Breaking the Boy Code - We Don’t Exist： Boys and Patriarchy

00:00:00.000 This episode is dedicated to Cade, who lived from November 2012 to October 2018 and lives on in the hearts of those who loved him.

00:00:12.400 According, statistically speaking, we are supposed to have four times as many gay people as North Americans are supposed to have.

00:00:19.940 But it's not recognized.

00:00:23.540 Yeah, we don't have a legal recognition.

00:00:27.860 yeah that would be a perfect statement because even though we are not criminals right now just 0.88

00:00:33.320 by existing we don't have any laws protecting us from discrimination we don't have marriage equality

00:00:37.860 we don't have adoption rights like we don't exist we are not a category of people protected under

00:00:45.460 human rights

00:00:47.800 I'm Ash and I'm listening to Drake King The Boy Co

00:00:57.860 My name is Jonathan. Welcome to the podcast.

00:01:15.220 I just want to start with a trigger warning to let you know that

00:01:18.100 parts of this episode will include homophobia, child sexual abuse, and suicide attempts. So if

00:01:25.840 If any of those are things that, you know, that you're not comfortable with, you're not ready for, then maybe this is not the episode for you.

00:01:34.380 It is currently Pride Month, which I actually haven't looked into the history of, but it's a month to, you know, to celebrate gender and sexual diversity, to celebrate people's identities.

00:01:48.700 and at the same time that that kind of thing is happening,

00:01:52.680 I'm leaving some really amazing

00:01:54.480 and also really diverse programming with next-gen men.

00:01:58.700 Facilitating boys' programs with young people in Toronto

00:02:02.220 and in the greater Toronto area.

00:02:04.120 I think it's the most diverse city in the world.

00:02:07.720 And so with both of those things in my mind,

00:02:09.740 I'm pumping out this podcast episode

00:02:11.680 with a question of culture and sexuality

00:02:15.000 and what it looks like when those two identities are in conflict.

00:02:20.900 Knowing that everybody carries multiple identities with them,

00:02:24.300 I've been interested over the last several months to learn more about cultures that are not my own

00:02:30.140 and to learn about how that fits in with hegemonic masculinity, with gender and sexual diversity.

00:02:37.600 So I've connected with this young teenager named Ash.

00:02:42.320 and while we were talking

00:02:44.220 well honestly we started out by talking about

00:02:46.400 his experience finding a therapist

00:02:47.980 you know and

00:02:50.100 doing that without the support of his parents and discussing

00:02:52.460 what his relationship with this

00:02:53.940 therapist is really like

00:02:55.960 and in that

00:02:58.420 context he started talking about the fact that India

00:03:00.400 this was back in the winter and India

00:03:02.280 had just recently repealed section

00:03:04.340 377 from its criminal code

00:03:06.080 which is the part of the law that basically 0.77

00:03:08.220 said if you're gay 0.98

00:03:10.200 you're a criminal 1.00

00:03:10.860 So talking about what that, I guess you could say national discourse meant for him at school. 0.98

00:03:21.320 Then after I talked to him about like having to face indirect homophobia because I'm not out, because I was not out in my school at that time.

00:03:34.300 But it was still pretty stressful to hear, like, I don't deserve human rights every day in class because it's a hot topic.

00:03:42.060 The reason it was a hot topic, because 2018 was the year that Section 377, which is like an ancient law or a bill passed by the British administration on India to criminalize gay relationships.

00:04:00.880 that was imported to our legislature because we were under British control at that time.

00:04:06.920 And it never got erased when we formed our own constitution.

00:04:10.860 I don't know why, but apparently we just copy-pasted a lot of stuff.

00:04:15.700 And it was in effect till about 2009 when the High Court of India declared it to be unconstitutional

00:04:26.240 as it was denying the right to privacy somehow.

00:04:29.780 I didn't understand that. But in 2009, that bill was struck down. And from 2009 to 2013,

00:04:38.060 it was a good time to be gay in India because that bill didn't exist. But in 2013,

00:04:44.580 the Supreme Court of India ruled over the high court decision and said that this bill is back

00:04:50.820 in effect. And from 2013 to 2018, that bill was uncontested. But when a group of engineering

00:04:57.800 students put forth. I don't know what they did, but the case was reopened and it lasted for about

00:05:04.800 seven, eight months. And in September of 2018, the bill has been struck down indefinitely. It

00:05:11.380 won't come back. The irony is that this law was scrapped from British legislature in like the

00:05:19.760 70s and and it stuck to our legislature throughout the start of the 21st century and that's why it

00:05:28.900 was a hot topic at that time everybody was discussing whether or not I should deserve

00:05:34.180 human rights or not it was stressful to hear that so I discussed that with my therapist that was

00:05:38.600 my main focus of discussion that I cannot focus in school because everybody is just talking about

00:05:44.560 things that i'm associated with but they don't know i'm associated with so they talk about talk

00:05:51.040 about it negatively in third person and even though they're not talking directly to me

00:05:55.300 i feel i feel what they see uh so when it started like people in school just don't open up discussions

00:06:04.260 about gay rights especially in india i still don't have a non-street friend in india so yeah

00:06:10.480 that sucks uh so i was hoping to get some resources like gsa's those don't exist here

00:06:16.680 i thought they would but they don't uh but um what happened was uh it it made big news in about the

00:06:25.220 summer of uh 2018 and uh my teacher brought up the topic which which was unusual and kind of

00:06:33.560 unpleasant to me but um thankfully she was on the good side of things and when my teacher brought 1.00

00:06:38.880 of the topic like most of my class was homophobic like yeah it's safe to say most of my class was 0.96

00:06:45.660 homophobic uh so people started arguing like how you're going to reproduce and all that shit 0.98

00:06:51.000 like uh and what i felt was why the fuck do you care i'm sorry i'm not supposed to profane 0.98

00:06:58.900 um all right so what what went on in my mind was why do you care they're just people if they're 0.96

00:07:05.360 not looking to reproduce like ban single mothers ban infertile people why are you targeting this 0.70

00:07:10.720 group of people who are genetically coded to be this way and you're not allowing their legal 0.53

00:07:15.240 existence just because of an opinion like it was enraging to not be able to stand up for myself

00:07:22.120 that that's that's one of the things that aggravated me the most like because it would

00:07:28.140 be odd for a straight kid to stand up for gay rights and debate in a school debate it would

00:07:33.660 be odd people would definitely start suspect suspecting things so i had to stay quiet so i

00:07:40.460 had to keep it in even though i had like tons of things to say so that's how i felt because i i

00:07:47.700 cannot stand up for myself that's that's the thing that kills me the most even even in college now

00:07:53.200 it's even more common to see such discussions and and the thing is if you even take a slightly

00:08:00.960 um pro-gay stance in those debates people are definitely going to start questioning

00:08:06.740 and i cannot risk that but i cannot just stand and watch them spew homophobia so what what the

00:08:14.140 hell do i do yeah that that mentality is uh is known to be present all around the world you have 0.95

00:08:21.500 to be uh like gay to pro to to be pro-gay or you have to be trans to be pro-trans you can't you

00:08:29.520 You can't just be an ally.

