaker 2: It's not surprising when we've different roles throughout evolution. Obviously
10:04
Speaker 2: that can change with society or excuse me, change political change,
10:08
Speaker 2: but there's still fundamental ways in which men, you know,
10:13
Speaker 2: and women do differ. Be a bit crazy if they
10:15
Speaker 2: didn't differ, really, But yeah, So the thing is, shame
10:20
Speaker 2: is a big one for them, not as you said,
10:22
Speaker 2: not feeling that they've got a useful role in men
10:27
Speaker 2: A man's kind of mental health depends on feeling he's
10:30
Speaker 2: got a yeah, absolutely, and of course that's true for
10:35
Speaker 2: everyone to some degree. In fact, I set up an
10:39
Speaker 2: advisory group for the labor government in this country in
10:42
Speaker 2: about two thousand and six, about the same time I
10:45
Speaker 2: was doing the men's stuff, and we came up with
10:47
Speaker 2: five basic needs of the human condition, which are just
10:50
Speaker 2: basically to be loved, to be heard, you know, to belong,
10:56
Speaker 2: to make a difference, and to have some meaning and purpose.
11:00
Speaker 2: That's true for all human beings, you know, one of
11:02
Speaker 2: the agenda, but for men's sense of purpose can be
11:07
Speaker 2: expressed differently. You know, there are different instincts. Men definitely
11:11
Speaker 2: have an instinct to protect, which often gets you know,
11:15
Speaker 2: under underplayed. Men have an instinct to take risks. On
11:21
Speaker 2: these all average differences, because obviously some women are vi
11:24
Speaker 2: risk takers, some men are not. But on average, men
11:27
Speaker 2: take risks more, they will protect more. And so this
11:31
Speaker 2: wise why attitudes to suicides are This is this all
11:34
Speaker 2: correlates with why we have less compassion for men, because
11:37
Speaker 2: we expect men to do protection. You know, we've ex
11:41
Speaker 2: you know, the Titanic sank in eighty percent of the
11:43
Speaker 2: women survived eighty percent of the men die roughly, so
11:48
Speaker 2: that's a massive experiment in human behavior that actually the
11:53
Speaker 2: men will try to save the women. And indeed, if
11:58
Speaker 2: if you look at first women traveling first class, I
12:01
Speaker 2: don't think anyone died, so that if you were a
12:04
Speaker 2: first class woman, even the Titanic couldn't kill you. You know,
12:09
Speaker 2: it says a lot about gender differences that men and
12:12
Speaker 2: even the Geneva Convention, it's about men protecting women and
12:16
Speaker 2: children is written into our conventions and our politics. So
12:20
Speaker 2: it's a bit crazy for someone then to say, oh,
12:23
Speaker 2: men don't open up and they don't seek help, so
12:25
Speaker 2: it's therefore they're suicidal. Because the whole society is predicated
12:29
Speaker 2: on the idea that we expect men to protect and
12:34
Speaker 2: that's not just coming from men, that's coming from everybody.
12:37
Speaker 2: That's not what our policies. So we do have what's
12:40
Speaker 2: called an empathy gap for men. You know, we're more
12:44
Speaker 2: tolerant of men dying than women. I mean, men have
12:47
Speaker 2: a lower life expectancy than women by about five years.
12:51
Speaker 2: Across the world, they have ninety well over ninety percent
12:55
Speaker 2: of people that die at work are men, So you know,
12:59
Speaker 2: we're more toleran into that because we're used to men
13:04
Speaker 2: sacrificing to protect society. In wars particularly, you know, the
13:08
Speaker 2: whole loads of men get killed and it's not seen
13:12
Speaker 2: as a gender issue particularly, which is amazing really, you
13:16
Speaker 2: know when we're looking at their issues these days. That's
13:19
Speaker 2: why John and John Barrier myself came up with this
13:22
Speaker 2: theory called gamma bias, which is perhaps our major theory,
13:26
Speaker 2: which is to try and explain it's partly based on
13:29
Speaker 2: the empathy gap, but it's also added other things to it.
13:33
Speaker 2: So for example, not only do we have less compassion
13:37
Speaker 2: for male victims because of the reasons have just been discussing,
13:40
Speaker 2: but we also don't celebrate masculinity. So you know if
13:45
Speaker 2: men die in war. If men die in war, we
13:49
Speaker 2: don't excuse me, we don't celebrate that as a gender sacrifice.
13:56
Speaker 2: We talk about soldiers in a general nutrient tak men
14:01
Speaker 2: and women of the armed forces. We're always careful to
14:04
Speaker 2: include women when we celebrate achievements of men. You know,
14:09
Speaker 2: there are some women who are great soldiers, and that's great,
14:13
Speaker 2: but we include them is if it's equal proportions, you know,
14:17
Speaker 2: so say the men and women of the armed forces
14:19
Speaker 2: every time Veterans Day comes around. But when it comes
14:23
Speaker 2: to bad things like sexual assaults and murders. But of course,
14:27
Speaker 2: even though there may be more men in certain categories
14:29
Speaker 2: of crime doing those crimes, there's certainly quite a lot
14:32
Speaker 2: of women doing those crimes as well, certainly a bigger
14:35
Speaker 2: proportion of women sex offenders than there are women soldiers.
14:39
Speaker 2: But we never say the men and women of the
14:41
Speaker 2: sexual offending. We just say men. Suddenly, when it's a
14:45
Speaker 2: bad thing, we focus purely on male gender. When it's
14:49
Speaker 2: a good thing, we make it general neutral. So this
14:51
Speaker 2: is our gamma bias theory. You've got that whole framework
14:56
Speaker 2: through which you look at gender the whole time. Bad
14:59
Speaker 2: things are men only, good things are men and women,
15:03
Speaker 2: and then privileges are men only, and then victimhood you
15:08
Speaker 2: exclude the men because there's quite a lot of male
15:11
Speaker 2: victims of domestic violence and all kinds of things. Sure,
15:14
Speaker 2: but they're not included in the culture, in the dialogue.
15:18
Speaker 2: So we end up with what we're calling gamma bikes,
15:21
Speaker 2: which is this idea that all the bad things men
15:23
Speaker 2: do are magnified, all the good things men do are minimized. Therefore,
15:28
Speaker 2: men just made it look a whole lot worse than
15:30
Speaker 2: they are. And then you get this culture of fear
15:33
Speaker 2: of men. You know, we even go into schools now
15:36
Speaker 2: teaching boys they've got to respect girls because they're all
15:39
Speaker 2: going to end up as offenders. You know, there's this
15:42
Speaker 2: idea that the male is a different rapist, even really,
15:46
Speaker 2: even though rapists are less than half a percent if
15:49
Speaker 2: you look at crime figures, but you know and order.
15:53
Speaker 1: That and many of them, and many of them have
15:56
Speaker 1: themselves been sexually abused and often by women and like
16:01
Speaker 1: as children, right in this trauma because I'm sure you
16:04
Speaker 1: know that, right, And they bring this trauma and it's
16:07
Speaker 1: like it changes the way that they interact with the
16:10
Speaker 1: world and people.
16:12
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, there's a study one of them by
16:15
Speaker 2: my colleague Nami Maurphi. She's a forensic psychologist. She did
16:19
Speaker 2: a study with high security male sex offenders found exactly
16:22
Speaker 2: what you just said, that over half of the men
16:26
Speaker 2: who are sex offenders against women have been abused by
16:30
Speaker 2: women as children. So it's not to excuse their behavior,
16:34
Speaker 2: but it's to say that it's not a typical man
16:36
Speaker 2: that goes around abusing women. It's an abused man. But
16:41
Speaker 2: the narrative is as if men are default likely to
16:44
Speaker 2: be abusers if we don't educate them. So then we
16:48
Speaker 2: get this massive educational program in schools which is quite
16:53
Speaker 2: you know, anti male really and it's setting our boys
16:56
Speaker 2: up to be quite negative about who they are. But
17:01
Speaker 2: then that's playing into mental health and self esteem.
