It almost sounds like you're saying there's no gender pay gap. There's definitely no gender pay

gap. Women that are in successful positions,

If you break down character traits, there's about 20 core character

traits. Some of them are more prevalent in males, some of them are more

prevalent in females. That doesn't mean a woman can't have more

Society can't deal without masculinity. If you have a problem with

Welcome to the Better Bloke Podcast. I'm Matty. I'm Rob. And

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know they're pretty solid. Man up, be a man, boys

Well, we're going to jump into it because I guess we've all been raised

with that sort of messaging, like going back

30, 40 years, whatever it is. But in

the modern world, there probably is more of a conversation between

what actually is masculinity, should men be

vulnerable, like all these things that maketh

a man. All of that though. Exactly.

Why not? Because 30 years ago, it probably wasn't that

second half of stuff. It was more of the first part. Yeah.

And that's probably led to, you know, the makeup of

us men and some of the struggles that we're having in

terms of communication. That's the reason we're doing Better Blokes because we

want to show both sides of it and ways to articulate,

you know, your feelings, your struggles in a way that's

conducive with actually being a masculine bloke

I think that this topic is actually

going to be really good discussion from both of us over this, because although

we are both blokes, both of us sort of sit on opposite

ends of the spectrum when it comes to that sort of emotional vulnerability. You're

fairly comfortable in that, you know, speaking about being

vulnerable and speaking about your emotions and feelings and whatnot. I'm

not. Not that I don't feel them.

Yeah, I've had to work on it over

time and by no means, I don't think I'm good at it.

Like I know I've progressed and got better at it, but there's

still so much that I'm almost, I am guarded in

sort of what comes out or the way that it comes out. But I

do put a lot of thought in my own head into trying to unpacking some of these

things, just so at least I can get a better understanding of it. And

it's definitely been beneficial to sort of like

me progressing through my life and trying to become, you know, a

better character. Would you say a better bloke? I would

say a better bloke. And the point of better is that you're never

the best bloke. No. Right? You're going to get a little bit better the

more you do all these things. So let's, let's start up with the

man up thing. Yep. Right. You get

told as, as boys, as teens, even as men, man

up. And that sort of correlates to pushing feelings to

See, I see that in a different sense. When I hear man up, I think of

like getting it done. So it's, this probably

what I was referring to as we both are on different ends of the spectrum. So

we're going to see a lot of what we're going to talk about in a different

light, which hopefully creates good discussion. That's sort of the whole purpose behind

what we're doing. Um, but yeah,

man up to me is more about just essentially like sack

up, get it done, whichever way you need to do it. So

that may be seen in, you know, a lot of people see man

up in a negative connotation that, you know, like it means to suppress your feelings and,

you know, don't talk about things. But the way I look at it

is. If someone tells me to man up about my feelings

and whatnot, I'm going to be a man and sort

No, tell me about it. No, like unpack it. So you

say get it done. Um, for me, that means

like. You could acknowledge your

feelings and work through them and then get it done or suppress

your feelings and just get it done regardless. So

Personally, I wouldn't say that I suppress my feelings, but

I definitely don't voice them. Um, I'm one

of those guys that, I guess I can deal

with it in my own way, but I am getting more comfortable with obviously what

we're trying to do. is I need to

showcase that if someone that

is very comfortable in not suppressing my feelings, but keeping

them inside and being able to actually talk about it on camera, if I

can do it, so can you. So I think

that's something that I've been working on since we've started this,

or even the plans of getting that across.

That's something that I've been trying to work with. I've got a bit of

a close network of boys that I do open up with, we

talk about different things that happen and how you feel about them

and whatnot. You don't necessarily have to go straight down the emotional path and

start talking about, Oh, I feel sad. I feel this, I feel this, but

you can, you can have a vent essentially. And I told boys to

do that all the time, but there's no right

way to deal with your shit. So if man up means that you

get emotional and you talk about it, that's good. If

man up means that you. push

it down, and you deal with it your own ways, it's also good as

internalizing it and actually doing that

in a way that you think about it. And maybe you're doing the

resources on your own to sort of learn, uh, different

concepts or find different ways

of dealing with an issue that you have recognized. Yes.

