71: A Hot Fat Guy Takes on Toxic Masculinity with Alex Frankel
Today’s topic is exciting: toxic masculinity, which might be better termed “functional masculinity.” I’m joined by Alex Frankel, who grew up in San Francisco clearly understanding that the definition of hotness was dictated by beautiful people in popular magazines. During his entire childhood, he felt trapped in his fat body and hated how he looked. He finally realized that being hot was more than perfect abs and bulging biceps but more of an attitude. Alex is now a successful plus-size model, and he’s a body-acceptance advocate and role model for fat guys all around the world. He created the Hot Fat Guy Club to dispel the myths around diet, culture, fatphobia, and other fat people stereotypes. His goal was to create a welcoming community where people are celebrated and not shamed for their body types. Why do I love this topic? It’s because men are not often talked about in the body positivity movement. Join us for a new perspective from a Hot Fat Guy!
Show Highlights:
● An overview of Dr. Ronald Levant’s Seven Tenets of Traditional Masculine Ideology
● Where the problem of masculinity originates because of deeply entrenched patriarchy, traditional masculine values, programming, and gender policing
● Fascinating trends in how young boys and girls segregate themselves until puberty hits
● Why Alex believes a lack of empathy and respect for other human beings are core issues with today’s masculinity
● How we are taught the power differential by society around relationships and rejection
● How programmed traditional masculinity can be dormant until it flares up later in life
● The link between church and religious propaganda and traditional masculinity
● Why men have been programmed by traditional masculinity around vulnerability and feeling shame in showing emotions
● Three things to note around weaponized vulnerability, emotional safety, and caring feelings
● An example about the inability to express or understand emotions
Resources and Links:
Connect with Alex Frankel and the Hot Fat Guy Club: TikTok and Instagram
Mentioned in this episode: Therapy Chat podcast and The Tough Standard: The Hard Truths About Masculinity and Violence by Ronald F. Levant and Shana Pryor
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
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KC 0:05
Hello you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And I'm excited about today's episode because we're going to talk about masculinity. We're going to talk about toxic masculinity we're going to talk about you know, I always try to stay away from the term healthy because I don't like the duality of like healthy, unhealthy, but let's just say functional masculinity, like an idea of masculinity doesn't harm you and the people around you so I'm gonna go with functional masculinity. And my guest today is Alex Frankel, Alex grew up in San Francisco where the definition of hotness was considered Oh was dictated by beautiful people in popular magazines and TV shows his entire childhood he felt trapped in his fat body and hated how he looked. That was when he realized that what do you been taught, I mean, I just like can't even read and I'm not even going to edit it out. Because it's important people know that I never have my shit together. hotness was more than perfect abs and bulging biceps. It's an attitude and that's what he had fast forward to. Now Alex is a successful plus size model, body acceptance, advocate and role model to fat guys all around the world. He created the hot fat guy club to dispel the myths around diet, culture, fat phobia and other fat people stereotypes. He wanted a community where people are celebrated, not shamed for their body type all are welcome. And I want to read this little thing here about the hot fat guy club because I love it. And it says the hot fat guy Club is a movement to challenge the way the world looks at men and people of all sizes, empowering us to be loud and proud and authentically ourselves. The hot fat guy Club is a community that spreads love acceptance and growth while of course showing off what makes us all individually and undeniably hot. We are real men with real emotions. We live our lives unapologetically, we support each other. We are sexy, and we know it. Oh, Alex. I love everything about it. I think that men are often not talked about enough in the body positivity movement.
Alex 1:52
Well, that ties directly into what we're hoping to talk about later on today is whether or not men actually like women. In my opinion, one of the most glaring reasons why men have been left out of the body positivity movement is the fact that the number one tentative traditional masculinity ideology is the resistance of all things feminine. Who were the primary leaders of the body positivity movement,
KC 2:12
women, and not only that, but it was women of color. Exactly.
Alex 2:15
Well, that also plays into the seventh tenet of traditional masculinity ideology, which is disdain or hatred for gender, racial or sexual identity minorities.
KC 2:25
So can you run down the tenants for me? Yeah,
Alex 2:27
so this is a skill created by a psychologist named Dr. Ronald Levant. He's my Jesus. He basically invented psychology for men in the 70s and 80s. Starting at the Boston University fatherhood Institute, I've adapted a lot of his language into my work primarily because I think the term toxic masculinity as an umbrella term for the sad state of men in the world currently is a terrible term because the world already engages in so much shaming of men constantly. When we say toxic masculinity. It's such a catch all for so many things, that there's no real alternative for what that might be. And I think it's really important to classify it more so as traditional masculinity ideology versus toxic because it's a societal issue, not just a individual issue. So the Seven Pillars of traditional masculinity are number one, the resistance of all things feminine. Number two, the restriction of the expression of vulnerable and caring emotions 345 and six are toughness, dominance, self reliance, and a super high interest in sex like Playboy norm, you know, I've got to have 100 girlfriends in addition to the my wife that I cheat on constantly kind of thing. And lastly is disdain and hatred for gender, racial and sexual identity minorities. How much of that sounds familiar? Oh, gosh.
