Men's Rights Activists vs Feminists | Middle Ground

Okay, let me tell you my experience, Dan. I have seen that many times. I've seen men laugh at each other for like, "Oh, my girlfriend hit me. You should have been a man. You should have thugged it out." But do you understand that maybe the guys you hang out with are the so-called toxic ones? Because the masculine men that I'm talking about would never do that.

My name's John. It's been five years since I directed an episode on this exact same topic, and it has only grown more relevant. So let's jump into our discussion between feminists and men's rights activists. Men already have all their rights. If you agree, step forward.

Let's start with, I hate the name "men's rights activists" because it implies that our rights are being taken away. The problem that men face is more existential. The patriarchy conditions men, or assigned male at birth people, to pretty much just keep your feelings shut down. By age 10, your feelings don't matter. Then, 12 through 13 and onwards, you just don't really feel like you matter much as a person. I don't think anybody's disagreeing with that.

Our rights aren't really under attack. Meanwhile, half of Congress hasn't codified Roe v. Wade. They're trying to control women's bodies, and it's just ridiculous. Our rights aren't under attack, but a lot of women's rights are, and I think it's important that we fight for that right. I also think that there's a difference between rights and inequality.

So, I don't think that my rights are being taken away. I think that's just an effect of patriarchy. I agree. We're not losing our bodily autonomy. We're not fearing for our lives walking down a dark hallway, you know? So I don't think they're comparable.

I agree. Yeah, I think when you look at most of the world's leaders, they are men. Most judges are men. Look at even our Supreme Court. There are nine judges, and how many are women? You know, it's the fact that women had to fight and ask to, in 1974, get access to have their own bank account. Like, that's absurd.

That's absurd that, you know, just because there's a little clause in the Constitution that says "all men are created equal," they're going to play dumb and act like that means just men. It doesn't mean human. For women to have to fight for anything to be equal to a man is just ridiculous. It proves that men have their rights. They're the ones that set the rights. They're the ones that, if that's most of our Senate, our House, our Congress, everybody, they're the ones that vote on the laws and things that get passed. They have the rights, and they're the ones that dish them out to everybody else.

And you're lucky if you can get them. We also need to remember that men's rights activism, while they do have some genuine plights, started out as a combatant to feminism. So I feel like they laid the groundwork off a very bad foundation.

No, I honestly, I 100% agree. I think it's been hijacked by a lot of bad faith actors who blame women for problems that you should blame the patriarchy for. Exactly, exactly. And it's very frustrating because I'm on this side because I think that there are genuine problems that I think need to be addressed. I'm sure we can all agree on that.

What are some of those problems? High suicide rates. Men are four times as likely to—um, I don't know what the TikTok version of the phrase is—but you know, four times more likely. I think that's something that should be talked about more. I think that there's also a lot of men who are very hesitant to get rid of the notions of patriarchy, whereas I've noticed a lot of women or assigned female at birth people are very willing to just throw away any notions of femininity.

I think a lot of men have a lot of emotional baggage from the patriarchy that they redirect at women, and it's not fair to them, and it's also hurting us. Right? And the problem is, for some men, all they have is their notion of masculinity to the point that they cannot let it go, and they can't see anything else other than that.

When the actuality is, again, gender isn't real. We're just plants with complicated emotions. When I look at people, I just see human-shaped flowers. Yeah, I would agree with you. I would say that a lot of these men's rights activists, they're struggling. Like you said, they have high suicide or high self-deletion, whatever we're supposed to say. I don't know what the word is.

And the way they're coping with it is by saying, "Okay, we're having this issue, so we need to put women back." Exactly. And be this. Yeah, we need to take away their rights. We need this society to be the way it was, where all the rights that were afforded to people were men. Men were the first people to get rights, and then other people have to—especially white men—then everyone else has to catch up to them.

And because they're struggling, they go, "Oh, let's turn the clock back." Number one, that's impossible. You're not going to turn the clock back. And number two, I don't think that's actually going to help the issue. It's not going to help the issue.

I think we should also have a little bit of nuance. Women actually attempt suicide far more often. The reason why men are more successful at it is because they're more likely to own a firearm and use it. But in terms of men fighting for rights, I think that movements that attempt to fight for rights for particular groups—that sort of description should be exclusive to genuine social justice movements.

You know, there may be disparities in ways in which the patriarchy does disadvantage men, but I think that you can't co-opt the language of it being a social justice, a rights-based movement. No, that's the problem. I have this thing I say. I feel like saying that men have feelings is kind of like saying "all lives matter" because men only ever bring up their problems directly after women air theirs. So it just sounds dismissive.

And that's the problem. For a lot of men, I think we feel so uncared for by society. We feel so like we don't really matter unless we prove our worth that anytime any social movement gets any sort of traction, we just immediately just bum rush that.

And it really makes me wonder, are there rational men's rights activists, seeing as yourself, but are these people advocating for bad actors for women's rights to be peeled back for them to feel comfortable? I think so. Because I think the problem is that a lot of men, again, people who are so rooted in their gender bother me because it only hurts you. It only hurts other people around you.

It's kind of like the idea of, like, because the problem is that men are allowed to express anger, but they're not allowed to express sadness. Women are allowed to express sadness, but you cannot express anger or else you get called like a—yeah, exactly.

I've never heard one men's rights activist talk about the loneliness epidemic of men not having friends. It's always like, "Women's problem. They don't want to date you." They never offer any solutions. No solutions.

So this is a great opportunity to bring in our disagrees, but I please ask that we listen to what they have to say before we disagree with them. So the perspective that I come from was about three years ago. I wanted to know why men didn't want to get married anymore. I kept hearing men say, "I don't want to get married."

And it kind of took me down the rabbit hole of family court. I started interviewing men that had been what's called "divorce-raped," and I kept finding guy after guy after guy that lived a couple miles from his kids and could not see them. It goes back to men should have access to their children. It's 50% their DNA. They should get 50% custody off the bat.

And right now, 90% of the time, women get custody. The question was, do men have all of their rights? How can I say that they have all of their rights when I'm finding guy after guy after guy that is devastated he can't talk to his children? I had one guy whose woman got custody, and she ended up taking the kid to a different country, and now his kid doesn't speak his same language. He spent $300,000 trying to get that kid back.

I want to look at women's stories as to why they don't want to get married, and I could go interview a thousand women. You're looking for these kinds of men. What she's discussing are individual and, yes, tragic cases, and we can acknowledge that. But what we are discussing is a systemic issue.

On aggregate, men and women after divorce, women see a 27% decline in their income. They are more likely to be in poverty, and they are less likely to get remarried. If you go around the world, there are countries that have male-only conscription, countries that have higher pension ages for men. Countries like the US and Canada have certain welfare programs that men are excluded from.

Domestic violence laws, homeless laws, there are many cases where men do not have access to the same public welfare programs, tax-paid programs. And if you look at something like the draft in the US, people say, "Well, that's outdated. It doesn't happen anymore." But many countries in the world, including some that are considered very first-world progressive feminist countries—Austria, Finland, Switzerland—they have male-only conscription.

And many countries have higher pension ages for men. So there are many examples of countries that have laws that directly discriminate against men. So do we have all the rights? I mean, no, we don't. In the US, I had to volunteer—well, not really volunteer. I wasn't given a choice, but I had to register for the draft. So that's a small example, but it's one that still goes on today.

Going back to the family court thing, because we want to talk about traditional relationships and that's how it should be. The mom should stay home with the kids, and the dad is the provider and all that. But then when it comes to the family court, we want to be like, "Oh, dads need 50% custody." But you don't even know your kid. You've been off providing all this time, and the only reason now you want 50% custody is because that's the only thing that still connects you to the woman or whatever reason you have.

But it has nothing to do with the children at heart. It has to do with, "I'm their father. I deserve 50% custody." But where were you the first 10, 15 years that we were raising the kids? I'm not denying that they need their mothers or their fathers. More men and women complement each other. That is what I'm saying.

Some men are more masculine, some women are more feminine. My girlfriend's more feminine; I'm more masculine. We go very well together because our values align. What? No, but hold on. What is feminine to me? She wants to take care of children. She wants to—that's feminine to me. It is to me. It is. That is what I want in a woman.

You can only speak from your experience. I can name you the stats, but I'm talking about me. I'm talking as a person. Name the stats. So what about the stats where all the fathers who leave and don't pay child support? Isn't that far more common than these men who are on custody? Which they only do 50% less than women do.

When men want primary custody, they only file the appropriate paperwork 40% of the time. Women do it over 80% of the time, and then they complain that they're not getting it. Courts don't give you something that you're not asking for, period. So what are you saying? Men choose not to support their families? They waive responsibility?

Many times, that's very sexist to say that—to assume that fathers don't care about their kids. Why aren't they actually fighting for their kids? They are. It wouldn't be an issue if it didn't happen. It's an issue for a reason. There are lawyers that specialize in this. They wouldn't have a business if it didn't happen.

