Masculinity, and positive ways of supporting our teenage boys

Hello and welcome to Teenagers Untangled, the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards and today we have a special guest and his name is Michael Nicholson, the director at an organisation called Progressive Masculinity. Now I'm going to read this because I want to get it right. Is that right? That sounds good. Yep. Okay, well we've we've done a bit about masculinity already on the podcast. We've done an episode on male friendships, and we talked a bit about the man box in that. We've done an episode on Andrew Tate and what's called the manosphere. So what's happened on online in terms of you know some of these masculine groups, if you want to call it that. And then we also had an episode, episode 13, on pornography. And I know that affects everybody, but I think particularly for boys, that's good that's access probably younger and more frequently than girls. So it's all of these things really matter. And I think one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was I keep hearing the phrase toxic masculinity, and I'm not very comfortable with it. Because I think if I was a boy growing up today, I would either think, oh, I don't want to be associated with that, and I'd internalize it and feel really bad about myself, or I'd think, well, fine, if you think masculines are toxic, then I'll just be as toxic as toxic as I want. So um, so that's my sort of intro. What what made you think this was an important pro uh program to set up?

Well, I was a teacher for nearly 20 years. I was an English teacher and head of department. Um during that time I also did a lot of mentoring um informally of particularly young boys. You know, they would come to me at break time, dinner time, after school with a range of different emotional issues. And what was clear to me is the underlying factor, the thing that connected all of them was this performance of masculinity that they were trying to live. They were trying to be what they thought it meant to be a proper man. And that was sabotaging their mental health, their relationships, their academics, absolutely everything. So I went to the head teacher about five years ago whilst I was still teaching, and I asked him if I could put something together, would he support me and let me run it? And he was great, he said, yeah, put it together, you know, and I'll back you. And five years ago I started doing this. And over the next three years, I kind of constantly improved it, read a lot on the material, uh, improved it, refined it, and then it started to get attention from other schools and football academies and all these kind of places. So that's when I left and set up progressive masculinity as a business.

Interesting. And so you're on the front line, you meet boys all the time. Uh, what sort of age groups do you tend to go and talk to? I'd say year nine and ten are the most popular for us to be booked into.

So I'm not 14, 15.

Okay.

14-15. But we work from 10-year-old right up to 18. So our program is differentiated based on key stages, you know, based on how what's appropriate for each different age group. Because actually, we need to be having some of these conversations at a much younger age than we did in the past. Because a lot of the boys are uh they're watching material and they're they're they're exposed to things at a lot a much younger age now.

Fascinating. And do you, when you're talking to the boys, what sort of things are coming up?

What comes across most clearly to me from their point of view is that they very much feel unseen, unheard, marginalized, disenfranchised. You mentioned toxic masculinity earlier. They're kind of fed up with that because they feel like they've all been labelled that, and that what one of the things that I work hard with them to try and get across is that masculinity itself is not inherently toxic. You know, toxic masculinity exists, and we it's our responsibility to kind of to face that and to combat it. But masculinity itself is not inherently toxic. We actually think it's the lack of masculinity that's toxic. No weak, aggressive. Yeah, so we think that weak, aggressive men who have this need to dominate, we think that's not masculine. The switch that we try and kind of create is that it's masculine to be compassionate, it's masculine to be loyal, it's masculine to be caring. Um, because a lot of boys traditionally would view those as weak or feminine qualities.

That's absolutely fascinating. And I found that the men in my life that I know who are prepared to admit that to their failings and prepared to talk about the things they get wrong tend to be the ones who are they're just strong and they feel successful and they don't have to um try and make up for that in other ways. Um, so your program, I mean, you're talking about 14 to 15 year olds. What are the what are the sorts of topics you'll cover in your programs?

So it's six hours long across two days. So we do three hours on day one, three hours on day two. Every hour focuses on the different aspects of masculinity. So we look at things like the social cultural influences that have shaped, you know, the toys that we played with growing up, the clothes that we wear, the TV that we watch, the games that we play. Um in other sessions we look at emotional literacy, you know, how you know we say boys oh, boys should open up, boys should talk. They don't know how. Most of them don't have a linguistic template for that kind of conversation because they've never seen it.

