#201 Toxic Masculinity & the Epidemic of Gaming Addictions & Unmotivated, Underachieving Boys & Young Men

Rachel Denning (00:10.574)
I like to take our podcast topics from issues that really fire us up. It makes for better discussions. This week, I was fired up by some comments left on an Instagram reel I created about allowing quote boys to be boys with an audio taken from our recent workshop on boys adrift, the growing epidemic of under motivated boys and under achieving young men. This is an issue that we have personally been concerned about. And so we have been discussing and researching it in detail.

Some of the comments said things like this. This post really misses the mark. The toxicity that exists around masculinity has nothing to do with children having access to messy, risk -taking behavior. I agree that this is problematic for children, but it's not in any way linked to masculinity. You clearly don't know what you're talking about. What about girls and non -binary people? You don't think these issues affect them too? Why don't you do a post about that? Why are you posting something on Instagram if you're not interested in receiving advice or feedback?

Your attitude is toxic. Kids should be kids. Girls do get messy and wild outdoors. The phrase boys will be boys is extremely problematic, having been used for so long to excuse poor behavior towards women. Your post conflates masculinity with toxic masculinity, which are two totally different things. Society is rejecting sexism, rudeness, entitlement, and lack of accountability. The types of toxic masculinity you mention are totally using the phrase in an inappropriate context. In this episode,

Greg and I discuss these comments and address why this quote movement regarding toxic masculinity does have a direct downstream effect on some of the issues we're seeing with boys and young men today, being unmotivated and turning to video games as a way to find meaning and purpose in their lives. It's all connected. And we also explain how masculinity and femininity are neither good nor bad, toxic nor harmless. Like a hammer or any other tool, they're neutral.

It's the way they are used by the individual person that determines their toxicity or validity. If you have boys or men, young or old in your life, then listen now to this episode regarding a topic that hasn't yet peaked in significance before it will be reversed or corrected. If you enjoy this episode or any of our episodes, would you please do us a favor and leave us a review on Apple podcasts or at our website, podcast .extraordinaryfamilylife .com.

Rachel Denning (02:37.294)
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Rachel Denning (03:26.638)
Hey everybody. Welcome to the extraordinary family life podcasts. I'm your host Greg Denning with my amazing wife, Rachel. We are still on opposite ends of a continent down in central America. And yeah, sadly apart was brutal, but we're going to be back together in a couple of days, but we wanted to make a, another podcast for you guys. And so we're, we're here sharing some thoughts and ideas.

and some things that get us fired up and hopefully get you fired up. And I hope today, I hope you do this every time you listen to our podcast and I hope you do it as you're reading and thinking and interacting with people. Just be thoughtful. Really think through it. Think through all these angles and all these ideas and don't be so rigid. It's easy for all of us to get rigid and get really kind of narrow minded.

We grab hold of an ideology or some experience we've had or some way we were brought up or I don't know, whatever it is, right? And we can be so rigid with it and get so stiff and so narrow. And then we won't even listen or consider other sides. We don't think through it. And then often you think through it and you do the full circle and you might come back to right where you were, but now you're better off. Your position is actually stronger because you've thought through it.

And then other times you'll get out and you'll find new information and be like, Oh, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to adjust here a little bit. And life is this big experiment and we're trying to figure it out. Um, so we're going to hit, we're going to have some good stuff today. Um, oddly enough, I'm nervous about discussing, which is an interesting thing on itself. And you and I were kind of talking about that before, like, well, why am I nervous? And part of the reason is we like to get our content for the podcast.

based on things that are actually going on in our life or in the world. And, and this one specifically was sparked by an Instagram reel that I posted from a workshop we did about boys. It was specifically the book boys adrift by Leonard Sachs. And, you know, I got a lot of great comments. I always get a lot of great comments of people like, yeah, this is great. I agree. And that's awesome. But some of the comments were.

Rachel Denning (05:51.694)
very um

disturbing to me and not that they were disturbing in a way that was wrong or off, but like the way it was done seemed offensive or it seemed like attacking. And I thought, this is so strange in a way that, you know, I'm putting out something out there that specifically addressed two boys. So, and so you were talking to moms and dads with boys.

That's pretty much exactly. Yeah. And I'm getting this. So if you only have daughters or if you don't have kids, we're not talking to you. Right. But more than one person, at least three or four said, well, why doesn't this apply to girls too? And I'm like, it does. It can, but I'm talking just to boys in this case. That's okay. Isn't it right. And you would think that that would be okay.

We have to have the freedom to be able to do that, to take something and just speak to a specific topic at a specific time, like in a particular context without, and Rachel and I were talking about this last night. It's like, if we have to put a disclaimer on everything we share, the disclaimer would be bigger than the post itself. Exactly. If you have to explain yourself every time it's like, Hey, I'm going to say something here that's true for women. But.

We're not excluding men either or children or non -biopneary people or trans -gender. We love unicorns and cupcakes too. Right? It's like, come on people. Like we have to be able to talk to a specific thing. And you and I, and all of us, we have to be able to go out and give people the benefit of the doubt with a little bit of grace, think outside of that and say, okay, maybe they're just speaking very specifically to this instance.

Rachel Denning (07:51.63)
And I think so many people won't maybe we'll circle back to this and cover this, but so many people are walking around with a chip on their shoulder. And they're walking around with this little agenda in their head or they're walking around with. Exactly. So they have some kind of activism and they think they're they're moral activists, but that's the lens through which they see everything.

So you can't even post a picture of your puppy without like, what do you love dogs more than humans? You sicko. Right. And it's like, you're so reactive. You should love dogs more than humans. Like that's kind of where we're at here. And I say that tongue in cheek, but you know, that's the kind of stuff we're talking about that it's like, you can't post anything or say anything without it being, oh, so what you're saying is girls aren't equal to boys.

What you're saying is non -binary people are not the same as boys. What you're saying is, yeah. And I'm like, no, if that's what I was saying, I would have said that. What I'm saying is directed towards boys and young men. And so I got a bunch of these comments. Some of them were just about, well, what about girls or just children in general? Yes, that's true. But I'm talking about boys right now. Well, what about, and then it goes off on all of these things of how,

Well, this is off and your definition, because I referenced without saying it directly, I referenced this idea, which we're going to get in today of masculine traits being viewed as toxic. Well, of course people are like, well, you're talking about toxic masculinity and you're using the wrong definition because it's actually means something like this. But I had at least two or three people say that and each of them gave me a different definition that wasn't even the same. Yeah. Hilarious.

