Re-imagining Healthy Masculinity - with men's educator Dr. Brendan Kwiatkowski-Hartman
Breaking Down Patriarchy
Amy McPhie Allebest
4.9 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amy is joined by men's educator Dr. Brendan Kwiatkowski-Hartman to discuss loneliness, bullying, and other challenges faced by boys and young men, as well as what is and isn't helpful about toxic masculinity, the man-o-sphere, red pills, plus imagining what positive masculinity might look like.
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Dr. Brendan K. Hartman specializes in the social-emotional development and wellbeing of boys and men—and how this connects to the wellbeing of all genders. His interdisciplinary work bridges sociology, psychology, and education to foster healthier relationships, emotional connection, and resilience in individuals, communities, and systems.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, all the best. To kick off today's episode, I'm going to read a section of a poem from Dr. Brendan Kwikovsky Hartman, who is a men's educator. He writes, |
| 0:13.6 | When I was 16, my best friend and I worked at a summer camp as counselors. One morning, our friend told us she had had a weird dream about us. In her dream, |
| 0:22.6 | we were a married couple, and one of us was pregnant with our child. But me and my best friend were |
| 0:27.7 | both boys and not gay. And the last thing we wanted, even in a dream, was to be the one with the |
| 0:33.5 | child. Because then that would have meant we were even more girly. And when you're trying to be a |
| 0:39.5 | man, girly just won't do. So that dream started a real life competition about who was less |
| 0:45.9 | feminine than the other. For the next eight years, when one of us would do something feminine, |
| 0:51.2 | the other would say, see, he's more feminine than I am. It was an ongoing joke. |
| 0:56.2 | I viewed the feminine like it was contagious. And the best way to protect against it was to find |
| 1:01.5 | someone who had it more. People laughed. We laughed. So I guess that meant it was all harmless. |
| 1:09.8 | As you can imagine, this behavior is not harmless. Dr. K. Hartman goes |
| 1:14.9 | on to write about how this fear of the feminine or of being gay has continued haunting boys and men around |
| 1:20.8 | him his entire life, in some instances even claiming their lives. Clearly, there is a need for |
| 1:26.9 | intervention for a serious conversation |
| 1:29.0 | about masculinity and how we can protect our sons, our husbands, and our neighbors from this |
| 1:34.3 | dangerous loneliness and this performative masculinity and all other damages of patriarchy. |
| 1:40.8 | And to help us understand the situation better and more critically what we can do about it, |
| 1:45.8 | I'm excited to welcome to the podcast researcher and educator Dr. Brendan K. Hartman. Welcome, Brendan. |
| 1:51.3 | Hi, I mean, thanks so much for having me. I am so excited to have you here. I've discovered your work |
| 1:56.3 | on social media and you bring so much wisdom to this conversation. You're like exactly who I've |
| 2:02.8 | been looking for. I think for years, I've been looking for really men who are researching men's |
| 2:08.4 | issue. So I'm super excited to have you here. Thank you. I'm going to read your professional |
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