Adulting - #39 How To Be A Man with Alex Gwyther

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

Hey Podulters, this week I speak to writer, playwright and poet Alex Gwyther. We talk about toxic masculinity, porn and how the world has changed in our lifetime. I hope you enjoy and please do rate and review! You can find us on instagram @adultingpod and twitter @adulting_pod. Happy listening! xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See't believe that we are fast approaching the end of season four. I feel like it's gone by so quickly. But I'm really excited for this week's episode, How to Be a Man. I speak to a white, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied man, which is actually on this podcast, I guess, quite a diverse speaker.

So that's really cool. And we talk about toxic masculinity. We talk about kind of gender differences when you're growing up. It's a really interesting way I met this guest. Alex Gwydir is a writer, a playwright, and an actor. And he actually reached out to me like years ago when I was still quite fitnessy, to kind of pick my brain about this piece that he's writing. And it's kind of come full circle where it makes more sense for me to speak to him now. So it was lovely to meet him and get to talk about the work that he's doing at the minute. And I

really think that it's a really cool conversation. I think we go to lots of different areas and it's really nice to have a different perspective on feminism and I guess how to navigate this world from a perspective that maybe isn't a female one or someone who has a different kind of intersection and yeah it kind of kind of goes everywhere and I also wanted to mention in case you didn't know that adulting does have a twitter and an instagram it's just adulting pod so if you were looking for it then that's where I post the episodes on there and there's a few memes which everybody loves of course and please please do rate and review if you're enjoying it and let me know what you think it means so much to me and helps to to get me higher up in the charts and get new listens, which is always a great thing to do. So thanks so much for listening and I

hope you enjoyed the episode. Bye. Hi guys, and welcome to Adulting. This week I'm joined by Alex Guider. Hello. Hello. How are you doing? Good, you? Yeah, good, thank you. You've been doing a lot of speaking already today, I feel. Just one interview. Just one interview. Just one. Okay, fab. So Alex, would you like to tell everyone who you are and what you do? I've got my next one-man play coming out Ripped which is going to this year's

Edinburgh Fringe which looks at modern masculinity and male trauma. Yeah I know this is really weird to say but I'm very excited to be speaking to a guy about masculinity and toxic masculinity and all of these issues because it's not something that generally comes up on the podcast from a white cisgendered male's point of view. Yeah. so it's actually i was just saying to alex before on this podcast you're a very diverse um guest to have on good well we're the biggest perpetrators of toxic masculinity so what is uh yeah i'm glad to be talking about it so it's interesting because i guess when whenever i enter into conversations around toxic masculinity

it usually isn't with men it's usually about about or people that fit into the stereotypical male heteronormative ideal. It's usually with people who feel the impacts of toxic masculinity. So how has it got to the point where you're now commenting on it? And I know that's a huge generalisation, but what was it that made you see it as a separate entity to yourself rather than like what it was to just be you? Well, I mean, I've always been interested in masculinity, even from an early age, although I didn't know it was masculinity, but I was very much aware of this kind of pressure to be a certain way. You know, for example, in primary school, to be popular, both with guys and girls, you know, you'd have to be good at football.

Right. And that meant that you were invited to the most parties, you know you'd have to be good at football right and that meant that you were invited to the most parties you know it showed that you were fit and strong uh you know you'd be in the football team you'd have girls liking you you'd have you know lots of friends and so from an early age I was just very much aware of that and aware of trying to uh trying to be good at football or sport in some general in order to feel wanted or liked and being kind of aware of that pressure. And I think that kind of continues on. And I think as you get older, you know, the goalposts change slightly, don't they?

So, you know, when you get to secondary school, who's, you know, growing the first bits of facial hair who's got the first bit of um hair on their legs and who's you know looking slightly more like a man and whose voice is broken and then as you get older into your 20s it's you know who's bought the the newest who's bought a house who's got a car who's got a a decent job you know and i think all these ideas of masculinity run through us and i think i suppose you know a lot of it has ideas of masculinity run through us and I think I suppose you know a lot of it has just come with age that I just kind of got to a point where I thought what is going on here and I suppose it's because it's more you know it's in the media a lot more

now and we're having active discussions and there's you know I think there's like a revolution going on at the moment a complete change in attitude from basically i think you know a generational thing of how our fathers and grandfathers were taught to be a man um i think we're kind of breaking away from that i think that's why at the moment we have so much contrasting you know attitudes and behaviors because we're evolving which is great but we've got to kind of continue having conversations like this and totally i think the fact that we have language for it as well it's definitely really useful but i think it's so perspective sorry i've got invisalign on so perceptive that even at primary

school you were starting to see because as you said that i realized you're right i remember thinking i knew that certain things made you more attractive as a guy and a girl but i don't think that i ever realized that those reasons might be kind of redundant do you know what i mean so do you think that you you realize that literally by doing sport it would be a means to an end rather than the sport in of itself was a great thing to do because that's basically what you yeah i mean yeah i mean obviously um I didn't mean that yeah people were doing sports not out of the love of it I think I was just always a bit of an observer of people's behavior I was probably a little bit weird as a child so I was just kind of just aware aware of this I don't think it's weird though I think

that it's the very classic thing I was really into drama when I was young as one I'm assuming that you probably would yeah into it then and I do think that it's the very classic thing of i was really into drama when i was young as well and i'm assuming that you probably would be into it then and i do think that heteronormativity dictates that guys who are cool and better comments do do sport and aren't into those more emotionally humanitarian like we're not they're not really into english and drama and singing like you do see that divide so even probably retrospectively you calling yourself a weird child is still that heteronormativity like pressing down on you it's not weird at all it's actually probably quite intelligent yeah um but i definitely see that that divide and then did you did you ever get into being that cool guy in school did you feel like that was like a struggle you were struggling

against what you wanted to be and who you thought you should be um A little bit. I think, I mean, school's a magical, horrible circus of, you know, hormones and awkward moments. I think there's so much going on at the moment. I think there's so much going on when you're in school that, you know, everyone's trying to find their identity in some way. And, you know, whatever you're carrying as part of your identity, you know, everyone's trying to find their identity in some way. And, you know, whatever you're carrying as part of your identity, you know, what is your family background? What, you know, what have you already been taught? How are you coming into that school day to day? And what are you carrying?

And the knowledge about yourself as well, I think, is hugely important. I think it can really, really affect children. And I think that's where, that's where, you know, we're taught from an early age about what, what boys are and what girls are. The fact that there's no, or there's very, in primary schools, we, it's more common to have female teachers. So from an early age, young boys haven't got that male role model because they're not in primary schools. Yet when they go to secondary school, the male role model because they're not in primary schools yet when they go to secondary school the male role model that they'll have is the PE teacher who screams

and shouts and tells you to do the laps and everything like that do you think that's still true now do you know I don't know if you've looked into it but I agree that all of my primary school teachers were I think we had one no I think it was just headmaster who was a man actually yeah I didn't have any uh I went to three primary schools but i didn't have yeah in the majority of them it was all women yeah i had one two male the funniest thing i was just thinking about the body hair thing is just the perfect example of how ridiculous these rules are because as you were saying about in secondary school you're thinking who's the first guy to get hair on his legs and who's the first one voice to break ours was who's the one whose mum's gonna let us buy a razor so we can shave our legs?

And my mum wouldn't let me and I remember it being so mortifying because I had like, blonde, I don't even care about shaving my legs now but back then, it was horrible

and so it's so funny that, well, neither group, the boys and girls probably wouldn't speak about this but all of us are going through this weird kind of conforming to really mundane

things around gender which are just completely structural. Yeah. And I think all of that though is completely completely natural i don't think there's anything wrong with that because it's it's a strange time and you know if you start growing things in certain places and everyone starts looking different like yeah you know there is a natural awkwardness to it which is great but it's then when that awkwardness then turns into people feeling like they're not fitting in or people who because i think then that that's where we've basically built some sort of requirement or we've built some sort of goal or image that, you know, that we should be looking.

