Sad Boyz - Toxic Masculinity w/ Briggon Snow

Episode Date: June 26, 2018

Sad Boyz is a comedy podcast about feelings. Every week we take an emotionally resonant topic and open up while somehow making it funny. Today we're talking about masculinity (specifically toxic masculinity) and we're joined by the wonderful Briggon Snow, actor, and voice of Caleb on the Bright Sessions. We recorded this from a hotel room in anaheim while we were at vidcon.

No, I'll see you later, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Oh, it's you again. Wow, um, you have to stop sneaking into my apartment. Today's episode of Sad Boys is another video episode. So if you want to watch us while you listen to the smooth audio stylings of me, Jarvis Johnson, and my young ward, Jordan Cope, hit us up at youtube.com slash sadboyspod. And please subscribe so that I get a dopamine boost when I refresh the page. Oh, and if you're not into podcasts on YouTube, fear not,

you can just close your eyes and imagine you're watching a very dark video. Life hack. Anyway, today's episode is very special to me. It's about toxic masculinity, and we did it at VidCon in Anaheim last week with our wonderful friend and talented actor of The Bright Sessions, Brigham Snow. Enjoy. Welcome to Sad Boys, a podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis. And I'm Jordan. The iraq was an unjustified crime based entirely on financial gain cope wow hot takes trying to get a little political i'm a little behind the game right as far as i know that's the biggest political story happening i can't wait till the sad boys in 2026 when you talk about our current administration

the takes will be so hot. Ideally, by this point, the pendulum has swung back into reasonable universe. Everybody's chill. Everybody's happy, free health care. And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, exactly. Did you guys hear about this? He's having stress dreams every night.

But thankfully, we're not alone. We're not alone. Once we have somebody else on the podcast. It's been a long time coming. We've been doing fewer and fewer guests, um, but people love Lauren Shippen. Oh,

and we thought we all do. What's the next best thing? Yeah. What's that? What's it? It's usually how I go. This is like, this is like the ant man to Lauren Shippen's Captain America.

It really is. In the sad boy cinematic universe. Brigham Snow is with us. Brigham joins us. We are in LA. We're technically in Anaheim right now for VidCon. Anaheim. He's shouting out Anaheim.

That's good. Anaheim. Anaheim fans. Can I pull you? These mics are weird. You flip that bad boy so you'll logo face and you're going in here a little face here actually if you just stood to the tail and i make sure we get a three-dimensional anaheim and now you do the you said you had like a 25 minute prepared speech you wanted to give right about like who you are and your dreams and aspirations in the world.

Anaheim. Anaheim. Anaheim. Why the hell are we in Anaheim, Brigham? Explain. We just want to get a hotel room, you know, and just like be together, bro out. That's exactly right. With the acoustics in my apartment.

Bro out with your toes out. That's whatics in my apartment bro out with your toes hotel rooms that we share are a theme in sad boys and historically the setting of our best episodes mostly yeah i would say so at lauren's house or and then the streak is broken. Oh, dang. So, Brigham, who the hell are you? I am a fan of you guys, first off. Little old us. Yeah. No, I'm an actor in LA. I am on the show The Bright Sessions. Fantastic show.

Fantastic acting. Brigham plays Caleb. Yes. Yeah. The jockath of the show Which I imagine was just An easy transition for you So easy, I mean All the sports you do

All the sports with the Remind me, which one do you play? The sport? Football, yeah, in the show Run me through the logistics of football Which you know intimately There's a ball And then your foot's out

and that's about it yeah yeah really yeah yeah so it's my knowledge speaking of speaking of sports being a football speaking of jocks today our topic is masculinity that might be the best segue we've ever done anyone else have you seen the price of my audio equipment what else says professional yeah it certainly isn't quality of content i have the certainly not um yeah now i've got nothing else about masculinity well when we were throwing around the topic um so the way that we normally find topics with guests is we send them the list of like five or so that we think you might find interesting. Right.

So we sent you a list earlier and you were kind enough to reply with extreme enthusiasm and great ideas for every single one of them, which only made things harder. Great. It's actually, when we brought up masculinity, we were going through an old paper doc looking for old topics that we brainstormed at the beginning of the show and never got to. Yeah. And it's bananas that we've never done masculinity it's like yeah i'm actually surprised so for now there exists in a chest underground somewhere an episode zero of sad boys where we like came up with the name for the show and came up with the logistics and in that in order to like vet the idea we wanted to see if we could list out 20 episode ideas and one of the first that we

mentioned was masculinity because the whole show, Sad Boys, a comedy podcast about feelings, revolves around it being very difficult to have conversations about your feelings as like two guys. That was like our experience and we thought that other people might relate to that. So masculinity felt like an obvious place to start.