KC 3:44
I mean, it's interesting about the word toxic because you're right, that toxic is an individualist term. And so many times it means you're a piece of shit like you're toxic piece of
Alex 3:59
shit, right? I've been trying to shut my brain off with reality TV lately, because I've had the worst seven weeks imaginable. And I hate reality TV, but like big add on 90 day fiance, perfect example of, you know, one person being a toxic person, right? But like Big Ed is not an example of all men, right? It's we can see toxic traits and individual people, but it is a holistic issue. That's the problem where boys and men are forced to fit into this role from a young age. And it's younger than we even think it is. When you really dive into how deeply entrenched patriarchy and traditional masculinity values are not just in like full blown adults like you and I and like the usual culprits that you would expect to be kind of selling this idea to the world. I was a preschool teacher for almost a decade and there is so much unconscious, yeah, programming and gender policing that takes place between your peers when you're In like a preschool environment because, you know, kids mimic their parents. So when they see these gender roles play out in the home, it's policed even more in school. There's an incredible podcast, Laura Regan, who has a podcast called therapy chat. That's how I found Ronald Lavon was he did a podcast with her and his writing partner, Shana Pryor, where they talked about their new book, The tough standard, the hard truths about masculinity. And one of the things they talk about is like emotion, socialization and gender socialization, and how you know, there's all these there's been all these studies done on little babies that have just been born and whether or not assigned male or assigned female at birth, children are more emotive and assigned male at birth, children are vastly more than female. And there's like an inflection point at around 18 months, between 18 months and three years where girls skyrocket in terms of like actual visible emotions. And boys take a nosedive. What happens between 18 months and three years? Oh,
KC 5:58
lots of things. But I don't know what the right answer is. They're going to school? Ah, yeah. Yep. That's when they start that, let me ask you this, because my brain is my wheels are turning around this idea of toxic versus traditional. Because one of the things that came up when I saw I recently made a tic toc where I talked about well, actually, a year ago, I made a Tic Toc, where I said, you know, a lot of men don't like women, they are taught not to like women. And the reason is, because they're taught that being a man is just rejecting all the things feminine, right? You run like a girl, Don't be a pussy, don't cry, all these things. And so it's absurd to think that you would grow up your whole life hearing that those feminine traits are beneath you and to be despised, and that that's the worst thing you could ever be. And then all of a sudden turn around as an adult and go and now I'm supposed to love and cherish and respect this other person that has all those traits. And we'll get into that. But I just wanted to give that recap to know that somebody asked me like, you know, how would I know if the man that I was with liked women, or if he was just pursuing me sexually or wanted me to fill a role in his life, and so many men answered and gave what I consider to be red flags of toxic men. And what I thought was so interesting is that so few men answered what I was asking, which is like, I know that a man that talks about alpha male or a man that talks about submissive women, like I know that, but I think what happens is that like, I'm not trying to figure out who the bad dog owners are and who the good dog owners are, like, I want to know, does he think of a woman as an equal complex human with emotions and thoughts and feelings? And there are men out there that are good kind men that still see women as not as complex, not as nuanced, not as intelligent, not as and so I can't even like get my thoughts together. But it's like, it's not the difference between a good man and a bad man. It's not the difference between I hate women, and I know it and I'm consciously thinking that and like I'm reading a book right now. It's called the marriage portrait. And one of the things in it, this character who's a Ducati mares, and he's so kind to her, and he gives her gifts, and he lets her have her freedom. And he'll settle up and be like, I just love that you love to paint, you know, whatever, whatever. But the moment she crosses him, or challenges his authority, he's like, What the fuck are you doing? This is not how this works. And that was like, This is what I'm talking about. Like, it's not the difference between mean men and kind men. It's not the different like, obviously, Andrew Tate is an asshole. Like, like, yes, he's engaging in that traditional masculinity, but he's also toxic and an asshole. I hate that we boil this down to you know, the issue is whether you're a good person or a bad person, because you can be a kind man, empathetic man and be like shackled by this idea of traditional masculinity and not be able to engage in respectful, like relationships with women, not because you are wanting to mistreat them, but
Alex 8:49
you've been conditioned to be that way. Yes. Okay. So I have a lot of thoughts on this. And again, it starts a lot earlier than you think. Right? When we go to school, when little boys go to school. It is one of the most gender segregated places on the planet intentionally or unintentionally is not what we're talking about, right? It is the reality of what the situation is, when I was at the preschools I worked at, like, it was a very common thing. The boys would play with blocks, you know, the boys would play with the boys the girls would play with the girls boys would be playing with the blocks and or like and you know, the girls would be playing at the sensory table, or they would be doing clay or dolls or this, like everyone would do their thing. And like the boys would play with dolls too. But it was always a group of girls doing this group of boys doing that. And that happens at such a an early age and continues so consistently throughout school age that the boys play with the boys, the girls play with the girls. And again, I'm making a lot of really broad generalizations here, right. And the groups don't really reintegrate until puberty until they're sexually interested in each other. Exactly. So they begin to like teenage boys and like I can speak from my own experience. Like, I didn't know how to talk to a girl like a person when I was 12 years old, I thought it was this like, you know, I remember I had a crush on this girl, my Ada dooshka. Nova mentioned sixth grade. And I thought the way to get her to like this is like I haven't this memory is like really going deep. I couldn't have told you the name two days ago. But I remember like talking to my mom and one of her friends of like, the way to get my editor like me is to give her $5 Every day, right? You know, so boys have no clue how to interact with women until all of a sudden their you know, sex drive kicks in when they're 13. And then they see women as sexual objects and not people
KC 10:39
is that early gender segregation, or sex segregation? Do you think that that is instinctual? Or do you think that that is programmed
Alex 10:48
that I don't have a good answer for? I don't know. Yeah, I think it's probably a little bit of both. Because dealing with a really young young children, it doesn't matter as much like they're all going to interact and integrate together. It's like as you get out of pre K preschool, and then you get into like, kindergarten, first grade, especially elementary school is really when the cliques in the group start building up. But what's so fascinating is like, essentially, unless you have a sister, right, you're not going to see women as people when you're a teenager. And I think for a lot of people, they never grow out of that, you know, there's so much media and there's such a an environment of like, women should be submissive, they should serve their man, they shouldn't be homemakers, they should pop out as many babies as possible. And that's the role that women have in society. But it's so interesting, when you go even further back in history, and you look at like, the real reason, women's role in society was turned into what it was, and especially how like, the patriarchal society is purely based on maintenance of power and knowing whose children are whose, which is crazy. There's an author whose name I can't remember, but he wrote a book called sex at dawn, I'm polyamorous, I'm in an open relationship. You know, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of communication. And one of the things that he talks about in the book is how in hunter gatherer society, women were the most valuable people in society, because they accounted for 85% of the calories that any tribe any group of people would eat, and everything changed with the advent of agriculture, because now you weren't living in essentially this like agrarian egalitarian society. Now you needed to know whose kids were who's in order to plow the fields, and you had property and you had all of these things to push down, you know, now, like, it matters whose daughter is whose or whose child is whose and it's this horrible, fucked up, like, you know, you see where it came from, and look at where we've ended up now. And it's like, Oh, my God, we made every wrong fucking choice.
