Ever found yourself laughing in the face of adversity, or perhaps disguising discomfort with a tough exterior? Our most recent heart-to-heart unravels the complex web of toxic masculinity, diving into how these cultural norms, from emotional suppression to enforced stoicism, wreak havoc on mental health just as fiercely as a zombie apocalypse would on humanity. We share candidly about our personal mental health journeys, including the ongoing battle with PTSD and how these experiences mirror the relentless stress of surviving among the undead.
Join Leah and Dan as we scrutinize the masculinity displayed in zombie tales like "The Walking Dead" and "The Last of Us." We examine the stoic survivors and power-hungry antagonists shaping these narratives, questioning the real-life implications of such portrayals on gender roles and relationships. From discussing the evolution of the rugged Daryl Dixon to critiquing the manipulative Negan, we peel back the layers of these characters, offering a critical eye on how media can influence societal perceptions of masculinity.
Then we predict the fates of "tech bros", "finance bros" and "gym bros" in a world overrun by the living dead, and reflect on the role of men in feminism. As we wrap up this introspective journey, we navigate emotional intimacy, tackle the issue of mansplaining, and consider how men can support one another in breaking free from the chains of harmful stereotypes. This episode is an invitation to contemplate, laugh, and maybe even change the way we approach the societal structures that influence us all.
Daniella Youngs website:
https://www.uncultureyourself.com/
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Ever found yourself laughing in the face of adversity, or perhaps disguising discomfort with a tough exterior? Our most recent heart-to-heart unravels the complex web of toxic masculinity, diving into how these cultural norms, from emotional suppression to enforced stoicism, wreak havoc on mental health just as fiercely as a zombie apocalypse would on humanity. We share candidly about our personal mental health journeys, including the ongoing battle with PTSD and how these experiences mirror the relentless stress of surviving among the undead.
Join Leah and Dan as we scrutinize the masculinity displayed in zombie tales like "The Walking Dead" and "The Last of Us." We examine the stoic survivors and power-hungry antagonists shaping these narratives, questioning the real-life implications of such portrayals on gender roles and relationships. From discussing the evolution of the rugged Daryl Dixon to critiquing the manipulative Negan, we peel back the layers of these characters, offering a critical eye on how media can influence societal perceptions of masculinity.
Then we predict the fates of "tech bros", "finance bros" and "gym bros" in a world overrun by the living dead, and reflect on the role of men in feminism. As we wrap up this introspective journey, we navigate emotional intimacy, tackle the issue of mansplaining, and consider how men can support one another in breaking free from the chains of harmful stereotypes. This episode is an invitation to contemplate, laugh, and maybe even change the way we approach the societal structures that influence us all.
Daniella Youngs website:
https://www.uncultureyourself.com/
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is your abusive stepfather who tells you to man up and quit crying so much. I'm Dan, and when I'm not burying my emotions deep inside me where it can manifest as a serious mental health condition, I'm writing a book about how our toxic traits could be the end of us in a zombie outbreak.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah, and I'm sitting on the world's most uncomfortable chair.
Speaker 1:I disagree. This chair sucks, it makes me slide sideways and has no lumbar support lumbar well, I'm sitting support, I'm straddled sideways on a two-person camping chair that is torn on every part, that has a pole running through it it's been a well-used chair it is a lot of good memories having a little fire but it is not comfortable and I am stuck in this chair until we're done so did we finish our zombie bunker, dan?
Speaker 2:no well, I feel like this is actually accurate for what a zombie bunker would end up being like, which is like shitty chairs yeah, we need.
Speaker 1:We need more um more, more bunker, more bunker stuff we need more comfort in our bunker.
Speaker 2:Well, today we're talking about culturally arbitrary masculine traits that are as infectious and deadly as a zombie pandemic to humanity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, it was your idea. Yeah, I'm toxic, just like Britney Spears.
Speaker 2:I wish I could sing that song. I'm not that I'm not. I can't sing that high.
Speaker 1:We release episodes every Sunday, so make sure you subscribe. We're available on all podcasting platforms, so and also be sure to give us a rating and a review wherever you listen to us and help us spread like a virus.
Speaker 2:Only do that if you like us.
Speaker 1:Yeah or well. No, they can do it if they hit us too.
Speaker 2:But then they have to give us five stars so we can read the review.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we won't read your bad review if it doesn't have five stars and if your bad review says anything about how tinny I've sounded in the last five episodes.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be really, really hurt. Me too actually, dan, what's been going on in our life? This is a casual dead episode, so we get to talk a little bit about ourselves.
Speaker 2:we've been dealing with the tinny sound of our podcast it's true, we may have had a marital spat yeah about it, but I was really high so I don't remember it basically, I was moderately high and I went on a rant about how I'm tired of sounding tinny and that I wouldn't want to listen to our own podcast and I'm grateful that anybody listens anymore, which might be slightly dramatic. Also, I recently went off the pill and this could be hormonal. Yeah, but I do think I'm tinny.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I, like I said, was high, and that was a conversation that I thought took place over several hours, when actually it was more like five minutes.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what you're like. We've been talking about this for an hour and I looked at the clock. I'm like no, it's been three and a half minutes we were listening to a preview of the episode that actually came out today, which is two weeks in the past for y'all when you're listening to this.
Speaker 1:So I apologize on behalf of our shitty microphones for my extra tinny voice you know, somebody did comment, like when I first uh, put the podcast on youtube, um, not very nicely, pretty much just calling us out for our shitty sound and being like um, you know, there's actually ways to fix this and I I had to inform them. This is the fixed version yeah, this is the.
Speaker 2:This is the version dan like made better sound.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, um it's, there's some things that are kind of out of our control, and one of those things is the microphones that we use right now. They're not great, um, and there are better microphones and we want to get better microphones, so make sure you buy our zombie chicken. Evil magic chicken zombie shirt yep, that's all going towards microphones yeah, we, we need to sell how many, so how many uh I don't know how much do you make off a t-shirt, dan?
Speaker 1:oh, like 30 cents. Oh god, I don't know we need to sell a lot of shirts.
Speaker 2:I think we need to sell at least. I think 20 shirts is too little.
Speaker 2:I think we need to sell like 50 shirts to get 200 bucks that's gonna be my guess without actually getting any right yeah yeah yeah, so, um, we're also gonna do some work to do yeah, we're also gonna have for y'all, or actually should already be out there, as if you're listening to this, whoops. Uh, yeah, there's also gonna be things like mugs and stickers and other stuff, and if it's not there yet, it will be because we're procrastinators, but it's coming by the time this episode is out.
Speaker 2:It's up also in a recent episode I said never get a zombie tattoo. But then I thought more about it and I kind of want to have an evil magic chicken zombie tattoo. So I already changed my mind, yeah um, I love that. My life update is just to riff it yeah, what else is going on with your life?
Speaker 1:yesterday I was sad. Yeah, yeah, I got sad. I'm still sad today, um, no reason, I just am. You know what the interesting thing that I've been learning about, uh, ptsd is, which is what I have? The thing that I was referencing in the beginning of this episode, um, is that all of the all of all of the things, all the stress hormones that people get when they become stressed out or upset, um, usually, uh, your body is like okay, we're done with the stress, now let's give you some cortisol and that will end the stress. And what happens with people with trauma is that the stress doesn't end, it just keeps on feeding you the stress hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because your body doesn't realize that you're not unsafe. They still think you're unsafe.
Speaker 1:So I have this sad feeling and even though there's no reason for me to feel sad, I just continue to feel sad.
Speaker 2:May I share some yoga wisdom.
Speaker 1:Yes, please, yoga me so yoga me, uh.
Speaker 2:Whenever one feels sad for no reason, it it's likely that something has triggered you that you're not aware of that's possibly bringing up stuff. Yeah, um, and the best way to make sure it doesn't stay in your body is to find a way to like really let yourself feel it. And yoga is really good at that because, like, a lot of the movements help with emotional expression, like anything with your chest forward or even just, I cry a lot in Shavasana, which is when you're lying down.
Speaker 1:Oh, me too.
Speaker 2:That's where I do my best, crying it's really important, like you know, and I used to say a lot of the time. You used to hear me all the time before I was on Prozac like, oh, I'm sad for no reason. And what I've learned also thanks to that book we're reading together.
Speaker 1:The body keeps the score is like no, I'm feeling sad for a reason. It's just probably from like 25 years ago and some small thing brought it back up for me. Yeah, body keeps the score is not a zombie book, so you might be surprised that we're reading it and it's not for the faint of heart, though.
Speaker 2:You want to dig deep, you want. You want to think about your childhood trauma? Read the body keeps the score. Yeah, you want to. You want to read what happens to people who go to war. Read the body keeps score yeah, read all about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um leah, what, what have you? What are your life updates?
Speaker 2:uh, I think my life is a little bit more chill than yours. I'm not feeling sad at the moment. I had a really nice birthday. Yeah, thanks to you, dan, you made me cake. Yeah, I made cake. You made me cake.
Speaker 1:It was really good it was a weekend of cake that's the best thing about being an adult is you make a cake and then you just eat it.
Speaker 2:I think it lasted us like five days, and also I made double the icing because I am an icing fiend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um I bought icing and leah's like no, I'll make my own.
Speaker 2:Yeah like very sweet that you bought me a box cake and box icing. But I guess, like I will be honest and say I'm a slight snob because when my mom allowed us to have sweets which was not all the time, you know which didn't contribute to my eating disorder at all, but anyhow, of course not. When my mom would go on like binges with sweet foods, it was always homemade, so I have a slight bias.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think that making it homemade just does like it's like a barrier to entry for for unhealthy eating habits. So it's like, yeah, I will eat a whole cake by myself in one sitting, but I got to make it first. I can't just do this every day.
Speaker 2:True, I want to make my blueberry apple crumble. I'm like, oh, effort, um. But I will also say that you can still go down a rabbit hole with baking from scratch, like my mom has, who's very health obsessed and, like now, never eats sugar and thinks that it's the devil which ps it's not. Um, there's a lot of good science around this, but anyways, uh, the last time she made me birthday cake, it was made out of some sort of weird chickpea flour and was the driest, untastiest, blandest. I felt like I was being thrown back into my childhood, where there was no salt and pepper or sugar in my life, or any spice. It's actually oregano, which I told my mom recently is not a spice, it's an herb.
Speaker 1:So no salt or pepper in your cake.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Only oregano. That does sound like a bad cake.