And so I guess that's a good place to jump into this. The context of that is that the ins, you know, semantics and, and in nuance and in definitions, right. We let's go specifically with the word masculine. If I say masculine, what it means to me, when I say the word masculine, what it means to even Rachel is going to be different. And then what, you know, it's, it could be different for every single one of us could have a little different variant on what the word masculine means.

Rachel Denning (10:16.526)
or implies. And what's interesting is things, ultimately in life, things only have the meaning that we give them. And we have that freedom to give meaning to different things. So somebody who had, and again, we want to be, none of us are trying to be insensitive to people who may have had very unfortunate experiences with toxic men.

And I want to distinguish that there with toxic men, toxic people. And I don't want to be insensitive, but as I was thinking about it, I also don't want to be too sensitive because I think there's too much of that where we're actually being hypersensitive to something like masculinity. We, why can't we have a good, open, honest, beautiful, thoughtful conversation about the masculine and

The feminine and some people want to talk about the masculine itself. Well, right. Well, yeah, exactly. And why can't we just, I guess that's what I'm saying right now is like, can't we just have a conversation about masculine? But as soon as we gather, what about feminine? Well, we're talking about the masculine today. We'll talk about the feminine later. And I wonder if you had posted something about what's good for girls. If you'd gotten the same reaction, I don't think so because I think we're in a climate right now where.

And it's a fad, right? It's these changing fads. If you step back and watch history move and, and people get so dramatic and so hypersensitive, so caught up in these trendy things and these terms and manage, it just becomes a big deal. So anything related to that and they jump all over it, like you're some kind of bigot. Yeah. So I was going to agree with you there and say, I don't think it would have gotten the same response because I don't think that that is the climate we're in right now. And, and one of the ways we like to.

think about ideas like this is things swing on a pendulum and they can, you know, in the middle, that's great. In the middle, it's kind of balanced, but things can swing really far to the right or to the left. And that's not necessarily like political or anything like that, but you know, a pendulum swings and the pendulum did swing. There was a need for this movement for women's rights. Like that was a thing that really needed to happen. But I think what's happened.

Rachel Denning (12:44.686)
is that it swung so far that boys and men, especially young men and boys and older men are becoming, I want to use the word disadvantaged, although I know that that's not a good word to use because people could argue with that one, but they are becoming disadvantaged in a way in that their masculine traits are being seen as toxic. And we're going to get into that, but it's almost like they are now

being hurt or, um, what are some good words here? They're like the book that we, what was the word? Stifled. Stifled. The book that we discussed in our workshop that we did is boys adrift and it's the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. And this is a thing that's happening. It's a big thing that's happening where boys and men are.

essentially checking out of society and real life and checking into video games and the virtual world. And part of the reason is because of this swing in the pendulum where feminine traits are viewed as more valuable or more right than masculine traits. And that's all tied in with the toxic masculinity and all of these ideas. And so that's why if you put something out there about girls,

It's less likely to get this kickback because right now the boys are still seen as the enemy in a way. And not that they literally are, but you know, it's like, you don't want to say something about the men or the boys because they're the patriarchy and they're the bad guys. And we need to still be promoting the disadvantaged, but not what we're not seeing as a society yet. Although people are definitely starting to see it. That's why these books like this are out there is that men.

are becoming weakened by this and are not fulfilling their own personal potential, which is devastating for all of society, not just for them. It's devastating for everyone else too. A lack of strong, healthy masculinity is as detrimental to society as a lack of strong, healthy femininity. Exactly. And we need both. And I think you said that so well, Rachel, that.

Rachel Denning (15:07.566)
If, if we value feminine traits over masculine, like they're, they're more right or they're better or more valuable. And we do it as a society. We make, we make the masculine feel bad because of that. And of course just truly opposite way as well. Either way it's too far. Like you're talking about with a pendulum. And so it goes too far either way is unhealthy and it becomes toxic in the society.

Yes. Well, and it's interesting because you mentioned something about, you know, well, if you're going to talk about masculine masculinity, what about femininity? And that was one of the comments I've got pretty much. I put this post out there about boys and they were like, well, if you care so much, why don't you do a post about girls? Why aren't you posting about that? I'm like, hello? Seriously?

For one thing I do, I post about boys and girls and children and marriage and parenting. Like I post about a lot of things, but you think just because they do have a host about girls, I'm not going to do one about. Sorry about boys. I'm not going to do one about girls and that this is my standing view on this topic forever. And I will never talk about anything. It just seems so insane to me that we're jumping to these extreme conclusions and reactions based off of.

one 60 second reel with less than a thousand character captions.

It totally, it totally reminds me of this is kind of an inside family joke because you know, we like to watch Jordan Peterson and we watched this interview he did with I, I went, Kathy Newman, that's who it was. And it's pretty well known, you know, and you can watch it on YouTube, but it's so hilarious because in the interview, Kathy Newman constantly does this thing where Jordan Peterson will say something and she'll say, so what you're saying is, and then say something completely opposite to what he actually said. And we like, he's like, no.

Rachel Denning (17:14.445)
That's not what I'm saying. And I feel like that that's what's going on here in a lot of these hot topics, which to me, putting this out here does prove that this is a hot topic. For some reason, the idea of talking about boys or men or masculinity is a hot topic. It's a sensitive topic. You can't put it out there without getting this.

intense feedback, which is so fascinating and strange and perplexing in a way, but also indicative of what's going on here, you know, this undercurrent of.

vitriol or just passion about this. And so, you know, that's what we want to dive into this and unpack it a little bit today saying what's going on here and what do we, what can we do about it? Especially specifically for those of us who actually have kids because there's another interesting odd bit to these, to the people that got most intense about the comments, they were actually ones who didn't have any children.

So I also thought that that was very odd because they don't even have kids and they're telling me how off I am about this post about boys and young men and that I've totally missed it. And I don't even understand what toxic masculinity is. And I'm not an expert and I do should not be sharing my advice or opinions because I don't know what I'm talking about. And I'm like, okay.

Rachel Denning (18:53.71)
And again, we, it's not that we don't, I hope you guys know enough that we value others' opinions and disagreement and different perspectives. It's not that we just want to only have people agree with us. Yes, exactly. But we want to have this dialogue and it's just, it's fascinating, right? I have to laugh because the irony is like how we all have such strong opinions about how to raise kids until we have kids.