00:08:31.740 Yeah, because even if that kid is not homophobic

00:08:36.420 and actually believes that that kid should not be bullied,

00:08:40.500 but his friends will stop him from doing it,

00:08:44.840 from standing up for him.

00:08:46.200 talking to ash is um is fascinating like as anytime i talk to him i am reminded of how much

00:09:07.120 i have to learn and so um and and and he also talks you know and he talks at his at his pace

00:09:13.000 And so some things to pin that we're going to be talking about in this episode are just that context of masculinity within India, talking about the cultural narratives and the religious, I guess you could say mythologies that inform that gender identity, talking about the history of colonization, and also talking about the relevance of peer culture in reflecting on masculinity and creating alternatives to dominant forms of masculinity.

00:09:37.900 But honestly, the main thing I learned, and I'll probably mention this again, is that I have a lot to learn.

00:09:45.360 So Ash lives in Mumbai, which is a city on the west coast of India.

00:09:49.400 But knowing that India is an extremely populous and extremely diverse country, I also reached out to Love, who's from the northwest part of India in a region called Punjab.

00:10:00.800 and so we will come back to Ash

00:10:03.920 he has got more to say

00:10:04.900 but I wanted to give an opportunity

00:10:06.080 to introduce you to Love

00:10:07.740 and to sort of hear about

00:10:10.300 what his contribution

00:10:11.120 to this exploration will be

00:10:13.800 so let me just start by introducing myself

00:10:17.400 I don't want to introduce my full name

00:10:19.900 because of my own safety as well

00:10:22.580 so my name is Love

00:10:25.040 and people do call me Love all the time

00:10:28.200 I come from India

00:10:30.460 from a state called Punjab.

00:10:34.460 And I think in Canada, there are many Punjabis here. 1.00

00:10:39.620 Toxic masculinity is what I would actually define the Punjab I lived in 1.00

00:10:45.700 because that's how I was actually becoming a victim of various injustices,

00:10:52.000 even in my own family.

00:10:54.200 I have been a rape victim.

00:10:56.340 I got raped for the first time when I was around six or seven years old by one of my neighbors.

00:11:04.300 And then terrible turns of events started happening.

00:11:07.440 And it turned out like I got raped more than 100 times by the age of 18.

00:11:13.060 There was so much subconscious hold of those people.

00:11:18.140 Their voices in my head were always controlling me.

00:11:22.120 So every time, even if they were around me, the only thing I had to do was submit.

00:11:26.520 If I didn't submit, they would put me into pain.

00:11:30.180 So that's kind of a devastating situation, which has actually molded me up to this point as well.

00:11:38.820 And my whole life has actually built up to this point.

00:11:42.760 And my past has actually been very critical to me because it made me strong enough by the age of 20

00:11:48.120 that I can actually have more wisdom than people who are, like, way older than me

00:11:54.360 and tolerate a lot of stuff as well.

00:11:58.260 Even presently in Canada, where I'm actually struggling to have that safety for my life,

00:12:07.480 where my family wants to kill me just because of my sexual orientation,

00:12:12.000 is kind of in one way or another related to my past as well

00:12:18.380 because they performed family-sanctioned corrective rape measures on me

00:12:24.540 to correct me from becoming typically feminine to more like a masculine guy.

00:12:31.520 So everything that happened in my past has led to this very moment

00:12:36.200 and will be leading it to whatever happens in my future as well.

00:12:41.240 To be honest, I started recording this podcast episode in the winter, and it's now June.

00:12:46.540 And part of the reason that this episode took a really long time to create was

00:12:49.360 like a sense of being, like a little bit being overwhelmed, you know, as a white guy in,

00:12:57.920 you know, right now in rural Ontario, like there's a lot to learn

00:13:00.960 and a lot to unpack. And so I'm going to do my best to pick up these different pieces and to

00:13:08.160 and to take a look at them.

00:13:09.140 And I'll do my best to roadmap that for you.

00:13:11.640 So we will come back to Love's story.

00:13:14.480 And I'll try to explain where we're going from there.

00:13:16.060 But to begin with, I wanted to,

00:13:17.700 this isn't the first thing he said,

00:13:18.980 but for me, it's a grounding part of our conversation

00:13:22.020 because it's got a sense of familiarity

00:13:23.640 of what is the cultural norm.

00:13:26.180 And he talks about intergenerational messages

00:13:28.140 about being a boy, a young man in his part of India

00:13:30.760 and what that looked like for him growing up.

00:13:34.160 We don't have any choice.

00:13:35.500 we really have to pretend to be that masculine who is responsible and who has to take care of

00:13:43.840 their family and get married at the right age as well so as boys also it's so tough so so tough

00:13:52.100 back home but the toxic masculinity of the elders it just it's just like a very weird circle

00:14:01.080 that culture actually just keeps on falling like dominoes it's like inherited like you know then

00:14:07.580 your son has to follow that same thing as well but at the same time it gives so much leniency

00:14:13.880 to the guys as well that yes you are being that person that we are talking about but we also give

00:14:20.360 you the right to these girls now to be less sensitive you cannot cry as a guy you cannot

00:14:29.600 be a girl. Don't behave like a girl. Don't cry because girls do that. That's not your job. Your 1.00

00:14:39.700 job is to be strong, to be there for your family, and don't cry if they are crying. Always hold

00:14:47.640 your tears. If you don't hold your tears, you won't succeed in your life. But yes, we also

00:14:56.520 give you the right to do the social injustice that you do to the women yeah you can crush them 0.87

00:15:04.160 anytime you want you can do that but don't cry and don't regret that you are a man so be a man

00:15:12.740 and men don't cry they don't care much that's the definition of men that i learned when i was

00:15:21.900 growing up as a kid because these are the actual words my principal from that common school said

00:15:28.460 that be a man men don't cry why do you walk like a girl men don't do that be strong don't have weak

00:15:41.820 moments your mother needs you so it was like so much responsibility like you know um i was like

00:15:51.800 was subjected to me, that I was so confused, even at the age of six, I was so confused

00:15:57.320 that how would I actually deal with it if I don't act like a man or like a boy, if that

00:16:05.160 makes sense.