I remember in secondary school, you know, a couple of guys started growing facial hair around their upper lip. And it was kind of, you know, it was too short too short to shave but too long it was long enough that you really notice and uh people used to take the mickey out of them for it um which is ridiculous do you know what i mean but i suppose you know i know what you mean because it's that duality of like you're at that age when everything is you're trying to make sense of it so actually stereotypes sometimes can be quite helpful in that it gives you a bit of a guideline to work towards but on the other hand it's the arbitrary nature of some of the things that we're trying to aspire to achieve especially at such a young age when you should be focusing on

like playing and social things and friendships and obviously there's always going to be that element as you say of like the difference between the genders and um especially puberty which when whenever i look back on that you think think, oh, that was so stressful. And thank God I'm going through that now. I did a lot of, I've done a lot of theatre and education. And for about two, three years, I worked with a company called Tip of the Iceberg.

And we went into schools, primary schools all the way up to colleges and delivered workshops on sex and education, sorry, sex and relationships, which for year five, year six was like down to friendship and down to change and, you know, getting them to understand that everyone's different and people are changing at different rates

and also understand like friendship and bullying. And then you go to year seven to year nine and then we're starting to talk a little bit more about sex and relationships and peer pressure and this idea that, you know, your decision has an effect on everyone else and then we go up into year 11 to 13 and that's when we really start um talking to them about you know sex and relationships and what is a a toxic relationship and even like you know

we do little bits of um cbt and understanding behavioral patterns because so important but it's been so eye-opening listening to young people's uh conversations and ideas on sex and relationships like the what they know now you know and i'm talking like year five year six is what i found out in like year eight year nine like porn and stuff you mean oh yeah yeah yeah i mean we have to we have to go into we went into some schools which obviously i won't say but some schools in the country because there was what the teachers described as a porn epidemic and some of these were primary schools as well So what I want to ask you is that sounds

amazing and especially in a time where we're going through a very weird world of what the education legislation has to do especially when it comes to homosexual or non-heterosexual relationships, obviously there's all that legislation they're trying to push down through. How many, what do you say,

it's like a theatre group that goes in? Yes, it's called Theatre and Education. So it's, I mean, there's quite a lot of theatre companies around the UK that do it. So essentially what we do is we go into schools. You usually do a performance in the morning,

which can last anything from 15 minutes to an hour long and then you spend the rest of the day delivering workshops based on the performance but you know around the themes around the performance. And did you find that any schools or any parents were kind of hesitant for you to be doing this what was the reception of it? Oh yes with a couple of religious schools we went into we had to edit the script. Right. So they weren't, for example, we couldn't talk about condoms. Oh, OK. Was it a Catholic school? No.

OK. I don't want to say what, in case I get in trouble. It was a religious school, but, you know, which we have to respect. respect but as as people going in there i worked with two actresses and going in there as uh you know people who are trying to educate children on safe sex which which isn't just about you know popping on a condom it's all to do with being um safe mentally physically emotionally and you can't you know talk about certain issues really really limiting and restrictive so what what was the thing that you found i guess if we if we are talking about toxic masculinity how how young do you think that starts to kind of seep its way through with boys because i think we were slightly more innocent

um because we didn't have porn when i was growing up not that i remember and if you did it was very blurry and like we didn't i honestly think i didn't know about stuff till very late it wasn't even till uni i was still finding stuff out like i think we were quite late to it and whilst our guy friends did have kind of there was some that were obviously a bit more malicious than others i don't think there was ever like that much i don't know i've seen a lot more in my adult life but i do feel like now that with so much access to porn and things i think that younger children will be more vulnerable and i guess it depends on your parenting as well and things yeah i was the generation that went looking for it in the woods and hopefully you find a magazine which what happened i think like year four year five and

there was rumors going around of like a load of magazines which had been dumped next to the park and there were and so that was the first time seeing naked women you're like oh my god this is so weird yeah um so uh yeah i've i think well going back to what you said earlier i mean i've in my experience year nine seems to be the year where everyone started changing year seven they're kind of like older year sixes and they've still got that innocence about them and it must be something to do with secondary school that chips away by the time they're in year nine you know that that's where they're at their most kind of colorful and animated and that's where you can really get the boys that are really boisterous really kind of you know but yeah so wild i guess some people might push back

on the i might get you to find toxic masculinity in a minute but i guess at its most raw and and maybe not toxic it will be at those ages when you're literally coming into your hormones and you're getting all these sexual urges and it's like that first taste of your sexuality that is when I guess real kind of biological masculinity if that's even like a way of explaining it would exist so how do we explain to people because obviously there's always pushback saying you know from people like Piers Morgan who don't think that toxic masculinity exists which is ironic um how would you define what toxic masculinity is and how do you how do we not shame boys for being boys not boys will be boys yeah do you know what I mean um I well I think it's just the key word there is toxic which

is harmful and so if you're you know behaving in a way which is harmful to yourself and to others around you, other boys, other girls, other sexualities, which is, you know, because of your own insecurities to do with your yourself. Yeah. And that's it's in itself toxic. Yeah. Now, we can also have toxic women. Yeah. self toxic yeah no we can also have toxic women yeah it's just obviously toxic masculinity is the big thing at the moment because it's affecting so many people and and rightly so i think with toxic masculinity it can be boiled down into you know global issues we can take it you know to a

little comment in a gym which i overheard just the other day last week um two guys in a gym in the changing rooms and uh one guy said to his friend that girl was lifting more than you you know just just that throwaway comment and i i you know i i've thought to myself in the changing rooms am i going to say something no i'm not going to say something because it's not really the the time or the place they can come see the show yeah uh you know i was trying to think where did that comment come from the party came from his friend's own insecurity how did that make his other friend then? What does that perpetuate in terms of the behavior and the attitudes?

From working in schools with young boys, young men, let's call them that, it just boils, I think, down again to social media and what they are exposed to. I remember in another school we were talking about how if a guy sleeps with loads of girls, you know, why is he called a player? And if a girl sleeps with loads of guys, why is she called a slut? And, you know, that's a really, really interesting conversation to have with 14 to 16-year-olds. And so many of them, I think a couple of schools, there were guys that commented on Geordie Shore, you know like notches for the bedposts and you know it was just such a uh an alarm of you know how um young people are uh digesting these ideas of sex and relationships and you know there's nothing

and what we're trying to get is that you know there's nothing wrong with when you're uh of legal age to be sleeping with lots of people if you want to but as long as everyone knows and you're not say cheating on someone or you know everyone knows that that's what you're doing and everyone's consenting and everyone's safe then of course but unfortunately this then that that attitude that's that's thrown into it this idea of a competition especially with your young men being able to to get your end away and how many, you know, I've been there. And I went through that as well. And it all boils down to being able to be the popular one

and the acceptance between friends and people. And there's no regard to, you know, other people. And I do think it starts with the sex education. Because I think, and I can't remember if I was speaking about this before, but I think for us as girls, me and my girlfriends always discussed how when we were taught sex education, it was about how a guy, this is how you put a condom on and this is what will happen. The guy will orgasm and that could get you pregnant.

And it was just all about the man's sexuality. And there was not one mention of like female pleasure or how this might impact you or the fact that you could even say no. So then I think we, I had internalized misogyny as well so i would even go along with that thing of like one of our guy friends would sleep those girls in the summer and it would be really funny and then if one of the girls that was someone it would be kind of like hush hush can't believe she did that and it was because we were all conditioned in the same way so toxic masculinity can still rear its head in women um it's just trying to undo it

from a kind of systemic very base level so obviously when it gets to social media and tv that's only going to reflect what culture's taught anyway so i think it's really it is about getting in at that early ages which is why i think it sounds like that group that you do is amazing but we also it's also we've been taught for thousands of years that the man is the hero. Yes. And the woman, even in mythology, in particularly certain religious books as well, that the woman is either the virgin or the whore. And so you fall into those categories. So if you don't, as a girl, if you don't have sex with someone, then you're the virgin, then you're seen as

frigid but then if you do, you're the whore. And it's about breaking, I think the big change at the moment which is really exciting but you know it's going to take a while is being able to break away from those images and those... As you said that even remembered in um did you ever used to watch sabrina the teenage witch her auntie i remember i can't remember the second bit is but i remember she's doing outfit changes and she's going on a date so it's just when she goes damsel in distress or and then something else which was like the jezebel character and that's in like kids tv like i think it was so i think everything is written from um i don't know if you've read

invisible women by caroline um caroline criado perez i think that's her name but it's all just I think everything is written from, I don't know if you've read Invisible Women by Caroline, Caroline, oh, I'm going to get it wrong, Criado Perez, I think that's her name. But it's all just about how gender bias influences everything and how everything's written from a man's point of view. So even if it's not on purpose, just statistics are made for men. So it just, it goes so deep. So trying to then unpick it, it's like almost people don't even notice that it's happening around them.