I know at least for you and possibly for Pearl, you guys want to reaffirm traditional masculine roles, which does not assume that men are the nurturing ones. And if that's going to be the case, then you're going to continue to run into the problem where men aren't going to get custody because women are going to be seen as the nurturing gender.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you don't want that to be the case, then it makes sense to stand with feminists and want to dismantle those sorts of norms and expectations around what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman.

I would say it should be 50/50 custody off the bat. Women experience more sexism than men. If you agree, please step forward. Now, I don't know about more, but I'm coming at this from the point of view of what's more dangerous. Exactly. Like, men's feelings get hurt, but when it comes to misogyny and sexism, women get hurt, killed.

So when I say when I think of more, I'm not thinking like, "Oh, they have more." They face more sexism. Like, is the sexism hurting you? No. The same way I was looking at it when I heard sexism, I just heard safety. Yeah, that's that was the way I was approaching the topic.

It was basically men experiencing sexism. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. I think the topic was just more sexism. Like you said, you know, just simple things, just as like a man maybe just 10 feet behind you at night. You know, there are certain thoughts that just run into your head. Just simple ideas such as being treated differently in the entertainment industry versus how, as a man.

When I hear sexism, again, like you said, I view it more as just danger. You know what I mean? Like for men, me facing sexism, like you said, my feelings might get hurt, but I'm not going to feel for my life. You know what I mean? As opposed to women, I think they genuinely do fear for their lives more, and I think we should work towards making a safe society for everybody.

Right, and I think that that's ultimately, you know, what's important. Aside from safety, any other examples? Yeah, I mean, I think when most people in power are men, and then they can abuse that power by like, there's the common joke of, "Oh, she slept her way to the top." Like that wouldn't be such a common joke if it weren't for women being sexualized and experiencing sexism.

So common that it's just a regular joke that we all just accept and just go with, "Oh, she slept her way to the top." Like it's funny. Like it's clear that since men have so much power, and not only that, but men are bigger than us. So if they want something from us at any point, they could just take it. They can, and a lot of times they do, and you just have to sit there and take it.

Men are each other's worst enemy. I feel like a lot of the sexism that men face that really impacts them is from other men. Men make fun of each other for like getting assaulted. Men make fun of each other for like not getting the girl. Men—these are things that if men really wanted, if these men's rights activists really wanted to change this notion, they would be treating their fellow man better.

No, I mean, but they're ridiculing them for not being masculine enough. 100%. I—sorry, sorry, just was going to say, just I agree with everything you're saying. Like you said earlier, men shoot themselves in the foot, and I believe someone said earlier that men, when they talk about the loneliness epidemic, it's only about ever getting the girl, but it's never about friends, about camaraderie.

Exactly. No, yeah, one of the things that I think that you really touched on is that men shoot themselves in the foot often. There's just this idea that it's the same way you see poor people attacking other poor people because they're not getting paid enough. Men will attack other men because it threatens their masculinity or because they're insecure in it.

When, again, I'm not like a broken record player here, it's not a real concept. Masculinity is not a real concept. Femininity is not a real concept. These are just things that just hold us back. And like you said, it halts us from really truly feeling heard, getting our feelings out there, and experiencing more empathy.

We need to again destroy the system, destroy the patriarchy, and come up with a system that has empathy for everybody because it just doesn't. I think what's important to recognize is that misandry is not a systemic issue. It's not ingrained in us to the extent that there is like rhetorical misandry of like women saying, "I hate all men." You know, it's just like individualized, like, yeah, sure, unhelpful things, but it's not an otherization in the same way that misogyny is.

Yeah, I think that the world has been largely constructed through the male lens in a way that has otherized women. And so, yeah, misogyny is more endemic to gender relations rather than misandry being sort of like individual outbursts of reacting to that.

No, exactly. 100% agree. Okay, and we're going to bring in our disagrees, but I do want to say some of the things that you were saying you hear from men's rights activists. I agree. I've heard that online. I haven't heard that from these people in this discussion yet. I think it's just worth clarifying.

Let's bring in our disagrees. You start. Yeah, go for it. Okay, so I would disagree that you say misandry is not systemic. Cultural misandry is evident in a lot of the laws that neglect men. Misandry is why homeless men don't have as many shelters. It's why we don't take male victims of domestic violence as seriously. It's why men's health care is underfunded.

And there is a psychological phenomenon called the "women are wonderful effect," where society and people have less empathy for men in a general sense. Now, there may be some nuance. There could be some negative consequences for women, but overall, we see social welfare programs and laws mostly disfavor men.

And even if it's a male politician who supports that law, he's still catering to his voters. And the fact that a male politician makes a decision doesn't resurrect the 19-year-old drafty who was killed in battle. So when you say that misandry isn't a thing, I completely disagree. It's almost become fashionable. Misandry is almost a fashionable trait among the left.

And I'm not a right-winger, but I almost feel pushed this way because when I try and talk about men's issues, I get some very sharp reactions from the left. So I just want to respond to that just because it was specifically directed at me. In terms of misandry not being systemic, I agree that those issues exist, but a lot of what you're referring to is just the relationship between men having disadvantages due to socioeconomic status and comparing that to benevolent misogyny, which does actually otherize women and is a form of dehumanization that they should be specially cared for and specially undertaken.

There was a study out of the University of Chicago in 2005 that found that when you actually diversify the amount of judges in a court, sex-based discrimination lessens. So the reason why misandry isn't systemic is because we don't live in a matriarchy. We don't live in whatever the opposite of that is. We don't live in a matriarchy, right?

So men do things that, of course, disadvantage other men, but it's not because they're men. They're not being discriminated against because they're men. It's due to them being poor or whatever other sort of specific situation that they're in. And I just want to add that the reason there are women-only spaces or women-only shelters is because men are the perpetrators of most of the crime.

Now, they are also the victims of a lot of the crime, which is why that's why I didn't agree with the prompt. Because I think it is that sexism, like they did touch on it, and he did touch on it that like, oh, men are supposed to never back down from a fight. I even hear things like, oh, if men should have to know how to fight, men should have to be aggressive.

And you know, so these women-only spaces exist because most of the crime that's done on women is from men. So it's a safer place for women when there are no men around, especially when women that are homeless or at the bottom ranks of society.

Well, I don't disagree that we need a women's-only space. I'm just saying there is a lack of men's space available. So there are homeless men and abused men who don't have spaces available. We are not against women's spaces. We're just saying there is a greater need for men's spaces than currently exist.

You guys are referring to violence like it belongs to men. Most of, especially serious violence, most of the women that are killed, domestic violence, yes, they are women. One out of three women in the US are victims of domestic violence.

Do you have an experience to pull from that you want to share? I've been hit by women before. I've been stabbed. I've been hit multiple times by women. Yet I'm a 225-pound guy of muscle, and I have 20 years of experience. You know what I did? Nothing. I just took it. But if I were to go to the police, you know who they would remove from the house? Me.

My ex-wife, when I was going through a divorce, told me that she'd lie to the police in order to file the divorce faster because it was taking too much time. Because where I'm from in Canada, it's one year. Like, they will tell you that you need to be separated for a year so you have a chance to rekindle.

But all I'm saying is violence is violence, no matter. I'm not saying that men are not violent. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I've seen women as violent. It's just that it is not regarded in the same way. Just as you mentioned.

No, but men are not taken seriously either. And the point I wanted to bring is to what you said, because you mentioned that earlier. And correct me if I'm wrong. You were saying that men are not encouraged to speak about their feelings. I would say largely that's true.

Yet you're bringing them down in your conversation. You're saying that being sexist towards a man is not as big of a deal as being sexist towards a woman. So on one point, you're saying that men should be able to show their emotions, to live their emotions, however term you want to use. But in the next sentence, you're saying that the emotion of a man doesn't matter as much.

No, notions certainly matter. And I think that you can express disagreement or even sadness if somebody's being quote-unquote misandrist. I'm just saying it's not systemic, and that's a fact. That's a matter of fact. I'm saying in the descriptive reality of what misandry is versus what misogyny is, it's not actually systemic.

Right? So I'm having a factual disagreement with what men quote-unquote are expressing their feelings, which I don't think the majority of men or even a plurality of men are expressing those sorts of feelings that misandry is like some big burden on them.

But more laws against men, though. I mean, there's more laws in the US that are disfavored to men than women. Why is that? Like which laws? Like the inconsequential draft? No, like what laws? Access to certain healthcare programs. Prostate cancer, the biggest killer of non-smoking men, is not covered under the ACA.

Okay, women in like half the country don't even have a right to bodily autonomy, don't have access to effective contraception. You're comparing amount of rights. You compare them. Wait, you compare those? No, you literally just said men don't have more rights than women. You said that men have less rights.

And I asked you for an example. There's no women's—you said access to certain welfare programs. Yes, no. So men don't have access to male-only spaces, but men do have access to—and I do believe in a strong social safety net, but there's not male-exclusive spaces because there's not gendered violence of women against men to the same degree that there is in their—in terms of legitimate safety, in terms of like risk of injury.