But I don't think taking a core inherent flaw

or not even a flaw, just a negative trait out

of your personality. and putting it

No, no. That's look, you've probably made me reconsider my wording

with that is you don't want to push it down and

not, not deal with it. So, but from

my personal opinion, I don't want to let my feelings

and emotions consume my ability

to make a good judgment at that time to sort

of how to move forward, if that makes sense. So it

sort of comes back to that whole sort of stoic philosophy and like boys can look into that. I

mean, anyone can look into that. Um, because

I could sit here and talk for hours on that, but knowing when

to feel the emotion and when to not feel the emotion is probably my thing

Have you been able to, like, find aspects

of yourself, which you recognize are kind of having a

negative impact on your life, big or small, and

internally, because I know you you would rather

sort of recognize it yourself and find ways to deal with it yourself than

That's, that's, that's me to a T. I'm probably the opposite. Um, I

don't know, a bit of both. I see, like, I do a lot of that, but

I see value, especially for some people in going and externalizing

it and talking about it. So are there any of those things that you've recognized

done the work on yourself and then being able to find

I guess just the ability to start talking about things now

that like, you know, my wife and I will talk about

how I'm feeling about something. It doesn't have to be then and there in

that situation because I want to internalize it

and sort of fully comprehend how I do feel about that. You

don't want to let, just say it's something that makes you feel angry because obviously

anger is an emotion that most men feel comfortable feeling. Um,

obviously you can feel a whole bunch of emotions, but personally, I, I

feel more comfort, more comfort in anger than I do in

sadness or joy is a good feeling too, but you

know, I'm, I'm somewhat of a, I feel comfort in chaos. So anger

is something that I relate to. I don't want

to discuss that when I'm in that mood or in that, that feeling

of anger. So I'll internalize it. I'll wait

till I can fully process it and now I'll

discuss it. So, and from that, I think it's like

the discussions that my wife and I've had over, they don't have to be big

things. It's just about feelings in general. I feel like we're

moving, I guess, closer to just being

like a better partnership because of it. So there is

a lot of positives to pull from actually stepping

out of your comfort zone and talking about your feelings. It doesn't have to be

In the spirit of the whole vulnerability thing

we're talking about, you keep saying things or something. Is

there, is there something in particular that you could share and

I guess it just comes back to those, like the anger feelings and

it's, it's more so if, like

if I make a fuck up, And it could be something so

minuscule, like, you know, maybe I've, I

don't know, not serviced the car in time or not

taken the bins out or like, it could be anything. It just depends

on obviously what else is going on in your life. But whatever

that tipping point is that makes you go like, fuck,

like it's, shit's not working at the moment. That's

obviously something you need to discuss, but maybe not in that heated time.

If that makes sense, that's about as vulnerable as you're going to get from me at the

I'm not a therapist, but like, let's look at that, those

examples you gave. And it sounds like it's sort of,

maybe there's an issue with being overly self-critical and

Whereas, you know, to an extent, I think it's, it's

more so me, letting myself feel anger, because like

I said, that that's sort of my comfortable, comfortable emotion

that I can feel. And everyone's going to have different emotions that they

feel comfortable in feeling. So obviously you want to lean into whatever

it is that you feel and to help in a way to help you process emotions

and feelings and whatnot, and then eventually getting you to talk. Um,

but yeah, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure

And then once you actually start doing it, it's, it's kind of cool

because you start working out who you are and it

can be super uncomfortable and painful and all that sort of

stuff. But when you can look back at a situation

that you handled poorly at one stage, then you handled it

better at a different stage with a bit more self-awareness. It is

Yeah, see I still don't like that. But it's a process. It's

a hundred percent. That's, and that's me working through this. So I

can't comfortably sit here and, you know, recommend

that, you know, this is what boys should do and all that sort of stuff without

myself going through that journey and trying

to sort of, I don't know, find, find what works for

me in a hope that I can go, Hey, you know, I

was like you, I still somewhat am like them, but.

If I'm on that journey, I'm hoping that others can see that and go,

I think a big one that we grow up with is strength

and independence is sort of a trait that is rewarded. You

know, you want your kids to be these positive traits, but

there's a, a thing that kind of happens when you keep

rewarding that certain behavior is that people

place a high value on it because it is a good thing. And then

if the strength or independence. isn't

sort of partnered up with the ability to

say, you don't have to be this all the time, then there's a

disconnect with being able to not be strong,

I think a lot of strength comes from leaning on others though. That's like

my personal belief, which is very

contradictory to what I just said before with me, you know,

doing this, but it's, I don't know. I think, and that's something

that is probably the reason why I'm trying to do the things

that I'm trying to do, because I wouldn't have

thought about that five years ago. Very

much like that, you know, strength and independence, you do what you need to do to sort out that. Obviously

we're doing research into a whole bunch of things and that's

the journey and the path that we're on now with this. My perception

of what strength is has somewhat changed. I still obviously agree that, you

know, there is strength. in independence, but you can't do

Let me tell you a little story about myself. Go on. And this is something

that came to light very recently, to be fair in the last year. And

as a kid and a teen, I had a great childhood. My parents were awesome. They

did a great job of raising me, but I was a very independent,

go get it, go get a achiever.