And I guess, so you came to this realisation, I'm going backwards again. So you're at school and you're kind of noticing it it's like almost people don't even notice that it's happening around them yeah and i guess so you came to this realization i'm going backwards again so you're at school and you're kind of noticing it and then what age was it like what cusp was it when you kind of thought um i want to break away from this like what what tipped you over the edge of being like i don't want to aspire to this ideal of masculinity and i want to um see it for what it is uh honestly it's probably in the last three or four years that's why I mean it comes with I think it's come with age and being able to just have an older more experienced head on my shoulders and I'm still going through that change as well that behavioral change of just kind of being aware of how I'm talking to other people being aware of how other people are talking to me and you know the pressures put on me

at the moment I'm not drinking mainly because of I got the show coming up and I've had comments before like you know what to swear yeah okay so I wasn't sure how my tongue yeah I had some people go oh you're fucking pussy you know because I'm not because I'm not drinking grow a pair and it's like and I know probably

you know deep down people like that they don't mean it but it's just it's just because it's blurted out and it's just a habit habitual thing

you know and that's the same rhetoric when we say you know man up all the other things, stop being a girl. I think the drinking one's really interesting because I actually think the reason people do that is because I even thought to myself the other day, do you know what, a lot of

the time my work involves drinking that I don't want to do but I feel like you kind of have to because it's a social thing. I actually don't like, I love going out for a nice glass of wine, I love getting drunk with my girlfriends but I don't like drinking a lot. It doesn't sit well with me, I don't enjoy it so I'd rather not do it and the reason I think people say stuff like that is because when you see someone else drinking you kind of know maybe that you don't really I think we all have this camaraderie about drinking when actually everyone kind of knows I don't need to have this drink so when some once someone's strong enough to go actually I'm fine I'm just gonna have a soda water everyone takes that as like a personal attack on them because it's a bit like when you're

younger and your friend starts exercising and you don't want to exercise and you're like well you're a loser because you can't it it's instead it's a projection of your own insecurities if anything it's a compliment because it's like you're saying i don't need alcohol to enjoy your company because you're a great person yeah so i think it's a really good thing that needs to i do think that that's really problematic this idea of um shaming people for not drinking because there's a whole new set kind of change especially the younger generation coming through where they're like not even necessarily sober but like semi-sober they just don't need to drink which is amazing but the flip side of that is the huge thing of gym culture that we now have which which we were speaking about earlier um which is which i think is great and i think you know

the fact that 16 year old or teenagers and young people are sacrificing going out and getting messy on the weekends to you know go to the gym in the morning is fantastic but with that now we're i think branching out into a new um i wouldn't say crisis but it's like a new vice for people to be able to now assert their... Get clout. So do you think the reason they're not drinking is because they want to stay lean? Maybe, yes. I can't talk, you know,

and I don't want to give any generalisations or anything like that. You know, I know from working in schools that I've seen 16-year-olds with protein shakes. Yeah, that's weird, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, and I've always thought if I was 16 years old old would i be carrying a protein shake around with me possibly i don't know but it's just the fact that you know actually that's quite interesting though because at our school and i've definitely done this before i spoke about with my friend jazz went to high school as an athlete and we were talking about like the difference between

athletes and fitness influencers kind of thing and the boys did go to the gym from a really young age and we didn't really know that that's what they did but they did they they all knew about nutrition they knew about macros so i remember when i started getting into fitness all the guys already knew so maybe that that pervasiveness of um that again the masculinity already existed in our school but i do think the problems kind of exacerbated now with social media and this idealization of perfect bodies which has just gone tenfold i mean that that could be a podcast on its own yeah i mean that's why i said how we got in touch because i was reaching out to social media influencers who were focusing a lot on on fitness just to get their idea and you know

there's there's so many different people some who who are like, you know, core into the fitness and some who are like fashion and fitness. I think I was quite fitnessy then when you first spoke to me, wasn't I? Yes, I think so, yeah. Which is really interesting because it's come, actually now it's like the perfect fit. It's funny that it's like how you got into that as well because I think you were, do you want to explain how you,

because you just said this to me earlier, but what was your catalyst for writing this play and then getting into the headspace of starting ripped yeah so um well i think uh so in terms of yeah so i've always been interested in masculinity um and uh i remember an ex-girlfriend uh said to me um that she if we had a a break in a burglar uh burgle the flat um she didn't she she didn't think that i was the type of man to go out and confront the burglars and i remember at the time being really like offended by that and that was a real kind of knock to my masculinity and i kind of that really really uh stuck with me and uh we split up the following

year and so uh just to mend a broken heart that's when i started going down at the gym because i i kind of wanted to transform myself in a in a way which made me feel slightly stronger and and more like a man and i don't think that was necessarily a negative thing i think i think you know you know i got fitter and healthier and I um so I think that was a good thing but it's the it was of observing it's quite interesting that it came from a place where someone knocked my masculinity or you know it made me feel less of a man and so that that's kind of how I got into the whole gym world online and being aware of you know social media influences and and the impact that's kind of how I got into the whole gym world online and being aware of, you know, social media influences

and the impact that's happening. I guess as a guy then, that's awful, because that's definitely something that I've done when I was younger. I've realised that a lot of the boyfriends I went for were this like alpha male toxic masculine, because we've been taught, you're always taught that that's kind of the epitome of like what's attractive. And as I've got older older i've actually realized that

people who are the men who don't speak over you and don't have that big ego and who actually have want to listen and want to learn that's a really being what that's kind of really being an alpha male because it's it's i don't know it's so i literally had this whole realization i was like why are my relationships all like this and it really was because society's designed it for and also i'm not um a quiet diminutive woman i'm not someone that's like that that dynamic was never going to work for me i need someone that will be like on my level yeah and because we're not taught to be like that it's quite interesting and i i'm fairly certain that i probably would have made comments especially as a teenager to guys that would have insinuated that they weren't manly enough because that that that internalized misogyny which is basically saying anything that is remotely feminine is crap like women are lesser than so

if a man has any feminine quality then they're also lesser than so that's kind of where it all boils down to really doesn't it yeah completely there's um there's a line in the in ripped and it's um no girl wants to be on the arm of a skinny guy she wants to be on the arm of Tom Hardy or Thor or Magic Mike which is kind of Jack's motivation for going down the gym and making himself

this real man and Jack's your protagonist just in case Jack is the main character in RIPT who goes on this uh transformation into a hyper masculine man and it's true you know when we have these and we've had it you know with the pinup poster girls you know of of seeing these skinny girls or you know that the whole the idea of a perfect woman has gone through so many changes and it's

still going through change i don't know really know what it is now i don't know whether there is one i'm not sure if we're still on the whole Kim Kardashian, big bum kind of vibe. Or if we've moved on, I don't know. The irony is I have to take the big bum things. It's so funny watching it now

because I used to try and conform to stuff and you do just realise you've just got to stick with your own body because otherwise you're just going to be so upset. But it also depends on what circle you're in. True, yeah. Exactly. So it's really dependent. Actually, whilst we're on that how do you because we i whenever i talk

about love island or i when i was considering watching it this series one of the main like things was like there's no body does up diversity and we always talk about often how it makes girls feel but how does it make men has it ever impacted your mental health do you watch it at all uh my girlfriend loves it yeah she watched it and i have every time i'm kind of walking through our living room i do sometimes stop and i'm i'll say to kate what's going on is is it maura yeah there's more getting with curtis well i thought that they were okay and so i'll i'll carry on yeah because it's such trashy tv and because from a writer's perspective i did watch i watched the last one which i i which um my girlfriend got me into and i just became fascinated in terms of a narrative perspective

because it it does unfold like a story and i think as a writer there's something that you can learn from from that in terms of you know gripping audiences uh so you know reality tv is really interesting the curtis thing is very interesting as well, because on Twitter, someone had shared his Facebook profile, and on his Facebook profile, it said interested in men. And I don't follow, my echo chamber is very kind of woke, and no one's really making jokes about sexuality.