Here we are, episode 27, and we haven't talked about it yet. Why do you think, is there a reason why you guys never touched on it oh it's completely uh a lack of organization cool cool that is the life factor figuring out why something has or has not happened on sad boys why has an episode come out in two weeks oh you see it's our fault yeah nothing too complicated if you were my therapist i would say something about how um we were just waiting for the right time and the right place to address such a topic and that time is now and that place is

anaheim i will say we it is partly wanting the right guests in the right environment and i feel like brigham's perfect for this topic i really do i really do feel like i get i got the most excited that you were excited about masculinity and when i thought about guests for this episode i was like oh my god brigand's the perfect one cool and so we're gonna get into uh masculinity and our experiences with it and how we've come to understand what it means to be a man we're all adult people now and i think uh legally yeah and i believe we all identify as men correct yeah and so so that's a journey. So let's, we'll talk about that. But first,

Brigham, we're going to start with you. Yes. How was your week? It was, it was filled with pressure, actually. Yeah.

Yeah. This was a pressure cooker of a week. I have some projects in development. Yes. I've been working on for a while and there have been some speed projects in development yes i've been working on for for a while and there have been some uh speed bumps and getting these things off the ground and also just speed bumps in terms of collaboration with other people oh wow yeah one of the most difficult things is coordinating as you know this entire meeting was like me changing the time like through back and forth three separate

times so yeah collaborations with people are very difficult yeah and it was even sort of just a sense of of moving from creative to the logistic aspects and sort of the financial and then all that stuff uh moving from creative to that that just built up a whole lot of pressure and a lot of strain and sort of a lot of just frustrations amongst people so there was there's a little bit of a having it out a little bit this week which was not really uh wanted but probably needed do you feel like you're good at that kind of conflict specifically a creative project in which there's some degree of contention can you boil it down can you settle it i i feel like i can unfortunately there there is an element of um i i like to have a certain amount of control right um and i think i flex that a

little bit too much sometimes if uh like no it has to be this way and right and when i come across and it's actually pretty rare in my collaborative relationships that i come across someone who uh is equally if not more stubborn than i am uh i really struggle with dealing with that as if i don't know what to do with it i'm just like no this is how it works is right you say no at first then i persuade you and then yeah then it's so why do you still why do you still hold your opinion exactly did you not hear mine yeah so it's a bit of like checking i think that this week was a lot of pressure and a bit of checking my own ego uh which would tie into masculinity yeah absolutely yeah um but uh yeah it was it was actually a fairly tough week i'm i'm very happy to be ending it in a in a bed with you guys yes thank

you so most we don't hear that often most people are like honestly this is the worst way i could have been a lot of mistakes were made to get me here you're peaking right now shock thank god but i think that uh i think that weeks like this uh that like test us or that are full of conflict teach teach a lot you know like uh i i think that some of the most uncomfortable conflicts have led to some of the biggest like changes and self-realizations in me um kind of needing to be uncomfortably pulled in a direction or stretched in a direction that i'm not used to but yeah i mean like that's like i guess growth right yeah um do you think that's something that informed your decision to pursue something

creative that is pretty autonomous like your channel for the most part while you welcome feedback and you welcome script reviews it can exist with only you a little bit but you know i i really related to what brigham was saying about like having the vision like even when i work with other people or or people who are helping me out on something that I'm doing, I often have to remind myself that they're like taking time out of their day and schedule to like be there for me because it's so easy for me to be, I'm a very, I'm very hard on myself and I'm very like, uh, it's, it takes a lot for me to like let go of parts of my vision. And that is something that I is a natural part

of the creative process that i am just i'm getting so many more reps in the creative process now that i'm getting better at dealing with things that fall below the or fall different than the vision is it tougher for you to sort of like you know killing your darlings and everything is it tougher for you to do that when it is a solitary choice that you have made? Or is it harder when someone is telling you to kill it or trying to persuade you to kill it? So for me, I think it's definitely harder when someone's persuading me because I need to like find my way there. You know, it's like if in the sitcom where I find out that that Jordan's girlfriend is cheating on him and I'm like telling him, but he doesn't want to believe me. And it's it's a strain on our relationship. You know telling him, but he doesn't want to believe me. And it's, it's a strand on our relationship.

You know, every like every Disney channel show has had that episode. And this is the, this is theoretically, this is like a weird time for me to tell you this, but it's, this is huge news. I have a girlfriend.

Oh my God. Such mixed feelings. I'm excited. I'm confused. I'm annoyed. Yeah. Now you're, yeah,

you're getting it all at once. But like, um, in, in that the way that resolves is that you have to come to that realization on your own. And I think that that's the experience I have when I'm getting notes from someone. Um, I need to like process them, but, but what, like where I was going with that, is it like someone will be helping me and then I'll start getting frustrated because I can't like i can't explain why i want something a certain way i just like know it in my head oh that's the

when you have so i'm terrible with the elevator pitch or really so i like things that i'm creating are so clearly in my head and i think the thing that i'm consistently working on is is figuring out a way to explain that to people. Because then when I explain it, to me it sounds like I'm a crazy person. Right. No, that's not, if I could just like take the image and plop it into your head, then we'd be all set. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The creative project that you own, the one that was ideated entirely in your little brain. Yeah. Sorry, not an insult. It's your very small brain. Based on the interactions we've had i'm just guessing um but when it when it's entirely your baby you only think in nuance you don't have broad scale you don't say to yourself i'm gonna go and do sad boys a comedy podcast about feelings when somebody asked me what sad boys is before i remember that log line the first thing i go is

like well it so we'll do an intro and we'll talk about the week but that's so one thing that uh that that really makes me that really reminds me of is a conversation that we've had recently jordan and one one thing that i'm just starting to internalize myself which is as someone who gets caught up in the minutiae it is really hard for me to remember that I lost my point. Hold on. He's caught up in the minutia. It is. I was caught up in the minutia for a second.