KC 12:49
Yeah. And when you say, like, teenage boys don't see teenage girls as real people. I think that's also the piece where I think about like dog ownership, because like, it doesn't mean you hate them, or that you want bad things to happen to them or that you intend to mistreat them. Just like, my dog is not a person, I don't allow them to behave like people. Like there's this aspect of like, I love my dog, I'm good to my dog. I never mistreat or abuse my dog, you know, I do nice things for my dog, but it's a fucking dog. And like, I'm not going to let it sit with my children. In the same way in our household, I'm not going to let it do certain behaviors, like at the end of the day, like if someone's got to go, it's going to be the dog. And that's kind of what I feel like it's missing from that this conversation a lot of the time is that like, it's not about mistreatment, per se, or being abusive, per se, or being outwardly misogynistic. It's like this fundamental viewpoint of like, is the woman in front of me an NPC? Or is she somehow like below the complexity that I exist in?
Alex 13:58
That's a really interesting question, because I think you see the lack of understanding that men have here's a story for you, because I think this sums up the way that I think a lot of men don't understand what women have been saying, especially in the last like five years after the me to movement and kind of where we are kind of looking at this like horrible patriarchal society that were stuck in in late stage capitalism and you know, the repeal of Roe v Wade being this huge moment of like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, this is wrong. This is totally wrong. It was a huge reason why I'm starting a fat guy club is because in my opinion, men have to start taking a lot more responsibility for the only way men can be saved is by being saved by other men. Women have tried for centuries to save men and have failed at no fault of their own but purely because resistance of all things feminine is the number one, you know, traditional masculinity ideology pillar. And as one of the things that was so interesting to me during the metoo movement, which illuminated to me a lot how clueless my male friends are, because at the end of the day, I think it boils down to an empathy issue and I remember there was a hashtag on Twitter of like, if all men disappeared for 24 hours, how would your life change and I personally think that the majority of men do not have the ability to imagine themselves in the shoes of a woman, and how much harder and more dangerous their life is purely because of their a woman. So my father died on September 10. And I don't drink if I'm drinking, I'm not doing okay. So that day really long, terrible day I ended up getting a hotel room that night in Sausalito, because I was in California and I'm sitting at a bar and I am six feet tall and I weigh 300 pounds and I look like this right and I am sitting at this bar disassociating off into the distance on my second gin and tonic and there's a singer songwriter at the bar and this guy comes over and we make accidental eye contact and if that like level of accidental eye contact where it's like ah shit we have to acknowledge each other's you know? Yes. And like I don't even want to talk to my fucking wife right now. I just want to be alone to process everything that has just happened to me in the last 24 hours right? And this guy comes up to me and you know, we make this accidental eye contact me does it like you know, the dancey dance when you accidentally you know, acknowledge another human being and you're like, Ah, shit, do I have to go talk to you like, so he comes over and he tries to DAP me up. And I was like, I don't want to talk to you go away. could not have been more clear on that boundary. Right? And of course, this guy flew right over his head. He was like, how you doing? Man? I'm like, not good. I don't want to talk to you. Go away. Doesn't take the hint. Yet again. He's like, No, come on me and tell me what's going on? And I was like, No, I don't want to tell you. I don't even want to talk to my fucking wife right now. Go away three times. I've been abundantly and this is me six foot tall. 300 pound man telling him this right? He keeps going. And finally I'm like, Alright, fine. You really want to fucking No, my dad just died six hours ago, happy. He does the, you know the like, oh, feel you. And I was like, before you say another word I don't want to talk to you get the fuck away from me. I am not a violent person. I'm an angry person. But I'm not a violent person. I was gonna smash that gin and tonic in his face as hard as I could if I had to tell him one more time. And he tries to say something again, I was like, No, I'm gonna break your face open. If you say another word to me, I cannot be more clear that I don't want to talk to you go away. And finally he takes the hint. And he leaves. There's a woman sitting across the bar has been watching this entire interaction. And her jaw is on the fucking floor. And like me, being who I am the only thing that I can think of a myth. And you know, walking away from that whole situation is like, Who the fuck does this guy think he is? And what if I was a woman in that situation? Would he actually have listened to me or gotten or gone away. And it truly is a lack of empathy and respect that I think is the core of the issue as to one why men hate women so much. And to they it's illuminated even more as an issue now, because the way the internet works, the way algorithms work and the manosphere. And there is this internet ecosystem ripe with landmines for if you've had one grievance with a woman, they can immediately turn it into every single woman that exists on the planet, all it takes is that one woman was shitty to you, all women are shitty, and all women are shitty forever, and you should be terrible than them for your entire life. And you should control them and they're not human beings. They're just holes to be fucked, like no. One person being shitty to you means that was a shitty person. It does not mean every single person with a vagina on the planet is the same as that. And I think that's one of the core issues that we're facing right now is especially in SEL and red pill culture is giving these men that already struggled with empathy already struggle, maybe with social skills, don't necessarily have a community of people behind them or other positive male role models to actually show them not even how to treat a woman but how to treat another fucking person. Right? And I think it's there's so many reasons that it's a problem, but it's a lack of positive male role models problem, you know, it's a lack of empathy problem, it's a lack of just the ability to see another person's struggle as real or as a human being problem.