Risk three will face domestic violence. One out of four men face the same violence. The point is that we don't report it. What do you mean by same violence? Why does it matter if it's the same or not? But are you against male-only spaces existing in the first place?

Not necessarily, but I don't think that it's some widespread systemic issue or that it's the issue that men necessarily needed. Or I think that if you had co-ed spaces, I don't see why a co-ed space would be detrimental to men, whereas I do see co-ed spaces being detrimental to women and the need for women-only spaces.

But do you think that male victims face certain stigmas and stereotypes? I do. I do believe that we need to destigmatize the way that men experience victimhood. A lot of men believe that it's demasculating to ask for help, and that is something that, as a feminist, I push up against.

I also think it's wrong to consider a man less of a man based on how much he earns. I do believe that. Yeah, we should encourage men to share their feelings. What I find ironic in your statements is that you're literally saying that men's feelings don't matter as much.

No, what you were talking about sexism earlier, this is literally what you said. I'm just giving you a descriptive reality of why male-only spaces don't exist. I don't think that it would be like the most intrinsic evil in the world if a male-only space existed, but it's not a necessary part of the way that sexual or gender-based violence is experienced by men.

Since I have been a kid, it has been common in the media to refer to men as trash, to say that men are the problem, men are terrible, etc. To the point that on national TV, a guy got his chopped off, and they were laughing about it, and nobody said anything, and nobody cared. And if the reverse happened, I don't think it would be the same outrage.

Does anyone on this side want to—do you see that? I agree that should be an outrage, and the reason why it isn't is because it's considered demasculating for men to be victims. And I think that in order to dismantle that, we should dismantle unhealthy views about masculinity, which is exactly what feminists are trying to do.

I think if you guys did a good job at that, it's been a hundred years since feminism started. You maybe have some progress. I don't think feminists care about men at all. They just want to give women special privileges and treatment.

You're basically saying that men should be taken seriously and their violence should be taken seriously, but you're not understanding that when you talk about women being violent, you're talking about it from a patriarchal standpoint. Who says, though? It's because patriarchy weaponizes men to be more violent.

Women are seen as not culpable for their violence. It strips them of their agency and infantilizes them for when they do commit violence. And you guys are upholding that system by not joining us. Hang on.

Feminists support gender laws on domestic violence. In the UK, in 2020, feminists actually protested against the domestic abuse bill because they didn't like the fact it was gender-neutral. The Duluth model in the US, feminists protest the fact that it's gender-neutral. So it's feminists who want to perpetuate these gender roles by saying laws should be gendered and recognize gender into the factor.

So it's not you perpetuated. We want gender-neutral laws. Yes, there may be differences in gender. Let that be a case-by-case decision. Feminists are the ones who support laws that are by and large gendered and inherently by default treat men and women differently.

I'm just very confused how you're calling out feminists for like having these crazy views when you hear what he's saying, though, that he perceives feminists as advocating for gendered laws. Some feminists—what? Yeah, what's your reaction to that? Feminism is not a monolith.

Yeah, as a mother, I have three daughters and I have a son. So when I look at the world, I'm looking at the world for how will all of my kids fare well in this world. I don't want anything that's gendered in one way or another. But when we're talking about like this male spaces thing, whenever men enter a space, it becomes their space.

They're bigger, they're stronger, they're louder. And a lot of times when women feel uncomfortable, we'll just excuse our way out. And it's just naturally become a male-only space. That's why most shelters mostly have men. Homeless shelters, like in Denver where I live, all the homeless shelters are mostly men.

That's why there are specific women shelters, because if a woman goes into that shelter when the lights go out, who knows what's going to happen to that one little woman in this shelter with all these men? And speaking of this, all the domestic violence shelters for men, the one guy that did try to start a domestic violence shelter for men, and he was like a big men's rights activist, but in the true sense, wanting men to have what you want, like domestic violence resources for just for them, he got so laughed out of the world.

The dude ended up unaliving himself. Earl Silverman. Yeah, he was laughed at by feminists. He was laughed at by feminists too and men, not by men. So you basically want to excuse all, like just shed yourself of all the misdeeds of your movement.

The men's movement did not demonize Earl Silverman. It was not men's rights activists who demonized Earl Silverman. That's what you're saying. It was feminists. And the same thing with Erin Pizzey, who I've interviewed, by the way. Feminists demonized Erin Pizzey and Earl Silverman, not men.

We did not demonize either of those people. We're not trying to say that we feminists. We're trying to say that the patriarchal viewpoint that men like laughing at me, "Oh, look at him trying to get resources." It's a joke. I do not subscribe to that, but that's a patriarchy talking, not men.

Show me those men because I'm around men all the time, and I'm from veterans that suffer from PTSD to just regular dudes. I'll tell you, sources, you keep talking. I have never seen personally, because you're asking for personal experience, I've spoken to hundreds, if not thousands, of those men. I've never seen a guy tell another guy, "You shouldn't do this," or "You shouldn't behave that way."

Because you know what? When we're with each other, guys can just be guys. But still—okay, okay, let me tell you my experience then. I have seen that many times. I've seen men laugh at each other for like, "Oh, my girlfriend hit me. You should have been a man. You should have thugged it out."

Here, that happens all the time. But do you understand that maybe the guys you hang out with are the guys you— they're so-called toxic? Because the masculine men that I'm talking about would never do that. Okay, that's you and there's me. Personal experiences, right? But we agree that men should not treat each other that way.

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Thanks to Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this portion of the episode. Now let's get back to it. Women's sexual capital gives them an advantage over men. If you agree, please step forward.

So I would say that women's sexual capital allows them more opportunities. Some could say maybe they're bad, like in terms of sex work, right? But women make much more in sex work. Also, I've managed both male and female on social media. It's a lot easier to blow up as a chick, so it gives you more opportunity.

And why do you think it's easier for women to blow up on social media? Because it's looks-based. So any men love pretty women. It's really that simple. And as you said, likes too. Sorry, OnlyFans would be the perfect example. That really does not normally work for men, but it works for women extremely well.

And medical sales, you know, it's another one. I worked in sales as a sales engineer. I worked in sales for more than a decade, and women tend to do better. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing either because why not take advantage of the traits, the qualities that you were born with? Everybody likes to look at, and I don't think it matters that it's a guy looking at a woman or a woman looking at a guy. They like to look at somebody that looks good, but it does tend to influence men's decisions a lot more than it does women.

Do you want to add anything? Yeah, I mean, I think it's true, but it's kind of like, so what? I look at it as one of those facts of life kind of things. It's like whatever, you know, is what it is, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. That's the thing. It is true. You'll see it wherever you go. Women will get more attention because they look better, but is that that bad of a thing? I don't think so.

It is the way it is. Just is just the way it is. All right, let's bring in our disagrees. Yeah, okay, so I actually feel like this is perfect for me. So I am a top, top, top OnlyFans creator, and I'm also a lawyer, which is a very weird, you know, perfect person to talk about this.

And yeah, I have made a lot of money from doing OnlyFans, but I was always also vilified. I've never been more vilified either for using my sexual capital in order to make a living, whereas when I was a lawyer and all throughout school, I was always hated. I was always just looked at because I had like a more curvy body and everything.

So I do think women can capitalize off of their sexual power, but I also think they are also demonized and vilified. And even when they aren't trying to capitalize off of it, people still see them as just that. We also see cases of like porn stars dying. There's a lot of—I feel like a lot of men like to oogle out women, like to see them, objectify them, but they don't see them as human.

So I don't know. So women might capitalize off of that, but I don't necessarily see that as like net positive for them if they're being vilified for doing something that obviously has a market for it. I just think it's very hypocritical.

Why do you find it hypocritical? Because there are men that literally watch this content, that subscribe to these people, and then they demonize the same people they're giving money to 24/7. This is a man's problem, not a woman's problem. Men need to control themselves.

And I think if women have a ton of sexual capital, who gave it to us? It's not us. We're not the ones that are just deciding, "I'm going to be powerful because I have a body." That's not what's happening. It's men that never learned how to deal with their emotions and their feelings and their urges that wasn't taught to them, so they don't know how to do that.

So now they give women all this sexual capital and then also want to vilify us for it and make us the bad guy for it. But you're the one that's noticing the pretty girls. You're the one that's giving us this. I didn't ask. It's funny because when I'll go with my boyfriend sometimes, I'll go places and I get five chicken tenders instead of four, or you know, we go buy a drink or yeah, I get two drinks, and I come home and I'm like, "Look what I got."

And he's like, "That never happens to me." And I'm like, "Oh, silly." I'm not asking for it. I guess a follow-up, though, that what they might ask or that I would—I'm curious about is, do you think there's like a natural, that's just a sort of natural pattern or order to how men and women operate, or do you feel like that's conditioned?