17:06
Speaker 3: I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure it does.
17:07
Speaker 1: I mean, if you imagine if you're a boy and
17:09
Speaker 1: you know your self perception is that of something predatory
17:14
Speaker 1: and dangerous to women, and even though you would, you know,
17:19
Speaker 1: might tell yourself, I would never harm anyone.
17:22
Speaker 3: I wouldn't harm a fly as it were.
17:25
Speaker 1: And but but you're being bombarded with this narrative right
17:28
Speaker 1: as a as a child, as a boy. And also
17:31
Speaker 1: the way that I mean not to go on too
17:34
Speaker 1: much of a tangent, but the way that we educate
17:37
Speaker 1: boys in school is it's not it's not let's say,
17:43
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem fitting for them. Like when I was
17:45
Speaker 1: a child, maybe, and I think things have changed here
17:48
Speaker 1: in the United States. When I was a child, you know,
17:53
Speaker 1: we had things for boys to do to get that
17:56
Speaker 1: energy out of them, right, they would there would be recess,
17:58
Speaker 1: there would be sports, you go to them, you know,
18:02
Speaker 1: and those things have been almost completely taken away for
18:08
Speaker 1: safety reasons. But what you'll ultimately get is an environment
18:12
Speaker 1: where boys are you know, they're they're feeling that restless
18:16
Speaker 1: boy energy and they can't use it, and so what
18:18
Speaker 1: happens is they become disruptive, they're distracted, and the teachers think, oh, well,
18:24
Speaker 1: you know this boy has uh you know, he needs
18:26
Speaker 1: to be medicated. He's got you know, uh adhd or
18:31
Speaker 1: or something. And I noticed that it's been this way
18:37
Speaker 1: for quite a while, where you put you know, children
18:39
Speaker 1: boys on like various pills, so and and this is
18:44
Speaker 1: supposedly to correct their behavior, which is probably in most
18:47
Speaker 1: cases just regular boy behavior.
18:50
Speaker 2: I totally agree. And what that amounts to is that
18:54
Speaker 2: we're we've created a narrative which demonizes masculinity and then
19:00
Speaker 2: so pathologizes it. You know, we're kind of and we're
19:06
Speaker 2: obsessed with gender issues, but we can't we're blind to
19:11
Speaker 2: the fact that we're mistreating boys.
19:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we're really only obsessed with women as victims,
19:19
Speaker 1: not even like really as because I think that women
19:23
Speaker 1: and girls are not really served by this narrative either.
19:26
Speaker 1: And I think, like, for example, I think that a
19:32
Speaker 1: sizeable percentage of the female population is on SSR eyes
19:39
Speaker 1: and it is, and I don't think that it's helping.
19:42
Speaker 1: I think that they're very unhappy. They're also going through
19:45
Speaker 1: a lot of depression. There there may be less likely
19:48
Speaker 1: to commit suicide because they're more likely to ask for help.
19:54
Speaker 1: What do you think about, because I mean, since you
19:57
Speaker 1: work in mental health, what do you think about psychiatric drugs.
20:03
Speaker 2: I think they have a place, but they're always used
20:06
Speaker 2: as the first resort, never a last resort. You know,
20:11
Speaker 2: in my experience, I've worked with some people, and I've
20:13
Speaker 2: had the luxury of being able to work with some
20:16
Speaker 2: clients very long term, like ten years some of them,
20:19
Speaker 2: and I've seen people completely change without the use of
20:22
Speaker 2: drugs to all in the house.
20:25
Speaker 3: What did you do instead? Was it just sort of
20:27
Speaker 3: like therapy or yeah.
20:31
Speaker 2: I mean basically not even standard therapy. I've just made
20:35
Speaker 2: sure I phoned or text someone every day who was vulnerable,
20:38
Speaker 2: make sure that they were held in mind, which is
20:41
Speaker 2: a very important psychodynamic concept, the holding in mind of
20:44
Speaker 2: the infant, the containing of an infant in the mind
20:48
Speaker 2: of another. If you've never had an adult contain you
20:51
Speaker 2: in their mind and hold you in their thoughts. When
20:55
Speaker 2: you're young and developing, you don't learn to contain your
20:57
Speaker 2: own mind. You don't learn to believe in yourself. To
21:01
Speaker 2: feel secure in yourself. Mental health is basically security of
21:05
Speaker 2: having been cared for externally, which you then internalize as
21:08
Speaker 2: you grow. So empathy is something you have to It's
21:12
Speaker 2: like nutrition, so you know, just as food is physical nutrition,
21:17
Speaker 2: empathy is emotional nutrition. We all need that.
21:21
Speaker 1: So getting empathy, you mean not necessarily like getting empathy
21:25
Speaker 1: will make you more likely.
21:26
Speaker 3: To show empathy.
21:28
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you haven't had empathy in your damage
21:31
Speaker 2: by trauma and abuse, you need years to get through
21:35
Speaker 2: to someone the empathy because you've got to work with
21:39
Speaker 2: them a damaged person. So the psychotherapy can take years,
21:43
Speaker 2: but it does work. But drugs have their place because
21:48
Speaker 2: some people just can't talk and they just need to
21:51
Speaker 2: calm down. They're just over off the wall, you know,
21:54
Speaker 2: and they're just so low they can't think of it.
21:57
Speaker 2: If someone's really I always think of us. If drugs
22:01
Speaker 2: make you more accessible to having a relationship, they make
22:05
Speaker 2: you less. They bring you up a bit so that
22:09
Speaker 2: you can talk, or they bring you down so that
22:11
Speaker 2: you're not so completely overwhelmed. They bring you into a
22:15
Speaker 2: zone of relationship. Then drugs useful. Drugs aren't useful where
22:19
Speaker 2: they take you away from the zone of relationship. You know,
22:22
Speaker 2: they zombify you or they just stop you thinking. So
22:27
Speaker 2: drugs have their place, and I'm not an anti psychiatrist,
22:30
Speaker 2: but I do think drugs are overly used as a
22:33
Speaker 2: first resort. And you know that I don't believe in
22:36
Speaker 2: the medical model of causation of mental health problems. Everyone
22:40
Speaker 2: I've worked with with severe mental health problems has a
22:43
Speaker 2: some kind of story of abuse, trauma, or neglect early
22:47
Speaker 2: on in a serious problem, or maybe later in life
22:50
Speaker 2: they had massive losses like that, you know, they had
22:53
Speaker 2: to leave their country, or witness murder or you know
22:56
Speaker 2: all kinds of stories. People go through things which affect
23:00
Speaker 2: the mental health. But the biggest one is childhood abuse, trauma,
23:04
Speaker 2: or regret. And all the biggest mental health problems I've
23:08
Speaker 2: had to work with come from people with those kinds
23:10
Speaker 2: of stories, male or female. Obviously, it then affects you more.
23:15
Speaker 2: Agenda comes to play. Like example, if you're thrown out
23:18
Speaker 2: of if you're rejected as a child, then you're on
23:20
Speaker 2: the streets. You're more likely to stay there if you're
23:23
Speaker 2: male and if you're female, you know, because homelessness figures
23:27
Speaker 2: are much higher for men. And again because partly because
23:31
Speaker 2: we have more compassion and we're more tolerant of a
23:35
Speaker 2: male being on the streets than a female. We protect
23:38
Speaker 2: towards women and children. That's partly evolutionary, and that evolutionary
23:43
Speaker 2: instinct to protect women and children has been magnified by
23:47
Speaker 2: a social movement towards a female empowerment, you know, through feminism.