It's really interesting you say that because I think a lot of mums I talk to and and dads I talk to say but boys don't they don't want to talk. They don't it's not doesn't feel normal to them.

Is that do you do that's not been my experience, no, because in these sessions, the the workshops always go the same way. At the start of the workshop one, they're all really cagey, you know, they've all got their arms folded, they're all very wary of me and what I'm there for. But after about an hour, you can't shut them up. Honestly, you can't once they actually taste what it's like in a safe, non-judgmental environment where they're not shut down or humiliated or ashamed, no matter what they say, you can't shut them up. But when it comes to being emotionally literate, so like reaching being brave enough to reach out for help and support, we would we look at three things for that. We look at environment, opportunity, and ability. Now, for the vast majority of our young boys, they do have the first two. They have people and places they can go to to ask for help. You know, it might be a parent, a guardian, a teacher, a TA, whoever, but what they lack is the actual ability. Like I said earlier, they don't know what that conversation looks like because they've never seen it. They've never seen a man who they admire go and ask for help.

Right. So, how would you explain to or it it demonstrate to a young teenage boy how you go about asking for help?

I think this is where I fall back on my teaching career because you know I spent 20 years trying to engage boys on Shakespeare and poetry. So actually, engaging them on this topic is actually pretty easy in comparison. So, something you said earlier about men who are willing to admit their faults. The last thing these lads need is a 40-year-old man coming in and pontificating from a place of perfection. You know, I go and I'm very honest about my feelings as a man. I wouldn't have spoken up when I was younger. I had suicide ideation when I was younger. I came very close to doing it once, and sharing that story, sharing that vulnerability is a process of modelling. And we then break up into these little groups, and I've got these cards that I give out, and each of these cards represents a high frequency situation, something you see every day, where a young lad would need to reach out for help. And we role-play it, you know, in little groups of two and three. What could you do in that situation? And if they struggle, I'll say, Right, we're struggling now. Has anyone else got an idea? What how could you handle it? And we basically come up with a plan for each situation on how we could do it whilst also preserving our dignity, which is very important in the male world. You know, we don't want to be seen to be, we're not going to go out in the middle of the playground and start, everyone look at me, I'm going to cry. Okay. We have to do it in a way, we have to do it in a way that's going to preserve our dignity, but that's also going to get us the support that we need.

Fascinating. And I suppose, in a way, it's normalizing these experiences and these emotions. I used to coach parenting in in a city London, and one of the really powerful things was to get people in a room together and talk about things. And be, you know, I would share the problems I'd been having, and other people would go, oh wow. So yeah, me too. And that would just the whole room would just go, oh okay, I can now I now it's okay. And I think it's being, I I wonder what whether whether in the time that you've been, because you've been teaching boys for a long time, and you will have seen, I mean, I think there's been a big change since 2008 in the the the amount of online use and the access to information. Have you seen a difference to the way that boys feel about themselves? Or is it is it just the old chestnuts that just continue on?

I think it's the same stuff, but it's intensified. And I don't want to sound like an old man and criticize the digital world, but the digital world has increased a lot. It stepped on the a lot of the cracks that were already there. So, in terms of things like body image, for example, you know, I I tell the lads that I grew up really, I've got a very slight physique, I'm naturally skinny. And I remember being in year eight or nine, taking my top off at home, trying to flex in front of the mirror and hating myself for what I saw, you know, thinking things like that's not how a man's supposed to look. Who's ever going to want you? And I know that a lot of the boys I work with, because of social media, because of the projection of male bodies, you know, through fitness influencers on TikTok and things like that, they hate the body that they're in and they have low self-esteem, low confidence. I don't know if you've ever heard of bigorexia. And bigorexia is a huge problem.

Yes, my doctor mentioned it. Yes.