Exactly. Um, which is joke and everyone's got marriage advice until they get married. Um, I don't know. It's just, it's one of those funny things that, that we do, but there's a lot going on here. And if you zoom way out, really fast to what you're saying, because yeah, and this was one of the things I went through in my head. It's not that I don't appreciate another person's perspective or another person's viewpoint, but I think that there's, and this is one of the things I, I,

feel pretty strongly about. Like there's a time and place to do that. That's way more effective than in the comments of social media. And one of the things I kept trying to mention in, you know, I, I was trying to have a conversation with people on this, but I was trying to point out too, that this isn't the best place for this. It would be better to have a workshop or discussion or something else. A long form, a long form discussion is way more effective.

for diving into issues like this that are multi -layered. There's a lot to it. There's a lot to unpack and to understand, and you cannot, you cannot do that in the comments of an Instagram post. It's just not possible. There's so much nuance. There's so much misunderstanding that occurs in tone, in your real meaning. Like there's just so much that you cannot get.

When you're not hearing someone's voice, speaking it besides the fact that you're totally disconnected from this person. Um, even in, in, I think it's Sharon Peterson's most recent podcast, it's about IGN. Her name is Carl Twain. I think that wrote a book called IGN, um, that I actually have not read yet, but I it's on my list now. Um, and she's just talking about how this whole thing on social media where.

Rachel Denning (21:16.814)
We would say things on social media that we would never say to someone in person. Like you would never walk up the comments that were left on my post. Someone would never walk up to me and say those things to my face. That just wouldn't happen. And I think that too often we forget that we forget. And I know I'm reminding myself all the time because I'm not perfect at this. I'm trying to get better all the time. We're posting things that we would never say to someone in person.

And so we've become.

Rachel Denning (21:51.182)
on social media where it's almost like we're dehumanized. They don't see, we don't see each other as a real person. And so we say and do things that we wouldn't say and do if we were interacting face to face.

Rachel Denning (22:08.814)
which is, man, it's just such a fascinating time in history. In fact, well, unless I'm missing something, this is like the first time in history because, because social media exists for the first time now. Yeah. And it's this platform where we can, we can chime in, but do it either anonymously or to total strangers.

knowing we'll probably never see them in person and we're not seeing their face. And so you can just type something up, whatever happens to come to your mind. It's going on. Yeah. No filtering, no, no immediate social consequences. Right. It's just, it's just such a really interesting time, but let's, let's, let's dive deep into the topic. So I, I, I've been hearing about this for a while.

And, and, you know, this, this buzz phrase, toxic masculinity has been going around and I didn't even want to bring it up. I'm like, it's, and honestly, I still think, I still think it's a very small percentage of people that are actually concerned about it or worked up about it. I really do. And it's interesting, particularly as much as, as much as we travel. In fact, I'm international right now. I was in another country just a couple of days ago. We were all in place. And so we get to have a much.

bigger global perspective. And I get to put a finger on the pulse, so to speak, in a lot of different countries and a lot of different climates and things that are going on. And I get to contrast that to see what's happening in the United States versus happening in other countries. And so it's not a global thing like people like to think it is. And in fact, when you go out and you just travel as much as we do, literally across country, all over the place, and we're talking, we're meeting with people every single day. I'm going out, I'm speaking at events and we're all over the place.

It's not the big deal like it's often made out to be. That's one of the things, news and media in the United States, from my observation, extremely dramatic, much more dramatic and stirring things up and stirring the animosity than it is in other places and other cultures. But it's so stirred up, you think it's this huge deal that everybody's dealing with. It's a major concern.

Rachel Denning (24:27.118)
And again, it's a tiny percentage, two, three, four, five percent of people that have any real concerns about it, but they take these buzzwords and you think that's all anybody ever talks about at all, ever.

I was just going to add to this, even the topic that I posted about, which can't, we got the much of the content from a book we read by a psychologist who's written multiple books on similar topics, who has worked in school districts and cities around the country has even, I know, been to Europe and Australia. You know, this is a guy who's.

done a ton of research. He has a lot of experience, a lot of background in these topics. And he's talking about these issues with boys and young men and why they're struggling and how society in general is making, you know, kind of pushing boys out, not allowing them to have some of these masculine traits like competition, that boys really thrive on competition and competition is being removed from a lot of schools. He calls it generic violence, which we can

You know, discuss a little bit later and how, you know, boys need that. And they, that's not allowed. They have a zero tolerance policy for violence in a lot of schools. So this is a thing that's happening and it's happening in a lot of cities. But even in the posts that I did on my real Instagram, I had a couple of people saying, you know, this isn't an issue that we deal with at all. I haven't seen this at all. One person was like, I'm in the country in Vermont and.

Like this is not an issue. And I'm like, yeah, I bet it's not. I said, but here even, you know, we're in our set outside of Atlanta and we've got an HOA telling our sons all kinds of things that they're not allowed to do because of the HOA regulations, you know? And so it's definitely affecting us in certain ways. So yeah, it's not something that's always.

Rachel Denning (26:33.87)
known to everyone or spread, you know, so the same with toxic masculinity or, or these types of ideas. It's not something that everyone comes in contact with or even knows about. Um, but it doesn't mean that it's not an issue or not a growing concern, perhaps might be even a better word that it is kind of a growing concern. Cause I do feel that a lot of these ideas and philosophies are growing. Unfortunately.

And I think they might be growing for a while until there's a reversal, which is, you know, that's historically accurate that there will be a reversal at some time, but it may not, we may not have reached the peak yet. Right. And there has to be some kind of societal shape. Yeah. Some big catalysts. Like we've, we talked about this in our previous podcast, but something around the fourth turning or the changing world order is going to mix this all up. And so.

So these kind of social problems and this division and separatism, it really fits in with societal cycles. And so it fits in that same thing, but it's interesting. I'm glad you brought up that thing about the HOA because it starts happening in the schools and it starts happening in businesses and it even gets down to the HOA and how things are regulated. And we're not allowing kids to do certain things and we're not allowing adults to do certain things.

Then socially you start, you know, Hey, well, no, no, no, all these social no -nos and social conditioning. And it really can have detrimental effects on all of us. So I want to, I want to bring some distinction to this idea. And I get it again, all you listeners, I just want you to think about it. Just think through this stuff. Like what is femininity? What is masculinity and study it, learn about it. Are they different? And I would argue that they're extremely different.

and both extremely valuable and important and that boys and girls are just different. And so they need to be raised differently. But even as much as this is so hard to interrupt you when we're not in the same room and you're on another country or another country. Sorry, I'm going to interrupt though. Even this idea, though, that saying that now is becoming something that's.