KC 19:09
Well, the empathy thing is huge. And it's the entitlement I think, because I actually was having this thought the other day, like when I was preteen, right, like I wanted so badly to have a boyfriend and to be liked by the boys. And I just wasn't like I was kind of awkward. I had acne like, I was very popular, like I ran in the popular crowd, but I'd nobody ever had a crush on me. And I remember like sitting in my room at night and kind of like feeling sorry for myself and thinking about like, the popular girls in my circle that had boyfriends that like weren't very nice to their boyfriends. And I remember thinking like, I would be so nice to them, like I would be such a good girlfriend like they never like me and I will be such a good girlfriend. But the thing is, and I hear men talk that way like they always go for the assholes and I would be so nice and I but the difference and so like, it's interesting. So it's like, oh, I actually relate to that. I I remember thinking like they keep choosing the Mean Girls, but I would be so kind and I'd be so loyal. And I'd never cheat to differences. I never felt entitled to a man liking me. And so that sort of like, it's so unfair because I would be so good to them. It never had a chance to fester into anger at men. Because it was like, oh, man, this like, sucks. For me. There's this thing that I really want, like I, you know, I really wish I could have this thing, but like, none of them picked me. And I was thinking about this the other day where it's like men who start in that same place of like, Oh, shucks, like, I'd be so good to Brenda and look at her football boyfriend being so mean to her. It's like, how did they get from that to and so they never liked me. And if they never liked them, so fuck them and fuck brand and fuck all women. They never see how good I it's like there's this anger and entitlement of like, No, I'm supposed to get her. And that just never happened for me or any girl that I know that had that same like base experience?
Alex 20:54
Well, I have to say, unfortunately for you, you've never had the experience of being a white man in America. Born with that entitlement of Oh, give me everything. Yeah, I think a huge part of that, which is really interesting. I've never actually heard that perspective of it. Because I think a huge, huge, huge part of that is I had a similar experience growing up, right? Like I, for me, the primary experience, let me go back even further, something that I think about a lot in my work with hot pack club and just like my own evolution as a human being is all of the forks in the road where I could have gone down the Insell rabbit hole. And I actively chose not to because of the people that I was surrounded by and the you know, role models, both within my peers and my, you know, the people that were older than me, whatever. Just like I grew up in San Francisco, surrounded by gay people all the time. I'm a theater kid, like, you know, I exist in very diverse communities for my whole life, which is a reason I am who I am today. And when I was a sophomore in high school, I had a crush on this girl. Her name was Katie, and they were in our like lunch group, we would hang out in this one teacher's room to eat lunch every day. And it was one of the few places in school where I like legitimately felt safe isn't the word but as close to it as possible, because also, I was the fat kid who played football and did theater. So I never, I didn't fit into any box and I was ragingly depressed and suicidal. So like, I also did not have any social skills. So I had like, built up this whole thing with Katie in my mind, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna make this big grand gesture with a Valentine Graham on Valentine's Day and asked her out, and it was the most humiliating moment in my entire life. Because she got it before I got to the lunchroom that day. And I showed up and everyone was sitting everyone in that group was sitting, reading it laughing their asses off. And then when I walked in the room literally pointing and laughing at like, Haha, yeah, right fat ass, like any woman, whatever love you, let alone touch you kind of thing, right. And if that moment happened to me in 2023, and I fast forward 10 years into the person that I am, I'm gonna go to YouTube, I'm going to find Andrew Tate, or I'm going to find some Insell bullshit, that's going to say that that experience is every experience you ever going to have with every woman unless you're fat ass loses 200 pounds, and you get a million dollars in a boot Gotti and you have done all these gut like, you know, the things that are like, this is what you have to do to be a man. And this is what you have to do to get women. None of that is fucking true,
KC 23:23
is that reaction though, like every child is going to have that moment of rejection of romantic rejection. And I think that like you're onto something about like it is the reaction to that rejection that sets that course of, you know, am I going to become sad, you know, and everyone kind of turns it inward. I guess I'm not good enough. But what makes the difference between, you know, covering that up with maybe the issue is that I am good enough. And they're just stupid. They're just too stupid to know, a good thing when they see it, right?