Speaker 2:You know what I think could actually work? Like an oregano lemon cake. Oh, a basil lemon cake. I think it could have some savoriness. In other news, I saw the first robins in our yard two days ago and the chipmunks have returned.
Speaker 1:The chipmunks have returned.
Speaker 2:Spring is officially here, as of this coming out.
Speaker 1:It's right around the corner for us recording this, I know, but it's so nice and the sun's out and it's warm. Yeah, I'm, I'm the. I'm like the only um the weather gets gets is getting warmer. Springtime curmudgeon. Yeah, it's like. For me, as the the second, it stops being like a ice covered apocalypse. That's when they're like you have to come back to work now and I'm like, oh fuck.
Speaker 2:I feel like you should update our pod friends about what's happened with your career stuff, because I think you've talked in the past about trying to pivot and obviously that's not happening this year. So what happened?
Speaker 1:The pivot's just not going to happen. It's a lot and honestly, there's things about starting a career in social media or podcast editing and stuff like that. That's just like I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can handle the grind of being in front of a computer all day and talking to people.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you can cut this out if you don't want us to talk about it, but I think, speaking through PTSD and the fact that you're getting that evaluated right now with the VA, I think it really stood out for you how so many of these jobs have things in them that would be super triggering for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the more I did job searching. You know I'm getting out there, I'm like looking at jobs.
Speaker 2:No-transcript of your own particular brand of ptsd yeah because the thing about ptsd is that it can be a lot of different things yeah, you know it's, it's been.
Speaker 1:It's been 20 years and I'm still.
Speaker 2:I'm still learning about my ptsd probably because of your ingrained toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know um, the way that I dealt with my ptsd for a large portion of my adult life was by uh, not addressing it and just turning off my emotions like uh.
Speaker 2:Like in the intro yeah, and like when you came out of the army, uh, acknowledging anything was like struggling for you was not acceptable, so you just um, struggled by yourself alone for a year yeah, I mean, you know the comparison game comes into play where, like, um, you know you, you see yourself as not as deserving as other people are of that care.
Speaker 1:And then there's, there are some people that you will talk to who will also say that you're not deserving of that care yeah, like your stepdad's a dick, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he also has major ptsd and a lot of mental health issues and I'm pretty sure, yeah, so I don't only think he's a good candidate for evaluation. I will say, like it sounds like you've a little bit of survivor's guilt, yeah, and knowing because there's always somebody who had it worse, right like it's inevitable that that's the case, but I don't know, does it help to know that I have complex ptsd from my childhood and my last relationship and like those things don't compare to, uh, what you went through in ira, afghanistan, objectively you could put them beside each other Exactly, but at the end of the day, I was in scenarios where I was repeatedly abused and couldn't leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and your entire life and well-being was based around you having to put up with torture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is kind of why it happened again in my adulthood, I think, because I sort of like forgot that I could leave for a minute and then I was like wait a second, Wait, wait, I don't have to.
Speaker 1:I can leave whenever.
Speaker 2:I want. Yeah, I can leave. I mean it was fucking horrible, but it was worth it. I'm so glad I did. But anyways, I think like if you're out there and you have mental health struggles or you've been through some shit, it's really important to not do the comparison game, because all it does is hold you back from healing yourself, which ultimately isn't for the best for the people around you too. It's not for you the best for you with your own life, and I think any of us who have like serious trauma in our lives, the risk of harming ourselves or others if we don't look at it as really high. I think the most important thing here is just know you're not alone and it's not a comparison game and that you deserve healing and care and love.
Speaker 1:Also, if there's anybody listening who's either a soldier or a veteran, especially if it's been recent, go get checked out, because the thing is you have injuries you don't know you have. Yep, you're going to be in my shoes 20 years down the road and be like, yeah, have I just always had a broken ankle?
Speaker 2:We laugh, but that's because people don't want to cry about it.
Speaker 1:Have I had a slipped disc my entire adult life?
Speaker 2:desk my entire adult life. Yeah, I will also say that I I have not seen any studies about this, but I would not be surprised if there were some that showed that there is a higher rate of female soldiers who go to the doctor and go to the va and get the stuff addressed than men, particularly from your generation, because they are not, uh, victims well, they are sorry. No, they're very much victims of toxic masculinity. However, they're much less likely to be this part to have being green, which is like you can never ask for help. That's a dude thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or a. I'll get into what I think about gender in a minute. I'm not going to try and explain it now. It's a thing in America.
Speaker 1:And I mean, this is probably a lot different now, but, like you know, this kind of goes into the last casual dead episode that we had, where we were talking about trolls, and one of those things is women in combat, and especially people like my age. Women weren't allowed to be in combat. So I think that when you don't actually see the front line, you tend to diminish your experiences a lot. Um, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that happened that were not directly in combat for me, that I just ignored because I didn't uh, I didn't think it was important.
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't think it affected me like stuff that happened to you in basic training, stuff that happened yeah not when you were deployed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like well, think also things that happened while you in basic training, stuff that happened, not when you were deployed, yeah, and also things that happened while I was deployed that weren't necessarily a result of being attacked, you know, like everyday things that seemed perfectly normal at the time and then the more you think about it, the more it bothers you.
Speaker 2:Being in the military kind of feels like being in a abusive family, a cult or a cult.
Speaker 1:Yeah um, there's actually somebody I follow on, uh, on threads and I wish I remembered her name right now because I'm also I'm also reading her book. Oh, and she talks about, uh, surviving a sex cult as a child. Damn, um, her parents were in this cult in brazil. They had like compounds all over the world and they would. Whenever there'd be like a scandal or like you know, there'd be some like police like snooping around asking questions people, they'd just be like we're all moving to this other compound and like they'd just do a switchoo, like all the people from like a compound in Chile would go to Argentina or Brazil just to so like they couldn't investigate things. And she got out of that by joining the army, damn, and then realized how cult like being in the army was.
Speaker 2:So re-traumatizing yeah.
Speaker 1:And now she's like a subject matter expert in cults and she wrote a book about cults and it's what she does on social media she talks about cults.
Speaker 2:That sounds fascinating.
Speaker 1:I think her name's Daniela Young.
Speaker 2:I want to say let's add her into the show notes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, her name is Daniela Young and her book is called Uncultured. Like cult, uncultured.
Speaker 2:I did once upon a time know, but I don't remember anymore because when I taught anthropology I knew there was going to be a cult and a culture. But I don't remember anymore Because cultures are kind of cult-y. There's definitely a connection there, but I don't remember the exact difference so I'm not going to say it, but I do think it's a good segue to talk about toxic masculinity in the apocalypse. Oh, is that what we're talking about?
Speaker 2:It is what we're talking about, I think we've already started and I want to start with a caveat about what the definition of gender actually is and a little anthropology 101 for you.
Speaker 1:One of my former no two of my former anthropology students listen, so pop quiz right, write your, write your uh answers to this pop quiz in before you listen to the rest of the episode, otherwise you're cheating all right, dan, I'm gonna make you be the quiz answer.
Speaker 2:Pop quiz. There are only two sexes, male and female. Oh, I know this is false do you remember what it's called when there's more than two uh sex categories in a culture?
Speaker 1:oh, uh, holy.
Speaker 2:No multi supernumerary, if there's three or more sex categories in the culture. It's supernumerary, which, for example, like um two-spirited identities, which were a whole swath of different identities in different nations in North America, indigenous nations, so that's sort of like a blanket term is like a third gender. And so what is masculine, what is feminine is essentially a set of completely arbitrary cultural choices. A lot of the time it has very little to do with biology and more to do with, like how our culture evolved choices. A lot of the time it has very little to do with biology and more to do with, like how our culture evolved.
Speaker 2:So, for example, in some cultures only men can be weavers and another culture only women can be weavers, and there are some general patterns and who's right leah? Let's call them out now yeah, one of you is doing your culture wrong.
Speaker 1:Be more like us, men should be weavers that sounds like colonialism.
Speaker 2:Uh, I can't remember which culture it is that the men be weavers. That sounds like colonialism. Uh, I can't remember which culture it is that the men are weavers. I've spent a long time since I've taught so I think that's a good gig.
Speaker 2:I want to leave something but my point is is that when we're talking about male toxic or male toxic masculinity, I'm talking about specifically dominant american norms about what it means to be masculine. Yeah, not that these things are transferable across all cultures, although unfortunately, because of colonialism and imperialism generally, a lot of this has spread and there are patriarchal cultures that are not necessarily originating from Western cultures, but that's a whole other story. There's lots of matriarchal cultures as well, so let's talk about a definition of gender, right. So gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors and expressions and identities of girls, boys and gender diverse people. This is a quote, by the way, from the Canadian Institute of Health Research. It influences how people perceive themselves and each other, how they act and interact, and the distribution of power and resources in society. So I'll give you an example interact and the distribution of power and resources in society. So I'll give you an example my brother won't let me buy my nephew. Quote unquote girl toys.
Speaker 1:Right, and you know what, Based on our last episode of Casual Dead. The reason is is because we will come by and reassign his gender, or he just has a lot of toxic masculinity. And for people who know that's a joke yes, toxic masculinity. And for people, and for people who know that's a joke um, yes, uh, we in in the last casual dead episode, we uh, we um, debunked some trolls misunderstandings about how gender affirming care works yeah, it was a whole thing.
Speaker 2:Go and listen to it. It's episode 36, excuse me, wow, um. Another example is like because of toxic masculinity and the fact that men are um more dominant and have more power in many ways in society. As somebody who is coded female and was assigned female at birth, if I see a dude and it's dark out and he's walking towards me on the street, I'm likely to cross the street yeah, that that's I mean.
Speaker 1:honestly, that's a good, good rule of thumb. Unfortunately, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, so those are the kinds of things, but they are arbitrary because men are not inherently more violent, but our culture makes men more likely to be violent. You get me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, correct.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so there's like a ton of diversity around the world. There are many different sex categories that exist. I identify as non-binary, but like sort of demi-female, because I present very female but on the inside I feel like nothing.
Speaker 1:It's like a jelly.
Speaker 2:I feel like a set of eyes looking at the world and, to be frank, performing my feminineness having long hair, wearing mascara. Sometimes, frankly, it gets me things right, like when you act outside of the gender binary, which is male, female. Uh, it's harder to exist in the society because that's what people expect from you, because of the cult right of this idea that there's only men and women in the world yeah, like if I wore a dress to like the Dollar General. What a dream.