23:54
Speaker 2: It's the idea once you add evolutionary instincts to protect
23:58
Speaker 2: women and children, you add those to a feminist idea
24:03
Speaker 2: that women have the inequality issues, not men. You put
24:07
Speaker 2: those two things together, you get a massive bias, which
24:10
Speaker 2: is what we try to explain gamma. You know, our
24:13
Speaker 2: gamma bias theory is based on people often asked, well,
24:16
Speaker 2: what where do you think gamma bias comes from? And
24:19
Speaker 2: gamma bias just means the interaction of alpha and beta bias.
24:22
Speaker 2: Alpha bias is when you magnify a gender difference. Beta
24:26
Speaker 2: bias is when you minimize one. So John and I
24:29
Speaker 2: came up with gamma bias because we're doing both with men.
24:32
Speaker 2: We're magnifying the bad stuff and minimizing the good stuff.
24:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, the good stuff.
24:37
Speaker 1: And we're and we're also excluding women's part to play
24:40
Speaker 1: in these things, for bad or well, for bad in particular.
24:44
Speaker 2: You know, we minimize female perpetrators most stuff.
24:48
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we definitely do.
24:50
Speaker 1: Okay, So in the United States we have well, I
24:55
Speaker 1: don't know if it's exclusive, That's what I'm going to
24:57
Speaker 1: ask you. So I'm sure you know about the American
25:00
Speaker 1: Psychological Association and they had released years ago and we've
25:05
Speaker 1: covered it many times A well, I guess you could say.
25:09
Speaker 1: It was a paper that was supposedly guidelines for helping
25:14
Speaker 1: men and the and it's all based in this feminist
25:19
Speaker 1: theory of you know, toxic masculinity and that men have
25:24
Speaker 1: to talk about their feelings more.
25:26
Speaker 3: That they're there they are.
25:28
Speaker 1: The reason they are suffering is their own fault because
25:31
Speaker 1: they're not you know, getting help or whatever.
25:34
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask.
25:35
Speaker 1: Firstly, do those guidelines affect the way that people are
25:40
Speaker 1: treated in the UK or if not, do you have
25:45
Speaker 1: something similar to that.
25:47
Speaker 2: Well, firstly, they do affect the UK because everything from
25:50
Speaker 2: America bleed into the UK, all the political gender issues,
25:58
Speaker 2: all the sort of left wing, right wing all the
26:01
Speaker 2: sort of fashions in American thinking to UK. So there's that,
26:09
Speaker 2: but also they reflect a common root that in the
26:12
Speaker 2: UK there are similar views about gender in certain circles,
26:17
Speaker 2: and as you said, in the universities, gender issues are
26:20
Speaker 2: taught mainly as women's issues, and men are seen through
26:23
Speaker 2: a feminist lens mainly, which means they are othered as powerful,
26:30
Speaker 2: they are other sort of powerful, dominant, dangerous, predatory, and
26:36
Speaker 2: if they have issues and problems, those issues and problems
26:39
Speaker 2: are perceived as down to men's own failures to seek
26:44
Speaker 2: help or whatever. So there is that general and it's
26:48
Speaker 2: also the theory of gender because gender theories have become
26:52
Speaker 2: very constructionist, postmodern sort of theories which completely ignore biology,
26:59
Speaker 2: which is it's a bit crazy to ignore biology and
27:02
Speaker 2: gender because you're basically saying your gender has got nothing
27:05
Speaker 2: to do with your body. If someone feels them in
27:09
Speaker 2: the wrong body, they start hacking away at your body.
27:11
Speaker 2: So it's all a bit mad. But at the end
27:15
Speaker 2: of the day, it's all of that post constructionist sort
27:20
Speaker 2: of thinking that gender is just a construct and you
27:23
Speaker 2: can teach the boy and girl to be different and
27:27
Speaker 2: nothing about a boy has to be Everything about boys
27:31
Speaker 2: can be reconstructed to education. So there's the same madness
27:35
Speaker 2: that is a madness, and that madness exists in the
27:39
Speaker 2: UK too. But in terms of gender guidelines there are
27:44
Speaker 2: things there have been UK projects like the Power Threat
27:50
Speaker 2: Meaning framework was quite a well popular model of power
27:56
Speaker 2: threat meaning in framework. Yes, it's kind of a couple
27:59
Speaker 2: of British psychologists came up with it, if they didn't
28:02
Speaker 2: test it, by the way, and it's on gender. It's
28:06
Speaker 2: one of the worst things I've ever read.
28:07
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, oh, no, can you tell us
28:10
Speaker 3: a little bit about it?
28:10
Speaker 2: Yes, on gender. The power Threat Meaning framework basically is
28:15
Speaker 2: like reading a feminist bible on male dominance and power.
28:21
Speaker 2: So basically the idea of power threat obviously, the implication
28:25
Speaker 2: is that men are more powerful and more threatening, and
28:27
Speaker 2: as you said earlier, that's not a great narrative for
28:29
Speaker 2: women because it's always making them the victim. Women are
28:33
Speaker 2: justice capable of being friend powerful.
28:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.
28:35
Speaker 1: Well, it also makes women terrified of the average man,
28:39
Speaker 1: so I mean, I think that's another purpose of it.
28:41
Speaker 3: This is why women are.
28:44
Speaker 1: Generally distrustful and suspicious of men because of these narratives
28:48
Speaker 1: and this isn't good for men and women coming together
28:51
Speaker 1: in general.
28:52
Speaker 2: No, No, that's what's happening is it's divisive. I think
28:54
Speaker 2: it's attacking the love. It's attacking the link between male
28:58
Speaker 2: and female, the family, because family life is basically a
29:02
Speaker 2: male and female and even if you're not heterosexual, there's
29:06
Speaker 2: a masculine and feminine difference in all relationships. So it's
29:09
Speaker 2: attacking the it's devaluing relationships generally. It's attacking the idea
29:15
Speaker 2: of male and female and coming together to look after kids,
29:20
Speaker 2: which is basic human pattern, you know. So all of
29:23
Speaker 2: these guide Yeah, so there's that British psychological model, but
29:27
Speaker 2: it's not an official model, but it's very highly it's
29:31
Speaker 2: a high status within British psychologists and people are teaching it.
29:36
Speaker 2: It's like a lot of this stuff. It's like critical
29:38
Speaker 2: race theory and stuff. People just teach it without ever
29:41
Speaker 2: bothering to test it, you know, as a scientific theory.
29:45
Speaker 2: But in terms of guidelines, myself and John again, in
29:49
Speaker 2: terms of British psychology, two of us often end up
29:52
Speaker 2: doing quite a bit of this stuff. We did some
29:56
Speaker 2: guidelines for British psychologists on adult therapies for male We
30:01
Speaker 2: called it Male Friendly Guidelines, which did the British Psychological
30:04
Speaker 2: Society did publish. So it's not like there's a total
30:11
Speaker 2: hostility two good psychologists and men and women, because a
30:17
Speaker 2: lot of our best male psychology practitioners in Britain and
30:21
Speaker 2: women and they're fantastic at it because we don't have
30:24
Speaker 2: that issue of its men versus women. It's just male
30:26
Speaker 2: psychology is there for all of us. And but these
30:31
Speaker 2: guidelines Male Friendly Therapy Guidelines are there online to be found,
30:36
Speaker 2: that British Psychological Guidelines on Male Friendly Therapist. So we're
30:41
Speaker 2: managing to make some difference there. So that was deliberately
30:44
Speaker 2: written in the light of the APA guidance to try
30:48
Speaker 2: and counteract that a little bit in our country. Sure,
30:52
Speaker 2: and also I understand that you know, the APA guidelines
30:56
Speaker 2: have been moderated a little bit by resistant some critiques
31:01
Speaker 2: that have come from good psychologists in the States, you
31:05
Speaker 2: know who don't you're not happy with the ABA stance,
31:08
Speaker 2: So there's a pushback. But yeah, we're always having to
31:12
Speaker 2: fight this stuff. You know, you can't just work with
31:15
Speaker 2: men and boys and be seen as legitimate. You're always
31:18
Speaker 2: having to fight this kind of biased narrative, you're seen
31:22
Speaker 2: as being some kind of anti I don't know, you're
31:25
Speaker 2: just seen as a kind of an extremist if you
31:29
Speaker 2: want to help men. But men's rights activists are scene
31:33
Speaker 2: in a as extremists, whereas a woman's rights activist, it's
31:38
Speaker 2: just a feminist feminist.