Right. And that was rewarded quite a lot. Um, just in

terms of, I guess, praise and, oh, Maddie's doing this, Maddie's

doing that. And then that just carried

through my adult life to the point where independence

was such an important aspect for me to

feel like, I don't know, I was conducting my life in the way I was told

was right and good. And for the best that

I, and you know, this do have a hard time asking

for help. No, no way. Because

I'm like, I can handle it. Yeah, I can handle it. But sometimes it's

really fucking hard. And that that's

not just in work, that that's in the relationships as well.

Sometimes, you know, I don't want to burden other people.

with anything, even if they're super willing. They

want to be there to help me. They want to take load off me. I

have a really hard time. And that

has come from, you know, growing up, I

So going back to being rewarded

for being so independent, were you ever criticized when

things didn't pan out though, as well? Like, were you given not

shunned, so to speak, if you did the wrong thing, but, you know, just say something

didn't work out exactly how you wanted it to do. Were you

like pepped up and said, Oh,

good try. Or were you only ever rewarded for

No, like I'm sure I was, I don't have the best recollection of

my childhood. I was definitely, there's

definitely been critique of the shit I'm

not good at. which has like led me into doing stuff that

Oh my God. Like, I think that's a human, that's a

human trait though. Yeah, but I really hate it. See, I, I

low-key, low-key love leaning into that uncomfortable though as well, because

Yeah, it does, but I bloody hate it. And especially doing it

in front of other people. Like I try to get into surfing and

I look like a surfer, but when I went out there, I'm

like, I suck and I felt like everyone's judging me.

They probably didn't give two shits that I'm out there. But I felt

so uncomfortable in that situation of being bad at

Like multiple times. Do you think that leans more into that

whole male perception that, you know, like what it is to

be a man, you need to be like just good

at everything? Or do you think that's a direct correlation of

how you were raised and you got gratification for

I think in my brain, being good at something is

a reflection of your character. So the better you are

at more things, the better you are as a person, which

isn't necessarily true. And it's put me in situations where

I've put way too much emphasis on achieving something. It's

not all about achievements, but I've sacrificed a lot for achievements and

That's how we learn. That's how we learn. Did you, did you learn from them

though? That's the, and that's the, going back to a few episodes

ago, I said, it's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from it. That's

something that I believe very, very hard.

Yeah, I learned. In some situations, I learned too late,

like lost stuff. And

yeah, paid a price for it, where I think if I

had better self-awareness early on, and put more accountability

But we are where we are now, like you can't live with-

Do you think that like putting the accountability on yourself was part of what

made you lose it though, and this sort of ties back into leaning

on others, which we're telling boys to do now. If

you had have leant on others, would you have perhaps

not had the loss or would you

Yeah, that's the point. I 100% probably

wouldn't have had the loss. But

I guess I just wasn't developed enough as a dude. Like I

can 100% call that a long form

fuck up of me acting a certain way because of stuff that I

wasn't aware happening inside myself. Like until you're aware of it,

you think it's normal. You think everyone's got this going on inside of

them. You're just making decisions on the fly. But

until you're like, Hey, wait up, that's a heavily influenced decision

because of all this shit I got going up in here. Ah,

that's why this person thinks that you're being weird

or, you know, treating them badly or whatever it might be.

So yeah, it'd be a completely different outcome, but you can't change your

past. All you can do is grow and learn. And that's sort of where I'm at.

Going back to masculinity. So, because a

lot of what you explained probably stays

down that path of, you know, this is what men should do.

Like men fix their own fuck ups. They, they stay

in that routine and rhythm, which we're seeing a

lot. I wouldn't say the opposite now, but

it is starting to sway outside of, I

guess, the, the norms of what some

people would refer to as toxic masculinity, which I can't stand

that term. Do you think that was because of what

Definitely. I had

a really bad relationship with asking for help, which is kind

of why man up to me is don't talk. Because

that's how it manifested itself in my life, where the way you're

explaining it, it's sort of a whole different thing. It's like, you

know, man up is being able to do said task or said responsibility,

and then finding the way to do it in a masculine sort

of manner, which, you know, being a man nowadays, 2024, I

think it's got a different meaning. It is being

accountable of all these feelings. It is being

able to experience vulnerability for growth and

like being a better partner, being all these things. Does

Yeah, it does. That's good. That's a great explanation

as to sort of what I guess the differences between my

perception of Man Up and your perception of Man Up is. In the

social media, I guess, world that we live in now, you

and I have both seen a few different videos getting around

of different ways that men are opening up and

maybe showing their vulnerabilities. A

Yeah, essentially cuddling, canoodling, crying and

rubbing each other okay. Now, I'm

not saying there's anything wrong with that. Don't come at me, super

overly affectionate blokes, because I'm scared of you. I'm

not. But what's your take on the ways that,

I guess, Do you think that that's a good thing

Different strokes for different blokes, but I think it's

sort of like a weird ice bath movement where blokes

See, I'm not against the ice bath movement though, personally, because

Yeah, although Wim Hof's not really a trend and that's what it's all about, essentially. Off