Speaker 1:I mean, really nothing would happen, but there'd probably be somebody that would take umbrage to that. Yeah, and probably. Let me know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think Vermont is a little bit better than a lot of places, but somebody's going to stare for sure.
Speaker 1:I was thinking New Hampshire.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, even worse. Yeah, across the border is a problem. So let's talk now about what we mean by toxic masculinity. This is according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, which I didn't even know was real, but I'm glad it exists. Do you want to read this definition, dan, or do you want me to read it?
Speaker 1:I think it's best if you read it. Right, I said that and then I remember. You don't want me to read it. I'm a bad reader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I got it. Toxic masculinity refers to a set of cultural norms and expectations surrounding masculinity that are harmful to both men and society as a whole. These norms often promote behaviors such as aggression, emotional suppression, dominance and the suppression of anything considered quote unquote feminine or weak. Toxic masculinity can manifest in various forms and, while it predominantly affects, of course, it impacts women and people of other genders, particularly trans people in this day and age, because I think people who are really living into their toxic masculinity find trans people especially threatening to their identity, which they're not PS, but that's how it's perceived, because it's outside of this rigid binary that they think everything is supposed to be in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're at war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're going to talk about some of the top 10 toxic masculinity behaviors and then we're going to get into where we see this in zombie literature and then also what we actually think would happen to toxic dudes in a zombie apocalypse, because I don't know that I necessarily agree with how they're portrayed. Okay, number one being stoic. Men are constantly given the message that they must be self-reliant, independent, physically tough, etc. They're told they have to be this way because it will make them successful in terms of business, society and finding a partner. Being vulnerable will cause men to be ridiculed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we see this, this is like super. I mean, this is man 101, really.
Speaker 2:This is Brad Pitt in World War Z, man 101. Really, this is brad pitt in world war z. Do we ever see him like we know he cares about his family, but I don't ever see him like genuinely afraid for his life, genuinely feeling a big emotion, you think?
Speaker 1:in the beginning of world war, z he, uh, he, he showed. He showed some like actual fear of the situation when his family was involved. I think a better example of these of stoicism really is is rick from the walking dead he's, he's, he's. Stoic to the point where, like, it becomes a problem and then when he finally breaks, he breaks like so I?
Speaker 1:this has kind of become a meme, the whole like, uh, beginning of season three. Um, laurie walks up to rick and she's like I don't want to step on your toes, I don't want to, I don't want to tell you what to do or anything. You're doing a great job, rick.
Speaker 1:You're doing so good being so he's so fragile she has to like in the in, like she asks him about something and he's like he's like I'm lurie, I'm, I'm busy, I'm I'm doing stuff, thanks, stuff and thanks. That's his reasoning. That says. That's his whole, whole argument. It sounds like she's at, like he she's asking him like to do the dishes and he's like I got, I'm doing stuff doing man stuff I'm doing things protecting all of the trap like he can't say what those things are, but no, but he's doing them and stuff.
Speaker 1:Uh yeah, and then like laurie spoiler alert if you haven't seen past season- one three of the walking dead. Uh, laurie dies and, and because he had like such a stoic relationship with laurie towards the end, where he did not express any emotion, he has a full-on mental break when she dies because there's so many things that were left unsaid between them.
Speaker 1:Unexpressed, well, just unexpressed by him, period, anywhere him on a phone and like he's, he's like hoping that she'll call back so that he can tell her all of these things like that he loves her and that he's really sad that she's dead. Yeah, but she doesn't call back.
Speaker 2:shane calls back oh, shane, speaking of talking about masculinity, you know who else I think is really stoic in? Uh, the walking dead, daryl daryl yep daryl has this like daryl's daryl's tell of emotions. He does this like shuffle thing where he like shifts his weight and that's how you know he has a feeling yeah, he is.
Speaker 1:Norman reedus is an incredible physical actor. He is because, like he, he knows how to portray every emotion without like saying anything, without even showing anything on his face.
Speaker 2:He can just do it with his arms and legs yeah, he's incredible, and I will say what's really interesting, um and we talked about this a little bit last week when we talked about dixon also, I'll just briefly say it here is that I think that, uh, his character is probably one of the best that I've seen. That show goes from being like super toxic, masculine and super stoic, super stoic, super duper duper.
Speaker 2:Super stoic. Oh, my God, my dog's so cute. I'm sorry that distracted me. I just looked over to the left and my puppy's being adorable, see, they don't even have to make tippy taps or barks for me to get distracted. What was I saying? Oh, super toxic masculine. Because he was like a lot like his big brother, merle, to starting to address his issues and like, look at that toxic masculinity and how it's been affecting his life.
Speaker 1:I think it's season five of the Walking Dead when he is might have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's season five.
Speaker 1:They go after to find Beth, who's disappeared, and they found out that she's at this hospital in Atlanta. Beth, who's disappeared, and they found out that she's at this hospital in Atlanta. Daryl and Carol, they head off into the city and Carol leads him to a women's shelter where they're safe and they can spend the night there and avoid zombies. And before he leaves, you see that he's secretly packed away one of the pamphlets about childhood abuse. Yeah, secretly packed away. Like one of the pamphlets about childhood abuse. Yeah, and like that's when we start to see, like this big change in daryl's character where, like, he starts like like being okay with his emotions and talking and, uh, and not necessarily just being the guy who will, like you know, pull somebody's fingernails off with pliers if you ask him to I mean that's still very much in him yeah but uh I mean it will be forever yeah, we've talked more about that.
Speaker 2:And listen to the dixon episode if you haven't. Yeah, here's the next uh top 10 trait of toxic masculinity being promiscuous, typically, men will be praised by other men for sexual conquests. There's a well-known double standard regarding perceptions of male versus female promiscuity, with men being praised by their peers and being called studs, while rejecting women who have multiple partners and branding them sluts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Kanye West made a song about it.
Speaker 2:What's it called?
Speaker 1:The Gold Digger. But it's true, there is that double standard. And also Ludacris also made a song about that. I forget the name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking about.
Speaker 1:I know this is not the Love is.
Speaker 2:Blind podcast. But I will be honest, the first thing I thought about this is Love is Blind, season six. You know what, if you are randomly also watching Love is Blind, season six, give us a shout out.
Speaker 1:I want to know You're alternating between the Walking Dead and Love is Blind.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a good show in the sense that it's a trash fire and it gets you to talk about your relationship or think about how you are in relationships. That's true, but anyways, this one guy, clay, expressly says like he's always seen as his dad be a fucking hoe, even though it was, like you know, considered cool at the time, and it's affected his ability to feel like he can be-.
Speaker 1:A trustworthy companion. Yeah, a trustworthy person which PS?
Speaker 2:he'd just be polyamorous. Yeah, trustworthy person which ps? He could just be polyamorous, but you know, I don't think that that felt like an option. It's true, yeah, for him. So where have we seen promiscuity in zombie media? I'm thinking about this well, uh, you know the whole shane and laurie situation yeah, do you think that people judge laurie more harshly in the beginning, like watchers judge laurie more harshly for sleeping with shane than shane for sleeping with her? Absolutely yeah did you judge lori more harshly?
Speaker 1:no, um, but also, like I read, I read that in the comic, like I read the, the comics up until they got to the, to the, to the prison, um, and that's, and then then the show started and I started watching the show, um, so I already knew a lot of that arc and I absolutely blame Shane for that because, I don't know, maybe it's, maybe it's because of the experiences that I've had in my my own personal life where, like, I think that there's a big difference between what Lori did and what Shane, who is a friend, did, um, I don't know. Um, well, first of all, shane lied about rick being dead. He didn't know that rick was dead, he assumed that rick was they lied to laurie.
Speaker 2:She didn't really know yeah.
Speaker 1:So laurie thought 100 that rick was dead. Yeah, and I think and even I don't think either of them actually did anything wrong. Given the circumstances, I think it's perfectly reasonable that if two people think that Rick is out of the picture and dead, they were there for each other and having a romantic involvement after that doesn't seem like a bad thing. Romantic involvement after that doesn't seem like a bad thing. What I think that Shane did wrong was that he became obsessed with it and didn't want it to end and wanted to take Rick out of the picture instead of just being like, okay, I'll just go back to being good old uncle Shane.
Speaker 2:I don't know where that fits on this list, but that's definitely toxic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:For being promiscuous.
Speaker 1:Actually, I think the best example is probably negan with his literal uh enslaved harem of women yeah, he could pick from and like that was really fucked up yeah, and he kind of got off on it too, because, like one of his wives was, uh, was dwight's wife and she agreed to marry negan so that he wouldn't kill both of them yeah, yeah, it's like super uh, abuse of power and yeah, definitely, like you know, actually it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a perfect example, because they could not sleep with any of their husbands or other men. They could only sleep with negan yeah it's really messed up.
Speaker 2:And the other one that I think is real is um oh no, now I'm forgetting her name. The other one that I think is real is um, oh no, now I'm forgetting her name. The other example I can think of where, uh and I do see this is how, like these toxic masculine beliefs, the patriarchy start to bleed into women and how they treat each other and themselves, is when, um, sasha and Abraham got together and there was some overlap. I think it wasn't like uh, abraham's alone for a while after breaking up with Rosita. It's like I broke up with Rosita. Now I'm sleeping with Sasha, and there was definitely a lot of hostility from Rosita towards Sasha for doing that. And Abraham didn't get I don't know. From my memory he didn't get that much flack.
Speaker 1:Know he? He fell back on his other toxic traits to um shield himself from any of that criticism.
Speaker 2:You know went fully stoic when he broke up with rosita yeah, he has no feelings, that man definitely is stoic, no feelings he just shut off all of his emotions and then he's just like he's just like.
Speaker 1:It's not working.
Speaker 2:I'm out yeah, was it? You know, I think about it. The way men are portrayed about feelings in a lot of zombie media is like you can kind of deduce they have feelings by showing their internal world and what they're like doing and interacting with, whereas women will say it. I think that's very real in our everyday life too. Like a lot of men won't say it, but you can kind of figure it out because the vibes the vibes are not right. You were going to talk about Steve, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Steve from, uh, Steve from the I was going to say the walking dead, Dawn of the dead. That's the one. Steve, Steve, Uh, I mean, he doesn't necessarily he's not necessarily promiscuous, but like, the only thing that we really know about Steve is one, he owns a boat, uh. Two, he's a total dick. And three, um, of like the four women that were in that mall, uh, he picked the blonde one that wanted to bang.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And uh, and that's, that's what he's known for. He's just, he just videotapes his bangs.
