27 "They Looked At Me Like I Was Insane" and "I Could See Me In Looney Tunes"

Naty: [00:00:00] Hey folks, it's Naty. This week's show features adult content from the start. So if you listen with your kids, then maybe check this one out on your own first to see if it's appropriate for them. And if you're a young listener, then ask your parent or your guardian to check this out and decide if it's appropriate for you. All right, here's the show. [00:00:17][17.5]

Guest 1: [00:00:18] I think my mum, for a while there was wary of people asking me at a family dinner or something what my PhD topic was on, and then I would just start out with a big conversation about, you know, all of this stuff that I'm looking at. He'd go to parties and we'd get the whole kind of been true, bent out of the way where people would call me doctor porn and all of this other kind of stuff. And then, you know, an hour later, I'd have somebody coming up to me and be like, wanting to have a much more deep and in-depth conversation because people do want to talk about it. And beyond this superficial Venturi kind of way, or that more moralistic way, I think that people do actually want to talk about topics like this. You just have to give them permission to do that. I grew up in a town in the South Island of New Zealand called Christchurch, and I didn't realize until I left later that it was quite full of overt and covered forms of discrimination, racism, sexism, homophobia.

I was quite a soft child. I was quite a soft boy. Like, there's a lot of struggle when you kind of become socialized into what the expectations of a teenage boy are like in an environment where the pressures are quite contrary to how you act. I started off as a aspiring printer, and I was working in a screen printing factory, and it was an older guy, and he used to be in the US Navy. I remember one day I turned up to work wearing pink nail polish. He noticed the nail polish and he didn't talk to me for the first half of the day, which is unusual. And then a colleague of mine came out and he was like, oh, Doug's been kind of wondering what's going on with the nail polish.

And then we had an Apple event. And so after lunch, I just had him up and I was like, sorry, I hate you a bit. And we ended up about the nail polish, what you know, and he was like, well, I just want to know what it means. And I said, well, what what do you think it means? And we ended up having this amazing discussion about saying, you know what? Later on, I became, you know, understood as much in the presentation and silent symbols of masculinity, femininity. And so we talked about things like pink and blue and then what it's supposed to mean and what his interpretation of my behavior is. And I was, what, 19, I think, and it was probably my first interview in an academic way, even though I wasn't an academic then, this exploration of what his perception of me was, and I realized that he was also kind of curious that there were probably a lot of men who have these more conservative views of gender who just they would like to know, but they don't know how to ask and they don't know how to how to do that in a way that doesn't come across as, you know, crossing a line into those roles, crossing those roles. So, I mean, like, I have so many stories like that as a product of that. I was exposed to quite a lot of homophobia.

I'm not gay, but it was kind of redundant, I guess, to know of the all of the men who wanted to police my gender expression. On the one hand, masculinity is about being able to do whatever you want, apparently. And then on the other hand, there are all of these roles, like all of these things that you actually can't do. So I was kind of like, okay, well, on the one hand, I'm supposed to be able to do anything and I can be whatever I want. I shouldn't care what other people think. And then, on the other hand, I have all of these men predominantly telling me the undressing wrong, that I'm acting wrong, that my interests are wrong. And I think that that was where the first inklings, a bit of an interest in gender and and masculinity. Yeah, I was just always and have always been interested in men and how men make sense of the world in a way that closes off a lot of possibilities for men, like the ways that you live your life are kind of limited by these rules. When you actually step away and look at it, there are so many roles that you're expected to just sort of intuit and understand.

And I think that's also partly because masculinity is expected to be this natural category of gender that just, you know, springs from the body miraculously and isn't socially constructed. And then you're like, well, then if it's not socially constructed, why do I have to follow all these rules you keep telling me about? I was also in a band, moved to London with the band, and we played music around Europe and went to the States and did a lot of that sort of stuff. And then I came back to Zealand. Then I found, a job working in a kitchen. I think I've always been a curious person and interested in history and social issues and, you know, working this crazy job in the kitchen, working 60 hours a week, coming home smelling like a deep fryer and just kind of partying to hide. And and at one point, I was just I was sick of working. And I remember going to my boss and saying, I want to work three days a week. And they looked at me like I was insane. No, like, what do you want to do that? And I just want to like, explore and have some energy to like my life. And I did that for a little while, and that gave me the space to start thinking about going to university. I didn't have the intention of ending up getting a PhD. I didn't have the intention of ending up working as an academic. I had only the intention of finding out more. I did a PhD that focuses on men's pornography viewing, which is obviously the masculinity part of it. And so I became interested in both pornography doing and men's experiences of that. And then also this kind of medicalization of that process is something that, you know, why we medicalized and the ways that we medicalized it and what that medicalization means. The team that I was working with had done work in high schools with groups of teenage girls before, and the teenage girls were saying, you know, we are in an environment where there were pressures to send nude images and there are expectations, but also this is a normal part of our lives.