31:39
Speaker 1: Well, it's just in fact, I think that it's expected
31:43
Speaker 1: for everyone to be a woman's rights activist, right, it's
31:47
Speaker 1: sort of normalized. Yeah, I saw that you had tweeted
31:55
Speaker 1: or posted.
31:55
Speaker 3: I guess we call them posts now.
31:58
Speaker 1: Boys impact can't friends and it already passed. Unfortunately, it
32:03
Speaker 1: was on the twelve Wednesday, the eleventh Thursday to twelve.
32:06
Speaker 1: Did you attend that.
32:08
Speaker 4: Or are you just yeah, I was just causing that
32:10
Speaker 4: one on but I think, yeah, you know, I'm involved
32:13
Speaker 4: with various things like the Men and Boys Coalition and
32:18
Speaker 4: various men's charities in this country when stuff comes up,
32:23
Speaker 4: even if I can't attend that forwardly to other people,
32:27
Speaker 4: just to try.
32:27
Speaker 2: And help keep the momentum going of men's issues. You Yeah, yeah,
32:33
Speaker 2: so I always do that.
32:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
32:37
Speaker 1: So we were just talking about how you're you know,
32:41
Speaker 1: we're trying to provide or you I'm not going to
32:44
Speaker 1: include myself. You're trying to provide alternatives for men who
32:49
Speaker 1: are looking for help that don't go along with this
32:51
Speaker 1: sort of you know, for whatever reason, postmodern approach to
32:59
Speaker 1: caring for men and women. I guess, So what how
33:03
Speaker 1: do you I guess get men two? Uh, like, what
33:09
Speaker 1: do you propose for men who are looking for help
33:11
Speaker 1: that are because I think that one of the reasons
33:14
Speaker 1: why men don't ask for help and I know that that,
33:16
Speaker 1: you know, the feminists will say it's because of toxic masculinity.
33:20
Speaker 1: They feel like they have to be macho and they
33:21
Speaker 1: have to be tough, and so they just they stay
33:23
Speaker 1: tough until they kill themselves. Of course, I think these
33:26
Speaker 1: are kind of ridiculous claims, but I do think that
33:29
Speaker 1: men are very suspicious of the you know, the the
33:34
Speaker 1: sort of mental health industry, and I think it's partly
33:37
Speaker 1: because they there is aware, They're aware that there is
33:40
Speaker 1: an anti male bias in most institutions, and they're wondering, well,
33:44
Speaker 1: am I going to be served by this? So like
33:47
Speaker 1: what what I'm I'm guess what I'm asking is, uh,
33:53
Speaker 1: what do you think about that that approach? And what
33:57
Speaker 1: what how do you guys attract man. How do you
34:01
Speaker 1: put the message out there that you're there to help.
34:04
Speaker 2: Well, I think we do a number of things that
34:06
Speaker 2: we use the male archetype. So I try to you know,
34:10
Speaker 2: when you put out a message saying to boys it's
34:13
Speaker 2: okay to be vulnerable or whatever, that goes against the
34:16
Speaker 2: male archetype, which is then that will have the feminist
34:18
Speaker 2: kind of all saying, so you've told you so. But actually,
34:21
Speaker 2: if you say to a man, if you seek help,
34:25
Speaker 2: you're taking charge of your life. You're you're trying to
34:29
Speaker 2: do something, You're trying to solve a problem. Then men
34:34
Speaker 2: will start being more interested in seeking help if you
34:36
Speaker 2: frame it in the right language. If you say to
34:39
Speaker 2: the man, and it's okay to be to be vulnerable, Okay,
34:43
Speaker 2: yes it is.
34:44
Speaker 3: But if you want to.
34:45
Speaker 2: Put it a male friendly language, you say, seeking help
34:49
Speaker 2: is actually you're protecting yourself and then that will help
34:53
Speaker 2: others in your life. So you can make so that's
34:55
Speaker 2: the first thing you can do. You can make the
34:57
Speaker 2: messaging a bit more friendly. I work with the Samaritans,
35:02
Speaker 2: who are sort of twenty four hour helpline in the
35:05
Speaker 2: UK and Alvioso worldwide. I guess, and we did a
35:09
Speaker 2: project with them where we spent we just trained the
35:12
Speaker 2: volunteers to by the way, the Mountains gets fifty percent
35:16
Speaker 2: male callers because it's anonymous. So the next thing you
35:20
Speaker 2: do to help men is make things a bit more
35:22
Speaker 2: anonymous because they feel a bit less shame about it.
35:26
Speaker 2: So the Mountains do get fifty percent of male callers.
35:32
Speaker 2: And what we did was simply train the volunteers to
35:34
Speaker 2: listen in a more male friendly way. We expose them
35:36
Speaker 2: to blues music. Said, look, why do men express their
35:40
Speaker 2: feelings in blues music? I mean most men. If you
35:43
Speaker 2: listen to most blues music, it's the pain of men,
35:46
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's not like it's invisible. It's just that
35:50
Speaker 2: society is a bit blind to men's the way men
35:53
Speaker 2: express things. So we taught them all volunteers the stuff.
35:57
Speaker 2: And once we've taught them all of that, we then
35:59
Speaker 2: measured the length of the phone calls they have with men. Now,
36:02
Speaker 2: at the beginning before the project, men were making a
36:06
Speaker 2: lot of very short phone calls, but by the end
36:10
Speaker 2: of the project, the phone calls were at least double
36:14
Speaker 2: the length. So we measured the volunteers as a sort
36:18
Speaker 2: of variable. If you like that, we could change the way.
36:23
Speaker 2: We could change the way men talk simply by changing
36:27
Speaker 2: the way mainly female volunteers were listening, because eighty percent
36:31
Speaker 2: of the Somaritans volunteers are women. We changed the way
36:34
Speaker 2: those women were listening, and the men talk better. So
36:36
Speaker 2: that disproves the theory that it's down to men, because
36:41
Speaker 2: even the Samaritans were teaching us that, you know, don't
36:44
Speaker 2: let men banter get them onto their feelings. That's the
36:47
Speaker 2: most psychologically poor advice you can give. If a man
36:51
Speaker 2: is bantering, he's trying to connect with you, So psychologically
36:55
Speaker 2: what you do is say or go with that, make
36:57
Speaker 2: a connection with him. Then he'll take you somewhere or
37:00
Speaker 2: you'll go somewhere else. But if you stop in bantering
37:03
Speaker 2: and say, oh, tell me about your feelings, ay, you're
37:06
Speaker 2: trying to control the conversation. B you're showing are uninterested
37:10
Speaker 2: in his signals about how he's trying to connect with you.