Rachel Denning (29:01.006)
A trigger for people to be like, what? Boys and girls are different and you should raise them differently. No, that's wrong. And I think so part of what we have to do here is like define this idea of what is toxic masculinity. And it's interesting because the comments that I received from people saying that I was so wrong in my understanding of what toxic masculinity is, because really it's this, they didn't agree. Some of them said, Oh, well, it has to do with the way men treated women that was toxic.

or dangerous or bad, right? And I'm like, okay, yeah, I can definitely see how that would fit into the definition. But some of them were like, well, it has to do with how men and boys weren't allowed to express their feelings or weren't allowed to be vulnerable or open. And I'm like, okay, I can see that too. But all of them were basically saying that what I had said in my post, which I'm going to share a little bit of it was, was inaccurate. And I'm like, well, no, because according to the way I define it and how

how it has progressed and what it has led to, this absolutely fits into it. You know, because I was talking about how there's been these changes in society, like we were just talking about in the schools, in the HOAs, where masculine traits are started to be viewed as toxic, right? Specifically things like, well, I already mentioned competition or generic violence, but even wrestling or taking risks, fighting, right?

fighting for what you believe in standing up for yourself. Like in some schools, you're not even allowed to stand up for yourself. Well, in his book, he even gave more ridiculous stories of things that have actually happened where, you know, a boy would leave, bring a little teeny toy gun to school and would get suspended or another boy chewed a pop tart into the shape of a gun and was pointing the gun at people and got suspended. Right. I mean, like truly ridiculous things, but.

These things are happening. Being a warrior, riding motorcycles, jumping off of stuff is discouraged by well -meaning adults. The result is boys and men who are emasculated and who have to find meaning and purpose in virtual worlds, AKA video games, since they're not allowed to act out who they are in real life. And the people are basically saying, no, that's not an accurate definition of toxic masculinity. And what I'm saying and.

Rachel Denning (31:25.262)
You know, I obviously didn't say it well enough was that this idea that masculinity is toxic is what's leading to things like zero tolerance for violence in schools and no competition in schools and no wrestling and no throwing snowballs and no roughhousing and no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do any of these things because they're dangerous and bad and violent and we don't put up with that.

That's what's leading to all of this, which is then causing our boys, and he goes into this in the book, causing our boys to feel like, well, what's the point? I can't do anything I want to do here. I might as well play video games because at least there I get to compete and I get to be violent. And we're going to talk about the violence part in a minute. And I get to do all of these things that I want to do. And this is the only place I can actually do that. Right. That to me,

I would arguably say is a direct downstream effect of this whole swing towards viewing masculinity as toxic or viewing certain traits as toxic. Does that make sense? Is that clear? Yeah. And it's, it's as though they are being driven into the virtual world because this world is, is being, they're being.

hold and either directly or indirectly that these things that they like to do or want to do or want to explore or figure out are bad or wrong. And again, they're just, they're being stifled. They're being stopped. And yeah, it's, it's, it's prioritizing feminine over, over the master. Right. Because in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, those are more of the feminine traits. The feminine trait is more.

And this is where, you know, people start to disagree about this nowadays, but, you know, I've done my research on this and I, plus I have experienced that the feminine is more nurturing. The feminine is more. Less likely to jump into violence. You know, the feminine is less. Well, here's the perfect example. Actually, when we started having a family, Greg and I, um, we had four children under the age of four. By the time our oldest was four, our fourth was born. We had four kids under the age of four.

Rachel Denning (33:52.718)
age of four and we had two girls and two boys. It was a girl, boy, boy, girl. And at the time, Greg and I were kind of, you know, leaning towards this hippie lifestyle. And we had this whole. Vision of nonviolence and we were going to raise our children to be equal. And we weren't going to have them, you know, if our boys wanted to play with dolls, that was okay. And if our girls wanted to play with trucks and whatever, that was okay. But we were not going to have weapons, no weapons, nothing, no swords, no guns.

nothing that was a weapon at all because we were going to raise them to be like nonviolent. And I remember as a young mom being shocked. Well, besides the fact that we homeschooled and well, I mean, our kids are small, but we were planning on homeschooling and we didn't let them watch any movies that were violent or scary at all. And I remember being shocked when my two boys would start walking around with.

Their fingers as guns or using sticks as sword and fighting and making machine gun noises and all. And I'm like, where did they learn this? Where did they pick this up? That I literally have not exposed them to anything where they would have gotten these ideas. And that's when I started to realize that boys and girls are different. They are not the same. You know, they were raised the same. We treated them the same. They did not behave the same and they.

Made weapons from whatever they had, even though they didn't have any available. And so this idea of, well, I guess I want to, you actually had something, but I do want to talk about, you know, explain this idea of generic violence and this, um, what we call, I don't know, the warrior instinct or whatever we call it. I want to talk about that. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The boys, the boys came out as warriors and, and actually our daughters, our daughters like.

I've taken all of our kids so far to martial arts classes from MMA stuff to jiu -jitsu, kickboxing, and most recently, Krav Maga. And we've taught our girls to fight and we've got them in there. And one of our daughters so far has the warrior instinct. She's a fighter, but man, my boys, they just were born with this desire and drive to protect and fight for things. And we need that in our world.

Rachel Denning (36:16.43)
Exactly. Well, and it's really interesting too, because that you bring that up, because actually, as I did this post and I actually, I was talking to my daughters about it, because I'm here with three of my girls. And when I was making the, um, the reel, my eight year old and my six year old were watching it. And they were like, well, mom, girls like to do those things too. And I'm like, yep, you are right. You guys, you girls like to do those things. And I'm like, exactly.