I think it's conditioned because it is so refreshing and welcome and amazing when I meet a man who does not treat me that way. They do not treat me like a sexual object. They treat me like a person. They talk to me like a person. They give me what I paid for. I get my item and I leave, and there's no weird, like, "Did I owe him anything? Did he—"

Can I respond to that? In my personal experience, men only talk to women they want to sleep with. Yeah, in my personal experience, women have to be attractive on top of their job. You can't just be a lawyer; you have to be an attractive lawyer. You can't just be a dentist; you have to be an attractive dentist.

I think when men talk about sexual capital and women, it's because they literally ignore every other woman in that area. There's like this concept of like men get put into the friend zone; women get put in the zone. So do you think that, you know, some of what I heard is it is what it is? Men are attracted to beautiful women, so there's kind of a natural order argument.

This is just the way we behave, whether it's biologically or do you feel that it's conditioned? I do think it's conditioned. Can I respond to that? I think it's a little both. I do think that that is a little bit of the natural order of things, but like, for instance, I think a big—like my only really interaction with these man spaces or the manosphere spaces are these like red pill podcasts that I've gone on a million times, like Fresh and Fit, whatever, where they bring on women like me that are making all this.

"Oh, you're on OnlyFans." They bring in all these sex workers, and then they tell us we're low value, nobody will ever love us, we're for the streets, and they do all of that, and then my comments get flooded with that. That's conditioned. Can I just say, Fresh and Fit really sucks?

You do not like them? They are trash. They're garbage. They're from South Florida, unfortunately. I do, but why do OnlyFans women go on the podcast? Yeah, that's a good question. It's because the same men, their audience that hates us, they're also making me a ton of money.

Exactly. Like, you're pretty much a prop for them to make more money because they'll have you on the podcast, and you'll be like the eye candy, but they don't actually care about your opinions. They're just using you as a prop to put down, and so that could feed into their audience.

People don't respect sex workers because it's easy to take your clothes off. That's why they don't respect them. It's also easy to open your mouth. People respect things that are hard, and sex work, OnlyFans, that's not hard. And why is it that people still respect like Leonardo DiCaprio sleeping with models?

It's really easy for him to do that. Nobody bats an eye for him sleeping with who? With extremely rich and wealthy, successful men. Wait, when extremely rich, successful, healthy, and good-looking men sleep with a lot of women, even though it's easy for them to do so, they're not looked down on the same way that, like, for example, a sex worker maybe using her body.

It's also important to note that this whole idea of sex workers and OnlyFans girls making a ton of money is extremely new. Who owns like 99% of the actual porn industry in the production studios? It's men. Men historically and even today still are the ultimate benefactors of women's sexuality.

And men only started getting upset about porn and all this stuff when women started making their own money on OnlyFans. Men did not complain about porn before the proliferation of OnlyFans. These podcasts did not exist back then. What do you think?

Was it difficult for Leonardo DiCaprio to become rich and successful? Is that a difficult thing to do? In his case, maybe, but for a lot of men, not necessarily. To be a world-renowned—do you think it—you just answer yes or no. Is that hard to do?

Question, what do you think? I think it's hard to do, and that's why people respect it. Do you think being a sex worker is easy to do? So people don't respect it. Lots of people do easy things. They start YouTube channels spewing nonsense.

OnlyFans also don't make a lot of money. The record is most OnlyFans girls do not make money. They don't, and they're not respected either. Are men who were born into wealth and naturally good-looking, when they sleep with a lot of women, are they demonized for that?

No, no. So it doesn't matter whether or not it was difficult for them to get to a high status or if they were just born into it. I would say being a man doesn't prove— they're not demonized, but it's generally difficult for men to be selected by a lot of women, and the dating app stats will back that up.

That's again—so again, I know you're asking about demonization, but the original question was why is Leonardo DiCaprio celebrated? It's because it is hard. Being a sex worker is easy. So you just said he's celebrated because it's hard, but you just admitted earlier that a guy who is successful and born into wealth and born into a naturally good-looking body is also celebrated for sleeping with a lot of women.

That's not really B. It's not. So it's not actually contingent on whether—I'll make a caveat. I would say even men still need to learn to be attractive to women, even if they're born into wealth and naturally good-looking. Women also need to learn how to be attractive.

That's—are you calling us just dumb dogs or something? But I—some of the top OnlyFans creators aren't attractive at all. Can I ask? That's subjective. That's subjective. Clearly not.

I think I have a question. You say being a sex worker is easy, but look at the—I know you love statistics. How come most OnlyFans women don't earn a living off of it? Because they don't care about money. They like attention, and that was the big thing when I interviewed a bunch of OnlyFans models, and they'll tell you that a lot of them do.

They say, "I just enjoy taking off my clothes on camera." Well, let's hear from somebody who has experienced. Do you want to respond to that? That's absolutely not true. I mean, just to use my anecdotal experience, I didn't even have social media before I started.

I have an Instagram. I do not care about attention. I just wanted to make a lot of money, which is why people do OnlyFans. Why would they want to get attention? It's a lot of—it's negative too. A lot of people hate you. A lot of people think you're—no one's going to marry you, blah, blah, blah.

I don't believe those things, but I'm also able to advocate for—I'm a lawyer, so I'm more gifted in being able to combat that rhetoric. These girls are not, and a lot of these girls that are going into this, I'm the exception. They don't have other options. They're not super educated. They don't have other avenues to try to make a living.

And then a lot of them, when they do go in this, when you say it's easy, it's not easy to make a ton of money on OnlyFans. I had to do a ton of marketing. I had no social media following ahead of it. You could say, "Okay, well, you look a certain way or whatever," but a lot of the women that enter this, if it was so easy, they wouldn't be not making money.

Well, I would disagree that there's no other option. You guys can get jobs just like the men do. I look at what people say versus what they do. You might say that you didn't care about attention, but I look at the way you behave and dress, and it would indicate otherwise.

To the real job, too, and you're more scantily clad. Okay, so why? What are you looking for? Attention? Okay, let's not do personal attacks. It's not really going to work out for us. Let's move on.

There is a new episode of Radical Empathy out now. I had an interview with an OnlyFans star who is also a virgin. Go listen to it after you watch this episode. Middle ground: feminism is trying to remove masculinity from society. If you agree, please step forward.

So I would say that they're trying to be masculine, so they're trying to remove what masculinity is today and replace it by a version of femininity that is masculine. Who's they? Feminists. Oh god, I thought that's who we were talking about. Got it, got it.

Yeah, I think that feminists are against anything that's actually masculine, so they're trying to get rid of it, is what you say. But I think it's more than that. They're kind of replacing it. They're kind of trying to redefine what masculinity is.

So you know what? Probably the better answer is traditional masculinity is being replaced by something that is not masculine at all. Well, and the question is how do you raise masculine men? You need fathers in the home to teach them it, and feminism has given incentives to take the father out of the home.

Do you want to give us a few examples before we pull these guys in? Well, what percent of men actually get custody of their children? It's 50% of their DNA. Why don't they get 50% custody?

Men typically get custody of their children way more often than not. When a woman rightfully and honestly gives her experience of domestic violence in the marriage, she's more likely to lose custody of her children. There is no issue with men getting custody. That's absolutely true.

You're just making—no, what percent of the time do men get custody of their children? At least 50% of the time. What you're thinking about is not true. 77% of the time, 90% of the cases do not even go to family court.

No, but the question is why? And that's—I had the same thought when I first heard it. I would ask, like, why aren't men fighting for custody? But the problem you get is the lawyers will tell them not to even fight because it's so expensive.

And you have a—you have a 10%—don't even file the appropriate paperwork. Are you blaming feminism for that? Wait, I think the statistics and the numbers that you're thinking of and that you're talking about are from the 70s.

It was from a psychologist, Dr. Gardner. He was the one who invented the term "parent alienation," and he was very biased in gearing it towards women. He was later discovered to also be defending pedophilia. The parent alienation has never been in any DSM, never recognized by anyone, even the World Health Organization.

So more often than not, now that women are working and men are working, custody is very much split down the middle. Who gets the major custody the majority of the time, men or women?

So men who fight for custody actually are far more likely to get it. To get back to the question, I found the question somewhat too vague. I mean, do feminists want to erase masculinity? It's kind of too abstract and vague to answer.

So my problem is when feminists try and redefine masculinity or they try and say, "This is our interpretation of toxic masculinity as we see it." That's kind of the problem that I have. I don't like it when feminists tell men how they should feel, how they're supposed to feel. This is how your experience as a man is supposed to go, and that is where I would have the issue with that.

I would say that, yeah, so people say, "Oh, masculine—like men are all supposed to be masculine, and women are always supposed to be feminine," as if there's no overlap. While there may be differences between men and women on average, a lot of times those effect sizes are pretty small.

And to have a society where we have this rigid, like, "You're a woman, therefore this is the best job for you. You're a man, so this is the best job for you." That's not how you have a flourishing society. Actually, based on meritocracy, where the people best suited for a particular role or a particular job or more passionate about it can go do that.