Speaker 2:Love that. In fact, we see it at the end on his camcorder. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it's, that's kind of his thing as he videotapes a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think all the time it really is about power and honestly bragging to other men. Yeah, which is really weird. It's like not even about the woman. It's about being able to tell dudes that you fucked somebody.
Speaker 1:I don't know yeah it's strange to me as somebody who was not raised this way um, another really great example of this and this is one that you wouldn't know about which is the uh, the anime series high school of the dead, and basically it's about a high school boy and like four or five high school girls in a zombie apocalypse, and for the most part, it's just about the sexual tension between all of them and how he like moves from one to the other, having having like like emotional engagements with them. Um, not really anything physical, because that's like anime is all about, like building up that tension so that you know, and then nothing ever really happens why does anime do this?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean anime honestly. Most anime is a study in toxic masculinity. That shit is fucked up yeah, I think really good storylines that are just ruined by gratuitous and unnecessary uh shots of uh anime girls yeah, that would absolutely be high school of the dead.
Speaker 1:In fact that I I almost didn't watch it, and this is like 2013, 2013. Dan almost didn't watch it because I'm like all of all those all this is is gratuitous shots I appreciate that but then the story was actually really good. So like it's one of those things where it's like it is good but also highly problematic, and now I don't know where I stand on it it's unfortunate, like it just shows you how that stuff doesn't really help the plot line.
Speaker 2:Like I love initial d. It's the first anime I ever watched, thanks to you, yeah. And every time they decided to pan a woman's body with no shot of her head for no reason never to a man it was just like this. Every time that happened I was like this fucking ruins it.
Speaker 1:I don't like the way to takumi. There's always the the foot to to hair yeah, exactly foot to.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of what was her name is love interest.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Natsuki Sure, a lot of Natsuki where it was like just like leg to boob.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, they did stop at her boobs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a lot. Yeah, OK, let's go on to the next one, championing heterosexuality as the unalterable norm. Well, fuck that. That's what I have to say before I even read this. Many men are programmed to react negatively to the concept of homosexuality as it is a sign of deviating from the traditional male stereotype Talk masculine. Through popular rhetoric and from an early age, when boys are learning about gender roles, men are taught that to be homosexual is to be less masculine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I struggle to find an exact example of this, like in the walking dead or anything that we've watched recently.
Speaker 2:What's the one where the one guy admits that he, like or sorry, talks about being gay and they're in the prison.
Speaker 1:Dawn of the dead yeah. That's the only time I can think of yeah when when um he's, he's the organist for the church and he has a captive audience, literally, of the security guards from the prison who they put into a holding cell and he's telling them his coming out story, and they hate hearing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's there very much toxic man and honestly, I think that scene wasn't really okay with gay people. I think that scene wasn't really okay with gay people Also because there was that weird preacher that was like talking about how gay people are the reason that this whole apocalypse is happening.
Speaker 1:And also there were some slurs earlier on from the dumbest of the security guards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that movie is not really great. On the flip side, 2022 comes along. Was 2022 the Last of Us, or 2023?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, probably Recently the Last of Us comes along was 2022, the last of us?
Speaker 2:or 2023 for 23, I don't know probably recently the last of us. Um, I think it actually demonstrates this, but it's kind of a beautiful healing story, because bill absolutely does not like. He's lived his whole life in a relatively small town and he's extremely masculine in all the ways that you expect him to be. He's got. You know, he's the guy, he's the survivor, he's got everything.
Speaker 2:He's ready to fucking survive an apocalypse and celebrates when it happens yeah he looks like the doodliest dude dude that is quite the dude he's very repressed in his sexuality and the only reason why that ever gets honestly, without the apocalypse bill would have been repressed for the rest of his life and probably believe that something was wrong with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really sad. He would have died loveless.
Speaker 2:And I think it's a really interesting point because I know we talked about it on the episode of the Last of Us, but I'll just recap it here briefly that the apocalypse started in what year? In Walking Dead or no? In the Last of Us, 2009.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think 2003.
Speaker 2:Right. So that was like just on the cusp of same sex marriage becoming legal it was yeah. I'm not saying the world is friendly for my queer folks along out there in the world that I adore so much, but it is. At least has a few more legal benefits and a couple of spaces like marriage and so like maybe. Maybe if the world had kept going like normal, Bill would have eventually been able to come out of the closet. But I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe, but he would have been well. He would have been as old as he was when he died in the show.
Speaker 2:What's sad about it is he played that piano song for his soon-to-be love interest, frank, and that's how Frank knows he's gay. Yeah, because he exposed his soft side, soft, hidden underbelly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he shed his veneer of toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like that's how I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, this next one being violent. Oh, back to me crossing the street thing. Statistically, men commit significantly more violent crime than women. There are numerous reasons for this, but there are clear links between male instigated violence and the need men have to use aggression and violence to prove their masculinity and bolster confidence in their masculine identity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean all of these traits I I identify with, because there are things that have been expected of me but, like you know, aggression and violence. That was my job for a little while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you grew up in an army town, so it's almost like the height of masculinity where you grew up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. But yeah, we also see this in, like I mean, this is every zombie movie and zombie show. Yeah, the hyper aggressive, hyper violent, like jump to violence, before you tried diplomacy ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, slaughter everybody while they're sleeping. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The one exception that I can think of is Zombieland. Yeah, jesse Eisenberg's character is very passive, whereas Woody Harrelson's character is the aggressive and dominant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, woody Harrelson is kind of like the toxic Superman strong, stoic guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And other guys learning from him, do you think? Yeah, he's learning, he's learning how to be a man.
Speaker 1:quote unquote in that movie well, you know what he's critical of a lot of the things that tallahassee does tallahassee's his name but he admits that there are some times that that he's right. Um, he admits that sometimes you just got to blow off some steam. That's when tallahassee just smashes all the windows in a minivan. And also sometimes you have to be a hero.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which went against his own personal rules.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the zombie apocalypse genre really is like a lot of violence and I don't feel like I have enough expertise to comment on why men in our culture are geared to more violence. So if you have any thoughts on that, I'm curious.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean, that's how we're told to interact with the world Right from day one. Like violence is how you solve conflicts. You know boys will just like fight with each other. Just, you know, scrap it out in the front yard like throwing punches and wrestling, and you know everything from toys to video games to the TV shows, they're all like look at these guys who fight the bad guys, yeah, and every person thinks that they're the good guy. They don't think that like Negan thinks he's the good guy.
Speaker 2:It's disturbing but he does, and in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:He kind of is in a weird way, and that's something that we should talk about at a later episode.
Speaker 2:The nuances of just on negan, because there's a lot I could say, but I'm gonna hold my tongue, yeah um, but like he, he made a society that did keep people safe. He just did it in a totalitarian way where a lot of people also got harmed I mean, I wouldn't argue that the women who were getting food and shelter were safe when they were being sexually accosted by this man, because the exchange for safety was sexual abuse. Yeah, I don't buy that. So we need a whole episode on Negan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which, to be clear, I do think Negan has some redeeming traits, but not that it's more nuanced than most people give Negan credit, for he did set up rules. He didn't follow his rules. But the episode where he stabs Rapey, dave Rapey.
Speaker 2:Dave, yeah.
Speaker 1:Rapey, dave tries to try some stuff with Sasha when she's in the closet prison.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Negan shows up and puts a Bowie knife right through him.
Speaker 2:Sort of a hypocrite, but okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like he doesn't follow his own rules, but that's also like a weird way that he saw things and Rick called him out for it. He's like I never forced myself onto any of those women and Rick was just like, oh so you think that all of those women and, and uh, and rick was just like like, oh so you think that all of those women married you for love?
Speaker 2:like what, what choice do they have? And he, I mean actually this is a great segue to the next trait of toxic masculinity, which is being dominant. There is no way that he didn't. I mean, we know he got off on his domination over those women yeah, so he knew that yeah, he knew that he had power over them and that's why they were sleeping with him he loved having power over everyone.
Speaker 1:He loved having power over dwight.
Speaker 2:He'd bring up dwight's ex-wife every chance that he had he's also a great example of promiscuity too, and even just I'm thinking about before the apocalypse he was cheating on his wife.
Speaker 1:He was like a super toxic male that was like uh failing in the real world and I think he really loved being able to like take power yeah in a vacuum of power yeah, I mean the real world was kicking the shit out of him and and then the apocalypse happened and he was on top yeah, I'm gonna read this definition.
Speaker 2:I just realized I forgot to say what this list is from. It's called New Dawn Aurora. It is actually a women's services organization in the UK and we can leave the link in the show notes. So where it says being dominant, it says to be preoccupied with power and dominance to a point that it causes harm to others, such as verbal, physical and online bullying. One study found that over a quarter of men thought they should have the final word in relationships. Over a third of men believe they had the right to know where their female partner was at all times. This is 2019, so this is not that long ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I feel like shane is dominant also over laurie like he sees laurie as a possession yeah, he sees carl as a possession as well. Yeah, and he takes, he feels Rick, because Rick is going to take away these things from him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really sad. That's very disturbing. I didn't know these stats about men thinking they have Jan. Do you think you have the final word? I can't even finish the question. I have the final word after you're done talking now you're sounding like one of those really terrible sitcoms that uh insults women for talking too much. Men don't talk at all because they're stoic yeah, we just watched.
Speaker 1:Um, uh what, what was it called? Kevin can fuck himself, yeah so I have a lot of uh sitcom drilled into my brain right now. Uh, by the way, kevin can fuck himself. Absolutely recommend speaking of toxic masculinity yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 2:I mean, he definitely thought he should have the final word in relationships yeah, and they have the right to know where their female partner was at all times he literally called the cops on her because she didn't answer his phone yeah, they his phone call. I mean yeah, she.
Speaker 1:She was on a on a road trip, decided not to answer the phone and he reported the car stolen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's so he could find her. It was fucked up. Yeah, so, yeah that. And I've certainly had, uh, male partners that are like this, where they think they should have the final word in relationships thankfully not in.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is dark sexual aggression towards women I feel like this kind of like, kind of is like an extension of dominance and violence oh, definitely yeah definitely.
Speaker 2:It says men who conform to toxic masculinity standards are more likely to make sexual comments or sexist jokes to women, commit sexual harassment, accept rape myths which is like she was asking for it? Um, we're never asking for it and behave as if they're entitled to women's bodies. Yeah, I think like we've literally covered this one with so many others. Yeah, and again, I think, uh, my understanding of sexual assault is that it is very much about power yeah, and there's a.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of instances in the the walking dead where, like, um, a lot of the the bad guys will be pretty aggressive towards women.