Sorry. It's really hard for me to remember that people don't know the vision that I have in my head. So like when I put something out there that doesn't align with the vision, somebody can be like, oh that was a really cool video you put out. And I was like, ugh, you know, but like in my head, it was falling below expectations.

But what people see is what is actually manifested on the page, or what's manifested in the actual creation. So they don't see like the cool thing that you didn't manage, that you cut for time. They didn't see the darling that got left out. So, and when you watch it, you you're like oh but if only right and and you can almost never have that experience

of of seeing your own thing or hearing your own thing experiencing your own thing as a person who wasn't there the whole time for the creative like sort of process you can never distance yourself from that vision yeah that must be an absolute nightmare for writer director or tears oh my god yeah you produced this thing from scratch threw away a thousand babies oh yeah and then here's the result and it is hundreds and hundreds of professional critics jobs yeah to point out what i did not do oh my god i know i want it but you don't they tie you just want to point at the pile of babies. Which historically never a great argument.

And that's like when you I'm glad that I'm experiencing this now and I want to get to a point where I'm like really comfortable with that. I think of it much in the way that I like think of goals. It's like you, you can have goals, but you can never, it probably shouldn't be like a high resolution, very specific goal because you can't just host that show you want to host. Maybe that show goes away or you know what I mean? And getting that now, like distancing myself from the vision, still having the vision, but being comfortable if things like don't align, being comfortable sort of in the gray area of like, well, it's funny. I think it, it, it works for most things where I've, I try and practice and it's not easy, uh, but not having a tight grip on things, being open to sort of like free jazz that comes out of creating and knowing that it's never going to be even like life plans. Like nothing is ever going to be exactly the way that you want it to be like when i moved out to when i was the starry-eyed young dude coming from maine to

move out to la i remember like last night exactly yeah okay cool as we were walking in briggan was just amazed to see a building this tall he came off a bus with like a hat box you were mugged eight times before we got went to the hotel. A hat box? The year was 1920. Exactly. I'm just glad you weren't drafted. Really dodged a bullet there. But coming out here, I wanted to be...

Bones first. I wanted to be an actor, and that was like, that's what I'm going to be an actor and that was like that's what i'm gonna be and in the the five years that i've been out here in la um i found out that i like i found out my passion is actually storytelling so in whichever way that that takes shape it's writing it's uh producing it's murdering people and throwing them in the trunk of my car yeah totally seamlessly moving on to the next topic if we can keep that super straight it would be so fun to see the comment that's like did anybody Yeah, totally. Seamlessly moving on to the next topic. If we can keep that super straight, it would be so fun to see the comment that's like,

did anybody... I'm a very eagle-eyed listener. 1720, I'm pretty sure he's admitted to murder. Speaking of that free jazz, there's an improv principle that I think of, which is like, you're not supposed to write an improv. And writing is what it's called when you're building the idea for how things should go in your head because what happens when you do that is you build this vision that cannot possibly be realized on

stage because I go I walk out with Jordan and I'm like hey bro and I'm like he's he's my brother uh now and we've got this long storied history and and he's like what do you mean brother we're on the moon and i'm a dog and now we've now we've both created these clashing visions and uh uh and it's already a bad scene whereas like in the i don't know about that actually i'm super interested in this is the exception that proves the rule unfortunately we did just come up with a sick idea yeah you'll watch out but um in in those situations like it's a it's a clash of visions but if instead someone just puts one thing out into the world the other person listens and reacts to that and kind of lets it flow freely then you get a much more a much more cohesive a much more comprehensible

and uh good good thing usually because people yeah feel like they're being being heard and yeah this is actually a super interesting time to be talking about this because myself and brigand just recorded something quite recently haven't really publicized what it is yet it's coming in the near future but i'm very excited about it and it's improv heavy i think it's fair to say yes um actually screw it i'm just gonna say exactly what it is because i know the show is going to be good uh scoop troop get out your pens cut back to that serious face um we are launching a dungeons and dragons podcast in the very near future i just edited down the first couple of episodes and the interesting thing about this and why when you bring up writing i have such an internal conflict is because obviously as the dm brigham is one of the uh the three p, player characters You're the direct message of the... I'm the direct message