Yeah, bigorexia is a huge problem, it's growing amongst young men, this desire to be ultra muscular. And it's really interesting when you look at the progression of boys' toys throughout the year. Um, I saw something on YouTube the other day, someone got all these kind of muscular toys from about 1980 onwards. The toys now are about three times as muscular as they were in the 1980s. Yeah, so this and when I'm working with the lads, you know, a lot of them actually do like going to the gym, and I'll say, no, it's great to go to the gym, you know, like if you want to lose a bit of weight, add a bit of muscle, but your masculinity shouldn't be dependent upon it. Your self-respect and your self-worth are immutable, they don't need to be earned, you have those already. But a lot of them don't feel that way. And body image, I think, is something that there's a lot of attention on the female side, right, Missouri, because it's hard for women as well. I think on the male side, especially in schools, it it gets swept under a little bit.

So rather than just reducing the pressure on women, we're increasing the pressure on men. Yeah. Which is really, really not what we're trying to achieve. It's so funny that you say that because years ago there was a awful program on UK television, which was, I can't even remember what the point was, but it was they they got all these men together and they had to sell themselves to one woman, and at the end of it, the woman could walk around the back, they all had to stand by the pool, and she'd push the ones into the pool that she didn't like. And it was bizarre. But what was really interesting was the things they were saying about themselves were things like, oh, you know, I'm really strong and muscular, and all the things that are man-box things. And if you haven't, if you don't understand man-box, it's kind of, you know, it's what we imagine.

Oh, God, I know the man box well.

Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, all I think you're talking about the lit the listeners if they haven't listened to our our one-on-one boy friendship. But what was fascinating was the girls would push the guys into the water who would stress those things, and they would want to keep the guys who had a more sort of gentle, empathetic um presentation. And I can't I I remember thinking all boys should watch this program. They need to see that it's not just big, but I think in the way that girls they say girls dress for other girls, women dress for other women, um, men, I think often, well, I mean, again, I don't know, I'm not a man, but I wonder whether men are dressing because they think that's what other men think they should be wearing. Is that all or is it always to attract a mate? What's going on here?

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think anyone who's ever been in a school on non-uniform day, you know, will tell you that boys care greatly about their appearance. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, there's nothing, it's not particularly shallow or vain to care about their appearance, but a lot of them put their reputation on the line based on it. So unfortunately, I've seen lots of times a young man who maybe is from a disadvantaged background financially will come in with non-branded clothing and he will be targeted by the other boys, you know, who've got the latest Nike shoes or whatever. Even that's that that's nothing to do with his masculinity. You know, he may be a very kind, caring, loyal, lovely young man, but because he's not got the latest brands, and there is a very strong sense of materialism that runs through masculinity. And I think again, that's something that's overlooked or put onto women. You know, a lot of lads will say, Oh, my wife takes ages to get ready, or my girlfriend loves brands. You spend time around young boys and they're suffering from that kind of materialism as much as anybody else's, and lads that don't meet that standard. The the male world is very hierarchical, and unfortunately, the younger lads they feel like they climb the hierarchy by humiliating others. That's one of the ways. Not by not by promoting yourself, by putting others down. And this is something that we look at in the workshops. Why do we organize ourselves into a hierarchy? Why do we humiliate to rise? Why do we have to stamp over each other to you know to get to the top?

Fascinating, because I did one on girl friendships and the way that the structure of a group works, and there are roles in those groups. So you'd have Queen Bee, you'd have the sidekick, you'd have the banker, you'd have the target. And the target was either outside the group or they were in the group, and they were used as a way of increasing the power of the person or the people at the top and keeping control. And I've seen friends talk about how when their boys go to senior school, there's a there's an uptick in some of them of their bullying tendencies. And I did wonder whether they're looking right up the top of the school to the the tough guys and thinking, well, if I want to be the strong, if I want to survive this, because it's quite scary, I need to be back. Yeah. I mean, is that is that reflected, you know, I'm making this, I'm this is stuff I'm just seeing, but I mean, what are yours, what are you seeing when boys first go to senior school? Um how how does this play out?

