Hello everyone, just giving you a heads up that there's a mention of self-harm and sexual violence in this episode and if that is particularly upsetting to you, please feel free to skip this episode and we will see you next week.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Iway with Jimmy Le Jamile and podcast against shame. I hope you're well. I am okay and I feel very warm after today's chat.

I really enjoyed talking to Justin Baldoni, he is a wonderful actor, he's also a wonderful writer and speaker and educator around how we could, how men could heal themselves and how we as a society could live a better life if men had access to more intimacy for more outlets for pain to more emotional and social and sexual education.

I think he's a really important voice because he speaks from a place of so much love and hope and restoration. He's a restorative person, he's a progressive, he believes that men and women can come together, he doesn't believe that all men are who do bad things are evil but they are misguided.

And I understand the impatience that a lot of other genders have with men because she has been taken too far and there is enough education out there for people to know better but we also don't take into account the things that we are up against when it comes to those who are indoctrinating men into the worst parts of patriarchy and that can be media, that can be music, that can be in cell culture, online, that can be the things that they see in politics,

that they are hearing from their parents who aren't really educated and feminism all around little boys is so much misinformation about masculinity, so much misinformation about women, about gender stereotypes, about how to behave, how not to behave.

And it's something that we don't take into account enough and so we talk about patriarchy in this very sort of understandably punitive way but we don't talk enough about how we could prevent it, how we could prevent the type of masculinity that harms, I would even call it masculinity but the thing that is used under the guise of being masculinity to harm all other people, all other groups.

And so in this chat we go deep into the psyche of a man, the psyche of a little boy, I learn that there are fucking stress hormones in the tears of children which I didn't know and so how wild it is that little boys especially are encouraged not to cry because it would make them behave like a little girl and how bad that is for their health and for their psyche and how that can lead to them acting out.

Just so many things that I haven't considered because it's not my experience and it is vital for men and women to share their platforms to be able to speak about these things so we can understand what we're up against because we don't understand it, we cannot fucking fix it and we need to fucking fix it, not just because of the harm that men do to women and to other genders but also the increasing harm they are doing to themselves, the homicide rates are up of men killing other men and the suicide rates are sky high of men killing them.

So we're all in a fucking crisis and patriarchy hurts everyone misogyny hurts everyone how do we fix it.

I think it starts with conversations like ours just in is here to talk about his new book boys will be human rather than boys will be boys and that is something that we talk a lot about we go through elements of his book that are about how we stop the rot before it starts.

And if you are a parent or if you know parents or if you're just interested in the conversation around masculinity and I mean Justin doesn't use the term toxic masculinity which I kind of challenge in this conversation but also understand but misogyny patriarchy all these things.

I don't want to dismiss it I want to lean in I want to learn and I want to understand how we can stop repeating these horrible mistakes that just make this world terrible place to live when everything could be so beautiful because we could all just fucking get along I know that the relationships I have with people of other genders are some of the most beautiful relationships in my life and I don't think I'd still be alive for that a lot of those people so I see that hope I believe in that change and I hope you enjoy this episode and I hope you follow Justin and read his books.

I think he's using his platform and a really lovely and helpful and insightful way.

This is a great chat I really enjoyed it I hope you enjoyed it too this is the excellent Justin Bell Donny.

Justin Bell Donny welcome to our way how are you?

I'm wonderful I'm today's my son's fifth birthday.

I'm so happy birthday to him I like your shirt by the way I love it so you're wearing your pajamas this morning I am wearing my pajamas this morning I would have loved to have worn my pajamas but we could have done a whole thing in our pajamas together.

Absolutely but you know what you made me feel so at ease on our pre interview that I was just like he's my fucking friend now and friends talk to each other in their pajamas.

Well I'm having my pajamas I have my stuff.

Well you look lovely and I'm really happy that you're here and I want to talk to you about about a zillion things because I love your perspective I love the way you've used your platform I love everything you discuss and I align in so many ways with your way of thinking and it is such a vital conversation the one that you have made a big part of your life's mission which is one on.

Underfinding masculinity you call it but I'm on making sure that we understand masculinity and understand how to not demonize it or deflate it or destroy it but to use it for our own benefit and to elevate peace between genders and peace in and of ourselves is how I would describe it.

...