Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. Today's book is really important to me. During this whole project, I've been in conversation with my men friends asking them what their fears are and what their hesitations are in relation to breaking down patriarchy. And I hope that listeners have felt

through the whole project, my intentions, and my concern about men. I'm very, very invested

in creating a world that works for all human beings. And that includes everybody. It includes

in my personal life, my husband and my son

and my brother and brothers-in-law and nephews and dad and father-in-law. It includes those men

just as much as it does the girls and the women in my family. I want the whole human family

to be free and to have the tools

that we all need to flourish. So with that in mind, periodically, I check in with the men in my life

and just to find out how they're reacting to this educational project. And in response, I get lots of emails and I've had lots of conversations.

And I want to start the episode today with an email that I got from one of my college friends,

one of Eric's good friends too. We were all friends freshman year in college. And he wrote this in an

email, quote, I hope you'll also consider all the negatives of being male.

Higher crime rate, higher imprisonment, higher suicide rate, higher homicide rate, higher drug use rate,

lower college attendance, lower high school graduation rate.

And then he says, I don't know if those are related to patriarchy,

but sometimes the word patriarchy implies that men have it easier in all the categories and that

men also seem to be the winners. I heard some of these while listening to Jordan Peterson,

whom I sometimes agree with.

And then a smiley face, end quote.

He probably added that sometimes agree with and the smiley face because he knows how I feel about

Jordan Peterson's views on women.

But this is a friend who's engaged with me on lots of difficult topics.

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