They're looking for where they fit in, they're looking for their role within this hierarchy, and they're looking to copy the actions of those that are placed high up in the hierarchy. So the top of the male hierarchy is alpha or sigma data. So alpha, you're probably aware of, that's your pack leader, you know, that's your dominant one. He's he's part of the big group, but the group looked to him to make decisions. A sigma is something that's arisen fairly recently. A sigma is equal in power to an alpha, but they don't need the pack. They're kind of like the lone wolf. Uh they're admired for slightly different reasons. They don't require the support of a group. They just go and do their own thing and everyone looks up to them. And then you go down the pecanoid, so you've got your beta males next, who are secondary to your alphas. They tend to work to promote the alpha, to stay on the good side of the alpha, and therefore not get bullied themselves. And then you go down and down, unfortunately, to the bottom where you're going to find lads who are maybe a more gentle-natured, more academic, which should be celebrated, not be you know ridiculed, which unfortunately is a lot of their time in the male world. And these young boys are looking for where they fit in. And this is this is what my program's all about. So I don't just come in and work with these lads for six hours and then say, see you later, I'm off. Like I say, right, give me 12 really influential lads in year 10, and then I spend six hours with them, and then I provide the school with resources to use those 12 lads to drive cultural change from within the school. So they might become peer mentors for some of the younger lads, or they might write PSHE lessons on masculinity, which the teachers then deliver, you know, from a pupil's point of view. And it's all about driving cultural change from within the pupil body because that that lad in year seven will look up to that year ten in a way that he would never listen or look up to a teacher.

I love that. That's so interesting. I spoke to Natasha Devon recently about uh the online world, and she said she goes into schools a lot, and she said one of the things she's noticed is you'll get kids in a group, she's talking to them, and then every now and then one of them has to leave the room, and then every now and then, what that person who leaves the room, when they go, the entire room, the nature of the room changes, the feel of the room changes. So there are those people who'll have a massive influence. So you're trying to find those sorts of people.

Is that and when I sell it to the lads, they're always wondering why they're there, you know. And I say you're not here to be punished, you're here because you are gonna be a leader in changing the way that people think about masculinity. And I mean, I deliver it very sensitively, but it's very positive the programme. I also make them very aware of suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 50. You know, we are suffering, we are struggling, and it's lads your age. You know, I remember being your age, I know what it's like, and you're gonna be the drivers for change. I'm gonna empower you to make the difference, you know, rather than you're here to get beat over the head with toxic masculinity, like you're gonna enjoy it, you're gonna talk about things that you've never spoken about before, and then you're gonna go make a difference.

So I could absolutely, because the the scary thing with boys is that when it goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong really, really quickly. And you know, if you're talking to them about suicide ideation, what kind of things are you trying to tell them to help them to find help or to not go down that path?

Just to dismantle the idea that communication is weakness, um, I don't know if you know, but when young people ring childline, uh, the first thing childline do is say, How bad is your problem on a scale of one to ten? The average female response is a six, the average male response is a nine. So we hold on to it for so long, we think, no, I'll get through it. A man doesn't need anybody, I've got to be you know the rock. And we hold on to problems for so long that when you get to a nine out nine or ten out of ten, you are hurting yourself or somebody else. That you're at crisis point there. And it's all about getting better at coming forward when you're a three, four, or five out of ten, about being able to have that emotional literacy and emotional template to come forward and say, Oh mate, have you got five minutes? Yeah, things aren't very good. You know, this idea about opening up, when you say that to a lad, he's filled with fear because he thinks it's going to be a big public event. That can be as simple as pulling your mate to one side at break time or privately going to see that person that you trust. It's all about not letting it get to that point, but that if it does get to that point, you're not less of a man, you're not weak, but you shouldn't be the only person that knows those things uh in your head. So I talked to them about my personal experience and how I came very close. Um, and what saved me really was making a phone call to my best friend. And I told them that that phone call was unbelievably difficult to make. You know, I didn't want to do it, even though I was actually scared to get through the next day. Um, but that phone call took a tiny bit of weight off, and I was allowed I could get through that day because of that phone call. And then actually, with my best friend, we spoke twice every day for the next two weeks until I wasn't having those thoughts anymore. And they all have at least one person like that in their lives. And I think for the vast majority of them, I might be the only, and this isn't a brag, but I might be the only fully grown man that's ever stood in front of them and said something like that.