So if women want to stay at home, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. Same for men. Many people also have a mix of femininity and masculinity. Can I expand on that, actually? Go ahead.

In my experience, I feel like what is—when it comes to redefining masculinity, that's not even a real concept. We need to abolish gender as a whole because the ideas—that's pretty much raising the whole masculinity. That's not even a real concept. Femininity is not a real concept.

These are just things that were designed long ago by people who—abolish gender? Yeah, it's not real. It's not real. It's a human construct. If the complaint is that feminists—which aren't synonymous with women, obviously. We have two male feminists right here.

If the complaint is that feminists want to reconstruct a new idea of masculinity that is actually healthy, that allows men to realize when they are victims, when they are going through things like depression or suicidal thoughts or alienation, any matter for that fact, we have to recognize that that is going to be to the benefit of men.

Right? So, but I don't know anybody, especially me. I'm as masculine as they come. I would never say that that's wrong. What you just said is absolutely right. But the point in the matter is there are things that women do better than men. They're better caretakers. They care more. They love more.

This is why if you look at the University of Ottawa studies, they show that within the next 10, 20 years, 75% to 90% of caretakers will be women, as in medicine—not just nurses. We're talking all across the board. But does it have to be that way? Does it always have to be that way?

But hold on, that completely sidesteps the point I was making. Do you deny that when a man cries, it's considered demasculating? No, not at all. Whoever they is is saying that this is what a man should be. The thing is, men don't deal with their emotions the same way women do because they're not taught to from childhood.

Because you're a boy, you get a truck. You're a girl, you get a doll. You're going to be good at cooking. Go play in the toy kitchen. You're a big tough man. Go get the army soldiers. That's why basically—do you think you have the special answer of the right way to tell the kid?

Of course she does. I think when you look at having children as I'm bringing independent thinking little humans into this world, and I want them to grow into whoever they are meant to be, whatever that is, whether it's a male ballerina or a female NFL coach, I want this little person that I love so much to be whatever they want to be.

No one's arguing with that. Okay, so here's what I think. I agree that people should not be locked into a role either way. I think that if you took 10 million men and 10 million women and you tracked them over 10 years, you might see certain trends emerge.

Now, it doesn't mean you have to be this or you have to be that. People should be free to be whatever they want, but I do think that you would see certain trends emerge. Now, what might some of those be? Well, you might see on average boys are more likely to play with G.I. Joes, and girls are more likely with Barbies.

Are straight statistics coming straight out of his—like whatever? We cannot go off of statistics and the numbers that you're coming up with on the fight. You make a good point, but I feel like you're talking about social conditioning. You're saying you assume there would be some trends if you ran that study.

Yes, but that's his assumption, not an actual stat. But do you—does anybody on the feminist side have—do you believe that masculinity is a thing? Well, I mean, it's a thing in the way that every race is also a thing. It's not biological. It's not fixed, but it's a real social construct that does have real impacts on people's everyday lives.

And I understand what you're saying, that there are going to be deviations and differences, and the test is whether or not those deviations are socially constructed, environmental, or biologically based. But I think that we have no clue to the extent the way that things are truly socially constructed.

For millennia, women have been barred out of educational purposes, but now women are actually out-graduating men. They're actually earning better grades than men in many instances. You have nothing of a—

I would agree. I think it's a mixture of biology and conditioning. So it's interesting to imagine 100 years from now how it will play out, but I do think it's a mixture of both. So I do agree with that. That's nature versus nurture. We've known that. We've understood that.

It's nothing like mind-blowing and new. You said you were the most masculine person here. Can you define what masculinity is exactly? I would like to hear that. Five things: a man's a provider. He needs to be a protector. He needs to have faith. He needs to have courage.

You got it. So if they don't do that, they're not masculine by your definition? Why is faith masculine? You have to believe. Okay, to answer your question, I'll ask you a question. How do you build self-confidence? You don't need faith to do that.

You don't need faith to do that. No, you don't. Hold on. You're assuming that faith—I'm talking about God. Don't assume what I'm assuming. No, but faith in yourself. Your self-belief starts with believing in yourself. That's faith because at the beginning, you won't believe.

Why is that masculine, though? Anybody could have that. Do you think that there's masculinity? No, it's not a real concept. Femininity is not a real concept. Aren't you a men's rights activist? I'm a men's rights activist, but that's just the other side of feminism.

I believe in destroying the patriarchy. I believe in destroying the ideas of gender. I agree with everything you're saying because the ideas that you guys are talking about with how men are emasculated, not allowed to cry, or people think their emotions are valid, I agree with all that.

That's not women's fault, and those aren't even like masculine traits. These are all just ideas that were just fed to us by the patriarchy, and we need to destroy it. Why are you a men's rights activist? Only because I feel like this side understandably has a lot of bad actors and grifters, and there aren't a lot of people on this side who thoroughly align themselves with feminists.

I have a lot of friends who are feminists. I align myself with most trans feminists and feminists of color. The reason why I'm mostly on this side is honestly just because I can sympathize with the plight of most men not feeling valid and not feeling heard, and I think that should be talked about.

The problem is that the people who are leading that conversation tend to be folks who are still rooted in the concept of gender, and I think that's detrimental to the movement. And when you think about it, feminists and men's rights activists could work together.

I agree 100%. Yeah, we want a society where, like for instance, like she said earlier, "Oh, it's because women are going into these useless majors." Like, I'm a lawyer. Half of our profession is women. Half of the medical profession, doctors, are women.

Right? This idea that men have to be the providers when half of us households have women earning almost as much or more than men. It's because women are good at these jobs. Women are like, "I do very well on the outside. I did very well in law school."

So for you to say, "Oh, women are feminine, and they're not supposed to just sit at home and be nurturers," then in a meritocracy, well, in a meritocracy, a lot of women that kids—I—if men are supposed to be providers, if that's masculinity, then what's femininity?

I never said that a woman needs to stay home. Name the five—name the five things in women and men complement each other. Well, that's a good question. How would a woman complement masculinity?

That's a good question. How would a woman complement? You know what? Take my example because that's all I can talk about. My girlfriend will stay at home with the kids, so that's complementing. No, no, but that is her choice. I understand.

I choose to provide, and I do not want—do you think it's feminine for her to stay at home? This is a choice that her and I made. I found a partner that is more traditional in her values. She wants to raise children. That's what she wants.

I come from a broken-down family where my dad left when I was 14, and he never came back. I needed a father figure to teach me what it is to be a man because a woman cannot teach a boy how to become a man. Neither can I teach a girl how to become a woman.

So in my choice, when I want children, I want a woman that will stay with them, that will teach them love, that will teach them to be compassionate. And I think their follow-up would be, do you see your partner taking that role as inherently feminine more so than if she went to be a neurosurgeon?

Of course. I believe in a more traditional role, but that doesn't mean that you're wrong if your husband wants to stay home. I don't have a problem with that. I believe that men and women complement each other.

Men should go to therapy. Agree or step forward. Sorry, so I would be very cautious when it comes to—I'm not against it per se, but I just think there's a lot of things that are not completely sound. But I'm not against the idea of men going to therapy if you find a good therapist and it helps you, sure.

Yeah, good therapy. Not—weap—like I think what you're talking there is some people that weaponize therapy talk that basically try to psychoanalyze people and use false stereotypes about them. But good, honest therapy, I feel like men, women, everybody could benefit from that.

And I feel like as men's rights advocates, you guys should be striving for men, you know, taking their mental health more seriously. Has it benefited you? I used to take therapy back in high school due to, like, you know, uncertainty about the future and my academics and stuff like that, and it did me good.

And I feel like a lot of people just need someone to talk to, and a therapist is, you know, that's what they're made for, you know? Well, I will say personally, I do think therapy is important, but I do have a problem with how it's seen as like the end-all, be-all solution to men.

To me, America is such an isolationist country that even our forms of healing are isolationist. Like, go out somewhere, come back healed. Yeah, the solution is always therapy and pills. It's never community or compassion.

Right, and I think that should be—like, to me, everybody I know, I've done therapy personally. I've been in it for a couple of years. Yeah, it's fine, but what really has helped me is just finding community, finding other friends, talking to people.

Not that could be therapy in itself. No, it is. It's just—but there's a definition of therapy that I think is wrong, and that's why I was hesitating because community—explain what you mean.

For men especially, and again, I can't talk for women. I'm not a woman, but for men especially, we lack the interaction with other men without having women involved. Yes, that's true. And this is why I love martial arts. This is absolutely why it has made me the man that I am today because I got to bleed, to literally physically hurt somebody else, but it was always in a controlled manner.

I am a violent man by nature, but I meditate every day. I have my violence under control because I was shown techniques to control myself that were taught by a community of men. So martial arts is your therapy, but not talk therapy?