And I put a little piece in my post of like, yeah, girls like to do this stuff. They can do this stuff. But then later my 15 year old said something that was interesting. She said, well, yeah, girls do like to do that stuff. I like to do that stuff. She's like, the boys need to do that stuff. If they don't do that, it's like they don't become men. And I was like, wow, that's actually really insightful. It's true. She's like, she does it. She likes to do it, but she doesn't have the same need.

or drive to do it as our boys do. And so I thought that that was really fascinating that she said that. Yeah, that's a great insight, really great insight. And there is, and I think that's the distinction between the masculine and the feminine. There are different needs. And again, there's people out there arguing like, no, the only need is food and water and shelter so you don't die. I'm like, yeah, I get it. Again, they're going to the extremes of like,

It's not a need if you won't die without it. But in this instance, there are needs that you won't become your best self. You won't be fully developed without it. It's that kind of need. And we totally get, you guys, we don't want to be misunderstood here again, we realize there's a full range of masculinity. There's a scale of masculinity and femininity. We get it. And we realize we're generalizing here. But

we can generalize on these topics because in general, you know, masculine is a certain way and feminine is a certain way in general. And obviously there's some differences and some discrepancies, but we're going off some generalities here. And we need to point out that these are good things. The natural masculine traits are good things and the natural feminine traits are good things and they ought to be fostered and we shouldn't make anyone feel bad or discourage them or

Rachel Denning (38:37.677)
or tell them they should be more one way than the other. I guess that's what we're saying here, but there seems to be this growing sentiment that anything masculine is toxic. And I guess I want to drive that home right now with a little bit of intensity here. And maybe people will criticize my masculine intensity, but I want to drive it home with some intensity here that just because it's

masculine doesn't mean it's toxic. And I really want to distinguish that. And so anyone who's kind of out there jumping on the toxic masculinity bandwagon, like it's not the masculinity that's toxic. And if you see men behaving in toxic ways, that's not the masculinity. It's the man. The individual man. Yes. Individual person. And so if, if you have been around.

a man who was toxic, if you grew up around a man who was toxic, I'm sorry for you, but it was that man who was toxic. It's that guy, that individual. He was toxic. And maybe you're around a few of them or a lot of them, because it tends to go putrid and grow in groups. And maybe you grew up in an environment where it was that. And so the tendency might be to think like, oh, well, it's

It's masculine. That's what it is. And I want to say, no, it's not. It's not the masculine. If anything, it's, it's masculinity gone awry, gone wrong. It's gone. It's gotten corrupted. Which happens on the feminine side as well. Absolutely. I mean, have any of you, again, listen, or just think, have you ever been around a toxic woman? Sure. You've been around toxic men? Sure.

But is it the femininity or the masculinity that's toxic? And I want to argue that it's not. And if it, if it's, if it's gone too far or gone off course, it's, it's not femininity or masculinity in and of itself. It's the individual. Right. And the personality traits or it's more that it's, um, traits say in the big five personality scales that have gone off or too extreme that are causing.

Rachel Denning (41:00.653)
those toxicities, not the masculine or feminine itself. Exactly. And if you look at society and nature and psychology and all of it, you'll see some of it's literally psychosis. There's a small percentage of people that are, that they're dealing with psychosis. Like they're genuinely off, off the charts. It's a small percentage of people that with real problems or they're, they're being dominated by addictions.

or just wretched habits or total misconceptions from their own upbringing or terrible things they've been through. And so, yeah, you might see a lot of men and a lot of women. It goes both ways here in acting out in really toxic, unhealthy ways. And I think it's very foolish of us all to blame or target, in this case, masculinity as the thing that's being toxic. It's not the masculinity. And if we want to start

blaming it on that, then what literally what we're doing, and we have to see the big picture of this, literally what you're doing this, this whole idea, this movement, this kind of buzzword of toxic masculinity is the underlying, the underlying target is masculinity. And so if masculinity is being attacked, what's it saying then? What's the underlying message? What's the core message there? And ultimately it's that femininity is better.

And so feminine ways are better than masculine ways. And so men should not be masculine. The masculine is somehow bad. Yeah. And.

Go ahead, babe. Okay. Um, and I think really connected to this, especially the part you're just talking there about how, Oh, well, what the underlying message is perhaps femininity is better. Feminine traits are better. I think another thing that's happening, cause you, you touched on how sometimes this is just, you know, a small percentage of people who are psychotic or have some sort of psychosis or something is off that's causing them to be toxic individuals.

Rachel Denning (43:08.941)
I think the other part that plays into this, the little lot of people don't understand is simply this misunderstanding between how the sexes are different. It's the whole men are from Mars, women are from Venus thing, right? Once you understand, once you read that book and you understand it and you get it, you're suddenly able to understand the other sex and are like, Oh, wow. Amazing. Now I know how to get you.

Now I know how to talk to you. Now I know how to understand you. Now I know how to work with you. And I think a lot of people really don't get that. And so they view the masculine per se as completely different and off and weird and incomprehensible. And they think, wow, that's just toxic. You need to be more like me. You need to be more like my girlfriends. You need to be more like, you know, my mother.

When really that's not the answer. The answer is not that men need to be more like women. It's that men and women need to learn how to understand each other because they are different. And when you realize that, I remember when I first began realizing that, because I, I started out not really believing that for some reason, I don't know where I picked up these ideas, but I thought, yeah, men and women aren't that different. I'm not a typical woman. My husband's not a typical man. Like, you know, we're different. Those stereotypes.

They don't apply to us. But when I started to really understand that we really are different, it changed everything. And I would say it changed everything in our marriage or relationship. Not that it was bad before, but I think it really, we had a great relationship, but I think it deepened it even more when we finally had those understandings of, no, we are different. We see things differently. We process things differently. We view things differently. And we learned how to use those to our advantage.

And to make those strengths instead of weaknesses. And I think that a lot of that is what's happening with this whole, you know, toxic masculinity thing that instead of learning to understand each other and work together, we're just saying that right there, that's toxic because you should be more like this. And that just doesn't work. Exactly. It's, it's profoundly biological and physiological and even evolutionary or.

Rachel Denning (45:34.733)
Or however you want to view that, like it's, it's deeply ingrained. And when we start attacking it and, and making it the target, it's really based on a shallow understanding or even outright ignorance of those differences. Well, I thought it was so hard. Go ahead. This is so hard. I thought it was so fascinating in book, Boyz are adrift, how he talked about how that as a man, you were actually.

more closely related to a male chimpanzee than you are to your wife. Yeah. And that's, that was on a, like a biological level. Like if you're looking in your chromosome biology, your DNA, all of that. Yeah, exactly. And that your brain, sorry, you can look at them.

Go ahead. We do this so much better in person when we're interrupting each other like this. Cause then you can look at my face when I'm about to interrupt. Um, on the, even the brain, your brain operates more like the brain of a male chimpanzee than it does as a female human that you think more along those lines than, than I do. So that's, was extremely fascinating to me because.

It just proves to me that we are different and those differences are biological and they've been around for a long time. You know, this isn't some sort of societal conditioning. Right. It's way beyond just some kind of social conditioning or current trendy thing. It's, it's deeply biological and that needs to be understood. And like you were pointing out so well, once understood, it shifts the whole reality.

around, well, you should just be more like this, or this is the way things should be, or all humans should do this. It's like, no, like, no, that's it. Again, it's either very narrow and shallow understanding, or it's just outright ignorance. And so the, I would argue that the healthiest and best way is that men and boys ought to strive for a masculine ideal.