So where do they find these? Oh, so they they can find, hopefully try and find friends. Again, it's hard because you what you're trying to do is actually uh fantastic because you kind of need to change a whole culture so that they feel safe finding friends. And um, I f when I was looking into this, uh the research said that up until a certain age, boys when they talk about their friendships, it sounds more like a theme from love story than it does uh Lord of the Flies, but that changes because they suddenly think, Oh, I can't. So how do you make how do you give them that bravery, that that sense that is oh I mean, because what you're doing is a whole whole transformative thing. But I'm thinking about, okay, I've got listeners in 122 different countries. Um, what would be a powerful thing that they could encourage at home or in their environment that would really help boys to feel safe about just talking about these things?

I think the first thing we need to do is remove the social taboo around the discussions around it. You know, I mean, two of the three schools that I worked in were Catholic schools, and you know, I love the Catholic ethos. I'm not a Catholic myself, but I love the caring ethos of it. But there was a weirdness, there was a weirdness around pornography, there was a weirdness around suicide. You never knew quite where you stood in terms of what you could and couldn't say, which is one of the reasons I actually left education because I thought, you know, I'm not the cleverest guy in the world, I'm not the most able, but I've done a lot of reading on this, and I think I can talk to them in a way that is better maybe than I have been, restrained a little bit during my teaching career. So normalizing it, they come alive in the workshops when they talk about these topics. They absolutely come alive because it's like they've never had the opportunity before without getting laughed at or shamed or judged. Or I think rather than I think sometimes with parents is this like we need the the big talk, you know, the big one-off. Like the kids gotta go, I'm gonna go. Yeah. So it'd be like, right, son, sit down, it's that time, we're gonna talk about sex. When actually it needs to be embedded through normal everyday life, that kind of stuff, you know, any natural opportunity to talk. So if we're talking about pornography, for example, a natural opportunity to talk about consent or body image or what healthy relationships look like, you don't always have to reference pornography. And it's the same with mental health and suicide. Naturally, situations occur where you can discuss these things and doing it regularly rather than the big one off tokenistic talk. You know, you're normalizing something that previously has been seen very much as to Do. And the second thing I would say is seek out role models, seek out role models. There are a lot of men out there who are doing a lot of brilliant work on this, who are, you know, putting themselves out there, being vulnerable. And there are also men that these lads would look up to. So I fill my workshops with lads that are men that I think these boys will really connect with. So for example, I mean I love David Attenborough. I think he's an incredible man, but I don't use him in the workshops because a 14-year-old lad would look at him and think, Yeah, I know he's an old guy, what's he got to do with this? Yeah. So I show them people for example, the UFC fighter, Patty Pimler, who is extremely open on mental health. That all they see is the physique and the fact that you know he can beat other lads up. But then he's also he's so vulnerable, and he talks about mental health and he talks about men needing to talk more. And they're like, Well, that's psychological permission coming from someone they admire.

Yes, I love this. And um, and and maybe what we can do is you can just give me some other names and I can put them in the podcast link so the parents can act because I when I did one on Andrew Tate and the manosphere, um, I I did say, you know, please don't shame your boys for for following Andrew Tate because they're they're searching, they're searching for a model, they're searching, and what they see is they see what's positive and they're not really thinking and focusing on really the horrible things that he might be doing or or saying because that's not their focus. And I'm so glad that you mentioned um pornography, because this is a massive topic, and I I have done an episode on it, and I said to parents, you have to be talking about about it with your children because they're they're accessing it very young. And even if you're one of those parents who's managed to hold them back from social media, hold them back from access to online, they're going to see things because it's it's everywhere, and it's it's and they're curious, you know, they they're gonna want to know about things, and so you know, and I and I and I I think a lot of parents are saying, Well, I don't know how to have that conversation, I feel really awkward, I don't know. Um I I'm very open with my kids. I've always said, I'll tell I'll answer any question you want. I might cringe and I might, um, but I will. I will absolutely you ask me and I'll tell you. What would you say to a parent about talking about pornography?