The word therapy, that's misused. Men need therapy, but do they need to go see a psychologist, or do they just need to go to a street somewhere for a few weeks where it's just dudes? Because unlike—and I'm going to assume here, but I have spent years alone in the woods by myself in meditation, just reading.

And you know what? The hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but I needed to do it. That's true. I built a community of men around me. They might not be physically with me, but I have two guys that I can call no matter what. It does not matter what it is, but they're older than me. They're the age of my parents because they're mentors to me.

And this is what men need. They don't need somebody to talk to that's going to make them feel better. They need somebody to be there for them. And this is where we lack. I cannot remember the statistics or the numbers themselves, but after 30, most men don't have any friends anymore.

Yep, they literally are alone, and that's why men kill themselves. They have nobody to depend on. They have nobody to call. You know, there's the expression to say, "Do you have a guy that you can call at 3:00 in the morning to say, 'Bring a shovel. Don't ask why, but I need you to bring a shovel, and if you have a truck, I'd like that too.'"

Is that a good thing? But the point is that it's a do-or-die friend, and most men do not have that. Because women do tend to bond. It's easier for women to bond. It is just—

I think that many men can bond with other men, but I feel like instead of doing that, they look at women to solve their—no, I agree with that, actually. I think a lot of—I think I see this a lot in the men's rights activist movement where basically, again, we turn to women to use their emotional labor to sort of like, you know, kind of just, "Oh, women are natural caretakers."

And they're not. Nobody's a natural anything. And it's a thing where we need to start doing that for each other. Like, again, I've been in three men's mental health spaces, and it's all usually just me and a bunch of other progressive men just talking about pretty much just how we feel about the world, and that's really—that has done more for me personally than therapy has.

Right? And I think that's sort of like—I'm glad that you have that community with those two men. I think that's important to have. I wish more men had that because that's what's needed.

Yeah, I agree. And however you call it, like you can talk. It's more progressive. I did it through martial arts. Some do it through business. One of my mentors, a business mentor, but he's like my father. But I do think we also need to emphasize that men need to also hold each other accountable.

Just be like, you know, enforcing each other's bad habits and qualities. There should be a healthy community. Community of everybody needs an in their life, and that's normally me. But you need somebody that will call out your faults. You need somebody that's going to be—

We, so that is all part of the men community. You will find a guy like that if you don't. You should definitely not expect women. I think that women are really good at finding a lot of fulfillment in their platonic friendships.

There's often the case where we talk a lot about lonely men. There, you know, women are like marrying less too, but they're a lot less depressed over it because they find so much fulfillment and connection with their interpersonal friends.

And then in terms of therapy, you know, I work with therapists for like my day-to-day job, and there's definitely like bad therapists out there. But as an aggregate, you know, therapy is clinically proven to be, you know, generally more beneficial than not.

And it is also proven that men statistically are less likely to seek out therapy. And so, yeah, I think that whole—the definition of therapy that matters too. A lot of the men that I know, and again, I've dealt with thousands of them, it is not done through a psychologist. It is done through physical activity.

There actually is evidence, and I think that both are necessary. I think that seeking out a professional, depending on the person, might work for you, might not work for me. And you need to actually open up when you talk.

That was actually the thing I was going to say. You always do—you know the best conversation I've ever had is when somebody just punched me in the face. We're both exhausted, and we sit there. But no, but I'm different from you, obviously. We're not the same.

So to laugh at what I'm saying—vent by nature? Not at all. Everybody's violent. I disagree. No, no. I want her to fly, but just the way you've rolled your eyes at some of my comments shows violence.

You might not be physically violent, but the way you're responding is in a violent way. You just put a different definition on it. The way you deal with your problems—and I'm not saying you're right or wrong. You know better than I do on how to deal with your problems.

What I'm saying is the best conversations I've ever had is after physical exertion with another man. Let's bring in our disagrees. I forgot you there. So the only reason I disagree is because I think most therapists are crazy.

In college, you know, I would see all the girls that would be psych majors, and they're always insane. So I think if you have 100 therapists, more will do more harm than good. I can understand if you don't agree with that, but that was the only reason I stayed.

I think if you find a good therapist, man or woman, it's fine. Very convenient. The field that most women are into, shame and disregard. It's like, why do you seem to always attack women's fields and degrade them and say they're not—like, I—I have—

That's my experience. That's my experience. Good for you. Well, she was asked about therapy, so that's the field that came up. Yeah, but take it—no, but I think—but it's noticing a pattern of putting a man-dominated field.

You think she would be saying the same thing? I don't think so. Well, men-dominated fields usually do better. So can I piggyback on something Ariel said? He was talking about how, you know, men should go to therapy because it helps reduce the emotional labor that their partners have to do.

And I totally agree with that. That is exactly a reason why, because I can't tell you the pretty much every romantic relationship I've been in, there's some element of me like teaching them how what their feelings are.

And especially now that I have children, that's even a reason why relationships break down because when I can see a man and his behaviors are exactly parallel to my 8-year-old, I'm like, "Okay, so we don't know how to deal with our feelings. We don't know how to talk."

What's that behavior? Having a complete tantrum, a complete meltdown because something didn't go their way. I expressed, you know, "Hey, something you did really hurt me, and I don't like that, and can we talk about that because I love you and I want to save this relationship?"

And that turns into, "It hurts me that I hurt you, and now I'm really sad." And so they can't even be man enough to sit there and have a conversation about their feelings knowing that the reason I brought this up is because I love you so much.

The way you're talking right now, it would be very difficult for me to have a conversation. This to me is extremely abrasive, and I would probably just walk away. I love what you were saying because I honestly do agree with that.

I think a lot of men weren't taught emotional vulnerability and emotional availability, and it's honestly disheartening because you see how that stunts them later on. Kind of like you said, like they can't even maintain relationships.

Like you again, like that's just a good example right there. Like you are doing the emotional labor for the relationship. Men are not. I do think that bringing it back to therapy, I read somewhere that talk therapy isn't that good for men.

And I read somewhere one of the reasons for that is because men, we're not taught to handle emotions seriously. Our emotions are discarded, so we tend to discard other people's emotions. And it's again very sad to see.

So I don't think therapy, traditional talk therapy, that may not work for everybody. I like what you said about martial arts. I think that's, you know, if that works for people, it works for people. I think that stuff like that is important.

I think men—that's why we got to hold other men accountable. Just be like, you know, enforcing each other's bad habits and qualities. They should be a healthy community. Community of everybody needs an in their life, and that's normally me.

But you need somebody that will call out your faults. You need somebody that's going to be—

Plan B, there's like 20 forms of birth control. You can require the guys that you're sleeping with to put on a condom. You can get an abortion. Like, there's so many choices that if you are in the situation where you are a single mother, you didn't make one bad choice; you made like 10 bad choices.

But you're not pro-choice, though. You think abortion is murder. Do you think abortion should be accessible? So, I am pro-life. We go pro-life. And that comes from because I have a, um, my parents, they got pregnant when they were teenagers, and they had the choice to abort my brother. They ended up giving him up for adoption.

I met my brother when I was 22, and he's like this awesome guy. He's married now with kids. How sad would it have been if I didn't get the opportunity to meet my brother and my mom didn't choose life? I don’t have children, and I'm still deciding whether it's something I want, but I'm glad that now it's being framed more as a choice than as something you have to do.

I've loved hearing your experiences because before, when it was like, I mean, my parents are both immigrants from Iran, and over there, like, it's just, there's no, like, "Oh, what if?" It's like something's wrong with you if you're not going to be a mom.

I'd much rather have the people that are parents be people who want to be parents, the people who have all the information and still say, "This is something I want to do," than something that you should do; otherwise, you're not as much of a woman, right?

And it's when we frame things as women are supposed to be nurturing, and then if you don't have anyone to nurture, what are you like? Not a woman now? So that's one of the reasons these gender norms, I think, are not helpful.

I also think we need to talk about the absolute hatred of, like, women who choose not to be mothers that I've seen online. I feel like we should all have, like, some respect for people who want to choose to do what, you know, what their lives is. They choose.

And I don't think that, you know, I'm not going to shame somebody for becoming a mother, and I don't think somebody should be shamed for being a mother. I think there needs to be, like, just respect for every, as an example, uh, Trump's vice president, IAL pick JD Vin said, like, one of the biggest problems of the country was single cat ladies who aren't going to get married and not have kids.

He said they shouldn't be able to vote. And so that's just evidence that, like, one of the potentially most powerful people in this country is blaming single women who aren't mothers and the kind of pressures associated with women needing to fill the motherhood role.

I feel like women are so conditioned to want to have children. Like, going back to our earlier conversation, like, little girls are given a baby doll, and little girls are, you know, kind of, you know, sorted that way to do those types of things.

And so a lot of women, mothers, are afraid to even talk about how much motherhood is not fulfilling, how lonely it feels, how scary it is, how it's not everything you thought it was going to be.

There are times where I think, like, life would be a lot easier if I didn't have kids right now. If I didn't have this whole mess, everything I did, everything right. I married the guy, I waited a few years, we had kids, we did everything correctly, and it still fell apart.