And because that had gone onto the Explore page, everyone was like, I knew Curtis was gay, classic, he's just in. And it was so fascinating to watch all these people have really stringent homophobic ideas, which I don't think they even realized how problematic that was first of all he could have had interest in men because it was a joke it could have been that his sexuality's changed he's bi it could have been any reason but it was that exact oh my god you could tell i knew he was gay this condemnation because his personality he's slightly more on the campus side

i guess and he's not outwardly kind of like that alpha male style and people almost were kind of vilified they kind of felt like oh good I'm glad

he's gay that makes sense to me now because they didn't it almost like reconciled their preconceptions about him that because he wasn't super masculine

they couldn't almost get the fact that he could that people can be much like you can have a masculine woman who's not um a lesbian and you can have a feminine man who's straight and people find it really annoying i think sometimes to reconcile those two things they sounded like they were relieved because their preconceptions are based on truth which we don't even know because someone

could have fabricated the photo anyway like it was just but the amount of people that came out to kind of go like that again it's that self-projection i think they felt comforted because probably they felt their own ideas of masculinity questions i mean maybe if you find out that women actually really fancy this guy that's not hyper masculine what does that say to some guy who spent his whole life trying to be yeah some kind of way i guess it could be quite threatening to your own perception of yourself. Yeah. Do you know, which I guess kind of ties into what you were saying about in the story. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, we get our ideas and our preconceptions of genders and sexualities

from what we consume and what we will continue to consume in films, music videos, reality TV, magazines, everything like that. And I think the biggest challenge is being able to step outside of that and just understand that what you're being fed isn't the truth and it isn't always realistic. I can't believe that some of the guys, you mentioned that I'm 32 and I probably look about 23. Some of the guys in there look, you know, my age.

Oh my God, yeah, 20. And they're 10 years younger than me. Yeah. I think that is mental. That is so bizarre. I mean, it's, you know, fair play to them. But when you've got representations like that, so at 21 years old,

if a 21-year-old is looking at that and they don't look like, you know, this guy or that guy and you don't have you know shoulders the size of boulders and then and it just you know what what does that say then about you how does that make you feel they're not saying we shouldn't see people like that because they're still a person and they still need to be represented and given their 15 minutes of fame as well but when you've literally got everyone like that taking up all spaces of influence for young young people in their minds it's god it's so fascinating to hear this from a guy's point of view because interestingly it's the other way around for girls so like i get what you're saying because i can remember our guy friends at school boys very their puberty still seems so rapid like from

one minute they look like your little guy friend and the next day they come to school and they literally like a man and that can happen at all different ages and watching the program as you say like guys would aspire to be like tommy who's 20 years old but is very masculine looks very developed for a woman the younger you look and the more prepubescent you look the better so if someone looks old as a woman on there you're like oh well she looks old for not me but society and that again it's so funny how it's so opposite like the the younger you look as a woman, the better. Whereas guys, especially younger guys, like the mature and the more,

it also ties into which I guess we're going to go into in a minute, the conversation around rape. But that problematic nature of the powerful, stronger, older man with the younger, more, not always, but often more weak kind of prey. Yeah. It is quite, I don't know, but it obviously comes from, sadly, like an evolutionary point, I guess, as well.

Well, I think in the past, I don't know, 10, 20 years, I think women have done a lot more to liberate themselves from, you know, their stereotypes. You know, everything that all the progress that's been made in women's rights, which still has so far to go, is amazing. I think that there's been a liberation, you know, within that. You know, I remember being in primary school and the topic about there shouldn't always be such skinny girls on the cover of magazines. And that was when I was in primary school. So that was, I don't know, what, 20 years ago.

But we're still not quite there yet with men. We're behind. You know, we're not really having that conversation about okay we've got to stop having these guys at 20 years old with six pack on on men's health saying that this is what you've got to aspire to you know i've i saw an old um men's health magazine is all right oh my god yeah go for it okay okay well you're not not yeah not having to go at men's health or anything but it was interesting seeing i think it was like 10 years old and it was interesting just um there was an article about how to pick up women and how to kind of approach them and

what women like and it was kind of dictating what women like in men's health and it went through that whole phase of you know that to be a man you know it's the whole thing of being to be a man you've got to wear a suit like James Bond and drive an Aston Martin and have this kind of watch and have this kind of fragrance and you know you go do this kind of workout routine and you know it's it's ridiculous and that was only about 10 years ago do you know I forgot but you're right they always had like pickup points on them and also women's magazines would be the other way like how to impress a guy it was never like how to get your get off or whatever for a woman which would be really empowering like

whatever it is really fast and it is in only very recent history i think the reason that we trip up on talking about masculinity with men and even i'm not that good at it is because obviously men do have more privilege so it ends up being quite a skewed conversation so when someone is maybe more woke like you you might not even want to center yourself in in that conversation and then everyone else who maybe hasn't got to that realization is very protective of their masculinity because it is also a means of um capital if you do fit into that stereotypically handsome man you've got money you've got wealth you literally are the top of a designed food chain definitely so to then have to dismantle that and do work to realize why that might be problematic for the people could be very

soul-destroying and completely um like depersonalize you do you know yeah yeah why would you want to break down your own privileges yeah like just the way you know yeah and i think more more more people are doing that and i think but more and more people need to do that you know as a white as a white straight male yeah um i know that i'm uh extremely privileged and have had loads of privileges that have come my way that i i've probably never been aware of yeah but it's just about being awakened and understanding that and thinking well how can I uh how can I use my privilege in a more positive way but I think it's just the fact that if you understand that you are privileged that's that's part of the conversation with you know I actually know you said about

masculinity and and feminism you know it's the's it's we can't talk about masculinity without talking about women as well because they go hand in hand. Yeah. And, you know, why a lot of people have the whole part part of toxic masculinity and misogyny and everything like that comes in is because certain men don't want to give up their privilege. And they don't want to. They cannot stand and they don't want to they cannot stand the thought that a woman is going to get the job over them yeah even though she might be better yeah the job it's the fact that we shouldn't be giving up our uh jobs for women which is and that's where the toxicity comes in yeah exactly because it's so deeply entrenched and especially when it comes to talking about like trans rights and trans communities as well, toxic masculinity is absolutely rife

because I think that idea of, it is just that protection around the gender and it's a really redundant one because as we've been talking about, toxic masculinity isn't just harmful to people on the receiving end of it, but if you're living with this idea that you've got to create this facade all your life,

it's, I can imagine, quite soul-dest quite soul destroying i'd say millions of men around the world but you know are not living happy because of it a patriarchal society does not serve men no it doesn't serve men well i mean it does it does but what i mean well i mean it doesn't serve men kind of 100 it doesn't serve men as men perceive it yeah it serves them because they're still oppressed by, you know, their own pressures and regulations they put on themselves. With your guy friends, do you talk about stuff like this? No. Never?

No. Could you bring it up? Yeah, yeah, I probably could, yeah. Would they engage with that? I think they would. I think it up? Yeah, yeah, I probably could, yeah. Would they engage with that? I think they would. I think it would, yeah. Would it be divisive? Yes, I think it probably would be divisive, yeah.