This is relationship building and everything else. Why is it our responsibility when that? Rust is violated. I should be allowed to see that. And no damage to a body. Because, as you know, that's a unexpected thing. You know, not being it works all this pressure to do so. But it's not my responsibility. If that boy then goes on to on charity, the onus is on the on the part of the the boy. And so why aren't you talking to boys about this? And we were like, yeah, let's go and talk to a whole lot of boys about this. The vast majority of the men and the types of violence that men use is more deadly and so on and so on. And so I'm just like, it makes absolute sense to me to focus on men and try to change their behaviors, because I think most men don't want to be violent either, but they lack the skills or resources, or it's a thing brought up in environments where violence is a way to solve problems. They don't have the communication skills, and the solution to that is not incarcerating men. And it's not telling women to do not dress in particular ways that whatever it is to like, try to engage in what's going on. [00:07:03][404.8]

Naty: [00:07:07] Hey folks, it's Naty. We'll be back with more right after this break. [00:07:11][4.1]

Guest 2 : [00:07:18] The hell is my job? I'm in school. I'm in community college, which I feel like we need to talk about that community fucking college. It is past a joke. If they told me to bring a glue stick tomorrow, I would believe them. I would think, yep, that sounds about fucking right. And I think anybody over the age of 11, I think their brain naturally moves a lot quicker than the course at community college. Even when you take the eight week course, when you do, like a semester into eight weeks doesn't fucking matter. None of the things that they're saying has any value at all. And it's like, wow, people dedicate their entire life into this. This is it for a lot of people. What the hell is my job? Nothing provides any sort of fucking value to their life. And that's it. That's all they have. They don't get out in the world and they don't learn things on a daily basis. They don't communicate with everyone around them and just try to understand how people live and how people adapt and how people have gotten to where they are. Sometimes I go to the bathroom and I hit my vape and I'm like, I actually might jump out this fucking window. And it's like, wow, like, this really sucks. But like, it's also like playing the game. And I think that's really important to do. Like, you play the game and you make them be happy and you get your fucking degree and it takes like so little of your time. Like if you just get it done, get all your homework done, get your ass down like, that's it. And then you can go do whatever you want to do and you can pursue any career you want, even one that's risky, like the one that I'm in. There's like 600 contacts in my phone, for example, and I just go through and I call them on repeat and I call them on repeat. And like, I just build that connection with them and I just keep calling and like just checking it out every day is going, I don't give a fuck how your day is going. And until they're like, actually, I'm ready to buy a house, I'm like, oh my God, what a coincidence.

And then I do like, like courses and like classes like, and you can like learn. And then I take notes on that and I watch like what other people do. I take notes on that. And then I find like houses for people, like I go on the MLS and then like I figure out what, like open houses that I want to do, I figure out going to talk to and then I'll do like a little bit of school and then I'll go to the gym and then I'll like do something to like lead generate. And then I'll just follow up those leads and I'll find them in the house. I got my real estate license. In my opinion, I think it should be a little harder because everybody has it. And I think that it also it's the same sort of situation where it doesn't teach you anything that you're going to ever need to know when you're actually in the world. It just teaches you how to how a real estate deal and like everyone sees you as a dollar sign, which is really fucked up because it's like, okay, I'm a human being, I persist. I live a life just like you live. I have a family just like you have one. I'm not walking dollar sign. So if you don't say something that's going to immediately give them a check.

They don't give a fuck about what you have to say. So that's kind of rude. Everyone who's in the real estate game here and anybody who, like, is doing these big deals, they nobody thinks for themselves here and everyone just tries to be everyone else and they just hop on trends and they don't stop and think what they value. They're not stop and think about their morals. They don't stop and think about what they want to do with their life. They're drowned by all the stress. And the second that they stop working for half a second, they're literally going to be homeless on the street. Why are people not allowed to think outside of the box? Whatever happened to that? There's so many more results when you just think outside of the box and don't do what everyone else wants. Do I have this like ideology where it's like, if I don't want the results that everyone else has, why am I doing what everyone else is doing? It's going to give me the same fucking result. That and I pity them. And so what I do is I just call people and I talk to people, and I find ways to communicate with as many people as possible. And then I'll go to appointments and I'll talk to them, and I'll talk to them about what I can do to help them. And I basically just, like, sell my abilities and tell them that I could do ABM teams. I will go to bed with a billion things on my mind because I'm not like I get the how other people can't fall asleep like that. Like that totally sense to me. But I just fall asleep and then I'll wake up in those hundred things I saw on my mind.

But, I mean, I feel like I'd rather do that than live any other type of way, because when I'm still, it makes me very uncomfortable. I don't like it at all, so I just, I constantly need to be moving and I constantly need to, like, be creating a life that I want to live. It's like I just I can't be still. I can't just do what everyone else is doing. It doesn't make me happy like it makes other people happy. I don't really fuck with simplicity and I get how other people can, and I also get how other people can when there's like not a billion other factors. Like, I feel like the world is depreciating around us and I mean, like, I don't like, what am I supposed to do? Ignore that and like, focus on a negative I like I can't do that. Like my brain doesn't operate that way. But I think it's a learning process. And I think the more that I get out there and the more that I just talk to people and experience, the more I'll find out I like characters. Everyone in my life is a character. And I once got referred to as a bipolar Looney Tunes character. And at first I was a little taken aback and a little offended. And then I was like, honestly, you're not wrong. Like, I could see me in Lincoln. But I like I like London. I've never been to New York, but I want to go to New York. I also like the idea of an island. I like places where technology isn't as important, and I like places where people just sit on a mountain and just think where it's more simple. And not everything is so stressful. [00:12:51][332.9]

Naty: [00:12:53] Hope you liked the episode. Please help us out by rating us, sharing with your friends or buying us a coffee. Buy me a coffee.com slash. What the hell is my job? It costs us money and time to be here for you at the start of every single week, so please consider supporting us. See you next time. [00:12:53][0.0]

[759.3]