What happened? I wasn't being respected in my marriage, and when I decided to stand up and ask for that, that wasn't given. So I had, by not respected. I'm not, I don't want to go into the full details of my marriage.

Just trying to find a way to blame you. Yeah, you're trying to find a way because what you're trying to do is you're using yourself as an example. So I'm asking questions about what we're supposed to do, and I just don't want to get into the nitty-gritty details of my divorce.

But I wasn't being respected as a human. I wasn't treated as a human. I was treated as a baby-making machine. Take care of the kids, make sure they're good, that's it.

Oh, once having a heart problem, who cares? Another baby? Oh, another heart surgery, who cares? Another baby? When you look at women as just that, oh, they're here for children, they're here to have babies, you dehumanize them.

Andrew Tate is having a positive influence on society. If you agree, please step forward. That's going to be interesting. You guys go for it.

So I don't agree with every single thing he says. I don't agree with every single thing he's ever done, but I think overall he has a positive message. He tells guys to work hard, go to the gym, and I think overall his content is positive.

It's mostly the delivery that people don't like about Andrew. Because what do you mean by that? He can sound condescending to people. Like, he can sound very abrasive to people.

And as she says, I don't agree with everything that he’s, I don't know anybody I've ever agreed with everything that they say. Even me six months ago, there's probably things I don't agree with now.

But at the same time, we have to remember who the message is for too and how that message is served. It's served through social media where the person that screams the loudest is going to be heard.

You know, you say it's positive, but, um, what is that positive impact to say to work hard to young men? To tell them, because one of the things he says a lot, and I would say the same thing to young men, stop worrying about women when you're young and develop yourself as an individual.

'Cause if you look at history, that is how men show value. Men are always judged by what they bring to the table. Well, in my opinion, it comes from during his whole court case, and when he was going super viral, I covered him a lot, and I would do street interviews.

So I would talk to young men that said he changed their life. So I can't, how am I going to say it's a negative if I'm talking to the actual people?

Yeah, what would the young men say? They would say they started going to the gym, they started making more money, um, and they generally improved their life because they saw his content.

Okay, um, let's bring in all of our disagrees. Let's start off with you just, uh, going against the grain on your side.

Okay, well, I say screw Andrew Tate. He's horrible. Um, I'm part of several MRA spaces, and we denounce him completely. Uh, seen his video of his so-called boot camp for men where he just basically bullies men.

So dumb. I'm not saying he doesn't have any good points ever, but for the most part, he's everything the men's rights movement should not be like, and I don't think he's a good MRA.

Can I, uh, can I also add to that? I feel like men's rights activists, we have a problem with grifters on our side. People who, like you mentioned earlier, you understand social media. They target young men.

Yeah, they target young people in general. Just Andrew Tate's not men, not men for young. I get that you think Andrew Tate's an MRA. Hold on, hold on, let me finish my thought.

What I'm saying though is the guy's a grifter. He sells people. The problem with MRA activists in general is there's real problems affecting men, and Andrew Tate will talk about that, but then he'll try to sell you on a course afterwards.

And that's the problem is a lot of people on this side take advantage of young men because we're so starved to be seen and heard that we'll take anybody.

But I will say one thing though, Andrew Tate is a symptom. You do have to, you why he get popular, there has to be some reason why these young men felt a need to turn somewhere.

It's the same thing. There's, I was going to say just real quick, there's an overlap between like, uh, like what's it called, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate's audience, and there's an overlap between Hassan Piker and FD Signifier's audience.

They are positive examples of masculinity who will tell you the same things: work hard and, you know, work on yourself. There's an overlap. The only problem is that men are just so starved for just somebody recognizing their emotions that they'll just take anybody and see someone like Andrew Tate as, "Hey, at least he's fighting back."

At least he's fighting back. They don't realize they're being taken advantage of. Exactly. Would you consider him an MRA?

I wouldn't have considered, I don't consider him that, but he does talk about men's issues from the same manosphere. An MRA is oftentimes have an, he's someone I would want to see.

I would have called success. I call him like success. I call him a grifter. I call him a human trafficker. Yeah, you know, call him a criminal.

Yeah, um, you mentioned that it may be more of an issue with delivery, but he said explicit things. Whereas, like, he doesn't take the opinions of women seriously.

There's no way of delivering that kind of message. Like, the issue isn't with the delivery; it's the content of that.

And then additionally, I would just say any individual who is a human sex trafficker, which if you listen to the videos in which he explains how he runs his business model, it is exactly that.

Stealing from, um, sex workers and lying to them, and how much is going towards taxes and fees, etc. Um, any sort of model like that, regardless of what they're saying, is not a net positive impact on men and, in fact, reinforces the same kind of sexist, misogynistic things that men need to get over.

And he's also admitted to literally robbing men, taking their money because he tricked them into thinking they were talking with actual women behind cameras. He said this himself.

I'm not making that up. I'm not, I'm not debating you guys at all. I said this. I said that there's a lot of things that he's done I don't agree with either, but to say that everything he has done is negative, I could say that from anybody.

The question is, Andrew Tate has had a positive influence on society. And so, Nico, what I'm asking you is, you're saying you don't agree with everything Andrew Tate does, and we're hearing, you know, there's things that he's explicitly said he's done that it seems like everybody here would probably agree as wrong.

But do you think the positive outweighs that negative? I'd have to split it down the middle, like any choices that I make in life, and say a win and a lose column and weigh the result.

I have a friend who, he out here in California, and he's got like eight months to live from brain cancer. Um, and his wife is paralyzed. So he basically got this diagnosis, and he found out he had eight months to live.

I was raising money for him, and the Tates donated like $155,000 to him and his wife. They don't even know him. And so it’s like, even just like personally, I don't know them well. I've just met them once.

But you're friends with them. Like, but she's saying I only met them once. I've literally met them once. And John Wayne Gacy was a kids' clown at kids' parties.

So really ugly people can still do really generous things in the world, so that does not make him a good person. A broken clock can be right twice a day. It doesn't make it a clock that you want to follow.

When you give someone like Andrew Tate that has such a disgusting message that disparages so many people in the world, and he treats people so horribly, he should not have any sort of platform.

Because not only is he not making the world positive, he is making the world a much, much uglier place, starting with our youth and little boys that we're trying to raise to have feelings and to be decent contributing members of society.

Tate is getting in their head. Since I do OnlyFans, I make it a point I do not use chatters. If someone's paying to talk to me, I will not defraud them and have some person in Bangladesh pretend to be me as a guy and talk to them.

Andrew Tate had no problem scamming any of these men. I have more respect for men than Andrew Tate does, not even just women, for men. I would never scam a man, whereas Andrew Tate was just like, "Oh, these losers, I'm just going to make them think they're talking to this girl and find a way to emotionally manipulate men."

Emotionally manipulate vulnerable men into giving these women this money that then he's just taking. Exactly. What are you doing? He makes fun of men for being broke. He makes fun of men for not having, you know, a bunch of women.

He hates men. He is the worst male advocate you could ever have. He's a grifter. The men's rights movement is not as important as the feminist movement.

Agree or step forward. Um, I don't think that it's to say that men's issues are less important than women's issues because I think that feminism adequately addresses both issues.

And I think that there are feminists who, um, may in fact contribute to some of, you know, pervasive attitudes towards men. Like, I always tell girls when they say things like, "Oh, he's not a real man unless he's like making six figures" or something like that, I'm like, "That's actually harmful," and that's something that, like, you should probably, it's in your best interest to also not perpetuate.

And so, um, the reason why I would also say that the men's rights activist movement is less important is because I, and I think even to some of the, you know, more genuine men's rights activists who do have good intentions, they'll acknowledge that it is filled with toxicity and genuine misogyny that it has a close overlap with things like the red pill, manosphere, pickup artists, etc.

And feminism has been here as a historical movement and has achieved so much, and so it's ultimately the movement that we should all align with, um, for, you know, gender equality and the end of gender oppression.

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, like, I know we, a lot, most of us, except maybe Pearl, have denounced podcasts like Fresh and Fit, but they literally say number one men's podcast.

So how much of these spaces are actually filled with that toxicity? And I mean, the definition of feminism that's most pervasive is the social, political, and economic equality between the sexes.

So we, I think real feminists are not the ones perpetuating those negative stereotypes of, "Oh, men need to be like this, men need to be providers. You're not a man if you can't do this, you're not a man if you can do that."

And so I think that real feminism kind of eliminates the need for that, for men's rights because we just want everybody to be treated as individuals instead of, um, you know, treating them differently based on their gender.

Yeah, yeah, I feel like a lot of people conflate feminism and MRA, and they just think, "Oh, if you're a feminist, that means you hate men and want them all to, you know, just suffer and, you know, have a horrible life."

And I feel like the people who think that, that's really their projection because that's what their position is. Like, when you're a men's rights activist and you're like, "No," and you're so against feminism, it's because you think feminism is trying to replace the patriarchy with a matriarchy, and we're going to rule just like they have.