Alex 23:54
I mean, that's kind of how I got through my late 20s. I went through this really terrible breakup in 2017 2016 and 2017. And it was, I was the secret guy throughout college. Like all these women would have sex with me, but none of them would ever want anybody to find out because of shame, or whatever. And also, it was like a semi professional environment to because it was like a theater conservatory but like, we're all fucking everybody. Everybody knew everything about everybody. We don't have to make this a whole shameful thing. And it was funny because I based I'd like forgotten about that for years until I
KC 24:29
was theater. Kids are always fucking everybody. So
Alex 24:31
funny story. One of those many secret girlfriends there was this woman who I was in love with my senior year of college. We were doing this terrible opera by Gertrude Stein about the libretto was by Gertrude Stein, the music was by Virgil Thompson and it was bad and it was corset day in rehearsal and corset day also happened to be my birthday. So it's when all the female cast members that had to wear a corset they got their rehearsal corset so they could rehearse singing in it because singing Of course, it's fucking hard and And the girl that I was, you know, dating, but in her mind was just secretly hooking up with looked amazing and said corset, and I completely zoned out in rehearsal staring at her at one point. And our director, who was also the head of the opera program at school was like Frankl stop staring at your girlfriend, and just monkey brain totally took over in that moment. I was like, She's not my girlfriend, we're just fucking in front of the whole, it was so bad. I'm so sorry. You know who you are, you're probably not listening to this. But you know who you know who you are. And I am so sorry.
KC 25:31
So and one thing about that moment is like, when I think about how, from a young age, I received this message that like, being liked by a man raises my value that like, my value is proven by a man's attention by a man wanting me by a man, you know, picking me and so when a man doesn't want me, that power differential that I'm sort of taught by society is different than like, if you're a man, and you're taught, yeah, man, like, it's the man that brings that woman value. It's the man that picks that woman and, you know, brings her up, and there is sort of this backwards, like, I'm better if I have that arm candy. But if you're rejected when you've always been told, like, but I'm the one that picks you. Like, that's a very different reaction than, like being told that I'm supposed to be bestowed upon the attention of a man, because there's this entitlement aspect of it. Like what do you mean, you don't want my help? Or you know,
Alex 26:33
my rate, I went to a club to go dancing with some friends last weekend. And they're these two, two women, and we're relatively new friends. And they've never experienced me in a club setting before. And it's very Papa Bear energy of like, the way my ADHD brain works is I'm involved in every single conversation in the room as soon as I walk into the room, and it is such a gift and a curse, because I know everything that's going on around me at all times. And it's I'm so tired all the time. And my radar for creepy men is great. And I'm always on the lookout for them. And they were like, Wow, you're so vigilant. And I was like, yes. Because especially in this setting, it's like, you know, people are entitled, and people are shitty, and especially when they get fucked up, like, people do dumb things. And I've seen my favorite thing to do is to make fun of dumb men who are peacocking doing the whole entitled, bro thing of like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna wear my Patagonia vest and buy you a bunch of cocktails. And yeah, that's gonna work, right? No, it's not gonna work. Now. 20 thoughts coming out? Same time.
KC 27:35
How do you do you think that there are things that women can? So like, you know, so go back to talking about like, when I asked the internet, like, hey, you know, what is the litmus test? How would you know? And I think that there are those obvious red flags. Like, obviously, if they talk about a woman being submissive to that, and certainly like women are still getting in relationships with those men. So maybe there are women that don't understand that those are like violent red flags. But I think that there are more subtle red flags to be able to discern, because like, it's almost like this programmed traditional masculinity. It's like a sleeper cell, like you could be in a relationship with a man for years. And all of a sudden, and it often happens when you have kids, all of a sudden, it's like this switch and you're going, Why what is happening, what has shifted,
Alex 28:19
I think a lot of people are afraid to have actually like really real conversations about what they want before they get into, Okay, first things first, I love children. I was a preschool teacher for 10 years, that job if anything taught me that, you know, I have the ability to love someone else's child as if they were my own flesh and blood, do not want my own children for a number of reasons. Adoption is definitely something that's on the table for me in the future, but do not want my own children. And I think a lot of people are too focused on the end result the white picket fence, the kids the this to that versus the actual minutiae of what it fucking takes to get there. I saw it so often, in actually just saw an infographic about this yesterday that I saved that I haven't been able to dive into yet. But I guess apparently, hating your children is another like pillar of white supremacy, which honestly makes sense based on some of the wealthy families that I've worked for in New York City who, you know, whose billions uphold white supremacy.
KC 29:17
You hate them once they become their own people, once they're not a status symbol for you, or a part of your
Alex 29:23
Oh, no. In New York, their status symbols the moment they come out? Well, that's
KC 29:26
what I mean. Like, they start out as a status symbol, but the moment they start to have their own personality, their own wants their own autonomy. It's like, Oh,
Alex 29:32
I hate you. They'd have their own personality from the second they come out though. That's the thing. Yeah.
KC 29:35
But it can't be bullied as well, at some point or projected upon.