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from, you know, I suppose the writing and acting world and I've got my mates that I went to school with as well, so there's a real kind of eclectic mix of people with different attitudes and different behaviours. But the thing is those that collectively if you were to get a load of guys in a room you can't trust everything they

say because they're in a collective so i mean this is a don't trust a bunch of men i'll remember well it's the same it's the same idea that you know guys um shouting out from a car when they're driving past fine collectively they would do that because the need to impress other men or the men that they're with. Individually, that's probably where you're going to get a more honest answer because there's no one around to impress or to entertain or anything like that. You sit them down and think, do you actually think that? Is that what you really think? And chances are, no, it it's just a bit of banter it's just a bit of a laugh so the whole like boys will be boys locker room chat is that still there do you see it every day do you think yeah and is it as awful because i remember hearing like you know it's a thing and

i even remember thinking when i was younger boys with boys because it is just in like in my lifetime basil i've had to do my own unlearning of toxic masculinity and misogyny but even now when i hear some things that guys say i'm like they don't actually still say that do they but uh i'm gonna give up the guy code dude i'm joking by that yeah well of course course guys guys guys still have that still talk like that I think because the essential thing is that it's locker room talk so people are going

they're going to find it not as harmful because it's in the the four walls of an enclosed locker space and that's you know we know that we don't necessarily act like that

it's just a problem that you know even if you're saying that to a friend of yours even if you're saying it to a guy it's still in the greatest grand grand scheme of things continuing the discourse of of those kind of attitudes and and behaviors well that's i'm glad you said that because that's kind of like where i'll i'll have someone like a man on my like they'll be agreeing with me right up until the minute when i kind of want to talk about

how um making one small decision has an impact. So I talk about rape culture and I'll say how like saying something victim blaming, like, oh, it was her fault because she was wearing a short skirt, is part of the problem when it comes to rape culture. And they're like, no, no, no. And then the not all men thing is the worst because the first lesson says not all men. You just know that you're one of those guys.

But we know that it's not all men. There's a really good quote that's like first lesson says not all men you just know that you're one of those guys but we know that it's not all men there's a really good quote that's like it's not all men it's just enough men to make me fear all men like it is that completely that idea and i think what the problem is people find it very hard to take themselves back and look and realize it's a system it's a systemic issue yeah and that locker room chat i'm so glad you said that because you're right just because it's happening behind closed walls doesn't mean it doesn't have that further cp and impact especially for like younger boys i can imagine if they were in like a gym changing room and there's still grown men saying that receptionist had a nice ass or whatever they're saying it's probably not what they're saying no i mean that's that is a good example i don't think

that's that's the the most insulting thing no would a girl say that though if you said you know that that guy's arms were that guy's arms were tasty i don't know yeah but i think no definitely we definitely would comment on the way people look but it's not got that same kind of um predatory feeling right okay i think when guys in a group are doing it together oh my god i would and i and it would just be it's very like there's no consent whereas a girl but oh my god he's so good looking and it would probably be like do you think he would fancy me it always it is same in flip reverse it's it would generally never be like i mean i do have one friend i remember that i'm going to climb him like a tree but it is changing like women are getting more sexually liberated but i generally think um as a sweeping statement

men talk about it and i'm going to take that way and women kind of, it's because, which I guess will come on to you, but the idea that you're meant to be nurturing and caring and a good girl kind of ties into the way that you comment on people

that you fancy. It's normally quite enough. Well, again, I can't talk for everyone. But I would assume some girls do talk kind of like that, like fucking ally, L.I.

fuck him or whatever but I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that no I agree I think it's

all about context I think that and obviously women can be predatory too and there definitely are girls and I'm sure I can't even think now

but I've probably said stuff that's a bit raucous in the past and there's definitely a lot more there's Aloni do you follow her on Twitter she's like

she's called the clapback queen but she has a podcast all about sex so I'm not sure if you've listened to it but she gets girls to send all their like sex stories and they do like

the most outrageous things and it's actually really liberating for women because and the pushback on that is guys say oh my god if we were saying it and we're like yeah

because girls have never had the opportunity to just be like oh my god went out got laid last night and then I slept with another guy like the things they do are I were saying it and we're like yeah because girls have never had the opportunity to just be like oh my god went out got laid last night and then I slept with another guy like the things they do

are I'm sitting there and you go like red like can't believe they did that but that's why people love Fleabag yeah exactly because it's the first time

on screen that a woman was yeah no Fleabag was amazing do you listen to the Guys We Fucked podcast no I tried to but I couldn't

I've never really got into it do you listen to it my girlfriend got me into it yeah I mean it's it's good they're really really open with well it's called guys we fuck yeah yeah i mean it's it's really uh it's really good it's just refreshing um having you know two girls yeah uh talking so openly about just everything everything from just like you know one night stands they've had and a guy they had sex with the other weekend and everything like that. And again, there's nothing,

it's great hearing that kind of attitude towards sex from girls being able to... Do you know what we've got to stop doing? I keep doing it too, but we've got to say women, not girls. Sorry, I'm normally really good at it, but I keep saying it. We've got to say...

Women, not girls. Because that's the... Do I say girls? Yeah. Oh God, I don't know why. I think I was copying it because I think I might have said it, it but i keep saying it we've got to say women not girls because that's the do i say girls yeah oh god i don't know why i was copying because i think i think i might have said it but you obviously know what like you shouldn't say that's one thing i've done with myself i try not to call myself a girl i try to call myself a woman because it's that same sexualization of younger people again which is but it's fine no definitely i wonder if i've been saying boys or men i think

i've been saying boys i think we well we interchanged it i don't know it's hard it's interesting though and also i think about i said this to my boyfriend not that long ago i remember thinking it's such revelation men again it's that same thing always want to be called a man whereas a girl girl you always want to be called i remember when i thought someone was going to call me a woman i'd be like a woman a woman now i think it's changing but it sounds matronly a girl is like a young girl young thing really fit a man is a man why would you have a man and a girl that's so weird but yes culturally like now i call myself a woman but even when i do that sometimes people look at me because manhood's a goal yeah

that's the biggest thing because you could you know that's what those women expire culturally maybe i don't know um but yeah because manhood is is the ultimate goal for for a boy where so there's that need like i want to get there i want to be a man i want to i want to be able to be that you know masculine male it's like a who's going to get there first so um we talked a little bit about rape culture but rape is actually a big theme of rich isn't it i haven't seen seen the play, but I know it. Can you talk to me about, first of all, what was your, how did you, what kind of things did you have to put into place to talk about it

and what research did you have to do to be able to delve into that? If I say, like, what made me want to write about it, because it's still in the context of the school, when we were, I was touring a show, I can't remember the name of it, Exposed. It was all on sex and relationships and I played two characters.

I played the alpha male and I played, I can't remember the guy's name, Jay, and then I played this kind of smaller, kind of geekier guy called Robbie. And it followed these characters and these three other girls kind of finishing college and going into university, and it was over the course of a year. And it kind of looked at the different kind of behaviours

that each of them employed and their different attitudes to sex and relationships. And anyway, my character Robbie at the end through a police interview um confessed that he had been raped by the alpha male right you know Jay um and delivering this multiple times a week to sixth formers and colleges certainly got a reaction and we knew it would and the reaction was majority most of the time laughing, pointing, cackling. It's to the point where sometimes I couldn't even finish the monologue. Because they just found it so humiliating to watch.

Just funny. Just funny to the fact that there was a guy, you know, through gritted teeth, confessing that he had been raped. But do you think that laughter did come from a place of nerves? A little bit. Do you think they laughter did come from a place of nerves? A little bit. Do you think they genuinely thought it was funny? Or do you think they couldn't believe they were watching this lack of masculinity being played out? A mixture of all of them.

And I think some people, I think it was not being able to know what to do. I mean, we kind of, in a sense, we wrote it to get that kind of reaction because we did the workshops with them afterwards. So I would say, you know, if it was a girl for gritted teeth confessing that she'd been raped, would you laugh? And they'd always say no.

And I'd say, why? And they'd say, because it would be a girl. And she's weak and it's sad. So with a girl, they have our sympathy. But with a guy, it's just funny. And so that, for me, that rang alarm bells as to how we um how we approach masculinity that was a direct there with link there with

masculinity do you have to do trigger warnings when you're taking this into schools uh we would ask the school if there had been any uh incidents but then did you ever get people coming forwards after that or um not that I'm aware of, no. No. I know that has happened with other theatre and education companies that they have had students come forward. Yeah, because I can imagine that's really the first time. I don't even know if we got taught about rape in school, you know.