00:16:06.340 Man, that was such a weird culture.

00:16:09.720 Even though this isn't the first thing, for me, this is a place to start.

00:16:15.380 What we sometimes call stereotypical masculinity, the norms of hegemonic masculinity, aren't

00:16:21.800 necessarily that different

00:16:23.540 in northwestern India

00:16:25.500 as they are in Toronto,

00:16:27.640 Ontario, Canada.

00:16:29.280 But one of the elements of hegemonic masculinity

00:16:31.420 as a gender theory, right,

00:16:33.240 as R.W. Connell's theory of masculinity 0.85

00:16:35.860 is that it's context-specific.

00:16:38.120 So it might not be

00:16:39.140 exactly the same if you think of, for example,

00:16:41.600 the streets of Baltimore in episode 3

00:16:43.460 compared to

00:16:45.000 an elite private school

00:16:47.940 in Toronto from episode 4.

00:16:50.320 There's

00:16:51.800 elements of context that inform hegemonic masculinity.

00:16:54.460 So while we have this familiar description of masculinity,

00:16:57.960 both Ash and Love have cultural and religious contexts

00:17:00.900 that influence them.

00:17:03.340 Because they grow up in communities

00:17:05.220 that have different perceptions of what masculinity means

00:17:07.520 in the context of sexual and gender hierarchy.

00:17:11.680 It's not at all.

00:17:12.720 Hindu mythology is one of the most queer-accepting mythologies 0.98

00:17:16.300 in all over the world.

00:17:18.000 Because our gods are gender-fluid.

00:17:20.380 Our gods are non-binary. Our gods are gender neutral. Some of our gods, like, we are diverse in terms of gender. But when it comes to non-straight relationships, all I could find was depictions and not texts, like not explicit texts.

00:17:38.300 if you just google um hindu homosexual carvings you'll find a lot and they're in temples as an

00:17:48.640 atheist but who who's been raised as a hindu uh i have a different perspective on all that stuff

00:17:54.080 because masculinity in hindu mythology is not violence it's it's not dominance it's it's

00:17:59.800 expression because um you you might have heard of the god gunpati i don't know if you have uh but

00:18:07.700 he's one of the most famous gods by the way hinduism is a polycystic religion we don't have

00:18:13.340 one god we have like millions of gods i'm not exaggerating on that number we literally have

00:18:18.100 millions of gods so uh one of the most famous gods uh is like uh they're like three it's a family

00:18:24.820 it's a husband a wife and a son and uh the son is is a hybrid of uh an elephant head

00:18:33.460 and a human torso.

00:18:38.160 So why he came to this family is the parents of this

00:18:43.620 are pretty conflicted with each other

00:18:46.040 because the father of Kanpati who is Shiva

00:18:49.900 is known to be the god of I would say destruction

00:18:54.920 but don't quote me on that

00:18:56.300 but he definitely regulates the universe

00:18:58.720 because he has the tools necessary to remove the evil by force.

00:19:05.600 And how that plays into masculinity is he's not entirely a male figure.

00:19:13.840 He's known to be half male.

00:19:17.160 I don't know if this is supposed to be biological,

00:19:20.560 but at least from a philosophical point,

00:19:22.740 it is pretty evidently stated that he's not entirely male.

00:19:27.640 and his masculinity is not his destructive side his masculinity lies in supporting his family

00:19:36.020 it lies in raising his son because his son was beheaded like he beheaded his own son when he

00:19:44.100 was in complete human form but he reattached it himself but he couldn't reattach the same human

00:19:49.760 head and he he took a took an elephant head i don't know why that's just how the story goes

00:19:54.920 but the masculinity is most evidently portrayed in this character's personality

00:20:06.080 and it's not what you would think it is, it's not his destructive side

00:20:10.760 and one another completely unrelated thing I'd like to add here is

00:20:16.660 one of the names of this god can be frankly translated to half man half woman

00:20:24.780 so yeah that's it masculinity from a hindu perspective is is not at all what you would

00:20:33.000 think it to be because uh from from various religious perspectives you would you think

00:20:38.500 masculinity is like oh be brave um be violent and take what you want by force but uh it's not

00:20:45.620 not at all like that from a hindu perspective but as an atheist and when you talk about indian

00:20:51.900 society Ganpati did a lot of Shiva's work peacefully for him because if Shiva

00:20:57.960 had a third eye on his forehead which is basically a cannon like that's the best

00:21:05.700 I can describe it was a weapon of destruction his third eye so the matters 0.90

00:21:10.800 that he would tend to were mostly sorted with violence but Ganpati did most of

00:21:17.760 his work after reconciliation with his son so he did his work peacefully and he's known to be the

00:21:25.120 god not of peace but he's known to be the god of starting things we praise that god at the start of

00:21:32.040 every ceremony like whenever you're there's a whenever there's a festival celebrating any god

00:21:40.340 you praise ganpati first and then you praise the primary god of that festival is just how it goes

00:21:46.040 shiva is supposed to like is he's supposed to embody blind love like i wouldn't say blind love

00:21:54.480 but uh love that is so intense that he that it surpasses your morality and your logic because

00:22:02.040 shiva uh gave many divine blessings to many bad people just because he was pleased with their

00:22:09.220 hard works and he's known to be the god who can get fooled easily because he is so loving that

00:22:19.000 he cannot perceive logic and that's why he tends to resolve his matters not with his brain but

00:22:27.200 with his heart so he's impulsive. Ash identifies as atheist but you can hear familiarity with the

00:22:34.280 stories, and you can imagine how significantly his community has been shaped by Hindu faith.

00:22:41.320 So after our conversation, I did some research on masculinity within Hinduism,

00:22:45.260 and one of the things I came across was an article about Uttar Pradesh,

00:22:49.060 which is a community in northern India that's super rural compared to Mumbai.

00:22:53.400 And so it's not directly relevant, but the reason it stood out to me was because

00:22:56.440 it mentioned Shiva. And well, I'll tell you the quote. The quote was,

00:22:59.780 a six-pack Shiva marshals his tritial like a laser gun,

00:23:03.020 talking about how images of Hinduism are being, 0.90

00:23:06.380 I don't know if I'd say co-opted,

00:23:09.080 but updated and maintained for a new era of globalized

00:23:13.380 gender identity and socioeconomic context,

00:23:19.420 if that kind of makes sense.