Alex 29:39
That's an issue that I see. You know, I think parenting is the hardest job in the world that none of us have any training for. Right. And I saw it a lot. Donald Trump's kids make sense to me now after working with the families that I worked with, because like, yeah, they're assholes. But they are so desperate for love and approval from their father, then they're never ever, ever, ever, ever going to get but they've been trying to get for their entire lives and so many of these parents, just in my own experience of working with these ultra wealthy people in New York, and I think just parents in general, I think there's a confusion that the moment that child comes out of the womb, they are 100% themselves, they are the exact same person that they are going to be when they are 35 years old. The difference is context and skills. Like I had this one student, I'm not going to use their name, we'll call them the Tasmanian devil. I fucking loved that child, so much most difficult student I ever had to work with. I always left that lesson beyond exhausted, it was my last lesson of the day for a reason. And that was the kid where I was like, Oh, you are there is 100% of a personality in there, you are such a wild, smart, brilliant person, you just don't fucking know anything, because you're three. And that is something that I find a lot of people don't give credit to is like kids, young children, especially are a lot smarter than we think they are. It's just that they don't know anything, because they've only been in existence for three years, four years, five years. Well, that
KC 31:04
casting of a role like so I got sober when I was 16. Oh, thank you. And I converted to Christianity when I was 19. And I was coming out of like, literally a year and a half of being institutionalized and brainwashed in a high control environment. And so it just felt natural to slip right into another high control environment and to the evangelical church. And I've since left the evangelical church, and very much have a different kind of faith. But one of the things that I observed, like early on, which I think is everywhere, but it's sometimes exacerbated by the presence of the Church, which if the church influences it, then that becomes like for the most part mainstream US culture anyways, is that the pairing up the picking of a spouse, it was like a job recruitment. Like it wasn't I found this person and they're so fucking interesting. And I feel drawn to them. And I just want to sit and talk to them for hours. It was like I have a job description. And the first person that meets the job description that seems like they can perform the role. That's what I'm going with. And so you would get some people would get lucky and that they really liked their person. Yeah, yeah, some but the majority of them what they were attracted to in each other was being picked was getting the job was excitement about doing the job because you're raised to like, I want to do the job, I want to do the job and now I got the job and you mistake and then there's that sexual part of it of like I'm going to do to do this next. And so you mistake the enjoyment of getting hired getting the job doing the job, you know, getting the wedding doing it. And then you kind of feel like you're playing house like you mistake all of that for liking the person that you're with and liking being married or liking being partnered and then like, life is so long is that you fast forward and then you go okay, so there's this like, super traditional masculine Romain, right. And this woman who is like hyper feminine, almost, and like they don't like each other, like they have an end sometimes it would become that they disliked each other. But then like, best case scenario, they didn't dislike each other, but like, it was clearly like a working arrangement. Like I fulfill this role, you fulfill that role. And we're good roommates, that fuck sometimes. And so which is funny because like, no wonder people talk about marriage being hard, but like from the get go, which is funny cuz I met my husband in church and we fell in love immediately. And like, we always looked around with this like, puzzlement of like, are we the only people that like each other? And I mean, like each other and I mean, like 10 years in so excited to come home and just be next to each other. And I think what breaks my heart is that like, it seems like men are not raised to even know what it feels like to like a woman
Alex 33:41
moreso than or what they provide to them physical and
KC 33:45
a woman has kind of conditioned that that's the best value she could have or whatever would also happen is that you'd get people who would make these business arrangements thinking they were in love fast forward and then there'll be so many affairs because what would happen was one of them would meet someone that they were actually attracted to and the fucking fireworks were going off and and because you've hyper spiritualize everything your whole like all your emotions are like the voice of God, right? It's like I think God wants me to be with this person. This is so real. This is so and you're like, buddy, that's what you were supposed to have that
Alex 34:15
or the shame was unbearable. Okay, that's where do I start here?
KC 34:19
But why would you want more from a woman because you've never been taught to believe that they they're intelligent complex be I will never forget being in seminary and how much I loved the rigorousness of the thinking and the logic and having my favorite professor say to me, and he thought he was complimenting me. The thing is Casey, is that like, you have a very much like an engineering brain that which is just like code for logical brain. And he was like, I mean, you've got like a really masculine mind. And it was this sort of combination of like, you're not like other girls. And also it was like, Do you not think women have minds like this? Yeah,
Alex 34:54
yeah. It's so insane to me that when I was growing up, I grew up in California and my Dad was an old angry Jew from the Bronx, like we went to my mother converted to Judaism, when they got married, whatever, we went to synagogue until I was like five or 10 years old and stopped going, and I grew up as an only child. I have half siblings, but they're like, my mother's age because my dad was 60 when he had me, and one of the things that my dad always taught me growing up was religion was the greatest piece of propaganda in history. You know, it's just an effort of mind control. And like, my mom would send me to live with her sister who had five kids so that I could get the experience of like living in a big family, right? Because my mom was the oldest of five, she wanted me to have that experience. Okay, she wanted a five week vacation every summer. We're like, Yeah, I'm a lot. I get it. And I remember, they lived in Virginia, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So like, not even that deep into the south, right? And I remember going to church with them. And being, you know, like, really drawn into it when I was a kid, like, oh, I can play I can sing in the band. And I can do this. And like, yeah, I can work caution tape on my guitar. And then when I got into middle school, I was like, Whoa, this is my why are you crying about the stigmata right now? It's July, like what you are not Daniel Day Lewis, buddy. Like what is happening here. And I remember I started to just like, make connections for things of like what was going on in the church. And I remember seeing, you know, as a little kid, like, every, I've been fat my entire life, everyone has always given me shit about my weight. And everyone has always, you know, told me lose weight, do this, you're not going to have any XYZ thing in your life that you want. And I was always hyper aware of all that stuff. And I remember going to the church. And there were all these people that were like, you know, like, they're praying for these people. It's like, oh, so and so's about to have a triple gastric bypass surgery. And then they're like sitting in the back eating an entire bucket of KFC by themselves. And I'm just like, there's a disconnect of like, you think God is going to solve all of your problems. And that's not the case. Like there is a place where you have to also be realistic with yourself of like, you know, if God isn't every one of us, then I'm the one that has to solve my problems. Like there's a commitment I like, I'm not, you know, this is I'm trying to be careful with my language in this, but like, this is my observation as an 11 year old when I was in seventh grade, my opinions are different now. Right? But it just showed me of like, Oh, these people are serious about this. They just don't want to feel responsibility for anything in their lives. Especially at that level, it was so interesting watching these, like terrible men exist under the guise of being a good Christian and weigh in with all of these terrible things that they were doing to everyone and all these people just going along with it, because that was the status quo. And you know, as we're starting to see more and more people leaving the church in the United States. And just as that kind of proliferates itself, it's interesting that we have not also seen a shift in what masculinity looks like is or what how men act as a result of that, because you could get away with this like, shitty lazy behavior when the Bible was on your side. But now all these people leaving the church, it's like, okay, well, what's your justification for acting in the same way?