Well, I certainly didn't. No. I certainly didn't. But, I mean, we wrote that because it was to show the whole spectrum of how people approach the actual act of sex, that it's not always, unfortunately, we live in a world where it's not always intimate between two people. People use it as there's no gratification or pleasure.

It's purely power and control. And it was important for us to have that conversation um so but yeah so their reaction just kind of was the catalyst for me wanting to explore um male rape the stigma attached to it um and tie that in with masculinity and how we view it and that's the journey that uh that jack goes on um that he he tries to just transform himself into a hyper-masculine man. One of the most interesting facts that I found was that the majority of perpetrators of male rape, man-on-man rape, identify themselves as heterosexual.

So it's not an issue which is strictly tied to the LGBTQ community. Because when we think of male rape, we naturally think, okay, so it's, you know, a gay guy with another gay guy and the other gay guy didn't say, you know, said no. And that's it. It can happen to anyone. Yeah. And I mean, it's so nuanced and I don't know the statistics or the answer to this, but it's just like a thought experiment I'm'm thinking about so if most of the guys that um are doing this they identify as heterosexual but then they are forcibly entering into a sexual relationship it would maybe sound like they are perhaps questioning their own sexuality but under such pressure to conform

to um action or activity that they say they're hatched out of a cell and also do an act which is, by its very definition, kind of the definition of toxic masculinity, is rape. It kind of is that forcing of power, that taking. Yeah, it could definitely be guys who are suppressing their sexuality. It can also be the really frightening idea that some guys do not see that as an act of sex the fact that in prisons which is a heavy in prisons which is a heavily hyper

masculine environment the fact that guys rape one another in prison but we don't necessarily see that as as as as sexual it's a power and control and an aggression. And you can have a guy, you know, it happens quite frequently, guys in prison, they will have a relationship with another guy,

a sexual relationship, but they still see themselves as heterosexual. And it goes then beyond it being kind of like an attraction or anything like that. It's an act.

It's like a primal thing. Yeah, exactly. But I do think that's what sex would have been. Like I even think in the ancient Greek times, didn't they all just have sex? Or even, this might, I might have got this wrong,

but I'm sure there was a time when men would only sleep with other men for pleasure and then they only really slept with women to get them pregnant. I think I've heard of that. And like, it's just this idea that,

and I really think this, I think sex, sexuality, who you're attracted to and all those things are distinct. And I think that gender and all these ideas, I think that like sex and pleasure, which is a pleasure. It's like eating is one of the only pleasures that you get kind of given automatically like eating. And like there's very few things that we can really enjoy just by virtue of doing it kind of thing.

So I do think that sex is weirdly, well, it's really puritanical, I guess it goes back to religious times. But yeah, I can understand how men could enjoy sex as a sexual act without the confined, because they're in prison, because they are literally emancipated from society. So they have no other structures of, I mean, actually thinking about it,

prisons would be such an interesting place to study how relationships work and move. Again, they're not, I don't know, sorry, I'm literally going off on a tangent. No, it would be completely, because everything to study how relationships work and move again they're not i don't know sorry i'm literally going for it no it would be completely because everything's flipped up yeah in in a prison it's such a hyper masculine environment yeah and uh they're really really interesting to see just how uh people react and respond and on an individual basis and on it on a throughout the whole prison as well definitely do you find that when you're performing the play or post-performing do you does is it

quite straining on you do you have to do any work to kind of well i haven't performed it oh you haven't performed it at all yet no i said we did the first uh 20 minutes um at the cockpit theater a couple of weeks ago to a female audience which was really really great to um to get their reaction but the previews are on uh the 22nd 23rd of july at the actor's center and then we go to edinburgh so i haven't actually performed it yet oh my god so are you worried about um you're saying not drinking are you going to drink during edinburgh because this is something i don't think i don't think so no i'm going to try not to because it's quite a raucous i spoke to grace campbell on the last episode and she's doing

a um a show at the fringe and she was just saying it's so known for this kind of like hedonistic crazy drinking nature and actually it gets people into a lot of trouble she spoke to josh on her podcast and he was saying how every edinburgh he got depressed and he couldn't figure out why and he realized because he was just in this cacophony of late nights and drinking God knows what else everywhere's open to like 5, 6 in the morning yeah it's mad

I mean it's an amazing I can't ripped is really physically taxing right I end up doing like 70 press ups in it

just like throughout it's kind of and there's a lot of shouting and emotional scenes and

so I drinking's probably not the best. So I'm going to try and abstain from it. Yeah. I suppose you're on the acting side rather than the comedy. Yeah, I think if you're doing a stand-up, then I think it kind of goes slightly more in hand-in-hand. You could probably do the stand-up show with a pint in your hand or a drink. That's true.

I mean, I can't really do that with the acting. Have you performed at Edinburgh before? Yeah, my first play I wrote was a one-man play called Our Friends the Enemy, which was about the 1914 Christmas truce when they played football. Oh, my God, yeah. I only know that really awfully

because of that Sainsbury's advert where they give you the chocolate, which was amazing. That came out when we were on tour. So that was kind of good. I think ticket sales went up actually. I can imagine. We were playing at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford

and we sold out when that came out. So I think it did quite, it was good for us. It just shows how powerful media is. It's just a shame that we tend to gravitate towards very unhelpful narratives yeah exactly yeah but yeah so i've been to edinburgh before and done a one-man play so i'm aware of kind of what's involved and how raucous and wild it can be okay that's good i have another question which i just thought of because i found it really interesting i don't

really know guys opinions on this do you want to have children that's not the main question that's just the pre-class yeah i said i actually said to my girlfriend the other day i was like i really want to be a dad do you yeah so when are you scared because i'm so scared of being a mom because i think of all the things i want to teach my children how i want them to be able to like yeah express their gender however they want to want them to express their sex right and like i think that once you get into this wormhole like black hole of unpicking systemic injustice and stuff it's suddenly the is this is this a wormhole you've got into yet when you think about parenthood like if you had a son,

do you think there's very specific things you would try to teach them? Yeah, definitely. What would be the main thing that you think a young man should kind of have to harness in order to kind of avoid the perils of toxic masculinity? Don't be a dick. But even that language though, is that not interesting? Well, no, like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't be a dick but even that language though is that not

interesting uh well no like you know i mean like i don't mean you know like a dick as in like you know of what the connotations of being a dick are do you know what i mean like you know don't don't be a dick don't be don't be a a idiot to to other people be respectful be respectful to yourself but do you not think that those things are symptoms? I think that acting out the lack of... It comes from insecurity

and so, I don't know, I think about this kind of thing all the time so I find parenthood really fascinating but I think that children who are bullies

or children who are cruel to other children, it's not because they're being a dick, it's probably because they've got some kind of insecurity or they've been brought up

in an environment where they have like no real attachment to their parents whatever so i sorry that was a bit of annoying thing to say but i do think and when i think about it it's about trying to teach your child all the tools to know they're loved and then i don't know silly thing i don't know definitely yeah um completely i think i'm teaching them uh to think um i think just teaching them how to be a good human which is so uh so sweeping so yeah but i think there's there's you know certain traits which make you rather than teach them a gendered way yeah no yeah yeah and acceptance yeah because so much so much um much misery and violence in the world

and abuse comes from a lack of acceptance. Totally. And just understanding that, you know, anything which is coming from a place of love is great. It should be celebrated and completely supported. Why waste your time and energy on stuff which is just extra love in the world it's it's it's there's so many other things that you should be doing i know with your

life and you know sometimes it's like when people get so angry and so uh insulted by just such trivial things such as you know gay marriage it's like have a day off come on there's so many really just just extra love in the world which anything we could we need more of totally right now it's just yeah i think the hardest bit about it all though is because whilst we're talking about like dismantle so even i've had to like dismantle my white feminism recognize where i'm actually acting in a way which is profiting me still because i'm not making spaces for women of color whatever else and they're not centric so many things that go on in my mind.