00:23:20.480 So there's this new image of Shiva with a six-pack, okay?

00:23:23.440 And the story, I had heard of Shiva before I talked to Ash,

00:23:26.500 But the first stories I had heard of Shiva were really from Ash.

00:23:30.040 And his stories of, you know, a father and blind love and this relationship with his son, like for me, did not connotate an imagination with this guy with the six pack, you know, and a weapon. 0.67

00:23:47.300 So that's where I became intrigued by masculine Hinduism.

00:23:50.860 And I came across this researcher named Shikatha Banerjee, who has researched this kind of thing.

00:23:56.780 And so she wrote an article about masculine Hinduism, saying that it emerged from India's experience of British imperialism.

00:24:04.860 And this is a quote from her. She said,

00:24:06.340 it's characterized by martial prowess, muscular strength, moral fortitude, and a readiness to go

00:24:11.360 to battle. Embodied in the images of the Hindu soldier and the warrior monk, masculine Hinduism

00:24:16.480 is rooted in a rigid us versus them view of the nation that becomes implicated in violence and 0.87

00:24:21.960 intolerance. And later on in that article, you know, in that article about Uttar Pradesh goes

00:24:30.540 on about is actually got Islamophobia as part of that identity. So I have not, you know, studied

00:24:41.720 much about Hinduism, and in particular, not much about how Hinduism was affected by colonization,

00:24:47.020 you know, or colonial rule from the British. But I have read a little bit about muscular

00:24:51.960 Christianity, which had a lot of the same values, that commitment to physicality and manliness and

00:24:59.660 fortitude, a readiness to be in an adversarial position against somebody else, that kind of

00:25:07.060 militant response to other groups of people, and also that lasting impact on how we still view

00:25:13.580 masculinity in this context in North America today. Muscular Christianity emerged in the

00:25:19.700 mid-19th century. And what else was going on in the mid-19th century? British colonization of

00:25:29.360 India. Which is part of what makes this kind of difficult to untangle, is that we're not just

00:25:36.540 talking about one historical narrative. We're talking about the plurality of India combined

00:25:44.560 with the complex oppression of an entire empire, right? With all the cooperation, confluence,

00:25:51.700 and resistance that goes along with something like that. It's a lot to hold on to,

00:25:58.480 But it's super important. So I found another article from the same researcher, Banerjee, who talks about masculinity and colonization, this time specifically in Bengal, which, if I'm not mistaken, was a really important site of resistance to the British.

00:26:11.440 She wrote, hegemonic masculinity has had a complex existence within the British Empire.

00:26:19.600 On the one hand, imperialism configured its ideas of hegemonic masculinities by defining itself against a supposedly effeminate colonial other.

00:26:28.940 And on the other hand, the colonized subject created a masculine cultural space that resisted this feminization.

00:26:34.180 with colonizer and colonized locked in struggle not surprisingly various nationalist responses

00:26:40.800 occurred in incorporating the values of hegemonic masculinity however this incorporation did not

00:26:46.120 merely duplicate british ideas but was itself an imaginative configuration of nationalist myths and

00:26:51.920 icons based on traditional cultural ideas aimed at challenging alien colonial rule it's kind of a

00:26:58.800 lot to hold on to so as i was writing this i was like i wonder if banerjee ever you know spoke about

00:27:03.840 this in a way that's a little more clear than an academic article. So I did find it a clip from

00:27:08.340 the University of Victoria on YouTube. And in it, she talks about nationalism and masculinity

00:27:13.260 and history in a way that I think will flesh it out a little more.

00:27:17.240 I developed a concept I called muscular nationalism. And by muscular nationalism,

00:27:22.960 I mean the idea that the nation is seen as this masculine entity, strong and muscular and warrior

00:27:33.160 like. One of the things that's very important in India, especially contemporary India, is to be a

00:27:39.700 very muscular nation, right? And one of the reasons that it's very important for India to be a

00:27:44.680 muscular nation is under 400 years of British occupation, India became independent in 1947.

00:27:51.040 One of the reasons that the British justified their presence was by saying, we are masculine,

00:27:58.300 We are rational, we are strong, we are powerful, and even Indian men were effeminized. 0.90

00:28:05.640 You are weak, you are powerless, and that's why we ruled you for so long. 0.64

00:28:10.640 So one of the strong elements in post-modern Indian nationalism is muscular nationalism, 0.99

00:28:16.000 to prove that Indians are indeed powerful and muscular and strong.

00:28:20.820 So we have this historical connection between nationalism and masculinity.

00:28:24.680 And if you look farther west in Punjab, where love grew up, there's a similar history.

00:28:33.000 In this context, we're talking about a different part of India, and we're talking about a different religion.

00:28:38.100 But I found this quote from Akriti Kohli, who said,

00:28:42.280 The formation of Sikh martial masculinity rooted in religious tradition was institutionalized into a particular form of militarized masculinity in the colonial period, in Punjab.

00:28:52.720 It might not be wrong to suggest that the dominant understanding of Sikh masculinity seems to be trapped within a martial Kasa identity.

00:28:59.900 However, it can also be traced to a very complicated relationship with the British in the colonial period.

00:29:06.920 And you can really hear this in Love's description of Punjab culture as well.

00:29:12.840 Religion never helped me, to be honest.

00:29:15.520 I never delved deeper into it as well, just because I was getting other people's perspectives.

00:29:20.180 but faith in myself did

00:29:22.820 faith in the fact that there's a higher power

00:29:25.240 and there are creations around us

00:29:27.540 of his

00:29:28.560 that's what I need to believe in

00:29:30.540 and the only thing I can do is

00:29:33.300 stand for my own rights

00:29:34.780 and for others too

00:29:36.420 by having faith in myself

00:29:38.380 and in them too

00:29:39.500 so that's my definition of Sikhism

00:29:42.420 I cannot talk about religion

00:29:45.100 or Sikhism in general at all 1.00

00:29:47.020 like in particular I saw

00:29:49.240 because I've never been a representative like that

00:29:52.940 and never tried pondering to know more about it.

00:29:57.240 But I can always actually put my perspective

00:29:59.520 of what I believe is my religion is. 0.59

00:30:03.640 You want to call it Sikhism, then why not?

00:30:05.840 Go for it.

00:30:07.680 Sikh people are also called warriors.

00:30:10.840 But these days, they believe that being a warrior

00:30:14.460 means you really have to be that masculine yourself.