The first thing I can completely understand why they would feel awkward about it, because people from our generations didn't grow up having those talks either, with this. So the first thing I say, I mean, by the time we get to pornography, the lads have been with me for four and a half hours. So, you know, they bought in. They're trusting it. They're okay. Most of them have been brave enough to be vulnerable at some point in that four and a half hours. So they kind of get why they're there. And I would say, like, we're going to talk about this, but let me just get this out. It's nothing really weird and disgusted and shameful. I know it's confusing. Pornography is so the social attitudes are really confusing. I remember as a young lad being really drawn to it, being naturally curious about it, getting a little glimmer of the top shelf magazines and getting really excited. But also picking up from somewhere. I couldn't quite pinpoint it, but I picked up from somewhere that it was a bit disgusting. It's something that we don't we do, but we don't talk about it. And it is a real shame, and it's a real shame. And now they have such easy access to it. And you're right, like you can put parental locks on their phone, you can follow their social media, you can do all this, but you can't stop their friends, you can't stop the older boy in the playground who says, Come and look at this. They are going to be exposed to it. So whilst we're kind of discouraging it, we're also making it clear like you will see things when you do, if you don't understand it or it upsets you, or it's confused by it, just tell me and we'll talk about it, you know, rather than it being this disgusting thing that we all do in private.

Yes. And um, I think so. What I do with drugs, for example, um educating them about things like that. If I see any articles that relate to those things, then I will pull it up and and I'll use that as a way to have a conversation about it. So presumably that would be an in because I think the other thing that parents, I think a lot of parents don't understand, because I've when I I've talked to parents about it, they just say, Oh, um, is that it's uh it's changed so swiftly. And Pornhub, which is like the YouTuber porn, um, talks about the way that the vanilla material has become less interesting to their viewers, and so what they've done is upped the ante to try and keep people coming back. And I mentioned that because that's the free stuff, and that's the stuff our teens are going to access. Because you're not saying, oh, by the way, 14-year-old, here's a subscription to something. Your parents aren't doing that. So they are accessing free material. And what concerns me is that the material they're seeing could easily confuse them into thinking certain things are normal that aren't.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, the the Children's Commissioners report that we mentioned the other day, people who work in the field that I work in, nothing about that report surprised me, which is terrible because it should be shocking, but it's not. So in this report, I said that the average age that boys start watching pornography now is 12 to 13 years old. And he actually said the nature of pornography has changed so much. He described the top shelf magazines of the past as quaint in comparison. Yes. Now, quaint is not a word that you would associate with pornography, is it? But he said, I think it was 86% of heterosexual pornography features some kind of violence against the woman, whether that's name calling, grabbing, slapping, choking. So if you take the national library, say a boy starts watching at 12, nobody's talking to him about it, he picks up that it's weird, so we don't want to say anything shameful. He gets to 16, 17 and he's about to be intimate for the first time. He's watched five years of pretty violent, non-consensual sometimes pornography. What does the picture of relationships and sex look like in his head? What is that experience going to be like for his partner? You know, when he thinks those things are are normal. And when we sit down and talk about it, about how pornography is a performance, it's not reality. It gives unrealistic expectations of our bodies, of our partners' bodies. I was working with a group in Leeds once and uh they were year 10, and they were there were a bunch of characters of these lads who were really like, really quite funny boys. And when we were talking about this, one of them pipes up and he said, Yeah, you know what, Mike? I didn't even realise that girls had pubes. And the rest of the lads burst out laughing. And one of his mates said, How can you not know that? You're fifty you're 15 years old. And he went, Well, they're all shaved on porn, aren't they? And I thought that was an excellent example of how pornography had given this young lad an unrealistic expectation of what a woman's body should look like.