I slide into the world of Tarithia Yeah, that makes sense So I slide into the world of Tarithia and I write out these scenarios these universes, these encounters is my main focus, like what combat could happen here, what trade may take place here, what argument may take place here, and the problem is

that it is impossible to write those scenarios without also internally or externally writing a solution right yeah the paper doc that i use is like it's like there's like 25 000 words yeah and there's a bunch of bullet points under every encounter that says potential resolutions yeah briggan figures out the puzzle and listens to the message yeah lauren activates her latent magical power and discovers that this was the mother the whole time whereas what can actually happen which did happen in our play was in the latest episode we all go to we we all we fuck the podcast we went and got drunk at the tavern we all went to a tavern in game and i had written out a dozen potential scenarios

two of them took place and we recorded for an hour and a half yeah and that was that's half the magic that's why i'm not writing a narrative show that's why it's a dnd podcast right but i i struggle with it in some cases i'm so happy with where we ended up but every now and then i would have to fight away this urge to go and um you suddenly look closely at a brick that's pointing out further in the wall than the other ones are wait was there a brick well was it a brick tavern yeah sorry it was just a brick oh i think it's really fun when uh when dms do that because you know they're leading you to something and then it's the job of the players to go yeah fuck bricks let's just go back to the tavern and then you're just like because

because it really is you you have to play with that. And you have to keep everyone on their toes. I think you were good about, because when I said that, I told a friend that I was doing this. And the first question he asked was, DM, does he lead you? Or does he just let it happen? And I was like, I think he just let us go wherever we wanted to go, which was really cool. I think it went really, really well. And one of the reasons is that because it's a show starring exclusively creators and people that enjoy writing, people that enjoy producing,

I believe all of whom either produce or have produced podcasts in the past, there's a narrative instinct. Everybody on the show thinks to themselves well if i do this would i put that in a scene right just i i you know i present like uh a surly man walks up behind you and pushes you on the shoulder and then laura just goes i leave yeah it's like well that's not gonna happen lauren is gonna invite conflict she's gonna invite yeah sound the most interesting and um i've definitely during the writing period which was about two weeks i definitely reconciled with the idea of well do i just tell them what to do and make them feel like it was their own choice or do i let them make the question about so in in that sort of creative process because i

know lauren on the bright sessions uh the actors like we we've brought stuff to her attention of like oh we'd love to do this or what about this idea right and before we record it was like that week i was so terrified because i'd never played dnd before and i wanted to like get my character down and i sent you like all these sort of like ideas on where i'm from and who this character is and so when you have created a world and you have an idea for a thing and you you invited all of us to sort of have a say in it. But there is sort of a- I don't want to actually do it. I'm just trying to be polite.

So the question is, is like when a person sort of plays in your sandbox, is that a good feeling? Is there a bit of resistance? How does that sort of shake out for you? I think in our case, it was nothing but positivity. But that's because what you suggested was good okay there is absolutely a world where you suggest okay i want my character okay he's got to have gills anyway he's got to have gills that's established but they're not gills they're just a bunch of guys named gills which he does use to breathe yeah they carry a series of oxygen bags.

They take a breath, go to his mouth and... Roll for advantage. And to bounce the question over to Jarvis and Brigham. Jarvis, you've shared a lot of scripts with me in the past, and I know, Brigham, you've had some creative conflicts this week, I assume around this area, sharing one thing with another person, them disagreeing or fighting back.

Does it ever deter you from wanting to do that in the future or do the prawns the prawns do the pros greatly outweigh the cons and how are the prawns the prawns are uh lacking in gills which i it's always a pain so i should mention you always share your scripts with the aliens from district nine i always share them with a shrimp cocktail. No, it doesn't really discourage me. Really getting other, I think I'm a big believer in like, like my vision and stuff like doesn't really matter. What matters is like how the whole process of like having a vision,

creating something, putting it out into the world, and then having the world react to that. Like that's the whole process of like having a vision creating something putting it out into the world and then having the world react to that like that's the whole process and having other folks like weigh in on things at earlier earlier stages is just a way to direct to sort of get some early feedback on that that cycle so um for example if i have like a really offensive joke or something that's like oh this is gonna offend a lot of people it's really good to hear that like have a canary in the coal mine sure rather than to like lay it out for everyone and then own a coal mine right i own a coal mine it's where i keep all of my prawns that's a very weird setup actually aren't great at warning me about danger yeah canary might have been the way to go yeah and somewhere with water would have been actually the greater not telling me that there's danger as soon as i put them yeah so so what i'm saying is sending uh my scripts to friends a lot like putting prawns in a coal mine

okay really just immediately die and then i never put out anything cool yeah um but no just generally uh what i was saying seriously is just that yeah it's just a way to get early indicators of how a wider audience might react, which is important because oftentimes the reason I'm creating art is for an audience or to communicate with an audience or to share. I'm with you on that for sure. Yeah. Let me hear a seamless segue. Yeah. Yeah. No, just kidding.

Cool joke. My seamless segue is, well, you can. This podcast is sponsored by Seamless. Seam seamless seamless.com a website where you can order food please please oh my god that's a seamless segue yeah um my seamless segue is conflict is a thing i often associate with masculinity yes kind of a validating point and it does kind of bring us back to brigand's uh week yes well brigand yeah do you think you deal with conflict well and is it something that you associate with masculinity uh i i think i do oh i don't like this actually i deal with conflict well I think in terms of the purposes of protecting myself and, and my argument, I feel like I, um, am not an entirely fair person to get in conflict with. I think I, something just came up recently where I, and this has been throughout my life that I tend to become a little bit more

verbose and articulate a little bit more. You know when people online, when they have an argument, it's almost like they have a thesaurus on the other tab. They just want it to be the most flowery stuff. I sort of, ever since I was a kid, would just try and be very clear, and it comes across as condescending. I will say I do equate conflict to masculinity,