Rachel Denning (47:52.845)
them fortifying and developing masculine traits, the things that kind of come wired in us and built inside of us to develop those things in a good, healthy, strong way, not to make them wrong or make them bad. And even when they go awry in individuals or groups, when they when they go off, it's not the

It's not the tool that is the source of, you know, wrong there. It's, it's not the inherent masculinity that's wrong. It's just the application and it's the individual or group. So that's where things can get off. And when we try to attack that core element itself, we're missing, we're missing the mark in a big way. Well, it's like the whole idea of, you know, if you have a hammer or a saw,

You can use that for a lot of things. It doesn't mean that the hammer is wrong or bad or the saw is wrong or bad. You know, you can use it to build something. You could also use it to murder someone, you know, it's, it's how it's used. The determines its value, not that it's inherently good or bad. Um, which I think I want to, unless you have something else, I was going to dive into the generic violence and that kind of stuff.

Perfect. This is a great spot because I wanted to just emphasize and reemphasize again and again. My goal is to strive for an ideal masculinity. I want to be masculine in a great way so that I can contribute to society because a great society has a very strong masculine and a very strong feminine. We fit together beautifully.

It's wonderful. Exactly. We need that. And yes, the feminine balances me out and keeps me from going too far. And the masculine balances out the feminine keeps out from going too far in a rise. So it is this beautiful balance and we need both in their full strength and glory. And I mean that I mean, I use those words deliberately. There is strength and

Rachel Denning (50:19.501)
glory, wonder and awe in the feminine. And there is as well in the masculine. And we need both. And just because I think and act in a masculine way, it would be so ignorant of me to look at the feminine and be like, well, that's dumb and that's toxic because that's not how I think and that's not how I act and that's not how I'm wired. So you shouldn't be like that. That is just, just.

absurdly ignorant of me to think that way if I did. And it's the same way on the other side. That if there's full strength and wonder and glory in femininity to just blatantly target masculinity as the problem and to say they shouldn't be masculine is detrimental to society. Right. Which it makes me think of...

because some of the comments that I did receive again that were, couldn't quite agree on what toxic masculinity is. Um, in part, if you think about it from the men are from Mars, women are from Venus perspective, I think still come down to this idea of not understanding the other sex and wanting them to be more like specifically the feminine, right? Because if you're, you're.

If these definitions are, well, it's the way men treat women. Well, yeah, there's, there are definitely lines that are crossed in the way men treat women. But, and, and let's make that very clear. It is toxic. Right. It's not, it's not masculinity in and of itself. It's, it's those individuals, those knuckleheads that are treating women poorly. Yes. But I do, I guess what I want to point out is that I do also think there's probably a part where.

Women are just not understanding that a man is treating her in a certain way, not out of disrespect, but actually out of respect. And she's viewing it as toxic because of her own preconceived ideas. A perfect example of nowadays.

Rachel Denning (52:32.557)
wanting men to treat her like her girlfriends do or something like that, right? Why doesn't, why don't men treat me like other women do? Correct. Um, I think a perfect example nowadays it's becoming common is a man who will open a door for a woman and she thinks he's disrespecting her because what you think I can't open my own door, but a man is sincerely wanting to show respect towards the feminine, which has now become toxic, right?

It's viewed as toxic if the man wants to show respect for the woman in a gentlemanly like way. That's now viewed as a bad thing. And I think that's just completely a misunderstanding of how the masculine operates and how he wants to honor women as the feminine in this yin and yang sort of way. Not that he views her as less or as incapable.

But it's a sign of respect. It's a way that he shows respect. And if we saw that for what it was, then we wouldn't be offended by it and view it as a toxic thing. Exactly. And I, I always open the door and it has nothing to do with the other person. It has everything to do with me trying to be kind and gentlemanly. And it's, it's no way, shape or form like, Oh, I have to get this door for the weaker sex is nothing, whatever to do with that. And it's an act of respect.

Which people would say, well, you don't get the door for your your guy friends. You wouldn't do that for them. I do. I do.

Rachel Denning (54:05.133)
I do because I'm a gentleman. Yes. But I guess what's interesting and a lot of the guys I talked to, too, they're like, yeah, I open it for everyone. The person's coming behind me. I'll hold the door for him. And I do this all the time, everywhere I go. And I mean, literally thousands and thousands of people that I've held the door open through countless, literally. And maybe once or twice has someone said something. So again, this is a hot topic and people are talking about it. But the reality is it's going to happen so rare.

It far, far less than 1 % of all the doors I've held open for people, men and women. Yes. Okay. Generic violence. Cause people are going to be like, what is this? What are you talking about? And it comes directly from the book, boys adrift. And he talks about how, cause he says that there are two, well, the subtitle of his book is the five factors that are contributing to this growing epidemic of.

unmotivated boys and underachieving young men. Right. There's five factors. His first factor is school. The second one is video games. But in the chapter on school, he talks about two major contributing conditions that are leading to boys checking out of schools. And they are competition or a lack of it at school. And OK, maybe it's not.

Maybe this wasn't the other one, but it was tied in this idea of generic violence. And he explained it this way. He talked about how when he was a student in the seventies, he was asked to write a paper and he wrote a creative writing piece about a fictional scenario during, I'm pretty sure it was World War II with, oh wait, it wasn't World War II. It was.

something after the war and there was a man who was trying to escape from East Germany to West Germany across no man's land and got on a landmine and his leg blew off and he had to crawl across, you know, it was kind of, it was a graphic descriptive quote unquote violent story about a specific.

Rachel Denning (56:19.917)
scenario in a specific place related to the time period and what was going on in the world. He wrote that piece, the article, whatever the, he wrote, he wrote it and he won an award for creative writing. Like it was, he was awarded for writing this beautiful creative piece about this experience that he made up. Fast forward to, you know, within the last 10 years here.

There was a young boy, middle school or early high school who wrote a article about, again, creative writing about a scenario during World War II where soldiers were fighting and one of the soldiers shot the other soldier at point blank in the head. He described the violence and the gore and this kid was suspended from school.

because of a zero tolerance policy for violence.