00:30:17.280 like you know that's how the toxic masculinity has actually like arisen in India especially in

00:30:24.660 Punjab as well honor killings are so common like you know they no one wants a daughter there even

00:30:31.100 if you get something it's like a very weird scenario there if you have a son people would

00:30:37.140 actually celebrate it if you have a daughter no one would even talk about it literally so it's

00:30:42.260 like for the first 10-15 days they would mourn the loss like why didn't they have a son and that's

00:30:47.200 like an everyday scenario I faced back home. I used to actually experience this kind of

00:30:53.320 situation where people were mourning the loss of not having a son. There was not a single

00:30:58.580 person who didn't do that, at least around me. So yeah, the concept of toxic masculinity

00:31:06.320 also came through the idea that men are the one who should be earning bread. Men are the

00:31:13.960 one who should be strong-looking, masculine, big muscles, big beard, big mustache, heavy

00:31:24.240 voices, and they are allowed to do anything they want to. 1.00

00:31:29.700 So if you are a wife, you should stay at home. 0.99

00:31:32.420 Even if your man sleeps with someone else, it's okay. 0.99

00:31:35.100 As long as you are taking care of the kids, that's your important role there.

00:31:39.600 so um that's how like that's my um perspective because that's what i learned when i was growing 0.98

00:31:47.820 up everyone wanted to be that strong masculine guy who's actually fucking girls around all the 0.92

00:31:54.760 time and that used to happen so frequently there that for instance you have a girlfriend now like 0.99

00:32:05.600 just imagine if I'm a Punjabi boy

00:32:07.800 and I have a girlfriend

00:32:09.740 I would actually ruin her name 1.00

00:32:12.460 by discussing about what private things I did with her

00:32:15.640 with my friends in open

00:32:18.020 to a point that they will actually ask me

00:32:22.580 so that they can actually spend a night with my girlfriend

00:32:26.220 so that was kind of a situation there as well 0.88

00:32:29.660 and homosexual behaviour in a way

00:32:34.640 who was also part of the community there

00:32:37.080 if 1.00

00:32:38.620 they are fucking you 1.00

00:32:40.600 then they are the man 1.00

00:32:42.680 so you are the girl 1.00

00:32:45.760 and you are the abomination there 0.93

00:32:47.480 but if you are doing it

00:32:50.980 then you are the man

00:32:52.000 and they are the abomination

00:32:54.220 people would do it

00:32:56.240 people would enjoy it

00:32:57.320 that's exactly what happened to me as well

00:33:01.400 they used to do that to me

00:33:04.100 and then tell it to their friends

00:33:07.340 and their friends would want to spend a night with me.

00:33:12.280 Literally.

00:33:13.760 And once I actually grew up

00:33:15.320 and I thought that probably this is just happening to me,

00:33:18.120 I used to go to the salon. 0.93

00:33:20.560 Guys were so disgusting there. 0.97

00:33:23.360 They used to do the same thing but to girls. 0.98

00:33:27.160 The same thing that was happening with me

00:33:28.760 was happening to other girls as well.

00:33:31.680 No wonder that after 7 p.m.

00:33:34.100 there were not girls roaming on the street even the guys assumed so much on so much of their right

00:33:40.860 on the girls that even if she was walking in a school dress in which she's like wearing a loose 0.97

00:33:47.060 shirt and loose skirt as well and you can barely see any curvature of her body they would still 1.00

00:33:53.080 assume the right that that's their like that's their property the girl is their property

00:33:58.340 so it became so difficult even for me as a feminine guy to stay in that town as well

00:34:05.660 so the same toxic masculinity that I am representing here like or I'm actually 0.73

00:34:10.780 putting it out there is the same thing that exactly happens to the girls in my own hometown

00:34:18.080 as well or in the state of Punjab and the root of it comes from the very fact that

00:34:24.780 guys are supposed to be the breadwinners 0.89

00:34:27.140 the ladies are only the reproductive 1.00

00:34:29.260 factory, they are only supposed to produce 1.00

00:34:31.080 babies, and that's it 0.98

00:34:32.660 there's a direct 0.97

00:34:34.700 connection

00:34:35.940 between Lev's experience of Sikhism

00:34:39.040 Punjab culture

00:34:40.420 gender-based violence and the

00:34:42.740 sexual abuse that he faced throughout his

00:34:45.160 childhood

00:34:45.540 so we're not

00:34:49.180 talking about hypothetical

00:34:50.900 consequences of gender hierarchies

00:34:53.100 you know, or

00:34:54.460 isolated tenets of history. This is a long story of power and violence that we are getting one

00:35:02.200 glimpse of, you know, through this chapter of his life. So I want you to hold that. And in the other

00:35:11.740 hand, hold the fact that Ash said, in his perspective, Shiva's masculinity is not Shiva's

00:35:19.200 destructive side, that his masculine identity lies in supporting his family and raising his son.

00:35:26.740 There was a lot of love in the stories that he told me about Shiva. And I was like, man,

00:35:30.720 I want to check this, right? So I messaged him while writing this podcast. And he said, yeah,

00:35:34.160 Shiva's character and personality, this is just in a teenager's understanding, but he said,

00:35:38.240 Shiva's character and personality are not centered on his rage or destruction.

00:35:41.880 He's sometimes destructive, but it's with good intentions. His masculinity is defined by his

00:35:46.540 honor, his care for his family in the world, and most importantly, his nobility. Which is to say

00:35:54.700 that when I was talking to Ash about this, it's like traditional cultural values and more progressive

00:36:00.620 gender relations are not mutually exclusive. It's a complicated thing to figure out, but it's an

00:36:06.360 important distinction to be made because we don't just set aside culture, right? And we don't set

00:36:13.140 aside those stories that have influenced who we are as people for so long, but we have got to be

00:36:18.900 vigilant. Like there's news going on right now about people trying to organize a quote, straight

00:36:24.760 pride event in Boston, like claiming to, um, to want to celebrate heterosexuality. Like this is

00:36:32.360 news from this morning, like it's going on right now. And part of the story is that the organizers

00:36:36.880 of this potential event have a history of violent events

00:36:42.800 with the active participation of hate group members,

00:36:46.780 self-declared fascists, and active white nationalists. 0.90

00:36:51.820 So it's like, okay, so you're celebrating heterosexuality, 0.83

00:36:54.660 but there's this intersection, right, of culture and sexuality.

