How would you, and what would you say to a parent raising a boy right now that is just starting to find social media?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I would encourage ...

I'm not a parent, but my child was out there engaging in social media.

Thing that I might do is just ask them questions about what they're taking in.

"What are you seeing out there?" Like, "What is inspiring to you? What is bringing up questions for you?" You know, I think, like, the power of the parent-child relationship is to be able to have conversations brought up like that.

I know a lot of young men are turning to social media, right, when in the manosphere and stuff as a way to, you know, they're looking to feel connected to other men.

What's one thing that you could tell them that might make the difference? Maybe it made the difference in your decisions, or you saw someone that ultimately let his guard down and, and let somebody in and then you can say that by doing that, that was the biggest first step that they ever took.

So like what was the starting point or the first realization for you that switched things in a new direction to see things differently?

The big thing for me was really reading another man's story where he was really vulnerable.

I read this book at the beginning of 2015 by a psychotherapist in Texas named John Lee.

He's an author.

He has a bunch of books.

And he was also involved in the men's movement.

There was a big men's movement at the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s.

So what is your view on women now? Like how do you explain or describe? I know it's a big question, but like what's your relationship to women and how do you view women now?

Yeah.

I don't know if you can hear it, but yeah.

And with my mom, you know, my mom's in my relationship and I get into this in the book too, but you know, my mom's in my relationship was such a loving relationship.

Like there were so many good aspects of it.

Like we were like really, really close, especially when she was a single mom and I was, you know, and I was, you know, this was after my parents got divorced and we were... we were living in like very small apartments together and we, we kind of did everything together.

So it was like, there was a lot of strong like companionship and friendship there as well.

So it was like, but it was, it was kind of hard for me to pick apart why I was angry with my mom for years.

So like, how do you think of them now? Is it very hard to think about them in any sort of maternal way? or fathering way like do they seem more like people that were in your life or do you do you still view them as like parental figures that you can look up to in some way