And he, he made this point of, well, what has happened in the past 30 or 40 years? Why was I awarded, given an award for writing a piece that was very similar to the same one that this boy wrote, but he was expelled from school. And then he explains that this idea of generic violence and the way he defined defines generic violence is this idea of violence that is specifically related or connected to.

a time period, a event that's occurring, you know, like a war or something where it's actually it fits into what's going on. And it's generic in that it's not directed towards someone specific. He said specific violence or violence that we should be concerned about. Would it be something like which actually happened with one of the Columbine shooters? He wrote stories in his school about.

Rachel Denning (58:26.541)
A teenage boy who went in and killed shot up, you know, kids in the school. He did write something like that. And it's published in the book that they released about, you know, their writings. That's specific violence. And he's talked about in an effort to protect kids and keep them safe. We've eliminated all violence from school, but that's actually having a detrimental effect on boys who come out of the womb using their fingers as guns.

and who are interested in generic violence. They're interested in reading about, and again, this is generalized, it's not every boys like this, but they're more interested than a lot of girls in reading about and writing about generic violence. Violence related to wars or the gladiators or the Romans or the Vikings. They're interested in that type of stuff. And because we...

especially specifically the feminine views that as a negative thing, a bad thing, a scary thing. We're eliminating it from society and from school. And so boys don't have that as an outlet. And so what did they do? They go to Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto or some other video game where they get to act out this violence or express this violence in a different way. And so that's one of the things that

is contributing to our boys not being allowed to be boys and our men not being allowed to be men. And, and it's certainly something I think that is viewed as toxic masculinity, that boys or men would want to be violent or they would want to fight or they'd want to wrestle or they'd want to take classes or they want to go shooting or all of these things. It's viewed as being toxic, a bad thing. And yet, you know, our journey starting out as the parents who are going to raise nonviolent children and then soon re.

realizing that like they came that way. Um, we've instead learned to embrace it and to channel it. And you already mentioned, talked about how, you know, our kids have taken Krav Maga and martial arts and, and we've done shooting classes and we've done, um, weapons classes, you know, and our oldest son right now, he's 18 and he's actually a stunt actor. He does. He.

Rachel Denning (01:00:52.813)
is in movies doing all kinds of stunts and, you know, some of them are acting out violence. Now, of course, it's fake violence, but this is a thing that not all, but a lot of boys and men are interested in. But when we make society so, quote unquote, safe, that they can't express this part of themselves, we're just driving them to the virtual world. Really, that's what we're doing. And I, I,

truly believe that that is what is contributing to so many boys and men, grown men who are interested in just

involving themselves in these virtual worlds and video games because that's the place where they get to find an expression of these types of things. In fact, it was so interesting as I was reading ahead in chapter two about video games, he was talking about, he said, if General Patent was born today, he would probably become a video game addict because that is the only place where he would be allowed to use this.

drive or instinct that he has now, you know, a lot of us may be like, well, that's great. That's a good thing. You know, we don't need more general plan, whatever, whatever your view is on those things. The point is it has been men who have made most of the sacrifices in this world, including for the country we live in now to have the freedoms that we do to, to be able to be safe.

And to live in a society that's protected, it's mostly men on police forces and in the army and, you know, in the armed forces, all of these things. Men have this instinct. And if we view it as simply toxic.

Rachel Denning (01:02:46.253)
All of society is going to suffer.

Rachel Denning (01:02:50.765)
And we realized that it can be argued that it's also been mostly men who've been violent attackers and who've been the cause of such horrible atrocities on this planet and throughout history. Yes, we get that. And that has gone very, very wrong. And we get that. And so that that drive for violence has been misused, grossly misused and led to countless, innumerable, immeasurable sufferings.

We realize that and we are not, we're not advocating for violence, but we also are not naive enough to think that, that violence can and ought to just be done away, right? In an ideal world, okay, maybe, but we don't live in an ideal world. And I think what happens often is we are so naive about what's actually happening.

what's going on in dark and evil places that we have this luxury to sit there and think, we don't, we don't need violence. We don't, we don't need men who are violent. We don't need warriors. What are you talking about? And, and that's because you live in this protected sheltered bubble and you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And you, I know you can't, I don't know if you can talk about it. Maybe you can or cannot, but I, I do know.

I'm going to just say this much. I do know that you have firsthand knowledge of this type of darkness. We can say that much. And I'm going to be actively fighting it. Yes, fighting it is a good choice. I'm keenly aware of the things that are happening. The most

Evil atrocities that are being committed. And I have a moral obligation and responsibility to fight it. And I want my sons. Yeah. And the warrior drive. And I want my sons to fight it as well. And if my daughters want to be involved, fantastic. But I will fight it. And yes, it requires violence. And sometimes violence is the, I sincerely believe it should be the last resort.

Rachel Denning (01:05:15.885)
but sometimes it is the only answer. And I invite all of you listening and thinking like, well, no, it shouldn't be that way. And again, in a beautiful ideal world where there's none of that darkness and evil, fantastic, it's not needed. But in a world where it is needed, man, I want a huge army, so to speak.

of men and those women who want to be involved, who want to be warriors to fight evil, to be ready, active, willing, prepared, competent warriors to fight against bad people doing bad things. There is a time for this. And if we're trying to push it away and we're trying to hide it, we're trying to make it bad and make it wrong. I think we're doing.

society in the world of disservice. We just weaken ourselves and we weaken society. Ultimately. Yeah. That is what's happening. And I think we actually see that happening. I think we're literally seeing it happening now.

So for me and my house, we will be prepared. And my boys and I will be extremely masculine. And there's nothing toxic about that. Nothing at all toxic about that. And those behaviors that are toxic are those behaviors. And it's toxic behaviors that need to be the target, whether they're coming from a man or a woman.

It's the individual and the behavior that's toxic. Sometimes, sometimes not even the individual. It's the action. It's the behavior that's toxic. And let's put it there. Let's place the blame where the blame belongs. Not on masculinity, not on femininity, but on the behavior itself. And if an individual acts in a toxic way,

Rachel Denning (01:07:24.461)
Then let's address that toxic thing. And I agree. There's all kinds of toxic behaviors and men acting like animals and barbarians, and it's despicable. And I'm not excusing any of it at all. Well, this kind of comes full circle in a way, because when you were just talking about the darkness that's happening in the world that you know of firsthand, it is men perpetuating that.

darkness, usually more than women. So that is the dark side of it. But again, it's the toxic behaviors more than masculinity itself because it's masculinity that's also working to put an end to that toxicity. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. There's masculine drives that are inherent. And when it goes

toxic. It's a very destructive, horrible thing. But you're right. It's also that same masculine drive that's out there fighting back, that's putting a stop to it. The people who are protecting us and guarding us and fighting against evil so it just doesn't run rampant and just wreck our societies and our families, it's also that same masculine drive that's being put to good use. And I know that there's a lot of women out there.

too, who are contributing to this and, and, um, playing a part in this on both sides. Yes. But it would be, it is interesting in some ways that, and this isn't a hundred percent, but in some ways those women who are doing it are actually acting out more masculine traits, I would say. Not, you know what I'm saying? Like it's more of this drive to protect and to, um, be a warrior.