00:37:00.820 And they just, I think the news this morning was that

00:37:04.460 They chose an alt-right leader, Milo Yiannopoulos, as the marshal. 0.99

00:37:07.260 And he's gay. 0.99

00:37:07.880 So if you're celebrating straight pride and you have a gay marshal, 0.99

00:37:11.920 the common thread isn't sexuality, it's white supremacy.

00:37:17.440 So with these connections between the British Empire historically

00:37:20.340 and between the present-day North American context in my mind,

00:37:23.980 I asked Lav to compare, because he's immigrated, right?

00:37:28.420 And so to compare India to Canada.

00:37:31.080 yes there are some faults here as well but at least there's some endeavor in rectifying it

00:37:39.380 one of the factors just look at the two countries in itself you know i know

00:37:45.500 like if you live in canada you would know how flawed it is if you live in any country you

00:37:50.800 would know how flawed that country it is the only thing is here even if a woman gets subjected to it

00:37:57.740 there's so much support

00:38:00.220 that you don't make her feel like a victim

00:38:02.400 I wear makeup

00:38:04.200 explicitly on my face

00:38:05.440 right now in Canada

00:38:06.940 and still I actually have the opportunity

00:38:10.300 to do anything I want to

00:38:11.580 if I want to become a doctor and still wear makeup later on

00:38:14.520 I can do that

00:38:15.500 let me go back home and try doing the same thing

00:38:18.760 that acceptance would not be there

00:38:22.360 because you

00:38:24.300 cannot actually

00:38:26.540 question the cultural norms

00:38:28.700 you do it 0.96

00:38:29.840 you are an abomination

00:38:31.420 and society won't 1.00

00:38:34.640 give you any place

00:38:35.380 I do face a lot of

00:38:38.480 injustice here as well

00:38:39.640 but I always have support here

00:38:42.320 I did face a lot of

00:38:44.420 injustice back home but I

00:38:46.360 never had support from anyone

00:38:47.820 not even from my own mother

00:38:49.360 I think

00:38:51.900 if that clears the

00:38:54.380 difference then I think that's

00:38:56.420 one reason that Canada is more of a home to me than India ever was. 0.98

00:39:02.880 Pretty much what it amounts to in my mind is, yeah, there are problems, but don't ever

00:39:10.520 forget how privileged you are.

00:39:15.140 Which is a sobering thought.

00:39:17.560 It's 2019. 1.00

00:39:19.640 It's been less than a year since homosexuality was decriminalized in India, but it is still

00:39:24.060 illegal in over 70 countries.

00:39:27.240 This week, C.J. Duran, if you remember from episode one, his mom was on the first podcast episode.

00:39:34.060 He's been Grand Marshal of Orange County Pride, and he's currently one of the centerpieces of Sephora's new campaign supporting transgender and non-binary individuals.

00:39:42.120 It's the same week that two lesbian women were just attacked by a man in the United Kingdom for refusing to kiss in front of him when he told them to.

00:39:50.040 so what i want to spend the last bit of time talking about and maybe this is what i usually

00:39:56.120 end up talking about is changing culture it's an important thread to be carrying because knowing

00:40:03.640 this history knowing the current violent beliefs and actions that continue to affect vulnerable

00:40:08.580 members of our communities like we've got to talk about how do we shift towards more equitable

00:40:14.200 understandings of gender. Love and I were talking about the experiences of newcomers to Canada and

00:40:21.120 what influences their balance between Canadian culture and the cultures to which they belonged

00:40:25.460 and continue to belong. What's really interesting to me as you listen to this quote is that what he

00:40:31.740 says is relevant to boys. If you think of boys as a separate culture, which depending on where

00:40:39.140 you're coming from might be super weird to think about, but if you just think about boys as a group,

00:40:44.200 For me, it adds a lot to this quotation, and I don't want to take away from what he's saying about the experience of immigration, but if you think of it with sort of two lenses, for me it becomes a really impactful reflection of the ways that boys, and especially adolescent boys, isolate themselves or isolate their group culture from discourses of feminism and influence each other.

00:41:12.440 incorporating the culture is another problem here you would see like i think it's common for every

00:41:23.120 um like every student from every country you would see a vast majority of indian students

00:41:30.040 just hanging with indian students always all the time i have met more than 90 percentage of people

00:41:39.960 who barely get exposed to the white culture here

00:41:43.900 or to any other culture in general.

00:41:47.680 Even if they make friends,

00:41:49.800 it's more like work friends, hi, hello, friends.

00:41:53.340 That's it.

00:41:54.420 But everything around them is totally monotonous

00:41:59.120 and it's their own culture that is governing them nevertheless. 0.99

00:42:05.340 That's one reason that even if people come from back,

00:42:09.080 like for many of the countries and come to these places as well they're not able to incorporate

00:42:16.200 that the culture here is also what they really need to have and imbibe inside them as well

00:42:24.500 because they have to live two lives in a way trying to incorporate Canadian culture but never

00:42:32.840 getting that proper place there and then going back home making sure that yes you did incorporate

00:42:40.080 some culture and then you have to live with that as well even if you don't want to so it just may

00:42:46.680 it just pressurizes you so much staying in canada is a problem going back home is a problem

00:42:53.740 just like as long as you're actually worrying about the very fact that what society will think

00:42:59.420 you never will be able to live your life

00:43:02.940 this kind of gets at

00:43:05.560 one of the things that I thought about right away

00:43:07.440 when I heard Ash's story

00:43:08.680 because he talks right at the start

00:43:10.900 he talks about in school

00:43:12.400 he cannot defend himself

00:43:14.240 or challenge norms of

00:43:16.920 what you could say are gender based violence

00:43:19.280 because that would mean outing himself

00:43:21.660 you can't stand up

00:43:23.420 or you're a target 0.73

00:43:24.480 and in his culture 0.96

00:43:27.300 you can't be gay

00:43:28.360 here's the thing 0.86

00:43:30.840 Ash could have said the exact same thing

00:43:34.360 in one of my programs with Next Gen Men in Toronto

00:43:37.300 Ontario, Canada, instead of Mumbai

00:43:39.900 and they would have all nodded their heads 0.97

00:43:42.480 every single boy knows that you can't be gay

00:43:46.560 and you can't challenge violent norms of masculinity

00:43:50.860 whether they're misogynistic actions

00:43:53.020 sexist language, homophobic slurs, whatever it is

00:43:56.520 because if you do, that will call your sexuality

00:43:59.620 and your validity as a boy into question.

00:44:03.160 It's a mirrored culture.

00:44:06.500 And while there's no doubt that we are privileged in Canada,

00:44:09.680 that mirror allows us to think about our own culture in a different way.