Speaker 2:Uh, the governor especially I was thinking of to negan.
Speaker 1:Well, negan has a weird relationship with women where, like, he will let women get away with a lot more than men because he has a soft spot, but also he does dominate them. Um yeah, if they marry him you know what's funny is?
Speaker 2:uh, I feel like most of our examples like we've had a few that are not the walking dead, but I think it just shows you how ingrained in our consciousness the walking dead is, versus like a movie that I've watched twice yeah, well, there's also just so much of it yeah like before the walking dead and I've said this before and I will say it again which is a million times is that before we had, like, the walking dead, all we had were just like a handful of decent zombie movies.
Speaker 1:Like you had zombie land, sean of the dead, dawn of the dead and the romero movies, and that was about it, that you had for good zombie movies. And the walking dead was like hey, you basically have 16 to 24 new zombie movies every year. Yeah, with the same characters in them.
Speaker 2:It's pretty epic. I do love the Walking Dead. I did just think of another one for sexual aggression towards women. That is not the Walking Dead that we just talked about. Pop quiz how many days later?
Speaker 1:Is it 28?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely when they think they are entitled to women's bodies yeah.
Speaker 1:The soldiers, yeah, definitely when they think they are entitled to. Women's bodies, yeah the soldiers.
Speaker 2:You've got to keep the morale up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what? Their morale was more important than the women's personal safety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. This one, I think, is more relatable to you because I think, well, actually I'm going to take one step back and say that sexual aggression towards women. I want to make a point that it says sexual comments, sexist jokes, sexual harassment, like saying things to people, women on the street, like, I think, a lot of men who think they're, quote unquote, good guys, do those like lighter versions of sexual aggression towards women, all the time and it definitely happens in their head. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm staring Dan down. I'm like what's happening in your head?
Speaker 1:Well, you know I've done a lot of work to like take these things out of me. But like I've had dumb thoughts, I've said dumb things. I still do that and I probably will do it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I'm trying, and you know I've had all the stereotypical thoughts that society ingrains into you, because why wouldn't I? I grew up in the 80s and 90s with sitcoms. I joined the army, yeah. And while I think that I've always been a little bit different than everybody else in a lot of ways and I've been more open, at least with myself, about how I view the world and how I feel about the world, it doesn't save me from the indoctrination of Western society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because as much as we logically were individuals, we're really just a consolidation of experiences and events and shit we watch and then hopefully we have some autonomy inside of there. But sometimes I wonder, because I really know that I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't for the experiences that I've had and I would probably still be super playing into the things that I believed I was supposed to do because I was assigned female at birth and I will say, dan, you've come a long way. Like after I broke up with my ex, who was a woman, and you and I were talking.
Speaker 2:I remember thinking like absolutely no way in hell will I ever be with a man again. And because, because this is like the most I you know, if you're a guy listening to this and you're working on addressing any of these traits, I don't want to like over applaud you, but I will say I appreciate you doing that, in the sense that people with privilege which, if you are a man, you have a form of privilege that I don't um are looking at it. I think that that's better than not, and I think it's, um a really good first step. So my point being, Dan, like I know, as much as I loved you 2010 version of you, the 2018 version that I got to know again had clearly done a lot of work. Yeah, and um, it's why I'm with you today, Because my tolerance, after being in a same-sex partnership for eight years, my tolerance for toxic masculinity, was zero, and even now, sometimes I'm like, okay, I have to remember that he still came from this world.
Speaker 1:You know also. I just wanted to say that I mean, this is a thought that just went through my head just now, so this is very well thought out. But I feel like there's two directions that men can go when they are looking at the world and how men treat women. They can either go the incel route, which is like blame women for everything, criticize everything a woman does, and you're the victim. Or you can look at all of these things and think how the way that you interact with the world and women is problematic and address those things and try to become better. And I'll say that there's if, if you're choosing, if you're, if you're in a fork in the road between going in cell or going feminist and your goal is to one day have a, have a female partner a healthy relationship.
Speaker 2:Who?
Speaker 1:likes you. Yeah, you have a much better chance as a feminist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I would say that's probably the case, no matter what your sexuality is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I don't know what it's like to be a gay male. I know we have some listeners who are gay men and I imagine that there's probably some conflicting stuff there. Back to Bill, because I think gay men also bear the brunt of toxic masculinity, because they're both being trained in it, also like trained in it, and then also being like well, that doesn't feel right and being punished by it yeah, that's really hard.
Speaker 2:So if that's you and you're interested in sharing some thoughts about it, feel free to reach out to us. I'm curious, uh, because I'm realizing this is, um, the discussion is, I think, very like, primarily hetero, male. Yeah, that we're we're talking about, I think it's primarily heterosexual men who are like displaying some of these super toxic masculinity traits. Of course, people of all sexualities, men of all sexualities, I'm sure, can demonstrate that Well, I think this is a first step.
Speaker 1:Somebody who has problematic viewpoints about women? We can't start telling them to also respect transgender people. They have to first take the world at least in the way that they view it and understand it and and change from there before they can ever accept, uh, anything else yeah, uh, we got a long way to go in this world yeah, I mean our world's fucking backwards. It really is what's front words?
Speaker 2:what would frontwards look like Dan?
Speaker 1:I mean honestly, the more that you teach me about indigenous cultures. I think that there's so many indigenous cultures that had a much healthier way of not just interacting with their world and nature, but also with each other. You know, like philosophies that, like our Western civilization just chooses to forget because it has nothing to do with the Dow Jones, you know has it's not going to make them richer. You know to to know that if, if everything that they do affects somebody, seven generations later they're like seven generations from now, I'll be dead and I won't be able to count my money anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically every white person in power right now. Yeah, um, I mean thanks for saying that. I think I will say it's important not to like, uh, play into the stereotype of the noble savage. Have you heard of that, dan? Yeah, you've told me about that yeah, where it's for those who don't know. It's like this idea that all indigenous people are like noble and full of wisdom and like inherently-.
Speaker 1:Here to educate us.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's not the case. There's still people and their cultures are still complex and have parts that aren't so great, and I think the more important point is that there are a lot of things about indigenous cultures that are fucking awesome, and some of them don't belong and should never be shared with other people outside of the culture, and that's their right. Other things, if they choose to share with us, like the seven generations teaching um, or the seven grandfather teachings, can be transformative for the dominant culture and it's sorely needed, and the problem is that we always have been trained to think that some people are civilized, aka white people, and no one else is, which definitely connects to toxic masculinity somewhere in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely I'll just trust you all to make the connection. Who are listening? Let's talk about one that I, you know we were talking about ourselves this week with you which is not displaying emotion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is hard for me to display emotion. Yeah, tell me more about that. You know, and you know, my memory is not great, so if I already talked about this, I'll just edit it out. But uh, you know, um, part of part of how I cope with PTSD is by uh, disassociating, and I've done that for many. I've done that for actually years at a time where, uh, I do, I do remember specific times of my life where I'm like, you know, I'm not happy but I'm also not sad, and I think that's as good as it gets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel very little.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like I was comfortable being there, you know, I'd I'd go to work, I'd come home, I'd lay in bed and watch Netflix until I fell asleep, and then I'd get up and I'd go to work, and then I'd come home and I'd lay in bed watching Netflix till I fell asleep asleep, and that was fine, um, but what I've, what I found now, is that like, especially as I'm starting to understand it more, is that like, when the emotions come out, it's like I I don't really know how to deal with them and they kind of take over yeah and uh, yeah, I and and like I can't, I can't close pandora's box once it's open, I can't go back to being numb.
Speaker 1:So, like the stress hormones keep on flooding my system and I just feel sad and I'm like I want to feel nothing at all and I'm like but you're sad. I'm like, but I don't know why I'm sad. The thing that made me sad is already over and done and we've already addressed it and it's fine now.
Speaker 2:It's like too bad, feel sad.
Speaker 1:The thing dan was sad about again, let's remind us, was me pointing out that I sounded tinny on the last few podcast episodes and because I was high, I thought you were telling me that for five hours, yeah, and I was like you're just beating me up about this for five hours. Slash minutes.
Speaker 2:But again, I think that that moment had very little to do with the thing I was saying to you and very much to do with you being ridiculed as a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably.
Speaker 2:Not to get too much into your personal stuff, but I think there's a connection there and that's what I think is important to remember and why it's okay to just feel sad sometimes. But, to be frank, like I was raised female and I still very much struggle with emotional regulation I think anybody raised by boomers probably is working on this yeah so um I was raised invisible yeah, on the my, my different version was that my emotions didn't matter because my job as a woman like the toxic femininity there, if you may call it that, is like um, my job is to make sure everybody else is comfortable, no matter how uncomfortable or sad or angry.
Speaker 2:I feel that none of those things matter.
Speaker 2:I need to like serve others and then I can like go feel my feelings somewhere else alone, depressed, so, um, but, and I will say though, as a woman, like it's very normal in female friendships or with other people who um identify as female, to like have those conversations that are intimate about our emotions, how we're feeling.
Speaker 2:I don't think that men do that as much and there was this really interesting article I read I wish I could find it, maybe I'll try and find it that talked about the experience of a trans man and going from a place of having um the ability to like have physical touch with women, like lots of hugs and comfort, and you'll talk about difficult feelings, and then, as they transitioned and presented male, um, that went away like all of a sudden they had no one they could talk about their feelings with, because they noticed that women treated them differently, and I think that that's like really sad, and that's why I think toxic masculinity is again like it's yes, it's definitely harmful for any other gender, but, uh, it's certainly harmful for you guys out there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's one of the first things that I uh, that I thought about. I don't want to say who it is, but I I know somebody who transitioned to being a man and, uh, this is a long time ago before like, I came to terms with, like, what that means, or try you know, before I understood it. My first reaction really was, like why do you want to do that? Don't you know what sucks like and I didn't have the words for it, but I'm like, but what I was talking about was toxic masculinity and it's like how, like, like this is gonna be such a fucking rough road for you, like, don't you know how terrible it is to be a man and be around other men?