But that's not the goal of feminism. The goal of feminism is so that everybody can be the same. It's also worth mentioning feminism is a diverse philosophy and lens of analysis.

You know, Susan B. Anthony's feminism is very different from Judith Butler's feminism, is very different from Angela Davis. Simone, like, they all have a variety of different approaches in the way that they tackle issues related to gender, sex, and, you know, the meaning of masculinity and femininity.

And so instead of, like, out of protest or wanting to address men's issues, attempting to create a new movement as in opposition to an all-a movement that already exists and has existed for a particular reason, it just makes more sense to, um, speak within the variety of perspectives within this movement that already exists.

A lot of you are making the argument that feminism should be working for everybody. So do you think you should be inviting men's rights activists to feminist spaces? Is that something you would advocate for?

When men come in and they want to listen and they want the same things we want, of course we would want them into our spaces. But a lot, I just, I don't see a lot of them coming in with that mindset.

Gotcha. Let's bring in our disagreer, and Isaac, let's start off with you. So I agree with everything my fellow feminists are saying, but when I entered this discussion, I was looking at male, like, um, rights activists from a more antagonistic point of view.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we could actually work together. Yep, I think feminism and men's rights on paper, yep, are trying to dismantle the patriarchy, the system that says that men must provide, that, you know, women should only get the kids, or like, you know, men are like more dangerous and more culpable for their crime, so they should be sentenced twice as harshly as women.

If we all work together, we could actually make a better tomorrow. So I don't think feminism is more important in the sense that we had the feminism to open this discussion. We needed it.

Um, but men's activists can join the conversation if they have well intentions. To me, I feel like kind of what I alluded to earlier, women do so much emotional labor for men. Men don't do anything for women.

To me, I'm on this side. I agree with almost everything you guys have said this whole conversation. And the reason for that is the reason why I'm still on this side is because there's a lot of what you were alluding to, a lot of manosphere, a lot of toxicity on this side.

Every man, every movement that I've seen that has mostly men in it honestly has been mostly red pill, mostly manosphere. I want to, that there are men's rights activists who for the most part want to work in tangent with feminism because ultimately you guys do so much, and you guys have so much on your plate that obviously the men that do feel that feminism maybe hasn't done enough for them, that's where I think men's rights activists can come in, pick up the slack that maybe you guys are too busy to deal with.

Ultimately, because there are serious problems that women are facing, and I think men could pick up the slack on our end for once and actually help women. I suspect there will be comments that say that you are not a men's rights activist. What would your response be?

If we just anticipate that comment, I mean, it's the same way that I would argue feminism is such a widespread, uh, men's rights activism is such a widespread.

Most of the people that I follow, the FD Signifiers, the Hassan Pikers, those guys, uh, I, again, I'm on this side because I think that there has to be some examples of masculinity that isn't against feminism, that isn't blaming women for everything.

You alluded to that earlier. Most of the men's rights just blame women for everything. I don't support that, but I do see the pain, and that's ultimately what the problem is on this side.

It's mostly just grifters. It's mostly just loudmouth people who realize that young men, young impressionable men are very easy targets, and they snuff out y'all's actual, and they snuff out the actual people.

Like, again, like my friends even ask me, like, "Why are you even on this side?" I just told him, like, because I ultimately know that there has to be some people in the audience who don't want to be sucked into the manosphere, who don't want to be toxic, but they want to feel heard.

They want to feel seen. I'm not, I'm not trying to sell anybody a course. I'm not trying to sell anybody my social media. I don't do any of that stuff. I literally just want men to feel heard.

And it just sucks that most of the people on this side, they're so close because they can acknowledge men's pain, but the solutions they offer are just messed up or they're paywalled.

Just because you don't agree with them doesn't make them wrong. In the same way we were talking about, um, therapy earlier, sure, you don't see therapy the same way I see it.

No, but I agree. Does that, no, no, but hold on. Does it make it automatically wrong? No. And this is why I don't think you're a men's rights activist, but that doesn't mean that you're not.

Sure, it's not because I think so that you're not. But the point in the matter is there's a lot of different ways to approach this to find a solution to the same problem.

It just sounds to me that whatever you don't align with, and I'm talking about you and a lot on your side as well, if you guys don't agree with it, it's wrong. I never said that.

Just having a conversation with you guys is extremely hard because we get cut off. And I'm talking about me. I'm not talking about anybody else on this panel.

But who really can say today that women need feminism? Name me one right I have as a man that they don't as a woman. Bodily autonomy.

There may not necessarily be a legal deser. That doesn't mean that feminism's obsolete. Men's rights activists typically don't acknowledge patriarchy in the ways that it actually hurts men.

But we disagree with feminist theory on patriarchy. And the thing is, I don't think a woman's movement should have the monopoly on defining A, what men's issues are, and B, how to address them.

Because I will say decades of experience, feminism does not adequately address men's issues. When I ask feminists what are you going to do about the boys' education gap, half the time they don't even know what it is.

What can they? But that's not fair. Like, I read Richard Reeves' "Boys to Men." There's a lot of feminists on this side. A lot of the issues you say, like the draft, circumcision, feminists aren't like, "I don't want anyone to be drafted."

I don't think men or women. There are some feminists I agree with. Yeah, so my point is a lot of feminism, we're trying to minimize those sex differences.

And what I feel is the majority of men's rights activists are trying to emphasize the differences between men. There's a lot of feminists I agree with, but when you look at feminist organizations, a lot of the laws they lobby for are not in the name of equality.

And feminists have supported gendered policies, example, like the Dutch model, which are not equal. I'm part of a movement called, well, an organization called the NCFM, National Coalition for Men.

Very, very solid group, very diverse group, men and women. I would say when you get past those big YouTubers and look at, like, grassroots men's organizations, uh, we're very much about the issues, and we're not just about a backlash of feminism.

So I feel like I acknowledged that you guys, a lot of you guys are in good faith. I think what I was talking about was that I feel like we live in an echo chamber where we see the other side as the enemy.

You see us as like, you know, saying that men do not deserve any rights, um, and we, you know, you look at us as saying that women deserve all the rights. But I don't really think that that's productive.

Men and women are supposed to go together. There's no rule to that at all. So when you say that, you know, they go together, that's just your own subjective opinion.

So is everything you've said up to now. It's because at the end of the day, when you have a group of people, when the men want it to be about them, they can do that. They can just be stronger, be bigger, be louder, take over, and make it about them.

So if you don't purposely carve out for women, it doesn't happen. Because you would think common sense would tell you that when the Constitution says all men are created equal, that they meant humans.

But the fact that women have had to fight to get the right to, you know, the gendered laws, there are gendered laws so that women could vote, I think that's a fair one because we had to gain that right.

Same thing with discrimination against credit and getting bank accounts and all that stuff. Like, some of the gendered laws are there because the men have been standing in our way. Damn right.

So my final thought is, as a woman, we have the right to do whatever we want, and I don't know what really feminists are crying about. We can go get an abortion if we want one. We can go get birth control. We can go work.

I can't think of anything we can't do. So to me, feminism is just a lot of crying and whining over nothing. It's funny 'cause I actually, like, most of my life, well, I, someone said, "Are you a feminist?" I would be like, "Yeah," but I didn't really have to get, like, adamant about it until I switched my career into doing OnlyFans and was constantly attacked by, again, I'm not used to.

And I love, like, the two of you and what you do because I do think that there needs to be a space for actual men, like Hassan, like you, who are giving a positive example of masculinity.

Okay, well, whatever. I don't, I don't watch a moment, a narrow distorted view of masculinity. And I feel like I almost had to become a feminist in opposition to so much toxicity.

And it is unfortunately the case that the big names are the ones that are having the most impact. I would love for you guys to be able to get more of these young men away from Sneako, away from Fresh and Fit, away from Andrew Tate.

But the unfortunate truth is whatever they're spewing out to these kids is more popular. And because of that, than people like me. I was like, okay, all these girls are going on these podcasts, and they're just being like, on because they don't have the verbal ability or maybe like the ability I have to combat the rhetoric.

So I had to almost, now everyone's like, "Oh my God, you're such a big feminist," but it's because I had to do it in opposition to a men's rights movement that came about to basically on us, a men's rights activist movement that doesn't care about men.

Mind you, you guys care about men. I could tell y'all care about men.

All right, thank you all for participating in this discussion. I know it was hard. It got heated. I would think it'd be good to shake hands, acknowledge each other, leave comments in good faith, please.

Thank you for watching Middle Ground. Suggest more topics in the comments for future episodes, and thank you all.

All right, that's a wrap. Awesome. Thank you. That was cool. Thanks. Hey, it was good being with you guys. Definitely, definitely good being with you guys.

You, well, shake real fast. Meeting you as well. You ever seen The Walking Dead? Nice meeting you, dude. You look like just like one of the main.