but I'm super aware of it because of my own relationship with masculinity. So I think in sort of how I approach conflict, even through that condescension, which I'm super embarrassed about, is I feel like I am, I recognize opposing argument and and try and be empathetic yeah and try and be less about the the chest pounding guy like let's take this outside or or sort of going to something stupid and really trying to like understand the person yeah which is interesting that we equate that with femininity and that's a empathy the traditionally and using traditionally yeah very actively i mean a traditional perception yeah of femininity is that you are welcoming and accommodating traditional masculinity is that you

fight for your belief and your perspective yeah to the grave yes yeah so let's let's zoom out a little bit um i want to talk about too close yeah let's zoom out the camera a little thanks for listening to sad boys um this was the best joke in the show so we're just going to stop doing it anyway let's go back to that seamless segment seamless.com where you can order food um seamless.com sad boys no relation it's another it's another podcast we can order a sad child. So zooming out a little bit, how do you think that traditional views on masculinity and what it means to be a man in quotes, in heavy quotes, how has that affected the way that you carry yourself in the world? And I guess maybe I'm curious about Jordan,

and then I guess we can go down. Yeah. So for the longest time, I self-identified as a non-competitive person. And there were two reasons for this one i grew up uh as the only child of a wonderful mother joy cope shouted out every single episode absolutely it's the closest thing we have to ad rev every time i say my mom's name she sends me a nice message joy.com sad boys she's a sponsor of this episode yeah shout out to joy cope um check out her seamless page but yeah uh she and she raised me to at least attempt to always find an amicable solution not by any means to say that i'm good at it or was at the time but i always drifted away from competition because it felt like the exact opposite of that it felt like me saying no i believe this

thing and i'm this way and you can't be that way because i wish to be this way and that was i guess a traditionally not particularly feminine way of acting and right i wanted to identify more with with femininity i took pride in self-identifying as a effeminate person yeah and then as i got older and i started to identify competition less as the binary opposite of accommodation and instead just like a path to being accommodating and a path to being empathic yeah that was really around my adulthood I'd say that's the first time I really started identifying with traditionally male ideologies like yeah using competition to invite information like if you if you come to me and we that improv example is perfect if we're trying to do a scene and then you say to me no i'm trying to do this scene i suddenly understand why it

happened yeah like oh we had a small amount of conflict yeah it floated ideas that were otherwise boiling under the surface right and now we can take action based on that information yeah uh but for a very long time i and i'm not just talking conversation i'm also talking sports i'm talking video games yeah i like single player video games. I liked solo sports like swimming. Yeah. Anything that invited somebody else to feel like they were better than or dominating me. Yeah.

Just like, hey, man, we can just both be. Yeah. Yeah. And as I get older, less and less, I think I'm moving towards a more competitive personality. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know why. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Brigham? I think it's interesting. i'm moving towards a more competitive personality yeah interesting i i don't know why yeah yeah

how about you bring in i i think it it's it's interesting for me because uh as as a gay man there's sort of stereotypes and things thinking that so there's there's a femininity yeah to that so then you would assume that that sort of the accommodating aspects of femininity are then intrinsic to a gay person. Right, right. I consistently ask myself, if I was straight, would I be as empathetic as I am right now? Right, right. So that aside, I think my relationship with masculinity has been so much of my life. Actually, interesting.

Beginning of my life in absolute overcompensation and embracing of it. Interesting. To fool everyone, to try and fool everyone. Specifically the reaction to your sexuality. Exactly. And then post coming out has been my relationship to masculinity has been in almost i say direct opposition to those to those traits so so getting to a place where i'm no longer trying to pretend to sort of play the man game right sort of pass amongst my my my school friends or anything i'm now living in a place

where it's like no i mean it i i want to understand people i don't want people to feel shitty and i i also don't i don't take any pleasure in in inviting conflict and then pushing someone down with it that that which i see some do yeah we should say it's absolutely a moment of elation and power is when you are the better man it's so interesting because i remember in college i'd be like at a at a party like one of those crummy basement parties right and and solo cups and all yeah exactly and i remember one specific instance where uh i was hanging with some friends and talking and then a fight broke out in the far corner of this basement um and my reaction to it was you know we should

probably get out of here i don't want this and a friend that i was with who i would say is pretty stereotypically masculine right almost to the point of where it was just sort of comical yeah he without trying to understand the circumstances ran and jumped into the fray and it was the perfect example of like sort of the two differences where i was like no i i don't know why we're seeking out conflict i hate how much i love that just jumping into it fucking sick i think that is like he lit a cigar swallowed it whole did a flip and landed on them with both biceps. Yeah, one hand holding an old-fashioned... The other hand spraying himself with Old Spice.

While objectifying a woman on Twitter. On Twitter with his butt. But so much of it seems like... What's the term? Like performative. Oh, absolutely. Where it's just like... It's this fear of coming across as weak

because how fucked up is it that femininity is is seen as weak in society and masculinity yeah strength well the danger zone and i'd be curious in your perspective on this because it's something that i've thought about but as a perspective of a a straight man I feel unqualified to contextualize, right? But something that I constantly wrestle with is the fact that masculinity, and I instinctually believe this. It's so frustrating. I know it's not right. Yeah. But masculinity is seen as true neutral.