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of your friends have always been women, because I think that you do like. You are another example of a man who I think, uh, while I agree you still have work to do on expressing your emotions and like feeling safe to do that and processing them, you are um, much, much further ahead than 95 probably more cis white men that I know. Like you have come a long way and I think, well, I can't say you come a long way. I think you've always had a higher capacity for emotional intimacy with women. Anyway, um, yeah, I think men, man spaces are very different yeah, man, space is like the place that I work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could not imagine hanging out with any of them Like it's it's. It is weird because, you know, I I do want to have friendships with people, but whenever I think of, I mean at least the people I work with, which are kind of like the only examples of dudes that I have right now. I'm just like examples of dudes that I have.
Speaker 2:Right now I'm just like, oh, fucking gross, I don't want to be around you. You know why that's still a problem. I mean it's a problem because you don't have men you can be close to yeah, I don't feel safe around them at all isn't that sad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't feel safe around a lot of them either. Uh, there's actually quite a few men that I don't listen to this podcast. I feel like you're probably one of the few that I would, just because you listen to this podcast, frankly, and listen to me talk shit about dudes sometimes. But it's also sad because what happens is that because men know that they can't be safe with other men, then they lean emotionally 100% on the women on their life and expect them to do that emotional work for them, instead of them doing the work and having other spaces to be emotionally held and supported. So this is going way off.
Speaker 2:Zombie topic, so I'm gonna bring it right around to the dead don't die. And that scene in the cop car where the two cop guys like they're, they're at the graveyard and they're completely surrounded by zombies. They're in their cop car and the woman in the back I don't remember any of their names because we haven't watched recently uh, the woman in the back is freaking out and is like the world is fucking ending and the two dudes in the front are like yeah, it's fine yeah, that happens yeah, and it's like they've just so practiced at uh, emotional disassociation.
Speaker 1:I don't even think they know they're doing it you know, the more I think about the dead don't die, the more I realize how brilliant it is it is really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those movies that is better after you've watched it and you think about it for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like watch it and then be angry at the end and be like what the fuck did I just watch? Did I just waste my time? And then like stew on it for like a week and just like let it linger in the back of your mind and then be like I kind of want to watch it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of want to watch it again. Yeah, we could watch it again sometime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a return to the dead, don't die.
Speaker 2:Okay, we got three more All right, buckle up. You're just, yeah, buckle up for the ride of your lives. Not being a feminist ally, it's unsurprising that the overly masculine would reject men who identify as allies of feminists or feminists themselves. Research shows that men engaging in feminist activism are the targets of harassment by men who prescribe to toxic masculinity as it is perceived as feminine and non-conformist to toxic masculinity. Do we see any of that? Have we ever seen that?
Speaker 1:um, no, I don't think so. But I mean there's, there's the jokes of, you know, like I can't think of a specific example, but there there will be ribbing where it's just like oh, you want to hang out with the girls?
Speaker 1:yeah um that's not that's you know where I did see this was in my own personal life. Um, because I mean, this was on twitter back before I quit twitter and I, uh, you know, I updated my bio to to include, like you know, a various number of things. One of those things being feminist, or at least a feminist ally. It's hard. It's hard for me to say that I'm feminist, because I don't think that I deserve it. I think I am a feminist ally in the sense that I try to be good about feminism and maybe one day I'll graduate.
Speaker 2:What would it mean to graduate?
Speaker 1:oh, I get a special badge that's not what I meant.
Speaker 2:Like, what would you be doing differently than what you're doing now?
Speaker 1:oh, um, uh, I don't know. Maybe less gaffs in real life I don't know that. That's it dan yeah, but anyways, somebody, uh, somebody that was a long time fan of, like, my work on youtube, a friend of mine from way back when I was drift racing, um, you know somebody that I'd known for well over 10 years uh said that I was in a cult, um, and that, uh, he went on this rant about platitudes and I feel like he just cut and pasted from Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 2:Is this guy also our troll?
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 2:Okay, we sound familiar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they get their talking points from the same people. But, yeah, it ended that friendship because he could not respect me, because I respect women.
Speaker 2:That's really sad me because I respect women. That's really sad. I think like um, first of all, I think you are a feminist, because do you or do you not believe that women and men are equal and deserve equal rights? Yes then you're a feminist okay, shocking.
Speaker 1:I just don't think that I deserve the title I think that, uh, I don't agree.
Speaker 2:I think you do deserve the title. I think that you could be on a journey towards going from a belief to is like advocating for it, calling it out. I try to call it out when I can, but like I'm not really good at it, you know that's a practice and, honestly, the best thing to do for you and for everybody else is to just like follow some feminists, because then you'll learn yeah, I do just like well, there you go and also I live with you yeah, but I'm still figuring this shit out too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:We're all figuring it out.
Speaker 2:That's true. We're all figuring it out together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think the biggest thing is like, hey, if you're a man and you hear other men making sexist comments, sexually objectifying jokes, in any way, just like bashing women, like you can actually say something. That's what I think is, and that implies some level of risk for you because they may not respond well, you could lose a friend, but that's how you actually show up as an ally. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think that's the next step.
Speaker 2:Also how you vote, although that's a fucking quagmire in this country. All of those things and just the fact that you like-.
Speaker 1:Lesser, evil Lesser evil.
Speaker 2:No, God, we're not talking about that. I can't figure out what I'm doing. I'll figure it out. I'm just learning. I feel like a toddler when it comes to voting in the United States, but even you thinking about whether or not you're mansplaining and how to stop doing that fucking progress yeah, I, I mansplain, yeah, I also autism spleen.
Speaker 1:I had a. I had a thread, um, you know, talking about how I don't know if I'm mansplaining or autism splaining, um, because what was the uh?
Speaker 2:what was the consensus?
Speaker 1:you know, most people responded most people told me that I'm not mansplaining and what was the difference? The difference is if you're more likely to explain to a woman than you are a man, and for me that wasn't a factor. I'll talk about trains to anybody. I think, trains is like a joke. It is a joke, but somebody did actually start asking me questions about trains.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you explained to me about mushrooms all the time. Oh yeah, I'm like, you do know more about mushrooms in some areas than me, but other areas you don't. And I'm like, dan, I I'm fully aware that, uh, what was the thing you explained to me recently doesn't matter, um, but I think there's also like, when you are aware that somebody knows about a lot of something, you are less likely to do it, and that's's the key.
Speaker 2:And also just like hot tip, if you're anybody out there, before you start going on your splainy splains, maybe you should ask somebody what they know about it Like the other day I got a Slack message sending me a very long message about this new resource that I had already read about and shared with all of our staff. That's an example of like. It would have been really nice if they just said hey, have you seen this before?
Speaker 1:instead of telling me why I needed to read it, and they just happened to miss the memo. Yeah, from like three months ago, right around um international women's day, there was a lot of posts about people um, being mansplained and like being told that they didn't know what they were talking about and that they should read this book. And turns out that they were the author of the book and they're like like, oh, you don't know anything about, about, uh well, population growth and in this area of this special expertise and you should listen, you should read this book by susan jacobs. And they're like, um, I'm susan jacobs, I wrote that book, all right, we got two more, dan okay, I already have one.
Speaker 2:It's another walking dead, unsurprisingly risk taking yeah connected to male dominance. Toxic masculinity encourages taking risks to demonstrate dominance. Men who buy in men who buy into this are more likely to take extreme measures such as perpetrate violence, drive dangerously, gamble and abuse drugs I've seen this more in um zombie stuff, where it's like dudes do really unsafe things to impress a girl like uh, oh my god the fast and the furious franchise no, I was thinking about a guy who gets his head bashed in maggie's love oh, glenn, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Glenn did so many things to just appear like he was a badass to Maggie and try and impress her, and I really appreciate how they dealt with it Because you could tell that Maggie did not give a shit and was in any way actually kind of less impressed with him.
Speaker 1:She called him stupid.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Stupid for risking his life.
Speaker 2:Usually what other people who are not toxically masculine think when somebody does something unnecessarily risky, it's like, why, why?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean, this is also something that I I have done a lot of in my past. Yes, um, it probably defined who I was. I mean, there's a period of my life spanning almost 10 years where people didn't actually know my real name and only called me danger.
Speaker 2:That's real.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, this is also a part of my PTSD, which is a way that I get those adrenaline surges that help me get those feel-good hormones that hopefully never go away is by doing dangerous things. So, so drifting I got into drifting for a long time. I drove fast, I had a fast car, I had a fast car and drove fast yeah, and you drank way too much for you to handle drinking was kind of like speaking of, like something that should be on this list is like excessive drinking.
Speaker 1:It should be his own bullet point, which is like toxic men I like. They bond through drinking.
Speaker 2:Well, of course they do. It's the only time they're allowed to have feelings, because they can't control them anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean I've. I've drank so much that alcohol doesn't affect me anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty messed.
Speaker 1:And you know I I've. I would say that I have, um, drinking problems, but not necessarily addiction to alcohol problems Like I. If, if I didn't think too hard about how much I was drinking and I just did it the way that I used to, I'd very much be abusing alcohol in a big, big way. Yeah, I'm using it to uh, completely numb myself from the world around me, um, but I I don't necessarily have an addiction to it, because if I decide that I don't want to do it anymore, I stop. And that's kind of where I'm at now, where it's like I can't even remember the last time I had alcohol. It's probably over a month ago yeah, and you literally feel nothing.
Speaker 2:Every time you do, you're like why am I doing this? Yeah, the last time you felt anything was, you drank a Four Loko and you were like oh fuck, I'm drunk. Oh no, you were accidentally drunk off of something the other day and you're like this is surprising.
Speaker 1:The other day.
Speaker 2:It was like a month ago.
Speaker 1:I think it was the hard cider. And you're like I'm shocked oh yeah, that did happen, these apples.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, we got one more.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm ready for it.
Speaker 2:I think there's some great examples of this, also from the Walking Dead, unsurprisingly, but if you can think of other examples, let me know. Before I even say it, I can feel the hackles raising on the back of my neck. Get those hackles up Not engaging in household chores and caregiving. Again, housework and child rearing are seen as feminine qualities. Being asked to do a feminine deemed task is just housework or worse. A man being criticized by a woman for not cleaning appropriately is often interpreted as an emasculating assault and provokes a masculine overcompensation response.
Speaker 1:Right off the bat season one of the Walking Dead, Carol's husband.
Speaker 2:Yes, of the walking dead.
Speaker 1:Carol's husband, yes, sits on, sits on the tailgate of his car, smokes cigarettes while everybody else is washing laundry and then comes down to criticize them for for jibber jabbering too much yeah not.