KC 38:02
Do you think that's part of that, like soda entitlement? Like if you look around, and you see like white male privilege and male privilege and people getting things and acting with impunity and having this power dynamic, and so you sort of come to think like that's going to be your birthright? And when that's not manifesting at 13 years old, 14 years old, 15 years old, especially with your romantic pursuits, do you think that that's part of where that entitlement comes from? And that anger comes from is like, I'm not like, I've been watching this my whole life, like, where's mine? Yeah. Okay. I thought of another question too, when going back to like, okay, yeah, there are dickheads. And then there are like men who are kind. And then like, of those kind men, some are still balls deep in traditional masculinity. And I wonder, like, we talk a lot about how men hurt women when they're engaging in traditional masculinity, and rightly so because that hurt ranges from hurt feelings, to physical violence to murder. And so that obviously, is the most important thing to listen to the voices of people who are affected by that. And I can't help but find myself wondering how many men that have empathy but have been so programmed by traditional masculinity, especially around the inability to be vulnerable, the inability to show any emotion that doesn't make you immediately feel shame because I think people don't understand like when we talk about men not being able to express feelings, it's not like you can't just decide one day to express them like when it gets that programmed, you actually feel shame anytime you express an emotion that's not anger.
Alex 39:36
It took me nearly a decade to be able to get out of panic mode and be an even now I still struggle with it and like not be fully swept up in the tornado of emotions that I don't understand. And I think a lot of a lot of men the whole you know, girls are hard boys are easy saying why are boys easy? Because you're fucking lazy because You've been told that boys are easy, but they're not. If anything, boys are harder, because it's like raising a nuclear weapon.
KC 40:06
Oh, my husband was so stoked when we found out we were having girls. And I was like, why? And he was like I have, I am a man, I've been a boy. And it is so easy. Like, I'm not saying like, it's harder, it's easier, like I just woof is what he said was like navigating, creating a good man through what our society like expects of men. And I just can't think like, we talked about the loneliness epidemic of men. And so many men want to say it's because they're not getting laid, and it's like, or like how many men who desperately want connection, they can't get it from their guy friends, because you know, but like, are partnering with a woman and can't ever get a connection that like feeds their soul because they have to choose between bottling everything up and feeling no warmth, or being vulnerable and immediately feeling shame about it. It's like a lose lose situation.
Alex 40:58
Okay, three sticky notes that we're going to put in our brains right now. Because there's three really important points that I want to address with this one, the confirmation bias of like, when you open yourself up and give, you know, show your vulnerable feelings to a woman for the first time and whether or not that woman is a bad person or not right like and they weaponize those vulnerabilities against you. So it's sticky note number one sticky note number two is male vulnerability and being able to like actually have emotional safety with your male friends. And number three is where are men able to actually like be vulnerable, caring feeling things? So going backwards? Like the two most common places where men are able to, like actually express and safely you know, emote their feelings? Or either,
Unknown Speaker 41:41
I guess Can I guess? Yeah, go for it.
Alex 41:43
There's two. No, that's a good one. But no,
KC 41:45
I was watching a sports game with my husband the other day. And I noted to him, I was like, it makes me sad that like, you guys had to create sports leagues to experience like passionate emotion and a safe way to be able to touch each other in a way that wasn't shamed. To be able to get excited and flap your hands in a way that didn't make you girly. Like you don't get to do it anywhere else. Yeah, yeah,
Alex 42:10
that's a thing. So it's dogs and their moms. That's it. For most men, at least dogs and their moms. That's it. So again, like my father died on September 10, my mentor died three weeks after, and he and I were super close. And one of the things that I learned about myself throughout that experience is, is I have very large emotions. And I am a larger than life person to begin with, right? I'm a fucking opera singer. Like, that's my, that's my shit. And I made two trips to California after my father broke his hip went first when my father broke his hip, and we had to get his house ready for all the things. And then the second one, we realized he had a four inch tumor. And as long as you know, racing against the clock, and Kelly came with me, my partner came with me for the first trip. And I was so thrilled and glad that she was there. For the first one, I really needed her support. And I was really having a hard time. That was like my big emotional churn that first trip. And in the second trip, Kelly had to stay home. And I was super grateful that she did, because I did just need to be alone for that experience. And there were so many people that came out of the woodwork that I you know, had been really close with that were really close friends or I hadn't seen they were acquaintances that I hadn't spoken to for a decade, and so many people made themselves available to me in that time. And what I realized about myself in that moment is when you know, the worst thing in the world is happening to me, I do just need to be alone to be able to safely experience and process all those emotions without having to censor myself to You know, I also didn't need Kelly to watch my father die, right. And like, you know, there's that level of like, I have to just be able to, like, be at my absolute worst right now without worrying how I'm going to look to another person. And if that's even a thought that's in the back of my mind, where I know with Kelly, I am emotionally safe 100% of the time, like, you know, and I found a unicorn and Kelly, she's perfect. And you know, we're able to like deal with the worst things ever by like laughing our way through them. And you know, I am lucky to have found that a lot of other people are not and I think it's this happens to me a lot. When I talk on tech talk about you know, how to be vulnerable, how to share your feelings and how to actually like the key to a healthy relationship is being able to and it's really hard to actually know what you're feeling and why you're feeling it, where you're feeling it things like that. It's even more difficult to express that to someone, especially if you've had the experience of you tell your girlfriend Oh, I feel XYZ thing. And then they weaponize that vulnerability against you. That is a really traumatic experience and would make sense why you would then hold that shit in here and never share it with anyone ever again. You can't let one shitty person change you forever, right? We're all going to have bad people do bad things to us. There's no way we can prevent that from happening entirely. But it's the you know, Brene Brown says it beautifully. Like there are some people who deserve your vulnerability and there are other people who don't and when people tell you that they don't deserve it, you fucking listen to them, and you've cut them out of your life. You Isn't
KC 45:00
this also just another example though of not seeing women as like real human beings? Because like, first of all, most men are having their first experience of like rejection and a woman, mistreating them at when they're preteens or teenagers. She's fucking 14. Like, it's there's this disconnect of like, you're 20 you're 30 or 40. And it's like, yeah, women and it's like you mean the 14 year old girl who also didn't know what the fuck she was doing right? Or even if it's your 20 and your 20 year old girlfriend, she really weapon and it's like, okay, like, but you're 45 Now, dude, like, what is keeping you from going? You know what, maybe she wasn't evil. Maybe she wasn't bad. Like, maybe she was just 19.