37:13
Speaker 2: So we try to educate the Samaritans volunteers and it worked,
37:18
Speaker 2: but we're still not getting I don't think the Samountains
37:21
Speaker 2: nationally is using that model. So we've still got more
37:24
Speaker 2: work to do. But the point is all the male
37:28
Speaker 2: charities that work, they involve things like men doing stuff together,
37:33
Speaker 2: you know, because a lot of counseling culture is quite
37:36
Speaker 2: talk based and sometimes you can just do stuff with people.
37:41
Speaker 1: And yeah, I was just going to mention that it's like,
37:44
Speaker 1: you know, women, I think women heal face to face.
37:48
Speaker 1: Men heal side by side if you do. Yeah, I
37:54
Speaker 1: think there's some truth in that. And I was going
37:57
Speaker 1: to mention, there's very interesting their you bring up the banter,
38:02
Speaker 1: because I think that is sort of like it's like
38:06
Speaker 1: it's like working in a cooperative environment, like you know,
38:11
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you, you're talking back to me.
38:13
Speaker 3: And then I'm more likely to share.
38:15
Speaker 1: But if you say tell me about your feelings, you're
38:17
Speaker 1: you're coming across as kind of authoritative. And I think
38:21
Speaker 1: that men are. I think that there they are going
38:24
Speaker 1: to be less responsive to that.
38:27
Speaker 3: On average.
38:29
Speaker 1: And I think, yeah, and the building thing, like, well,
38:32
Speaker 1: I guess what I mean is men one thing that
38:35
Speaker 1: I I in Australia, they it was a big thing.
38:37
Speaker 1: They have these men's sheds and they go there and
38:42
Speaker 1: they're and they sort of build something together and that
38:45
Speaker 1: is when they find, you know, for whatever reason the
38:50
Speaker 1: freedom they feel, the freedom to be able to talk
38:52
Speaker 1: about their issues because they're but they're they're busy using
38:56
Speaker 1: their hands, and I think that that might be part
38:58
Speaker 1: of that male archetype that you were talking about exactly.
39:01
Speaker 2: And let's go back to those five universal needs I said,
39:04
Speaker 2: you know, to be loved, to be heard, to belong,
39:07
Speaker 2: to make a difference, and to have a purpose. If
39:10
Speaker 2: you have a men's shed, which we have in the UK,
39:12
Speaker 2: I'm sure in America as well in Australia, then if
39:18
Speaker 2: you're going in doing something with other people, you are
39:22
Speaker 2: feeling your bunch of comrades working together. You know, it's camaraderie,
39:26
Speaker 2: isn't it. So there's a thing you cared about, and
39:29
Speaker 2: also feeling of being useful because you can help out
39:32
Speaker 2: someone else. There's a feeling of being listened to because
39:35
Speaker 2: you're tuning in with each other. There's a feeling of belonging.
39:39
Speaker 2: There's a feeling of doing something useful. So all of
39:43
Speaker 2: those boxes are being ticked without having to sit in
39:46
Speaker 2: their room and saying, you know, tell me how you feel,
39:48
Speaker 2: which is fine for some people. I mean, I had
39:50
Speaker 2: ten years of psychoanalysis, but I'm not your typical man
39:54
Speaker 2: in that sense. But there are some women who can't
39:59
Speaker 2: bear sitting in a room talking, and I've worked with
40:01
Speaker 2: women who prefer to just you know, you have a
40:04
Speaker 2: more pactoic.
40:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, some women also will do better engaging
40:09
Speaker 1: in the male type activity as well, Like, yeah, it
40:13
Speaker 1: can be. This is why I don't see a reason
40:15
Speaker 1: to limit the way that we approach mental health. If
40:19
Speaker 1: we can help men in there in the unique ways
40:22
Speaker 1: they needed, there will probably be also women that could
40:25
Speaker 1: benefit from that as well.
40:27
Speaker 3: Right.
40:29
Speaker 2: The whole idea that men aren't seeking help and it's
40:32
Speaker 2: there fault, I mean, that's that was tested very powerfully
40:35
Speaker 2: by the Aaron Pittsy who invented the women's refuge movement.
40:39
Speaker 2: She invented that in Chiswick in nineteen seventy one. She
40:43
Speaker 2: set up the first refuge for women. Quickly realized men
40:46
Speaker 2: were being abused and women were perpetrators too, tried to
40:50
Speaker 2: help the men, and she got booted out of her
40:52
Speaker 2: own charity. Yes, the idea that you know, it's just
40:55
Speaker 2: men not seeking help, that's rubbish. There's a hostility to
41:00
Speaker 2: helping men absolutely with that narrative.
41:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
41:07
Speaker 1: You know you mentioned Samaritans, and I actually have that
41:10
Speaker 1: tab pulled up. I'm glad you mentioned it. So how
41:16
Speaker 1: you talked about that the women that are working on that,
41:21
Speaker 1: how do they feel about the training, the way that
41:25
Speaker 1: they've been helping men? Like, how do the have has
41:28
Speaker 1: the women that have volunteered for this did their perspective
41:33
Speaker 1: or perception of men's needs shift at all?
41:36
Speaker 2: Yes, it did. This was a ten This project was
41:38
Speaker 2: ten years ago. We've written about it in It's referred
41:43
Speaker 2: to in the Paul Grave Handbook of Male Psychology and
41:45
Speaker 2: Mental Health, which John and I and two other guys
41:48
Speaker 2: co edited. It's an international handbook on male psychology and
41:51
Speaker 2: mental health the women. So this is twenty fourteen, this project,
41:56
Speaker 2: and it lasted about a year. But the women volunteers
42:00
Speaker 2: felt they really got to understand men better and to
42:03
Speaker 2: connect with them better, which of course is what they
42:06
Speaker 2: wanted to do. It wasn't they weren't deliberately trying to
42:09
Speaker 2: misunderstand men either. It was just that they were switched
42:12
Speaker 2: into this. If the guy isn't talking about his feelings,
42:15
Speaker 2: you've got to steer him away onto his feelings, as
42:18
Speaker 2: if they knew how to, you know, because I mean
42:21
Speaker 2: even in mental health. That's a pretty rubbish model to have. Anyway,
42:25
Speaker 2: people would tell you their feelings, he if they know
42:29
Speaker 2: their feelings, which they don't always know. If you've been
42:31
Speaker 2: abused as a very young person, you're not even very
42:35
Speaker 2: self aware. So it's that, you know, people are counseling
42:40
Speaker 2: models which sometimes get incorporated into charities like somemounties.
42:44
Speaker 3: This idea of.
42:45
Speaker 2: Talk and you'll feel better. It's very simplistic, and for
42:49
Speaker 2: some people that can actually be harmful to talk to
42:51
Speaker 2: someone you don't trust who's just trying to tell you
42:53
Speaker 2: what to talk about. You know, that can actually be unhelpful.
42:56
Speaker 2: So but these women in the Samaritans, when they did
43:00
Speaker 2: do that train and they did feel, yeah, they felt
43:04
Speaker 2: a bit of a light bulb thing that they yeah
43:07
Speaker 2: for qualitative comments in our project, and they definitely all
43:10
Speaker 2: said yeah. Even the blues music they thought, yeah, well, gosh,
43:14
Speaker 2: you know, guys suffer, they feel pain, they express it
43:17
Speaker 2: in different ways, and certainly blues music is an archetypal
43:21
Speaker 2: male way of expressing. Rock and roll, you.
43:23
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, you know, I'm reminded of a great was
43:29
Speaker 1: one of the first stories I heard that when I
43:31
Speaker 1: about when I got involved with this was about Eric Clapton. Yeah,
43:36
Speaker 1: and I don't you know about the story Eric Clapton.
43:39
Speaker 1: He was in case people don't know who he is,
43:41
Speaker 1: because I know I'm kind of old.