Speaker 2:Why not washing the laundry fast enough? And andrea, I remember he was being like why is it that we always end up getting like like the washing the clothes and the the cooking, the cleaning, the fish yeah, gotta say Dan is the better cook in our household and he's the best house husband ever. Yeah, I like being although I will say that you are a little bit deficient on the cleaning side.
Speaker 1:It is. Yeah, it's hard. Um, I think, I think my ADHD has a lot to do with that. Just like I look at a mess and it's just like it's overwhelming to me to look at it and I don't really know where to start, usually when I, when I get into the rhythm of cleaning, yeah, it's not a problem, but like getting started it is, you've gotten a problem pretty good at the kitchen.
Speaker 2:I've got to say like, especially because of all my foot issues, I got to give you props. You have been so amazing and I think if you were not who you are, well, never, nevermind, we wouldn't be together If I was going through this and you were like you still have to do all the cooking and I don't bring me a beer, woman yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, use your feet all the time, but the reality is actually it's more often where I'm like, dan, let's take a break and eat a frozen pizza, because I feel like you feed me three times a day, um, and I occasionally make a dessert. That is our current rhythm of life, so I appreciate you for that. I think there's probably other examples of this.
Speaker 1:You know, with the kitchen, though, for me it's become like a routine, so I know where everything goes and there's a routine that I have for doing it. You'll notice that every time I load the dishwasher, everything has a place in the dishwasher and it can't be changed. Yeah, I tried to help load the dishwasher. Like, everything has a place in the dishwasher and it is.
Speaker 2:it can't be changed yeah, I tried to help load a dishwasher once and I think it was very upsetting, but you know the other thing.
Speaker 1:This is inefficient.
Speaker 2:This is another example of how it impacts um women shouldn't be in the kitchen I don't know when. My brain just blanked when you said that, but it just like I think I dissociated Because I was thinking about Carol and how. Carol, when they moved into the community, what was that called?
Speaker 1:Alexandria.
Speaker 2:Alexandria. Yeah, when they moved into Alexandria, she decided to like, don't all of these, like, quote unquote feminine traits to make herself look less threatening. And that is what a lot of women do to survive is like smile and bake the neighbor's cookies and like be people pleasing I mean like that's my job in our relationship she brought casseroles to everyone yeah you're, you're your version of is like okay, I don't give a fuck what our neighbors think.
Speaker 2:And mine is like yo, if they don't like what we're doing, they're gonna come to me, not you, because the expected labor for emotional labor is going to be on me, not you. They're not going to talk to you, they're gonna. They're gonna complain to me about why there is water in their yard, because they happen to live downhill from us and it's a flood. I'm gonna be the one who has to field that that issue that was a special situation, it was like I don't know what to tell you like there's all this water.
Speaker 1:In my yard it's like, yeah, there's a river running down the street, yeah like.
Speaker 2:That's not from our. I don't know what to tell you. We live.
Speaker 1:We live on a hill and we're above you and she tried to insinuate that it was coming from our property. It's like, well, even if it was coming from, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 2:it's a flood the entire state is flooded anyways sorry, I'll divert the water away from your house. Or I don't know. Like this is such an interesting example of communal living, I think we probably just need better ditches in our community. But anyways, our ditches were working just fine. But she has no ditches in front of her house and she lives downhill on a giant fucking hill. So that's it. That's a wrap.
Speaker 2:Those the key things, um, that came out of this article around toxic masculinity yeah, I think, just to remind us, I'll hear that traditional masculinity and when I mean traditional masculinity I mean, like white, western masculinity not all of it is inherently toxic.
Speaker 2:Yes, a lot of it is yes and uh many, but there are some good traits that are associated with masculinity, however, I actually think that anybody could have them, but strength, courage, leadership all of those things could be positive and expressed in healthy ways. The older I get, the more I just think that, like, there's traits that are good and there's traits that are not so good, and it really has nothing to do with what genitalia you have or what gender identity. You identity you are. That is you either. Like.
Speaker 1:You either strengthen courage or you don't you know, I mean, there's plenty of times where being able to put your emotions uh behind you and and uh approach the task at hand is beneficial, but it doesn't have to be like your defining characteristic. Yeah, um, there's, and there's plenty of people that toxic males would say are feminine because they don't suppress all of their emotions. But all of those people are also capable of putting their emotions behind them and taking care of business when it needs to be done and arguably, sometimes uh more efficiently because they've they don't let it stack up on top of them until they crumble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's real. We got one more example that we didn't get to of toxic masculinity in zombie media, and that's Joel from the Last of Us. I feel like not all of these things does he subscribe to, but I'm going to make a list of the things that I think Joel has Stoic Violence, dominance, dominance not displaying emotion. I don't know if I'd call him a feminist ally, so I'd say not being a feminist ally, he's not.
Speaker 2:Not a feminist ally, though I mean he's, he's kind to women, but that doesn't make him a feminist. He's not like um. And then uh, risk taking. I have no idea if he engages in household chores so that I can't tell you. But we had three key examples of how Joel is somebody who is suffering from toxic masculinity. What were they?
Speaker 1:Dan, yeah, so he doesn't express his feelings, even when he meets up with his brother. Spoiler alert when he meets up with his brother later on in the series, uh, their relationship is very like surface level. He will not open up to his brother. Yeah, he won't even, uh, like tell him that like he missed him or he loves him, he cares for him, like none of that.
Speaker 2:It's just like the only things that he's allowed to feel for him are anger and disappointment I think that's true, like anger is one of the few emotions that men are like are acceptable for men. The other thing, I think, is that he really doesn't express his feelings about um, who's the one, what's the name, that dies early on oh yeah, I don't remember um, others, whatever. I guess it's not a spoiler, because you don't know who she is, a woman that he cares a lot about yeah dies very early and like there are again.
Speaker 2:There are moments where you get a sense that he's upset, but the man never cries about it. Um, never acknowledges it acknowledges it, that it's a horrible thing that happened to him. Oh, tess is her name, tess. He just kind of like blames ellie. That's about as far as it gets, because anger is an okay emotion yeah.
Speaker 1:But then ellie calls him on it and and she's like uh, she's she, she, um takes him aside, and he's and she's like yeah, so I want to. I thought we should talk about this. And he's like and he's like it's it. You know, if you want to apologize for for tests, like don't even bother it, it's behind us, blah, blah, blah. And then Ellie's like actually I wasn't going to, I was just going to tell you that it wasn't my fault and you should stop being an asshole about it.
Speaker 2:What about violence? I think this guy has some violence and dominance issues.
Speaker 1:You think?
Speaker 2:so A little bit.
Speaker 1:He did kill an entire hospital full of people and then lied to ellie about it and you know what was really fucked about that.
Speaker 2:Now that I'm like after reading this list. So over the course of the first season we get a sense that he does care for ellie, right, but ellie does not would not have chosen to have an entire hospital of doctors slaughtered. I mean, honestly, they're kind of an incredible resource in the apocalypse doctors generally to save her. I don't think that she would have agreed to that. She certainly wasn't a part of it, and I think that this is an expression of Joel's dominance is that he thinks that his word is the right decision in the relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the final say he has like more of a mother or a father daughter relationship with her. Yeah, he has like more of a mother or a father daughter relationship with her, but, like he's, he thinks that his role is to protect her at all costs, take risks, and that she doesn't have autonomy to make those kinds of decisions as much as he cares for her, which is why I don't think he's a feminist yeah, yeah, that's true yeah, and he also really tried hard to not care about ellie yeah, I mean, as far as he was concerned, she was basically just cargo, cargo, yeah, um, and it took.
Speaker 1:It took like a year of traveling across the country together before he finally like opened up and felt emotion towards, towards ellie yeah.
Speaker 2:So this brings us to our final segment before we go to uh, evil, magic, chicken, zombie sounds and wrap up, which is I'm gonna do a quick, uh, quick reaction for you. Uh, like you, give me a quick reaction to what different kinds of toxic men would actually like, how they would fare in the apocalypse. Are you ready? Oh, a quick reaction? Yeah, just give me, like, gut, gut reaction. How would a gym bro do a week into the apocalypse?
Speaker 1:Oh my God. First of all, they'd be like I'm out of creatine, I'm out of muscle milk, I'm out of my multivitamins. All these shelf-stable foods are carb-heavy. Yeah, there's too many carbs in these MREs. I didn't get my ice-cold shower this morning and the ground isn't hard enough for me to sleep on. Um, yeah, I, I, I find gym bros to be like strangely fragile in a way. Like they, uh they present themselves as these, like hardcore warrior spirit wannabes, um, but like I've I've seen, I've seen that mentality break down in the face of true adversity and, uh, the gym does not prepare you for trauma I think there's a lot of control that's woven into that kind of behavior where you're obsessively going to the gym and you have these like really strict um regimens that you live by in a world of chaos.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to struggle, yeah oh, and also, if they don't get their reps in every day, they are just going to be so grumpy.
Speaker 2:They'll probably turn killing zombies into some kind of exercise regimen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's going to go badly for them because they're going to be like I got to chop these zombie heads off in this way. That works more muscle groups and that's going to tire them out faster and be less efficient. And that's just when the zombie comes in and takes a bite out of their arm, which they'll they'll view as like losing muscle mass until they become a zombie.
Speaker 2:What?
Speaker 1:about finance bros oh, finance bros are like, yeah, so on threads made a few, a few comments about, uh, the, the people that'll try to make the avocado toast arguments and um, they weave like finance jargon into everyday conversation and think that everybody knows what they're talking about. And they are like just this weird animal of human where they're like I'm the alpha male because I know how to add money and I don't think they would fare well in because everything that they we don't need anymore because, like we're, we're living in this world full of these, these, these strict, like rule sets and money, and when you take money out of the equation, what are what do these guys have left?
Speaker 2:They'll probably still be thinking about money, like the guy in Australian movie. Oh cargo cargo, yeah, like in cargo, where he's trying to take control of oil because he wants to figure out how to get rich still. But this makes me think about the um proverb from uh, the korean nation, in canada. Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught, we realize we cannot eat money. That'll be the finance world.
Speaker 1:We'll be like fuck yeah, they'll be surrounded by money shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess you could burn it.
Speaker 1:It's good, it's good and also, they won't even have the money because all of their money is basically digital. Yeah, like they, they have. They have credits in a, in an account speaking of uh credits and digital.
Speaker 2:What about tech bros?
Speaker 1:I, I think tech bros and finance bros are kind of on the same level. Um, they kind of they, they talk the same. They kind of just are the same. Um, it's just, they'll talk about a different thing.