Alex 45:42
So this plays into another big thing that Dr. levant talks about that is fascinating to me called the normative male alexithymia hypothesis. Do you know what alexithymia is,
KC 45:51
is that when you go up and down, it's the ability to
Alex 45:55
express and understand emotions, essentially, the inability to express or understand emotions. And when Dr. Lavon I love this story, he tell I'll tell you this podcast is fucking mind blowing. He tells the story about a patient that he had, who was about to have a baby. And this guy felt nothing about it. And his wife sent him to work with this guy. And what he ended up having to do with him is this guy was so out of touch with his emotions, like he didn't have emotions, period. And he had to teach him what emotions felt like where they would manifest in his body. And basically give him like a diagram of all of these things. And when a feeling comes up in your body, write it down on a note card, and then we'll go through and we'll you know, we'll roleplay the whole thing. And there was another story where in the Boston University fatherhood Institute, mind you, this is in the ad. Okay, so this is like the beginning of the involved father, this father comes in, and he was super angry, and he was furious. And they're like, why are you so mad? He was like, I had a plan with my son today. And he canceled on me last minute. And you know, he shouldn't have done that. And it was you shouldn't have done that. He was so angry. It was like, alright, let's roleplay this, I'm your son, your you. Let's go through it. And he, in order to attract all these men to the institute, he had all this really fancy expensive camera equipment. And this is the most part of it is they treated all of this, like teaching men how to have emotions. Like it was a football team. Like they were watching the film from practice the day before. So they would roleplay these things, and then watch the video back of what was happening. And after hours of working with this guy, the closest thing he was able to get to what emotion he was feeling was, I guess I was disappointed. So compare that exact same experience. You're a mother, how would you feel you know, you're gonna go see a concert with your child and then they canceled on you last minute took a friend of theirs. Instead, how many different emotions would you feel in the process of that? Right? And you're able to see like, Well, at first, I was sad because I was really excited of doing it. Then I was mad because she canceled last minute. And then you know, I was worried like, Did I do something wrong? Baba Baba Mala. Meanwhile, this guy was I guess I was disappointed. So where's the disconnect there? Like, why is the mother so able to have all of these different emotions that they're allowed to not even that they're allowed to feel that they're aware of right, and how that plays into one situation. And this guy is clueless. So it comes into the normative male alexithymia hypothesis, which is that men not only do not know what their emotions are, but they don't understand what they feel like how to process them anyway. And part of that is because of how we are socialized from such a young age men aren't allowed to have feelings, we're not allowed to cry. We're not allowed to be scared of things, you know, we have grow up and be tough and be a man. Well,
KC 48:40
it's emotional castration at a really young age. And I will say, this is like, you know, it obviously harms men to go through that clearly. And when you really get down though, with a lot of men about like, do we want to change this or not? What is not talked about enough? It's like, if we change it, you will lose power, you having the power and the entitlement, and all of this is based on the emotional castration. And so you cannot forego that and lean into full humanity without also giving up the power and privilege that comes with the patriarchy. And the truth is, like many men are not willing to give up the power. No.
Alex 49:20
Which is stupid, because you know, we've destroyed the world, and it's time for women to rule the world.
KC 49:26
Alex, I feel like we could talk for another like three hours. We'll have to do another episode soon, but we'll have to do another one. Yes, I'm gonna have you back up. Can you tell people where they can find you? Yeah,
Alex 49:34
so you can find me on Tik Tok at Alex Frankel, the lion haired both Tiktok and Instagram. You can find the hot fat guy club on Elon Musk's shitty app Instagram, Tik Tok. We're still pre launch but we have merch coming for your hot fat guy Club T shirts for Black Friday and then memberships founding memberships with Carhartt membership jackets coming soon as well.
KC 49:56
That's awesome. Alex, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation and There's so much more to cover so we'll have to do it again awesome
Alex 50:02
yeah can't wait thank you so much Casey that's so great finally getting to do this thanks
Transcribed by https://otter.ai