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Hello, I'm Gemma and welcome to another episode of Good Influence. This is the podcast where

each week you and I meet a guest who will help us pay attention to something we should

know about as well as answer some of your questions. This week we're talking about toxic

masculinity. Where we learn our ideas about gender roles, how patriarchal ideas harm people

of all genders, and why actually maybe the term toxic masculinity isn't always the right one.

So joining me this week is Ben Hurst. Ben is an activist, model, podcaster and public speaker.

He's the head of facilitation and training for beyond equality, an organisation which works

with Ben and boys to explore and interrogate their thinking around gender equality,

masculinity and inclusive communities. We don't present any alternatives of like

how fast masculinity can be, like I think all of the messages you get as you're growing up are

very specific and very defined.

So if we take a bit of a kind of deeper dive into toxic masculinity today,

it is a term I'd say which has suddenly become a lot more mainstream and kind of widely used

in the way that we talk about behaviours in our society. Would you be able to give us for

somebody who maybe doesn't know a bit of an overview of what the term toxic masculinity actually

refers to? Oh, it's so sticky. Do you know why it's so sticky? Yeah, but I don't...

Okay, so the best place to start is that I work for an organisation that works in schools and

universities and corporates doing stuff around gender equality and particularly through the lens

of masculinity and we really try hard in our work not to use the phrase toxic masculinity because

...