Speaker 2:They'll talk about algorithms and, uh and like how a new app is going to revolutionize how you see, uh, turkey yeah, well, well, I think I was going to be like what is the technology, what is the software as a service that I can create and make a startup and capitalize on in a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're going to be like. This is the perfect opportunity for me to turn a small town in Texas into a tech paradise. It's made of glass.
Speaker 2:Dan, this is part of my.
Speaker 1:NDA. You've got to stop.
Speaker 2:I didn't sign an NDA, yeah but I told you which is me Break.
Speaker 1:Anyways.
Speaker 2:I had. I will just say briefly everything Dan said is much worse than you're imagining from a previous job, and yeah, that's really.
Speaker 1:Have you ever wanted to go into a bathroom and uh and have? The walls may be made of glass yeah in the desert, in the desert, yeah I mean, there it's.
Speaker 2:It's one-way glass you can see out, you can't see.
Speaker 1:And they already have one of those in london, yeah, in kingdom I believe, oh, wow yeah, I mean, sky's the limit, when they no longer have to abide by, like you know, uh, zoning laws and everything. So like, why not have, like an elevator toilet, you know glass elevator that goes all the way up, this giant glass tower? Yeah and they just, you just poop through the the floor of the elevator.
Speaker 2:I did a book called Toilets of the World once, which was super fun. I feel like I need to give some flesh to this lore that you're talking about, without giving details. I used to work for an organization that was focused on tech or startups, and we were approached by somebody who is a tech startup founder, who wanted to buy an entire town in Texas and turn it into the most absurd things you can imagine, including this toilet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, imagine it's all of these tech ideas that serve absolutely no one except for the person who created it.
Speaker 2:I feel like that guy was kind of like the governor because he made this whole pitch to us and at the end was like and you should work with us for free for the publicity. And I was just like, absolutely fucking not, I wouldn't touch this project with a 50 foot pole, absolutely not. Um, last but not least, what are the red foremans of?
Speaker 1:the world from that 70s show.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the work till till you die I think they may actually be useful in the apocalypse. True, because they're handy the red foremans the nick offermans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um the red. Well, I'd take red green over all of them.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. My dad has a lot of these toxic masculinity traits, but he is fucking handy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if you put them on a construction project, they're probably going to be very helpful. Yeah, I feel like out in the survival world they're going to be burning a lot of calories.
Speaker 1:We saw this actually season one of survivor um, I can't remember his name oh, that old guy got really weak because yeah, yeah, something like that, and he was like mad because all those young people were lazy yeah, he was like all these guys are lazy, I've been, I built this shelter all by myself and like he would build a shelter and then, like, tear it down and build it slightly to the left and put it all back up again.
Speaker 2:Out in the fucking beating sun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he's like and he's like bossing everybody around like they're his employees, like they're, because he was like he's a boomer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, he was. He was like a real estate person. So like he was. He was like a real estate person, so like he would like make over houses and flip them on the market, and he was treating everybody like they were going to flip these fucking shacks. He's like we got to get this done, guys, and they're like you got to slow down. You're going to give yourself a heart attack. It's 100 degrees out here and we already have the shelter. We don't need to keep building the shelter we already have it also.
Speaker 2:The shelter fucking sucked and he built it on the beach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was way too hot out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't realize you still held such strong feelings for this guy from season one.
Speaker 1:We're on season 46, yeah, of survivor well, you know, bb, he's, he's a perfect example of this, because, um, you, somebody like BB out in the zombie apocalypse and he's going to be like like I'm, I'm working twice as hard as all of you young people. So, let's, let's, you know if you, if you've got a, if you got an extra hand, grab a cinder block and drag it down the street so that we can build a fortress out of cinder blocks. And also, you should be looting 24 hours a day. And it's like sometimes you have to know when to stop, because in a survival situation, you have to conserve your calories. You can't just be out in the sun getting heat stroke.
Speaker 2:I mean that's the Protestant work ethic which is connected to capitalism, which is a whole other probably series of books y'all could read. If you have not read about the connection between Protestantism and the hardcore capitalism work ethic that this guy is, I would say I inherited that from my dad so I'm still working on it. Dan's like relax. Honestly my foot stuff has been the greatest thing to force me to relax in my life.
Speaker 1:I'm over here painting a painting, while dan is making me dinner.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm just gonna paint this painting right now. Well, dan makes me a five course meal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great and you know it's. It's hard for people to slow down if they're used to being busy all the time. Yeah, and that's what our society wants from us. Is that for us to just always be scrambling? Um, but sometimes you've got to sit down and let yourself rest, because we don't suffer from this now, because we have technology and we have society built in a way that if we get heat stroke, we'll survive it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you don't have access to an IV to put fluids inside of you, if you get dehydrated after being out in the sun all day and not drinking water, you know?
Speaker 2:chances are you might die. Hey, what would an incel do in the zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 1:Oh, I feel like the reason that we have so many zombies is because women couldn't fight properly. They're over here doing their nails, not having sex with me, telling me that I'm a gross piece of shit, and instead of doing doing what they're supposed to be doing, like fighting zombies they're over here telling me how gross I am and that's why we have so many zombies because they couldn't even pay attention. Girls can't pay attention to zombies. It's impossible. It is impossible biologically. They're not capable of paying attention to zombies.
Speaker 2:It's impossible, it is impossible.
Speaker 1:Biologically, they're not capable of paying attention to zombies yeah, and they should sexually serve me, because that's what they're here yeah always, always we have to repopulate the earth you know, all these women who hate me and think I'm gross should all suck my dick, ew all right, we need to change this up.
Speaker 2:You know what else is really helpful other than just resting and working on being less toxic as a man.
Speaker 1:I don't.
Speaker 2:Zombie Evil, magic chicken, zombie clucks. Oh, are you ready to hear?
Speaker 1:Is it the cluckening?
Speaker 2:It is the cluckening. We have a lot, so I'm going to just play like two today because I think we've had a long episode. Are you ready to react to this one?
Speaker 1:Oh, boy yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm ready, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ga.
Speaker 1:Ba-ga. Yeah, I remember when these messages used to start with them talking to us first. Yeah, okay Now it seems like they're just clucking okay, this one, we've got another one, you ready yeah, I'm ready this is a whole minute oh my god or maybe it just goes on. I think he's done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just forgot to hang up. Yeah, they forgot to hang up, or maybe that's the sound of the zombie chicken after it's been killed.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, Like got smacked in the head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let's see, should we do one more now?
Speaker 1:Let's do one more.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Those were okay. Those were short, let's do another one. Okay, here's one more. I love that we're getting these. By the way, I didn't, I didn't know if people would, uh, would want to play along with our silly zombie I gotta say we're starting to run low.
Speaker 2:I've got uh 14 in total so far, so I need more send us more clocks, people, we need them luck it up leah needs her clocks why are chickens so funny, especially chicken zombies? I don't know, because Wow.
Speaker 1:That was both amazing and terrible. Thank you, I feel like I interrupted that one.
Speaker 2:Do we need to play it again?
Speaker 1:I think it's good Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you all for those of you brave enough to uh clock it up with us oh, and brave is the correct word it is, but also like you're anonymous, unless you tell me that you want me to say who you are.
Speaker 2:So, like, truly, I'm starting to run. I've got lots, but I'm like afraid that after the next um casual, that episode, I'm not gonna have any more if folks don't start sending me more. Oh boy. So uh, we should be actually promoting this on our threads and instagram. We need more. Yeah, is it creepy that I asked the server at the local diner to please send us some zombie clucks? They haven't, so I think it was yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know what? Now we can't go back to that diner uh, we go there every week.
Speaker 2:We're gonna be going back just like embrace the awkward. If you want to send us a zombie cluck, the phone number is not here, so hold on one moment, let me find it. You can call us anytime with your very own zombie clucks or survival stories. We've got one in the bank so far.
Speaker 2:We'd love to have some more yeah, six one, four, six, nine, nine, zero, zero, zero, six. You've got up to three minutes long. Or you can email us your stories or um a script of how you want us to make a evil magic chicken zombie. Click at zombie book club podcast at gmailcom yeah and don't forget, we have a t-shirt out and if you buy that t-shirt, it is going to go towards us getting better microphones yeah, how do we sound terrible? We'll find out after we record this, we know.
Speaker 1:We won't know until it's done. It's too late, yeah, until it's going out the door. Yeah, because I edited it at the last possible second.
Speaker 2:What is our homework for the next couple?
Speaker 1:We have homework.
Speaker 2:We do.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we're reading a comic series for episode 45. It's called Path of the Pale Rider. Series for episode 45. It's called Path of the Pale Rider you might have heard of it, written by our reigning champion of the Zombieween game show. I like to call her the Zomqueen Zomqueen, laurie Calcaterra, and you can get her comics at pathofthepaleridercom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, we're reading this because we want to, and Laurie is really cool.
Speaker 1:Laurie is the coolest.
Speaker 2:Seriously, lori is the coolest. Seriously, lori is in my imaginary survival crew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine too. She's got to like split her time between my crew and your crew.
Speaker 2:Why we have separate crews. Are we divorced in the apocalypse?
Speaker 1:No, we're just competing crews. You know, like you have your territory, I have mine. We're both trying to get control of the Cumberland farms.
Speaker 2:I will definitely win this battle, you know, why, why. Apple pie Charm Diplomacy. Yeah well, I'm going to use my toxic masculinity. Ziggy doesn't look impressed. Anyhow, you can follow us on threads or Instagram. I'll be honest. We've been a little bit inactive there lately.
Speaker 1:We're going to be better. It's the ADHD.
Speaker 2:How much can we blame our ADHD? I mean, I think we can blame a lot on our ADHD.
Speaker 1:It's a real disability. And you know what? The things that I can't blame on my ADHD, I blame on my PTSD.
Speaker 2:We are walking diagnosis here. Anyways, I hope you have a really good day and you know you notice any toxic masculine traits. You're holding on to let them go, yeah just let it go or go see a therapist but great.
Speaker 1:And if you can't afford to see a therapist, let it go.
Speaker 2:Let the toxic masculinity go yes, if you can't afford to see a therapist, you can follow feminist accounts.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to say watch Frozen no, don't watch any old disney movies.
Speaker 2:They are rife with toxic masculinity. But please follow some feminist accounts on the internet. You can learn from us. We adore y'all. Have a beautiful day, yeah, goodbye everyone.
Speaker 1:The end is nigh hi, hi, hi, bye.