But the difficulty is when you're doing all those changes, again, like to undo your toxic masculinity, when there's still like a large, vast group of people who haven't caught up with it yet. The other fear is like trying to create a world. It just feels quite polarised. If you bring up your child to be this really woke, gender non-conforming, whatever. And then we still have these old stereotypical hope of change but i think that's where we're at right now i think the problem is that we've got

two camps of people ones who are still very much living a way which you and i might feel is maybe not that helpful and then very well and then everyone in the middle is kind of apathetic to it and maybe not impacted but But the change has happened. Yeah. And it continues to happen. And it might not happen in our children's generation. It might be our children's, children's, children's generation where we see a real difference.

And I think that's where, yeah, people will see the difference. But it's interesting you said about, you know, what, what, because I was thinking about this and like, you know, working in schools and listening to young people and seeing where their heads are at now like it's really really interesting going into a school talking about their ideas on sex and relationships you're like whoa you know things have things have changed things are not like they're not fazed by a lot of stuff oh no not at all not at all um which then you kind of think do I want to bring a child into this world? Do I want to, you know, bring them into all this going on?

Well, that's the way, because I get caught in this whole duplicitous bubble the whole time about, especially about social media, because on the one hand, it's incredible that a five-year-old speaks to someone who's trans and literally has no judgment and is so afraid that that same five-year-old might have access to incest porn or whatever it is that they'll end up falling upon and this is the weird thing with the internet is i think on the one hand it is educating a generation of change makers um and i really do

think that they will and are having a massive impact much more than i would have had but then is that sad that there's that loss of innocence youth and playfulness where they don't know like ignorance is bliss and that ignorance period seems to be getting shorter and shorter for the for kids yeah completely i mean the um a statistic that we used to read out in the i used to give the porn chat at the end of the the workshops which is always and you deliver it in front of like you know the entire year group so you know 315 year olds surrounding you and you give i always had to give the porn chat um and i think the big if i remember correctly the biggest consumer of pawns were of some pawns the biggest consumer age group of porn was uh 16 year olds yeah that doesn't surprise me and and one in six

i think it was one in six like six year olds had watched porn which is crazy well it's the biggest thing on the internet doesn't it take up like the majority of the space on the internet is porn um can i ask you and you don't have to answer what's your opinion on porn um now that you've like got more work in what kind of thing do you mean do you find it like can you because i've tried to watch porn but to be honest the whole time i've looked i just see it as like this doesn't look that great i think isn't it that enjoyable or realistic or i think um well i mean it's completely unrealistic i think that's what we always had to tell the you know the the students like you know that's not how it works that's not like what real sex is life because if you've got someone who's never had sex before and they just watch loads of porn

when it comes down to it like what are you going to grab are you going to grab the girl's hair and smash her against the wall and then flip her over like i don't know well apparently loads of actually like desensitized because they've like masturbated so much to porn that when they try to have normal sex, it's not like... And then they get hard into... A friend of mine's a solicitor and he was defending someone who had indecent material on their computer and they got into it

because they got so desensitised to this porn that it got more. They needed something that was, because I've always wondered this. Whenever I have, I even was looking at it the other day because I wanted to see what came up on porn. So I literally typed in like Pornhub and the top things are like incest. Oh, God. Stepbrother, stepmum, stepdad, stepmum or whatever. And it's the first page. And I was thinking that is so weird.

I'm really interested because I think another friend of mine who's a documentary maker is making one about porn and her and i were both saying like for both of us it just doesn't like i don't i'm never really i don't know it just it's just not for me but i i do think that that must be the reason why i think people have such a large access to so much porn that you get like bored of it which is it's a spoil for choice yeah you know there's there's categories within categories within categories i don't even know how it's leaked like it's it's very odd um yeah i'm not sure of the legalities of it i remember i'm going to the being a man festival at south bank and they had a uh on porn and it was to do with how porn is still kind of perpetuating these racist ideas you know like guys going into like the Amazon

jungle and like having sex with these tribes women and this girl was saying that I can't remember what it was called but it was like a you know really head turn of a title are you just like wow they got away with that there's like no not really even the categories are like racially organized and things the other thing with porn though I have to say quickly just whilst we're on it is that I support all sex suckers and porn stars and everything it's's just that for me, I think the way that it's generally directed, it's the narrative and the fact that I guess the guy, I don't know if you've ever listened to John Ronson.

No. You would love him. I'll just quick sidetrack. So he is a doc, I think he's a documentary maker, but he's really fascinated by porn. I think he's got a film out or a book called The Butterfly Effect. And it's all about how the guy who starts that porn hub

has ruined all these porn stars' lives. Because before they used to live like really lavishly they'd have amazing careers and they're actually quite like celebrities but because of this free streaming porn industries

not only has it cheapened it but it's made it a lot darker and I think a lot scarier because it's kind of contractually but he's fascinating I definitely would look

and listen to him he's been on a lot of podcasts as well okay what I quite like is the fact that more um women in the industry are taking control of porn themselves and making yeah there's female that they're either yeah they're writing and that they're directing and that they're producing and they have a control over um i think that's really interesting. I think the idea of making porn for women

rather than just for a male audience is really, really interesting as well. Yeah, definitely. I've always wanted to write, I think, writing a TV show, like a drama series or something based in the porn industry, following the lives of porn stars and that idea well sex education on netflix not the same thing but it was amazing i haven't seen it

it's on my god it's unbelievable you have to watch it it's just so clever it's so smart they time so many things and it's like they're british but they set it interestingly and it's like looks like an american high school yeah which is it was really cool i was listening to someone saying the reason they did that was because it made it feel a lot more attractive like if you look at a british state school on tv it doesn't it's rainy and it doesn't it's just not that aesthetically pleasing so the idea of doing that and it's kind of like 70s i think yeah it's a really clever direction it's oh that's that's really cool stuff like that is amazing it's just i think all of us 25 year olds 30 40 year olds are watching that going this

is great for the kids and the kids were all i say kids i know i'm still okay but they're all watching actual porn yeah i don't it's just a shame i don't think that it reaches the right audience no but as long as you know people watching porn especially young people who are the biggest consumers of it uh understand that it's it's not real yeah and that, you know, not all guys' dicks are like 10 inches. Yeah. And, you know, that it's just quite an unrealistic thing. As long as that, if people go away from that and be like, oh, that's how it works and that's what I'm supposed to look like,

but I don't look like that. Yeah. Then that's where I think we're going to run into problems. Definitely. I don't know how we've gotten to this, but I've literally... I was going to ask, why did you want to bring up porn? How did we even get there? I can't you said you wanted you thought of a question to do with porn oh I can't even remember what the point was that I guess it just that ties into I can't

remember how we got there what there must have been a reason uh I can't remember what we were talking about but it certainly plays into the whole masculinity and the the because porn has always been the dominance of men over women. Yeah. And I think porn plays a really important part in that, in gender stereotypes. And the fact that we can access it anywhere, anytime. And it's not taught in sex education. I think now the new legislation is that in schools they are going to have a section,

but it's unbelievable that that's not taught. I mean, you can get it on anywhere. It doesn't have to be like, it's on Twitter. Sometimes I get things retweeted, I'm like, oh oh i don't want to see that exactly on the tube and it'll be like full anal or something and i'm like oh my god it's like i'll because if you follow random i won't follow one for some reason it's like stay hydrated but it's like a water pit i don't know when i followed it but they retweet that r-rated stuff so i had to unfollow them because it would be like why are they retweeting because i don't think it was actually that i think that obviously all like big accounts that just change their names and like retweet each other so i don't think when i followed it was that

okay do you see what i mean and then they they just kind of must sell them on yeah it's awful i'm surprised twitter doesn't have a uh privacy kind of not privacy i don't know i think there must be something about the way that it works that it just can't do it on Twitter. Because I think that is one of the worst ones. Because obviously on Instagram, you can't really get away with it. No, you can't. It's very censored. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure.