All things should gravitate around masculinity. But masculinity is just being rational and keeping things together and fighting for what's yours and then that's why we have things like oh that is a gay sounding voice well that's the patriarchy i feel like it's the power structures assigning the norm but it's it's very bizarre i mean i when i was younger i did wrestle with the idea of like why do like some gay people just sound like girls and it's because we we aren't designed to sound like this only yeah regular performing that's not what a normal is so here's an interesting thing too so you you have your whole life i'm i'm i'm projecting on you now you've identified a straight

correct so the way that you walk the gate of your walk oh yeah the the way that you talk the way that you stand and present yourself um that is you know when we're kids we're moving around and we're not we're not aware of these things as you get older you put on because these sort of societal pressures or constructs yeah yeah put it on i have something that i wrestle with consistently where uh the way that i talk and the way that I walk, I tend to, I would say I walk in a masculine way. I don't know if this is intrinsically who I am and how I was naturally walking or if I chose to walk that way and talk that way to go against my sexuality.

So I identify with that with regard to the way that i speak and always being told that i like talk white and that's and that's like i don't know if i'm if i talk this way because of just how i wanted to be or if it's because i decided to take things from society that were like different than what was around me like if i like i think the way i talk is based on like what i heard on television rather than like the people around me and did i when i was younger like devalue the people who are around me in favor of something that felt more correct that was on like that was being shown to me uh on television one thing that i uh so responding to my own question about the um effective masculinity and some of the things that both of you said, I so I actually have had like no like Jordan and I are similar in this.

Like we just no dads, like no dads in the picture for the most part. No new friends, no dads. Yeah. And so it's like I only had, you know, I was only raised by women, and I think that gave me – I didn't feel inundated with the masculinity from anyone who was very close to me. It was just sort of at school and in pop culture and stuff. And I think that the playful term to describe how I sort of identify is beta male, but even to say that is like kind of a joke, right? It's buying into the,

it's buying into that. And so like, and, but the thing for me is I actually am very competitive and, and when people like, I feel like I'm like, I'm trying to be emotional and understanding. And when someone doesn't meet me there,

I snap into yeah i like i will now destroy you that's the thing you're not you're not playing by the the fair rules so now i'm gonna go to the thing that i don't want to go yeah yeah it's like yeah yeah you wouldn't like me when i'm angry it's like oh you want to be hyper masculine and mean it's like oh if you want to do it's like people would pick fights with me and i would just like find a way to like like sort of hurt them in a way that yeah didn't didn't involve me fighting because I like wanted to rise rise above or it's like I think I've given this example on the show before but like some kid like shot me with a little like rubber band like yeah thing and I like it was uh and you killed his family

I personally think it's too far but kind of impressive for a five-year-old kid I know it was like one of those things where they like stapled a piece of a thick piece of paper and then shot it with a rubber band and so it would cause like welts on people and they hit me in the eye and i was like i'm going to get you expelled my lawyer will be here in the morning yeah it's like because my options are to fight you and i have too much of a future to care about to get into that shit and i'm just going to use the rules to destroy you. And then it's like, but I just want to be the happy-go-lucky guy.

And it's like, if we could just be normal. If we could just... You know what I mean? He frames the kid's dad for money laundering. I had the tools for this and I didn't want to use force lightning. That's exactly what it feels like. It's like, I really wish I didn't have to do this,

but you've given me no choice. You should have assumed i could so then going off of that because that's interesting because i so often uh have to check myself uh with ego and pride where i see conflict and i see myself trying to be the understanding more empathetic person and then what that does is i end up judging that person and feeling better than that person right so there's an element of like do you do you deal with that when you go through it like do you do you have to sort of check yourself and be like oh i'm i'm being a little arrogant here i i think so i think so i think what i have i have instilled in me like like the risk like respectful actions and things that like were told to me by my parents like when i was like being respectful and always saying please and thank you and like opening doors for people because i

grew up in the south and so when somebody like whenever something feels in conflict with that like sort of moral operating like sort of procedure uh then i that's when i'm just like ah like i thought we were on the same page here like for example if uh someone you know you're you're like carrying a coffee and then like someone stops prematurely ahead of you and like i wasn't paying attention to where you were spatially or wasn't paying attention to their own actions then stops and then you uh or like moves their arm and hits your thing and then they we spill hot coffee on them i spill hot coffee on them and they turn around me and they're like what are you doing yeah you idiot and it's like okay now i'm angry yeah yeah because you failed the social contract yeah and are fining me because

i'm because i'm always apologizing first for things that i don't i'm not at fault for just to like make people feel good. Cause that's like my natural like thing. And you, you're, you're coming from a place of, I would gladly take a couple of hits to my pride to skip a conflict. Exactly. Because I'm not, because I, uh, because I don't, I don't think that conflict is often necessary. I want to avoid it at all costs, but not, but only if, um, I think conflict avoidance can, can be really harmful. And so I want to say specifically that when I'm avoiding conflict,

it's like avoiding things that like don't matter and not trying to like rile, like elevate like a situation for no reason. Uh, can I ask you and feel free to say no, um, you won't get paid for this episode, but feel free. Um um what would you say is the most toxic traditionally masculine uh personality trait or tradition that you take part in uh that you feel most self-conscious about or that you would like to rid your body of if possible I would say I, I would say I am quick to anger. Classic. Very quick to anger. And it's something that I've,

I've dealt with since I was a little kid. I was, I was an angry little kid. Um, but it's, uh, yeah. Anger.