43:45
Speaker 3: He was.
43:45
Speaker 1: He was in a band called Cream and then he
43:47
Speaker 1: went and you know, sort of like did a solo career,
43:51
Speaker 1: and I believe his son passed away and he wrote
43:56
Speaker 1: a song about out it as his way of healing. So,
44:02
Speaker 1: like what you know, one way that that men cope
44:06
Speaker 1: is by building something. So he wrote and made this
44:10
Speaker 1: song which was a massive hit, and that was his
44:14
Speaker 1: way of, like, you know.
44:16
Speaker 3: Of healing.
44:17
Speaker 1: It was Yeah, it's beautiful Tears in Heaven.
44:20
Speaker 3: That's what it's called.
44:22
Speaker 2: A beautiful song. And you can you know, and it's
44:25
Speaker 2: not difficult to see that there's a lot of feelings
44:29
Speaker 2: in the song. It's not like that toastally hidden anyway.
44:31
Speaker 2: The words are very clear. It's a beautiful way he
44:35
Speaker 2: could authentically connect with his grief and process it. You know,
44:41
Speaker 2: the men feel grief, just to say as women, they
44:43
Speaker 2: don't always process it in that you know, they feel it,
44:46
Speaker 2: they don't always process it in exactly the same way,
44:49
Speaker 2: and they don't need to There are different ways of processing.
44:52
Speaker 2: We found that for some guys writing I had I
44:55
Speaker 2: worked with a war veteran who I wrote poems and
45:01
Speaker 2: I just I got in to read his poems to
45:03
Speaker 2: me about his experiences, and he got through his trauma
45:07
Speaker 2: by just reading his poems to me, not just because
45:11
Speaker 2: he wrote he'd written them, but because he had someone
45:14
Speaker 2: listening to them. That enabled it to be processed. So
45:17
Speaker 2: it isn't just writing something, it's also getting someone to
45:22
Speaker 2: hear it, and then it processes your experience so that
45:25
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be sitting in a rem doing counseling.
45:28
Speaker 2: Counseling is obviously a very good thing for a lot
45:31
Speaker 2: of people, but it's not the only fruit when it
45:34
Speaker 2: comes to connecting. Key thing you need to do with
45:36
Speaker 2: people's mental health is connect with them, and you can
45:39
Speaker 2: connect with them through music and the arts. Therapies are
45:42
Speaker 2: very powerful for men and women. You know, you can
45:44
Speaker 2: connect with people in many different ways. You can help
45:48
Speaker 2: someone's mental health just by doing stuff with them or
45:52
Speaker 2: for them. You know what it means to them, What
45:56
Speaker 2: things mean to people is what matters. Not the words
45:59
Speaker 2: sometimes get in the way. You know, I think we
46:02
Speaker 2: just work someone it's actually no doing something for someone
46:05
Speaker 2: to mean a lot more than what you say.
46:09
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, other than it's very often absolutely very powerful stuff.
46:14
Speaker 1: Another thing I noticed that we keep it seems we
46:17
Speaker 1: keep coming back to this idea of male fraternity, really
46:23
Speaker 1: fraternity amongst men. You know, this was a thing. We
46:27
Speaker 1: used to have boys clubs and all these sort of
46:30
Speaker 1: like you know, male centered uh hobbyist groups and uh,
46:36
Speaker 1: you know, bowling teams whatever. It was, right, And I
46:39
Speaker 1: don't I don't think we do that as much anymore.
46:41
Speaker 1: I think we're all a lot more atomized, isolated from
46:44
Speaker 1: each other. I think that when men try to like
46:46
Speaker 1: form groups, whether it's online or or you know, in
46:50
Speaker 1: real in real space, there's concerns and there's that that
46:56
Speaker 1: that rise up, like what are they doing? Are they dangerous?
46:59
Speaker 1: And so they end up being policed and monitored. And
47:02
Speaker 1: I think that.
47:04
Speaker 3: In my personal belief, I think that one of the
47:06
Speaker 3: ways that you.
47:07
Speaker 1: Can help men is to just allow them, or even
47:12
Speaker 1: organize with them, to like do things together, engage in activities.
47:16
Speaker 1: They could be building things, forming a band, being on
47:19
Speaker 1: a team you know, sports or whatever, or or whatever
47:23
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that, I mean, I think
47:26
Speaker 1: that that is what one of the things that's certainly missing,
47:29
Speaker 1: and I want to know what you think about that.
47:31
Speaker 2: I agree. I think this idea of the male space
47:35
Speaker 2: has sort of been taken out and there may well
47:38
Speaker 2: have been a need for more female spaces, which I
47:40
Speaker 2: totally accept as well, we need that, but the sort
47:44
Speaker 2: of male space has now become sort of reduced.
47:49
Speaker 3: Problematized, problematized.
47:51
Speaker 2: So yes, and you know, even but men are very
47:56
Speaker 2: much group. You know, men are fantastic at work. Think
47:59
Speaker 2: we've evolved as originally as hunters. You know, you'd have
48:03
Speaker 2: to go out together, probably not taught a lot, you
48:08
Speaker 2: have to make signals, you have to hunt, you've got
48:10
Speaker 2: to work as men are fantastic in teams, and that's
48:14
Speaker 2: why sport is so important for men. But even men's
48:17
Speaker 2: sport now gets a little bit sort of people are
48:20
Speaker 2: trying to degender everything, you know, but there's default a
48:24
Speaker 2: male space, although you know sometimes but even things like
48:28
Speaker 2: the Scouts, which are a good male space. You know,
48:31
Speaker 2: sometimes there's more women now or girls in male spaces,
48:35
Speaker 2: but there's not boys in the female equivalent. So there's
48:38
Speaker 2: kind of a bias now against male spaces. Perhaps based
48:42
Speaker 2: on this kind of assumption that all men together is
48:46
Speaker 2: somehow not a good thing. But men are very good
48:50
Speaker 2: at doing stuff together. And if you want to yeah,
48:55
Speaker 2: if you want to help men's mental health and you
48:58
Speaker 2: want to help respect from the men, you've got to
49:01
Speaker 2: create more male spaces. But we're going into schools with
49:04
Speaker 2: the idea that if you're going into schools and teaching
49:08
Speaker 2: boys in your culture, that there's something inherently problematic about
49:12
Speaker 2: being male that's not going to correlate with loads of
49:15
Speaker 2: fantastically created projects that are there to create male spaces.
49:21
Speaker 2: So you know, the answer to what people think are
49:25
Speaker 2: the problems with males would be some male spaces. But
49:28
Speaker 2: equally people think that male spaces are the problem, not
49:32
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of a vicious circle. But this
49:35
Speaker 2: Andrew takes stuff which everyone asks me about all the time.
49:38
Speaker 2: The only reason Adam gets any sort of attention from
49:43
Speaker 2: boys is because there's no other male friendly.
49:47
Speaker 1: Domestically, you're basically taken away all of men's outlets and
49:53
Speaker 1: broken up their communities, and then they seek out someone
49:56
Speaker 1: like that. It's like, well, yeah, what did you expect
50:00
Speaker 1: to offer something better?
50:01
Speaker 3: Right?
50:02
Speaker 2: So we want lots of good male spaces, lots of
50:06
Speaker 2: good Andrew tapes, because obviously what he's offering is the
50:10
Speaker 2: archetypal thing that every feminist says. Lots I've told you
50:15
Speaker 2: y use this. It's this Mandred take is your image
50:18
Speaker 2: of masculinity. But actually, Andrew take is what you get
50:21
Speaker 2: when you deprive the world. You deprive men and boys
50:25
Speaker 2: of any kind of oxygen or space for their identity,
50:30
Speaker 2: for their authenticity, for just being loved as human beings.