00:44:15.540 I hope you're staying with this because it's been a journey, right,

00:44:19.080 from the history of the British Empire in India

00:44:21.920 to be talking about kids talking in the GTA.

00:44:24.600 but I'll keep trying to draw these connections

00:44:27.680 and the next way to do that is with an organization called

00:44:29.780 Promundo, which I might have mentioned before

00:44:31.540 they're a global leader in

00:44:33.720 promoting gender justice and preventing violence by

00:44:35.720 engaging boys and men

00:44:36.840 and they've published a lot of stuff

00:44:39.800 and one of the ones that's relevant to this is

00:44:41.540 called Challenging and Changing Gender Attitudes

00:44:43.880 Among Young Men in Mumbai, India

00:44:46.200 and they talk about

00:44:51.640 baseline understandings of what boys

00:44:53.640 how boys conceptualize themselves, how boys conceptualize their relations to girls and women.

00:45:00.020 And then they spent some time talking about an intervention that they designed and facilitated

00:45:04.260 with teenagers and young men. And I think this is a quote. They said,

00:45:09.140 the intervention attempted to spur critical thinking about gender norms that promote risky

00:45:12.940 behavior and to create support for gender norms that promote caring and communication.

00:45:17.400 Tapping into alternative voices and images of young men.

00:45:20.520 yeah this okay so this is like a pair i'm not exactly quoting them but i'm like pulling from

00:45:26.560 the article so they defined a gender equitable man as one who supports relationships based on

00:45:31.540 respect equality and intimacy rather than sexual conquest which if you think of what love said like

00:45:38.200 that's a seriously different definition of manhood and a couple more definitions a man who seeks to

00:45:46.060 be involved as a partner and a father who shares responsibility for reproductive health and does

00:45:51.020 not practice violence and opposes homophobia. Okay, so there's like sort of well-rounded identity of

00:45:57.400 a gender equitable man, and they facilitated different activities and discussions about this

00:46:02.880 and about gender hierarchy. And this is a bit of a jump, but I want to now mention

00:46:07.780 an article that I read recently by Amanda Ketty, in which she describes research on the importance

00:46:13.200 of boys' peers on their constructions of masculinity. So I'll come back to the Promundo

00:46:19.060 thing, but I mean, I'll read it and then you'll be like, okay, I get where this is headed.

00:46:24.000 She says, boys' self-categorizations and their potent desire for self-legitimation

00:46:28.140 and belonging are pivotal in the construction of their sense of masculine identity.

00:46:33.580 Hickey and Fitzclarence talk of the need for education to recognize the centrality of affinity

00:46:37.780 groups or friendship groups in shaping essentialist peer masculinities. They urge educators

00:46:43.180 to rethink their pedagogies to engage with rather than in opposition to the stories of young males

00:46:49.980 from within their peer cultures, right? So she's talking about how boys construct themselves based

00:46:54.900 on the boys around them. It's really not rocket science, but it has a huge amount of potential

00:46:59.240 for educators. And she goes on to say, quote, it is within the peer context that educators can

00:47:04.740 meaningfully help facilitate the development of personal resources that young males can draw on

00:47:08.920 to position themselves in ways that explore alternatives to dominance. As Brown asserts,

00:47:14.320 because such unacceptable behaviors are learned in groups, or at the very least maintained and

00:47:20.140 refined in groups, it is important that they are unlearned in groups. And this, to go back to

00:47:28.320 Pramendo, matches what they found in that intervention in Mumbai, India. Boys responded,

00:47:33.440 there was a whole bunch of responses like this, but I'll just read one quote. Boys said,

00:47:36.720 the interactions with boys in the group stunned me initially. I was all the while thinking that

00:47:41.580 only I thought like this about women and other men. There are many who think like me, but we

00:47:47.240 never get a chance to talk and share. So there's this huge potential of boys working together

00:47:52.980 to change what they've been told. And I've seen this myself in the work that I do with Next Gen

00:47:59.060 Men. Like I was just saying to Chris from Chasing Squirrels podcast this morning, that when we do

00:48:03.740 program evaluation with Next Gen Men, what the boys often say, this isn't all the time, but what

00:48:08.180 often they say they value most about the program is not the free time and it's not even the really

00:48:13.540 carefully designed activities. What they really value is the relationships they're able to have

00:48:19.060 with each other, with vulnerability and honesty and closeness and those kinds of relationships that

00:48:24.860 they don't get to have, you know, in other places in their lives. It's kind of like what Clementine

00:48:31.080 Ford said in episode four, right? And if you remember this, like suggesting that we start

00:48:35.520 encouraging boys to embrace healthy, intimate relationships with each other

00:48:39.420 and to help them set aside the fear that the authenticity of their manhood may be challenged.

00:48:47.580 I know I've taken this in a bit of a different direction compared to what Lava was talking

00:48:51.740 about. But for me, I guess as I say this, like I'm pretty biased, right? Because this is what I do.

00:48:57.920 But for me, like working with boys within groups where they can explore together and be vulnerable together and to create new visions of manhood together, like that's got huge potential.

00:49:11.680 But as with everything, this is easier said than done.

00:49:17.100 And as Ash points out, like easier said than done for sure with adolescent boys, because at that moment of your adolescence, friendships are fraught.

00:49:27.920 I'm not really sure if that's the right word, but it's like anything.

00:49:31.120 When you're challenging culture, you risk something.

00:49:35.660 Another thing that I'd like to just tell you, you can include this if you want, but friendships, I don't know how it's like everywhere else.

00:49:48.160 But over here, you cannot have a purely platonic friendship with a girl if you're a boy.

00:49:55.040 because they are going to romanticize the heck out of it like if you're a guy you can only be

00:50:01.020 friends with guys if you're friends with girls people are going to pressure you into like dating

00:50:06.840 each other and and it's it's so unfair because i see girls being so close as friends like physically

00:50:13.780 affectionate cuddling each other and not getting the slightest suspicion of being in a relationship

00:50:19.220 but but the second a guy and a girl even hold hands and like it things go crazy

00:50:26.920 yeah you cannot be overtly physical in those friendships like boy-to-boy friendships are

00:50:32.300 supposed to be all manly sports discuss about video games discuss about how how brave you are

00:50:38.540 and and even if you like hug a person or hug another guy for too long that people are going

00:50:45.920 to suspect that you're not straight like you the only purely platonic friendship you you can have

00:50:54.300 without being suspected of being in a relationship is between two girls anything else is easily

00:51:00.460 romanticized and that makes me mad because two guys like two guys being physical with each other

00:51:07.200 two guys cuddling each other extremely suspicious two girls cuddling each other very close friends

00:51:13.340 A guy and a girl cuddling each other, definitely in a relationship.