That's tough. It's tough to talk about. It's, it's actually, that's, that's probably the, the, the hardest appraisal that i have of myself yeah is probably how quick i go to anger and how acutely i can

employ that anger to to destroy this is your this is your sith lightning i fully identify with that oh like i wish i didn't i i hold back so much that when it like crosses the threshold it's like i actually have had you know all of the receipts i've basically i have all the tools in a shed like to to destroy you with yeah and like the lock is just right there yeah and you opened it yeah i didn't want to use it sorry like if bruce banner doesn't hulk out for five years it's going to be a pretty destructive yeah yeah yeah just don't bait the beast on that kind of thing so i have a question that's kind of a maybe a question we can wrap up on because i think that one thing that always confused me

is how early some of these like behaviors that force us into like the uh i guess the gender roles and like the the the masculinity versus like femininity like things it like all seems to come about when you're a kid and i remember because i didn't want to play the game of like being hyper masculine and if people wanted to fight i didn't want to fight like we talked about this before it would be like hey someone said they wanted to fight you and i was like what like i i have no bones to pick with anybody and what's your source on this who told you that they wanted to fight me can you get a couple different perspectives exactly and so and so but the thing is if you don't play by that game if something is coming from a masculine place and then you say no thanks then the immediate

place they go is like you're gay yeah it's you're not you're not playing within the masculine contract that everyone's playing so thereby you are less than and and i want to and like yeah what i want to understand is like where do you think that comes from from children who like have no context whatsoever on these things like why like i don't know how do we get to a place where like being gay is an insult like because that's something i never understood um and and or or even that like people so much want to other someone else so like like why like how did everyone get into the group think of like masculinity is that like a evolutionary thing is that like yeah i don't know it's classically it's parents right a lot that would be the go-to right though the thing is is that so often when people say uh

now my parents made me this way my parents did this thing to me what they're actually talking about is something far more insidious than like direct education right it could be you going home putting on a pink t-shirt your dad calling you gay it could be that yeah yeah but more often like in a household like mine for example where there was no stigma around how i wanted to self-identify or what gender roles i i traditionally associate with it came from well largely pop culture but also largely well i see people around me and my mom does these things and she's a girl. Right. And somebody told me at some point that I should be.

Another big factor of it. Let me know if either of you relate to this at all. The number one thing a kid wants is an affect. Right. They want a thing to self-identify by. Right. I'm the kid with lots of allergies. And it's like, that's not cool.

When you say that in like in in elementary school it's almost like oh you're defined great yeah you are now a little bit closer i was called snot nose yeah that was my that's my nickname you are again i'm afraid yeah snot nose that was me oh but like yeah self-identifying is basically what a child exists to do yeah it walks around and it goes okay my voice sounds like this i walk like this i stand like this i eat these things i don't eat these things and the second somebody is able to say you know who starts who knows who starts it but there's that one first domino kid whose dad happened to call him gay one

time and then he comes in and goes like you walk like a girl and then that kid goes no way you talk like a girl and then it just starts spreading yeah way you talk like a girl. And then it just starts spreading. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you think about this? Brigham? Like how do, how do we, how do we stop it early?

I mean, how do you specifically stop it? Yes. I mean, the crazy thing about this is, is like, we could talk about this for a week and still not. And we will. Call our,

call our 24 seven. This is a telethon yeah there we go hard cut to a week later you both have beautiful beards i have like slightly longer hair yeah this is yeah this topic is very it could go on forever so i mean i think what it comes down to is okay we're talking about things that that kids need to sort of be their identifier uh i think so much of why we have kids frustrated young men who are doing the most grotesque and evil things right uh imaginable is is because there there is either a lack there of of grace and acceptance for for these boys to just be who they are or what they are. Right. And a force of his, I'd say their peers, their family, and even right down to pop culture in terms of,

I mean, I remember watching Nickelodeon growing up and there were very clearly like girls commercials and it was like Easy Bacon. It was very gentle and beautiful music and the guys were like, crossfire! and like all that sort of like insane stuff yeah i nearly injured your sister so it all comes from a very sort of like men are intense women are gentle and and when you're a kid and you don't know what the who the fuck you are or and but all you're getting at all times is what your peers are telling you.

You should be what your, your family's telling you should be what, what culture is telling you should be. Um, I think what we really, really need to do, and I think it's a generational thing. It's going to take a very long time.

But first off, when it comes to, to pop culture, we, we need to be, we need to be showing more empathetic boys, empathetic men in the content that we're showing our young men.

And the benefits they're in. Yes. A really common unfortunate consequence of showcasing empathy in pop culture is that it's often associated with a martyr. Yes. Like I was fearless enough to embrace the feminine. And it's so interesting too,

where it's, I think, I think we need to be allowing them to embrace the feminine while also not vilifying the positive masculine aspects of, you know, there's, there's masculine elements of, of protection of caring for others.