How fascinating, yes. And of course it's going to shame them because what will happen is that they're used to being because these algorithms can actually fine-tune what they access, which is going to be that specific thing they find exciting, and then in real life, that you know, it's it's a whole package. And um, yes, and it and and it's this the shame of reacting wrongly or you know, slapping a girl or trying to strangle her because you think, oh, that's what they all like, and they don't, funny enough, weirdly.

I mean, consent makes up a huge part of our work, and not just consent for sex, everyone it automatically defaults to sex for consent, but consent is actually a very broad um kind of spectrum. One of the best exercises that we do is we pair I pair the lads up with someone else in the room and we get them ten feet apart, and then when I clap, one of them takes a step forward every time. And I say to the lad who stays still, when you feel uncomfortable, when he's getting too close, you don't like it, just tell him to stop and he'll stop. So by the end, they're all at different points. And then I say, right, take one big step forward, even though we said don't. And that usually brings them, you know, kind of there, nose to nose. And we sit down afterwards and I say, you know, how did you feel about that? You set a very clear personal boundary there, didn't you? And it was stepped over and it wasn't respected. How did you feel when that happened? And you know, they say things like, Oh, I felt really uncomfortable and I felt disrespected. I wanted to step back, I wanted to push him and shove him. And this just kind of strikes to the heart of consent, doesn't it?

Wow, I just think this is so fantastic what you're doing. It's really very, very powerful. And those actually acting out those things gives a real sense, like you say, consent it leads into everything. So before we go, what key thing would you say to parents who are bringing up sons, women, men, whatever, that you think might help to develop this relate. They they're in a situation where their boy doesn't talk to them.

You know, what what what can they do? Um I'm gonna go with two things. I'm gonna go firstly, leave everything should be on the table, every topic, every don't create any to do, avoid the big red button psychology, you know, where you put a big red button there, say, don't touch that and then leave the room. I love like me and you are gonna press this big red button together, we're gonna see what happens, we're gonna talk about it, and that will remove the desire to press the button next time. So, Andrew Tate, if they love Andrew Tate, ask them why. I would actually really recommend all of your listeners to follow Andrew Tate. You can't have a conversation about Andrew Tate if you don't know what he's doing and what he's saying, you know, and some of the things that the lads actually admire about him, I've not got a problem with. You know, his ph his physique is incredible. He was a four-time world champion kickboxer, and you know, that's what that was a hell of an achievement. But when he starts saying things like, women who were raped have to bear some responsibility, there's a great conversation there. You think, right, I know he's got a great body and he was a kickboxer, but do you think he's crossed the line there? Yeah, just modelling that compromise. I feel like if you go all out attack, they'll go all out defense. If you model negotiation and compromise, and if you kind of you're modeling emotional intelligence for them there as well, and then you're not gonna be at loggerheads, you'll find a middle ground somewhere. It might not be the middle ground you want, and don't expect a quick win like that. You know, you're not gonna do a 180. But over time, those conversations will will reap the benefits. And the second one, um, look for role models, ask them to sign up for the you know social media accounts for these. I'll provide you with some really good, uh, really good ones for your listeners. These men who they'll admire for one reason or another, but actually are also caring and compassionate and loyal. So they know what those men look like.

I love it. Absolutely wonderful, wonderful advice. I've so enjoyed this conversation. You I I might want to get you back again sometime. Um, this is Mike Nicholson, the director at Progressive Masculinity. Where can people find you?

Yeah, so the website is progressivemasculinity.co.uk. Uh, you can find us on Twitter at progressivemask with a C. And we're also on Facebook, but I can't remember the Facebook one. So if you just say it's progressive masculinity, I don't think anyone else has called that. You'll find us.

Um, Mike.