In essence, because I think ultimately the warrior archetype is more masculine. There's definitely women warriors for sure. But if you're looking at the yin and yang chaos and order, like in some ways I would view that as a masculine trait, which it's not wrong for women to have masculine traits, right? Just like it's not wrong for men to have feminine traits on that whole scale. You know, that there's scales of masculinity and femininity. All of us contain some of those.

Rachel Denning (01:09:51.245)
We all contain masculine and feminine traits.

Yep, and I'm just philosophizing.

Right. And I understand where people are coming from, where they might say, well, yeah, men, men are told not to cry and not to express their feelings and not to be vulnerable. And, and I guess I can see that, but yeah, I can see that. But that's not been my experience. And it's not, you know, all the men that I work with is the exact opposite. I never told anyone to do that. Not my boys are not all the men I get a coach and lead. And in fact, I.

I'm all about like the openness. I think you're very good at being vulnerable and, um, open with your feelings. In fact, I think you're really great at being able to just be there and sit with someone with their feelings and not try to push it away or change the subject or, you know, you allow people to feel their feelings and you feel their feelings too. Like you're very good. You're almost this empath where you can like feel those feelings that they're feeling.

And not, you know, have to get all masculine and be like, Oh, let's push that away. That's not, you know, we don't do that. You let them feel it. Right. Right. And I think, I think sometimes that comes up and, and my, my perception is that's just a lack of practice or underdeveloped emotional mastery. It's just some habits to pick up and not necessarily a masculine thing to avoid feeling those feelings or.

Rachel Denning (01:11:30.157)
Yeah. I guess you can argue. Well, yeah, you know, there's, there's all these guys that want to be macho tough. And so they're not allowed to cry or not allowed to be sensitive. And I don't see that. And so historically speaking, sorry, here I go again, another site historically speaking. Yeah. I think that's definitely been a thing that has been a thing and there has been a shift and that's good. That's good that there's been that shift, but I think that in making the shift we have to, and that's what we're doing here.

unpack the nuances and the nuances are, well, we made that shift because men had been trained by men to believe that when really, when we unpack it, we understand, well, yeah, men have these other, this other side of them as well. And it's okay to have that, but that also doesn't mean that the other masculine side of them is wrong. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

The goal is for men to be better men, not for men to be more like women. Yes. And the same for women. The goal is for women to be better women, not to be more like men. And when we, I think, again, I think it's an epic failure and a disservice to society and to individuals and families. If we keep trying to compare and compete and get them, keep trying to force each other to cross over. I think we honor, absolute honor.

the masculine, an absolute honor for the feminine and try to encourage full development and wholeness for both sides. And it makes, man, it makes for beautiful marriages and beautiful families and beautiful societies that are healthy and strong and powerful.

Rachel Denning (01:13:22.029)
Yeah, you guys, I was just, I was just in Honduras and on a humanitarian mission and worked with a team of both men and women and were able to go out and help these flood, these, these flood victims, families that had been completely displaced by these floods that came in with tropical storms. And it was awe inspiring.

to watch men and women bring their gifts and their strengths, both feminine and masculine, into this environment where we can help bring food and medical attention and ingenuity and creativity and love and compassion and service and just gritty hard work and a soft touch to bless these people's lives.

And it was just heart wrenching and so sad to see the living conditions. And then on the other side, so rewarding and so fulfilling and so exciting to bring some help in. And it all happened because we brought the full strength of the feminine and the masculine combined in a team of individuals.

from multiple countries to pull this off. It was incredible. So just last week I saw the full strength in a beautiful orchestration, a symphony of masculine and feminine strength and power doing good in the world. It was awesome. Genuinely awesome to participate in and to see. And I think that is an example of what's possible in life as we.

do these things together.

Rachel Denning (01:15:25.389)
Boom, love it. So, let's again, just reiterating here, just to think about this as you're listening, as you're thinking, as you're considering, as you hear these kind of these topics and people talking about it, just sit back and consider it, wrap your mind around it. What does it mean to you? What is a genuine healthy masculine look like? It can't be more feminine to make it a healthier masculine. It has to be masculine. This is...

It is, they're just different. If you're still kind of hung up on the differences, do some more research, just even in the biology and the physiology and the psychology, all of it, the distinctions are massive. And if we think we can just pile men and women in the same group and say that they're just just alike, and it's the conditioning, we're just grossly ignorant on that on that point. And so then really think through like, what is toxic? And it is it's not the masculine, it's not the feminine, it's specific behaviors.

gone wrong and let's make sure that we're placing the target in the right spot. That we're addressing the right issue. That we're not just jumping on the bandwagon of some activism, some chant, some movement where we're just shouting out and parroting things we've heard. Let's really dig in and see what the true issue is and how we can be a part of the solution and not just screaming back.

and joining part of the noise in the problem. Let's be a part of the solution.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Anything else, babe? Amen. Amen. Okay. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. As always, if you haven't, um, if you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe to the podcast and share this with, with friends and families, colleagues. I I'm sure it's come up, uh, with some of you, you heard it and seeing past as long, you know, where the topics come up and it's open for discussion. Again, we don't, this isn't an exhaustive.

Rachel Denning (01:17:22.829)
treat us on the subject, but it's a place to start thinking more and open up more dialogue and more conversation and more understanding. We're just trying to wrap our heads around all these issues that are part of life and a part of humanity. And so if you like this, I share it and raising, especially raising children and actually thanks, babe. I want to re -emphasize that your boys need different things than your girls.

Your boys are going to need some very particular things. Your daughters are going to need some very particular things. And again, we were short -sighted and doing them a disservice if we don't think so. And so we can lean into that. It's okay. It's good. And if they have those masculine or feminine traits, it's okay to strengthen those and direct them in the right direction, make them healthy and whole. It's a beautiful and wonderful thing. Okay. I love you guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here and caring. Thanks for being awesome.

Love you, reach out for it.