00:51:16.840 You see the pattern here? 0.73

00:51:19.000 Friendship is a lot different between boys than it is in girls.

00:51:24.940 And that kind of makes me mad.

00:51:27.940 And to have a relationship that is close enough to take that risk,

00:51:32.340 that's a particular kind of friendship.

00:51:38.060 Ash knows how difficult intimate relationships can be.

00:51:41.860 particular, not how difficult the relationships can be, but how difficult the perceptions of

00:51:46.340 those relationships can be, particularly in a culture that calls into question both

00:51:50.580 boys' platonic relationships with girls and relationships with each other.

00:51:57.200 And don't think that's just in India. Like, have you, like, I'm sure you've seen young boys

00:52:03.560 interested in girls being sexualized, even at a really young age, right? Or boys getting called

00:52:09.880 out for how close they are with each other. Challenging norms of masculinity leans against

00:52:16.380 stereotypical boy culture, and we navigate that space with our eyes wide open. Boys know what

00:52:23.060 space they're operating in, and that's part of the reason masculinity can be so slow to change,

00:52:28.940 which is nothing we haven't talked about before. But another reason that this has become apparent

00:52:36.660 throughout this episode is that we're not just talking about gender, and we never really have

00:52:41.480 been. There's complexity and intersectionality. There are cultural differences that are held

00:52:47.620 through tradition, but also influenced and remade through complex histories of colonization and

00:52:53.040 globalization. There's religion and nationalism. There's white supremacy, plus classism and the

00:52:58.740 burdens of socioeconomic marginalization. It's a mouthful, right? It's hard to say out loud, 0.55

00:53:04.700 let alone conceptualizing your mind and i guess to hold all of that i want to end with a little

00:53:13.340 bit about what love is facing in his life right now the only thing that i'm facing problems with

00:53:19.900 right now which is like the main problem because i i don't have enough money to even afford my

00:53:26.540 expenses and have legal restrictions on the amount of work i can do as well in a way

00:53:31.180 So the government is asking me to work, but they are also imposing restrictions on me

00:53:37.680 to work, so I'm not even allowed to work enough to manage my expenses.

00:53:44.500 And I don't know how to support myself financially if I'm not allowed to work much.

00:53:49.940 I can do anything I want to, I speak six languages, I can be a multilingual interpreter because

00:53:57.260 there's so many job opportunities there. But I cannot work enough hours and I cannot survive

00:54:05.580 on minimum wage. I am a student. I really want to start continuing my study again. I

00:54:13.360 don't want to be in this situation where I'm actually postponing my dream every day. But

00:54:18.740 Working 25 hours a week on minimum wage doesn't support you at all.

00:54:27.240 I can barely afford me renting a place.

00:54:34.040 There's so many legal restrictions which has rendered me financially helpless.

00:54:40.820 That's the situation I'm facing every day.

00:54:43.640 To a point that I have stayed hungry for one whole week.

00:54:48.740 The only thing I was eating during that time was bread slices.

00:54:53.780 My health deteriorated so bad.

00:54:57.020 So bad, like so bad, you won't believe.

00:55:00.880 A month ago, I was wearing six pants so that my legs could look normal.

00:55:07.780 I went so skinny.

00:55:09.620 Just imagine wearing six layers of pants.

00:55:15.700 Doesn't feel good.

00:55:18.740 doesn't feel good at all you know I have I don't know like how else can anyone

00:55:28.640 support me but at least they can support by supporting this very idea that I'm

00:55:34.980 about to share avoid judgments like literally just because a brown guy with

00:55:44.540 beard is wearing makeup doesn't mean that that person is very happy inside

00:55:52.700 so maybe your reaction could be the last one that could push them off the edge

00:56:00.140 that has happened to me i'll be very honest i've tried committing suicide here multiple times

00:56:07.260 after coming out of the closet because i didn't receive any support neither financially nor

00:56:13.100 mentally. So don't be that reaction, at least, that can push that person off the edge. Maybe

00:56:29.840 that's the kind of support I really need to really, really need right now. At least mentally

00:56:37.220 I don't have to struggle then.

00:56:42.160 At least there will be one burden

00:56:43.760 that will be taken away.

00:56:47.300 I don't really know

00:56:48.540 what you say after that.

00:56:52.600 But it's a reminder that,

00:56:55.560 like I said earlier,

00:56:56.580 this is not hypothetical.

00:56:58.680 There's a real teenager in Mumbai right now

00:57:01.420 struggling with his dad

00:57:03.020 and trying to maintain his self-esteem

00:57:04.700 in the face of systemic homophobia at school.

00:57:07.220 there's a student in Winnipeg trying his best to make rent

00:57:11.620 and put food on his table while healing from the trauma

00:57:14.540 that he's carried from age seven.

00:57:17.420 So while we're talking about culture and pedagogies

00:57:20.960 and intersectionality, what we're really talking about is people.

00:57:26.160 We're talking about boys in all their messy, unrelenting, remarkable selves.

00:57:31.960 and we're talking about a culture that we have the power to change my name is Jonathan Reed and

00:57:41.540 I'm doing my best as a white person to learn about the intersections of culture and identity

00:57:45.860 and gender in order to best support the diverse boys that I work with this podcast is supported

00:57:51.000 by next gen men an organization engaging boys and young men that is also based on intersectional

00:57:56.080 feminism and this is the end of season one i'm already beginning to line up some things for

00:58:01.900 season two aka doing it better on a better schedule and to do that i've created a patreon

00:58:06.940 essentially it's a way to support me with a donation per episode each episode if you don't

00:58:12.660 know takes several days to record edit write and produce and i need your help to make it happen

00:58:17.160 plus you can get some perks for supporting me like i'm posting exclusive content right now

00:58:21.580 from this episode just for patreon supporters with love's perspective about racism and my own

00:58:26.300 unscripted thoughts about working as a white person with racialized boys to find out more

00:58:30.820 you can visit patreon.com slash boy podcast or my website breaking the boycode.com to get in

00:58:36.760 contact i'm at breaking the boycode at gmail.com or at boy podcast on social media ask your boy

00:58:43.400 if he knows it's pride month right now ask him if he wants to celebrate it

00:58:51.580 We'll be right back. 0.98

Breaking the Boy Code - June 10, 2019

We Don’t Exist： Boys and Patriarchy

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