50:33
Speaker 2: They're going to find someone that is at least. It's
50:36
Speaker 2: a bit like gang to a gang leader, isn't it.
50:38
Speaker 2: If you have no father, If you have no father
50:42
Speaker 2: figure and you have no respecting your family and you're
50:46
Speaker 2: checked out, you'll find a gang because of gangs like
50:49
Speaker 2: your family. Gangs for boys and the girls, and gangs too.
50:54
Speaker 2: But they serve the role of creating all those things
50:57
Speaker 2: we talked about. They make you feel important, you feel
51:00
Speaker 2: that you belong to something. So we need to create
51:03
Speaker 2: lots of good gangs. So my big message to your
51:06
Speaker 2: listeners is, let's create good gangs for boys, or or
51:11
Speaker 2: on a value that good gangs we've already caught, and
51:15
Speaker 2: not devalue them. Because boys are fantastic together, working together.
51:20
Speaker 2: Like they talk, they have a different patternic communication, but
51:24
Speaker 2: they're equally human, they're equally emotionally driven. They care about
51:30
Speaker 2: the world in the same That's why so many boys
51:34
Speaker 2: and men do sacrifice themselves because at the end of
51:40
Speaker 2: the day, they feel this instinct to protect and to
51:44
Speaker 2: care about their families, their societies. That's why they make
51:47
Speaker 2: great soldiers, you know, honor that we should think, yeah,
51:52
Speaker 2: we should thank all the soldiers, but we shouldn't deny
51:54
Speaker 2: its a gender issue that most soldiers and men that
52:00
Speaker 2: we should at least say masculinity. That proves masculinity is
52:04
Speaker 2: serving others. It's it's it's powerful in a serving way,
52:09
Speaker 2: not in a dominant way, and we should respect masculinity.
52:14
Speaker 2: But until we start respecting masculinity and all that educational
52:18
Speaker 2: and political narrative, it's going to be very hard. That's
52:21
Speaker 2: why I do interviews like this, because you're doing a
52:24
Speaker 2: great job and trying to put out, you know, a
52:28
Speaker 2: more positive narrative and challenging the bullshit. Frankly, yes it's
52:33
Speaker 2: mainstream bullshit. It's still bullshit.
52:36
Speaker 3: It is, and that's true. I agree on her percent
52:39
Speaker 3: with everything you said.
52:40
Speaker 1: This is you know, I'm just glad more and more
52:43
Speaker 1: people are starting to like talk about these things, and
52:47
Speaker 1: so I got one last question. Firstly, I will mention
52:50
Speaker 1: to the chat that the website is uh Samaritans dot org.
52:55
Speaker 3: Right, they will look at it.
53:00
Speaker 2: They Samatters don't use that approach anymore, sadly, but we
53:04
Speaker 2: managed to achieve it ten years ago, but i'd be
53:07
Speaker 2: something that we tried to get them up to take
53:10
Speaker 2: as Yeah, I still don't use it, but it's an
53:12
Speaker 2: example of that something like that can be done. We
53:17
Speaker 2: did achieve in twenty fourteen, but it's not their official policy.
53:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm going to ask you one
53:25
Speaker 3: more question. Thanks.
53:26
Speaker 1: Guys, please hit like sub and subscribe if you're not
53:29
Speaker 1: subscribed already. This one is going to be controversial, but
53:33
Speaker 1: it's something I've been thinking about a lot, and I
53:35
Speaker 1: actually had a short conversation with Aaron Pitsey a while
53:38
Speaker 1: back about this.
53:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
53:40
Speaker 1: So, we have seen, like in the last few years,
53:45
Speaker 1: a increase and I mean like a spike in boys
53:51
Speaker 1: and young men identifying as women we're trying to live
53:55
Speaker 1: as women, becoming transgender, okay, and it is it is
54:01
Speaker 1: disproportionately men that do this until now. I'm not challenging
54:07
Speaker 1: like the very concept of transgenderism at all, but I'm
54:11
Speaker 1: wondering if there is a part of that. And airon
54:13
Speaker 1: Pitzy is zone that brought it up to me. She said,
54:16
Speaker 1: isn't it strange that seventy five percent of people who
54:19
Speaker 1: transition are men? This is at the time that it happened.
54:24
Speaker 1: And there's also a strange correlation between transgender women, trans
54:32
Speaker 1: women and autism. And so what I'm wondering about is
54:35
Speaker 1: is that do you think that there could be And
54:37
Speaker 1: this is my I wouldn't call it a theory even
54:40
Speaker 1: because I don't have anything a basis, but my suspicion
54:43
Speaker 1: is that this is what men do when they don't
54:47
Speaker 1: think that the masculine identity is positive.
54:51
Speaker 3: So they say, I.
54:52
Speaker 1: Want to live as a woman because I think it
54:54
Speaker 1: would be you know, like I would, I wouldn't be
54:58
Speaker 1: ashamed of.
54:59
Speaker 3: My self as much. Does that make sense? Yes, what
55:03
Speaker 3: you think about that?
55:04
Speaker 2: But well, I'll try and tell you. I think it's
55:07
Speaker 2: a very interesting theory. I think, firstly, yes, transgender is
55:11
Speaker 2: a real issue, but it's only a real issue for
55:14
Speaker 2: a very small number of people, and because of recent
55:18
Speaker 2: developments that the number of people who are getting involved
55:21
Speaker 2: in transitions has massively expanded, way beyond what you'd expect
55:26
Speaker 2: statistically if it was just about Because I think there
55:29
Speaker 2: is a massive biological component really to transgender, because I
55:33
Speaker 2: think people who are transgender may well be you know,
55:38
Speaker 2: hormones are a massive factor when you in the when
55:41
Speaker 2: you're in the womb, you don't always get the testosterone blast.
55:46
Speaker 2: You know, you might be male genetically, but you might
55:48
Speaker 2: not get the testosterone in your room. You might not
55:53
Speaker 2: get it pubertally. So there are I don't have to say, oh,
55:58
Speaker 2: you know, I'm biologically male but psychologically female. Whatever. Some
56:01
Speaker 2: of the biology can be mixed, not genetics, obviously, that
56:06
Speaker 2: is what it is. And it's all binary. It's all
56:08
Speaker 2: binary because you either go from male to female, female
56:11
Speaker 2: to male, so there's only two options, so it's all binary.
56:14
Speaker 3: Style is still binary, yeah, exactly.
56:16
Speaker 2: And the hormone So I think hormones play a factor.
56:19
Speaker 2: But I think the politics is now the big thing.
56:22
Speaker 2: I think you're right that we're we're negatively, we're making masculinities.
56:26
Speaker 2: That's a negative thing now. And that was even the
56:30
Speaker 2: intention to kind of do social engineering on boys and
56:34
Speaker 2: make them feel more, make them more feminine, because it's
56:37
Speaker 2: been assumed that feminine qualities are good, masculine qualities are toxic.
56:42
Speaker 2: So there's going to be a percentage of vulnerable boys
56:46
Speaker 2: who end up making the trans pathway their solution to
56:51
Speaker 2: their low self esteem, which has only been amplified by
56:55
Speaker 2: a very negative mainstream cultural message. So I think your
56:59
Speaker 2: theory was a lot of.
57:02
Speaker 3: Has some legs. And yeah, I interviewed someone who.
57:06
Speaker 1: Made the explain their trans woman and they explained like
57:11
Speaker 1: a completely logical approach, like I did this because I
57:15
Speaker 1: knew if I lived as a woman, and I was
57:17
Speaker 1: convincing enough that my life would be better than if
57:21
Speaker 1: I Even though you wouldn't have any of the you know,
57:24
Speaker 1: the ability to reproduce and all of that, it didn't matter.