Amazing. Anyway, right. I think we've covered pretty much everything. Was there anything else that you particularly wanted to talk about that we hadn't got to? Not really. I mean, I was interested in talking to you. I want to, I was, the questions that you're going to ask me,

I kind of want to mirror back to you as well. Just because the questions that you were going to ask me I kind of wanted to mirror back to you as well just because when we were talking earlier about you know being a boy

and growing up in school and how that differs to you know what a what are girls going through because as a guy you know we don't really

like girls don't really know what guys went through or guys are going through and the same with guys you know it's kind of it's like that you know a primary school uh disco the boys on one side the girls on the other side

we're all just looking at each other um i think i can remember one of our things was everyone to start their period because we just thought again it was that like that make you a really grown up we didn't really know what it was but we just knew that we wanted it yeah and we've like every break there was a point i think we just learned about it wanted it and we'd be like, every break, I think we'd just learned about it and I remember me and my friend used to go to a toilet every break and we'd be like, check. Obviously we didn't get it.

It's really, very weird, like just really adolescent. I think it's that wanting to be older and it was making me laugh when you were saying about year sevens. I remember being in year seven and one of the boys said, she's a wanker

and we were all like, ha ha ha, but none of us knew what it meant and something else about pubes, again, none of us knew what they were talking about but we just used to laugh and i remember about four years later i then found out what it was and i was thinking oh that's what that one must remember that like it's just that you know that you're not i don't know how you know that these words are silly but someone would find it out from like a big brother and then it would go around school but no one would want to admit that they didn't know what it was so no one would ask everyone

just nods along so everyone be like have you been fingered we'll that they didn't know what it was. So no one would ask. Everyone just nods along. So everyone would be like, have you even fingered? We'd all be like, yeah. No idea what it meant. And then we'd be like, what is that? And they're like, I don't know. They're like, where do you think? What are they fingering? Like, honestly, no idea.

That was quite sweet though, because I think that is just like child's play. But also we couldn't Google it. We used to type in boobs on our calculator and that was like the most naughty thing you could do. Or we would search on Clipart. You could search like boobs and stuff. Do you remember that?

Oh yes, I remember clip art, yeah. And you could actually, it would, weirdly, I don't know why, it did have like boobs. We used to get told for doing that. But that was like the naughtiest thing you could find, which was hilarious. Or the encyclopedias that you could, on the CD-ROMs, you could put in and type in like sex.

Oh yeah, no, you're right. That's so funny. So yeah, it was very like, I think with girls for us, mostly it was about it was a lot about body image for me i don't know if that's the same for everyone but a lot of the girls like it was because you for guys it's always great getting bigger all you want to be is not skinny and girls you go from being skinny which is like the ideal body to suddenly like putting on a bit of fat or getting like hormonal stuff and that i think a lot of mine was focused on body image

that was like my main issue um i'm just trying to think what else definitely body hair and shaving and it's all just it seems very mirrored but just the complete opposite so where the guys are trying to stay looking older the girls are kind of like as much we want to be more grown up and we want to grow boobs and stuff we also wanted to stay like it's very weird i think is it one thing we didn't talk about is is the 20s and i think the 20s is just an extension of your yeah routine i know you're you're still in your in your oh but i'm totally in that weird headspace of like what the is going on but i think i'm for me my my 20s were just the next certainly the first half were just an extension of my teens you're still like figuring out and because you're out of school then you're out of university university is a crazy

time as well like you're out of university and you're thrown into the big wide world and there's so much other much other stuff going on and taking it back to masculinity you know you're faced with new challenges you're faced with kind of real people and real feelings and real situations and it's you know it's it's a hugely uh confusing time and uh trying to navigate your way through the modern world of masculinity the absurdity of it all as well is is really challenging and i think growing up as well with so this is the reason i started the podcast because i was in that weird limbo and i do feel like I'm getting to know myself more but even now something happened to me the other day where this guy was just so entitled I realized he was getting so angry at

me because I was not agreeing with him he'd like left a dirty towel and I'd moved it he was like you can't move someone's towel and I was like well I'll get you another towel then but you don't just leave something around the gym and he was like shouting at me I was like this is so weird and I realized he was slightly older than me and he just could not believe that i wasn't going oh sorry i think it really was just like a power play he couldn't believe that i had a voice and same things like that happened to me where i'll just get put down by men and it's funny because i don't tend to hang out with these people so when that happens in real life i'm really like affronted by it really shocks me whereas that's my mum's like lived experience when she came on the podcast

and talked about she was like oh this senior consultant at the hospital I used to work at she's like you always be like do you want a QLO

and I was like what's that she's like quick Lego but obviously I have to tell them off and I was like that's awful but that

she was like oh we always get flashed out and so and so do this and I was like that's sexual harassment she was like no that's just so it's interesting

how our attitudes like everything stayed the same it's just the way we view it has really evolved and changed but i think um even being like an outspoken woman i shared something my story yesterday that was like i'd rather be a feminist and out that that outspoken feminist than someone who participates my own dehumanization because it is that thing of sometimes i'll get things like well you're very opinionated or she's a nuisance or she's really this and that i think well either i conform to how you want me to be and kind of like don't reach anything new or I do stand up for myself.

I think we are in that weird, that weird time. I think more conversations like this need to happen between men and women. Yes. And so it's clear that you don't think in a certain way and we don't think that you think in a certain way. And I think there's an awful lot of common ground that people can actually come towards and just help everyone in the process.

Massively. And my book club, for instance, I run every month. No guys ever come. One guy came last month and it was so great to have a guy there. And the reason that guys don't is, ironically, they're like, well, it's a room full of women and I feel intimidated. And I'm like like but that's every woman's room because every office you go into is full of men and we're the only there's the privilege that yeah exactly and

so i do agree and i do worry sometimes that with our feminism we aren't inclusive of men and then it creates more of a us and them thing when it shouldn't be because as you say toxic masculinity the patriarchy feminism is about all of us it's structural it's not about the individual man or the individual woman it's about how we

as a society function with each other but unfortunately because there are people especially the way the media does it say like Piers Morgan will get people

on his show which kind of pander to that stupid rhetoric of like women being a nuisance or whatever and then so

unfortunately the lay person who may not have access to this kind of conversation will just see outright feminist says that women should never wear a bra and it just makes it sound so stupid. And that's the problem, I think. And then the people who are interested in it generally don't know. It's hard to create. It'd be amazing to create a space where men and women were more involved in those conversations because I think I think for a guy

sometimes feminism probably feels quite exclusive um a little bit yeah sometimes I mean uh I think um I think you know I'd like to feel that I'm in some way an ally to that. You know, and I think just by men being aware of their own privileges and being aware of their own behavior and attitudes and how it impacts other people itself can be an ally. Yeah, definitely. I don't think you need to wear the feminist T-shirt, but just being aware that, you know, we're all equal and we should be seen like that

and there's no power exerted over someone else. But I think a lot of guys can't get, that's the perfect place to be in your right, being an ally. It's like, that's exactly what we're looking for. But the sad thing is that I think before you get to that, you have to get through the barrier

of getting over the not all men and getting over the fact that it's not about you and getting, and then you can get there. I think there's a big, and basically a lot of women who are maybe like me and think quite feminist things. That's such a shit sentence.

They can't be bothered to do the emotional labor to teach those men who are going, but not all men. And like, if I had a penny for every time I said that,

if someone said that to me, I'd be like a millionaire. And if I had the energy and the resources to be like, look, I'm going to sit down with you personally and explain why you are part of the problem not because you're an arsehole because I don't have time to do that unfortunately so I think that's it's how do we get that middle ground uncovered yeah um so that we can we can meet in the middle because otherwise I think I think this is why we've ended up with the Trump

and the Boris and the other problems going on. Yeah, which is a podcast in itself. I know it is. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I think we've covered so many topics. Brilliant. So if people do want to come and see you, you're doing your previews on Monday, Tuesday.

Monday, Tuesday, 22nd, 23rd of July, not February, July at the Actors Centre, which is next door to Tristan Bates Theatre in Leicester Square. And then we are at the Underbelly, at Carrogate, the Underbelly at Cowgate the Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival 1st to the 25th

of August at 1pm amazing thank you so much I've literally loved this it's been a really good episode thank you so much for having me and if people want to find you

on Instagram or socials or anything what do they need to look for or you're not interested in that I know I am you can do it I've only got started my Instagram up again

for RIP so I'm not sure how active I am so I think it's best of the biro B-I-R-O best of the biro or just Alex Gwydar okay perfect

thank you so much and thanks for listening guys bye We'll be right back. I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600

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