Right. That isn't, that isn't exclusive to the male genders. I think we all have, you know, it's, it's, it's a spectrum of that.

I think we should absolutely vilify the toxic aspects of masculinity, which is what we've been talking about. Exactly. And we should prop up the good stuff and showing how it is no different from the positive parts of femininity. It's just what makes us who we are. I, yeah, I think about like much in the way that our politics have become very polarized. I think that we've always lived, or at least as far as I, I understand, we've always lived in this world of like polarized like masculinity and femininity binary yeah

there's a binary yeah there's a binary and when in reality like i feel like it's so it's so new uh not like it's not it's not new historically but it's like new as a society today for us to be talking about like the spectrum uh of this and and i think that what we what we might be experiencing now is just like the effects the downstream effects of hyperpolarization of the masculine and the feminine like the blue is boys and the pink is girls like that that kind of stuff when like i've i've seen that happen in a couple of like really interesting ways um that, that I won't go deeply into, but one example is like, uh, with personal computers, like one big contributor to

men being really, uh, like overrepresented in computer based fields is because when personal computers were like becoming a consumer, like products, they, uh, had consumer product, they had to be put in stores like Sears and shit. Or even simpler, let's say the Nintendo. They had to make a choice. Video games aren't for boys. We had toy aisles that were separated by boys and girls. And someone had to make a decision. You have to put the puzzle piece somewhere.

To put it somewhere. And then that can be exacerbated into, it just is a vicious cycle that like continues to promote. And then it makes you afraid. I mean, the fact that we have like shampoos that have to be slate gray because a guy's afraid to buy a bottle that might be like pale, like lavender or pink.

Dr. Pepper 10, where the ad literally goes, it's not for women yeah the yorkie chocolate bar only in the last five years in the uk has disassociated itself from it's not for girls with a picture of a uh female cartoon figure x'd out wow yeah tastes great unfortunately so it's a really good bar i we've covered a lot here like we said um we fixed it yeah i mean tbh uh the but like this is a very deep topic and i think it's really important to understand how we got here uh both both in our like in our own individual lives and like as a society um and

we should also emphasize that despite the fact that it is overwhelmingly toxic it's not inherently bad to self-identify with masculine no i i am so proud to be a man yeah i am i am so proud to be a man and that doesn't your swift as a coursing river exactly with all the force of a great typhoon i would say getting in touch with you was difficult because of your moon like. Absolutely. No, I think I think it's it's I am. I'm are you proud to be a man? I think so. I identify as a man and I'm not like ashamed to identify as a man, but I often feel like I need to.

I don't need to stand up for men is kind of what I'm saying. Yeah. But what I do want to be is like an example of the power of having characteristics that are traditionally feminine. Just like saying you don't have to be like 100% masculine features all or nothing in order to be a human. Yeah, just be a person. Hey, be a man if you want to. Or don't. Doesn't really fucking matter, to be honest. We do have fun.

Just don't be shitty. Just don't doesn't really fucking matter yeah yeah we do have fun just don't be shitty yeah if you take anything away from this episode just don't be shitty yeah or if you do do it well are we cuddling after this or uh absolutely yeah um so thanks for joining us so much briggan um briggan i loved listening to you on this episode. This is Jordan. I always listen to the show. Oh, hey, Jordan. Great. Reaching out.

Ring, ring. Hey, what's up? Hey, loved you on the show. Wondering how I can get even more Brigham Snow in my life, preferably online. No, I'm a dog on a moon. Oh, wow. Wait, no, because I was going to be the dog on the moon. Oh, okay.

Okay, sorry. You've ruined the sketch. Sorry. Sorry. moon oh well wait no because i was going to be the dog on the moon oh okay okay sorry you've got a sketch sorry sorry uh no they uh you can find me uh at briggan on instagram and at briggan snow on twitter and you can find me on the bright sessions yeah which is a really cool podcast that i'm proud of yes indeed on insta yeah i got bring it on insta cool man just like what's my medium gonna be uh you got jarvis on twitter i'm really gonna take on the kick market pretty soon excited about that okay you're

for vero yeah you're jordan on vero uh and on uh uh what was that one other dead social network hello or something i don't know jordan yo where i'm just gonna do the socials now if you want to talk to the sad boys uh if you like we ain't got time for this uh sad boys pod uh on all the places and our email is sadboyspod.gmail.com website is sadboys.com hit us up send us a pen pal uh we'll read those on our next no guest episode i want extra pen pals for this episode by the way because i feel like there are a lot of follow-up questions and points on this topic, and I want to hear them. Yeah. Thanks again for joining us, and we always end

every episode of Sad Boys with a particular phrase. And we're currently working through a series of different musical genres. Yes. We sing the particular phrase. Okay. You're familiar with this phrase? Great. It's, uh, we love you, and we're sorry. And we're sorry. We love you. And we're Sorry. We love you.

And we're sorry. Oh, that's fantastic. Thanks so much, Brigham. Oh, it's so great. So much fun. You did that. We're going to get it.