57:27
Speaker 1: They just wanted to be liked, and so they lived
57:32
Speaker 1: as a woman and I never heard from them again.
57:35
Speaker 1: Hopefully you know they're okay. But I just thought that
57:38
Speaker 1: that that, combined with my conversation with Pittsy, got me
57:41
Speaker 1: thinking that, yeah, this this could be symptoms of this
57:46
Speaker 1: problem of essentially like treating masculinity as a problems a problem.
57:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, apologize masculinity. The cure is to become less masculine.
57:58
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
58:00
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, well, uh we've gone for about
58:05
Speaker 1: an hour. I think I'll probably end the show here.
58:07
Speaker 1: But mister or doctor is it doctor? Okay, mister Seeger,
58:14
Speaker 1: would you mind giving us some final thoughts and maybe
58:17
Speaker 1: like tell us some places where people can find you.
58:20
Speaker 2: Well, uh, yeah, some final thoughts are that we're living
58:25
Speaker 2: in a world where in the Western world, particularly obviously,
58:28
Speaker 2: where the narrative or masculinity is very toxic. Just having
58:32
Speaker 2: a concept of toxic masculinity is actually is where the
58:37
Speaker 2: toxicity lies in the concept, not in masculinity. You know,
58:41
Speaker 2: if you go around calling any demographic toxic, you've got
58:44
Speaker 2: a problem in your in your narrative. So that's the
58:48
Speaker 2: first thing that you know. Boys and girls are being split,
58:54
Speaker 2: divided by this gender narrative that's always comparing them. I mean,
58:58
Speaker 2: obviously we're all equally humor and boys and girls are different,
59:02
Speaker 2: and some boys are more masculine than others, and girls
59:05
Speaker 2: are more feminine others, whatever. But on average, boys are
59:08
Speaker 2: more masculine, because that's the whole point. But that's a
59:11
Speaker 2: good thing, and the damn. The abusive boys are a
59:15
Speaker 2: tiny minority, and they're the ones being abused. No human
59:19
Speaker 2: being goes around being abusive unless they've been abused. They
59:22
Speaker 2: don't just come up with, you know, nasty behavior unless
59:26
Speaker 2: something's been done to them. Regardless of their gender, Men
59:30
Speaker 2: and women show different patterns of bad behavior when they
59:32
Speaker 2: have been abused. Women show different patterns of abusive behavior.
59:37
Speaker 2: Can be more emotional, can be more verbal, can be
59:40
Speaker 2: more less physically violent, but it can also be more
59:45
Speaker 2: directed towards children. You know, we know that. So these
59:48
Speaker 2: patterns also reflect evolutionary differences in men and women. But
59:52
Speaker 2: there's loads of ways we can help boys, but we
59:58
Speaker 2: first need to respect them. You need to respect them
1:00:01
Speaker 2: as equal human beings. We've gone too far in scient
1:00:04
Speaker 2: to sort of treat masculinity as something that needs to
1:00:08
Speaker 2: be counterbalanced by feminism. I mean, feminism has been an
1:00:11
Speaker 2: important issue, but it's now we need to the counterbalance
1:00:17
Speaker 2: has gone way too far. We need to respect not
1:00:20
Speaker 2: only boys, but also girls and the relationships between them.
1:00:25
Speaker 2: And in terms of you know where to find me,
1:00:27
Speaker 2: I'm on I'm on Twitter or X I'm not. I
1:00:34
Speaker 2: don't have a website, but I'm very much involved in
1:00:37
Speaker 2: the Center for Male Psychology supporting that, which is John Barry.
1:00:42
Speaker 2: I'm very much the sort of patron of Sunderland University,
1:00:45
Speaker 2: which is you know or the module there. There's the
1:00:49
Speaker 2: first ever male So this again illustrates the point there's
1:00:52
Speaker 2: only one male psychology module undergraduate module in the whole
1:00:56
Speaker 2: world as far as we know. That's Sunday in the UK.
1:00:59
Speaker 2: And myself and John were behind some of the thinking
1:01:03
Speaker 2: that led to that module in sundn University. And I'm
1:01:07
Speaker 2: affiliated with various charities, but I'm not as a clinician.
1:01:12
Speaker 2: I don't sort of do. I only have a certain
1:01:16
Speaker 2: number of clients, mainly free or you know, low fee,
1:01:20
Speaker 2: and I'm sort of semi retired in that sense, but
1:01:23
Speaker 2: I'm still writing and talking doing things like this. I'm
1:01:28
Speaker 2: wanting to do much more on gamma bias is going
1:01:30
Speaker 2: to be the next big thing we have to amplify.
1:01:35
Speaker 2: We're doing research into it, international research to validate it,
1:01:41
Speaker 2: you know, because these theories, gender theories need to be
1:01:44
Speaker 2: validated by actual research rather than just be politicized. Otherwise
1:01:48
Speaker 2: you sound like another men's rights activist, which you know,
1:01:52
Speaker 2: I believe being active for men's rights and women's rights
1:01:56
Speaker 2: and all rights. But basically, I'm a scientist and a
1:02:02
Speaker 2: humanitarian and I care about men because I care about humanity.
1:02:09
Speaker 2: And if you don't care about men, you basically are
1:02:11
Speaker 2: trashing humanity because, yeah, women can't cope or survive or
1:02:16
Speaker 2: enjoy life if they can't respect and coexist with the
1:02:20
Speaker 2: men in their lives.
1:02:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't say solve a problem if you don't
1:02:24
Speaker 1: account for all the variables. So if you're only addressing women,
1:02:29
Speaker 1: then you're not doing anything because you've ignored half the
1:02:32
Speaker 1: population to bring them together. Yeah, we have to bring
1:02:36
Speaker 1: them together exactly. All right, Well, thank you Martin. The
1:02:41
Speaker 1: links to your Twitter is in the descriptions. People can
1:02:45
Speaker 1: follow you on Twitter slash x. And hopefully we'll have
1:02:50
Speaker 1: you back on again. I know that's I've had John
1:02:53
Speaker 1: Barry on twice, I think, so you know, well, well
1:02:56
Speaker 1: we'll definitely bring you back on. Thank you guys for
1:02:59
Speaker 1: coming on the show and joining us. Thank you so
1:03:02
Speaker 1: much Martin for joining me on this call. While we
1:03:06
Speaker 1: we like normalize this gamma bias term, I'll try to
1:03:10
Speaker 1: use it.
1:03:10
Speaker 3: I think we've used it on the show.
1:03:12
Speaker 1: Actually, a couple of times, but we'll try to normalize
1:03:15
Speaker 1: it so that people start thinking about it in this way.
1:03:17
Speaker 2: All right, Well, anyway, YouTube thing on Gama Byus. People
1:03:22
Speaker 2: want to click on that, just go on YouTube and
1:03:24
Speaker 2: put Gama byus and that's quite a good little brief
1:03:27
Speaker 2: thing on it.
1:03:28
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I'll look it up. Gamma Byus on YouTube.
1:03:31
Speaker 3: All right, check that out.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks so much guys for coming on
1:03:35
Speaker 1: the show. If you like this video, please hit like subscribe.
1:03:38
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1:03:41
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1:03:44
Speaker 1: let us you guys think about what we discussed on
1:03:47
Speaker 1: the show today, and please please please share this video
1:03:50
Speaker 1: because sharing is caring. Thank you so much for coming
1:03:53
Speaker 1: on today's episode of The Fireside Chat, and we'll talk
1:03:55
Speaker 1: to you all in the next videos.
1:04:02
Speaker 4: Pass