topic, mate. Back to Bloke's Crying. Okay, okay, yeah. Let's get

It's a difficult one because I think vulnerability is super important

and guys should be able to express their vulnerability. Whether

or not they should get together and take their shirts off and scream

into the air and do war chants, I haven't been to one of those things.

Just a bit forced and weird. Part of me getting vulnerable is I'm

open to actually giving those things a nudge. So primal shit I'm okay

with. Crying shit, if

We've seen like masculinity under attack. Over,

I reckon like the last five years, it's gotten worse. Definitely since

the whole cancel culture stuff's come in. They're more pedantic

on the little bits of bloke culture that perhaps aren't okay in

this modern world. Do you think there's going

to, we're going to keep going on that trajectory and

what's it going to look in like in five or 10 years more time? Are

we going to get a pushback of people going like enough's enough? Like

this is who we are, you can't suppress us? Or is

it going to essentially be a fold of masculinity and we're going

to see more and more weak men sort of infiltrate

I don't think there's going to be a fold of masculinity,

not with what we're doing. Um, I

think there's already a bit of a pushback. All you need to do is look

across your socials and you see like all these I

mean, using Mr. Cancelled, for example, Andrew

Tate, do I agree with everything he says? No. Do

I like a lot of what he does say though? Yeah, a hundred percent. It's just the way he delivers it.

The amount of people that latched onto what his message was, and

his message was essentially the core value of what toxic

masculinity is, that many people wouldn't have latched onto

what he said if there wasn't some sort of want

for that. So I think that's... that sort of created that pushback. I

don't think masculinity is going to fall. Like society can't deal

without masculinity. And that's, I'm like

comfortable as fuck in saying that, like, if you have a problem with masculinity, you're

I think in the last five years, as we've seen, Andrew Tate's

sort of been like a shining beacon. I

don't love his persona and the way he goes about it,

but what he's done is created a voice that people have latched onto, as

you said. And the reason he got so big is because he's representing

a silent majority. So those five years of people

being suppressed, being told that they can't talk about these things, they

haven't talked about them, but when someone did, they can support him.

And for me, that silent majority still

holds more weight than the vocal minority. And

what we'll see is a sort of shift in

society. And we've seen it over, like, you imagine the 70s was

like the drug rave culture, whatever, 80s, 90s, 2000s.

It's in ebbs and flows. It keeps changing. So I think there's going

to be that period in the late 20 teens, early 2020s,

where we went on this weird tangent for a bit. and it's going

to level out and find a new normality and

hopefully a place where we can strike a better balance

And I think the word that you said there that

needs to happen is balance. So for

so many years, it goes so far one way, and

then everyone kicks up a stink and goes, oh, fuck you. Bang,

back the other way. There needs to be that down the middle line where

We respect masculinity. We respect femininity.

Why are the two battling? So I'm not

Clickbait and headline culture of modern social media. I'm sure

as hell. I'm sure as fuck that it's not helping

the situation because everyone wants that 10 second clip. So they say

something controversial algorithm feeds it into either side.

And then I think it's pushed both messages of, um,

like that ultra. masculinity which doesn't necessarily

have the good parts of it like the vulnerability and

it's pushing the messages on feminism or whatever that

is so far in that direction it's sort of on the toxic level.

Should we test this theory right now? How do you want to test it?

Toxic masculinity is what you need and we'll just

clip that up and we'll see how viral it goes. Cancelled. Cancelled.

We'll give it a go. See that's the issue though it's like why do we

go straight to cancelled for that? Like you just said clickbait is

what you want. Like why does everyone go straight to canceled if

I think cancel culture is almost over to be honest with you. Because

it became so prevalent. Like if you look at someone

like Isaac Butterfield, you know, he's been doing

his shit for quite a long time now. He says what he wants, he says how he

wants, and he stands grounded in the fact that he's a comedian with, yes,

some political opinions, but they're his beliefs and he has every right to put

them out. And he talks about getting cancelled and

getting cancelled, but he's not cancelled because he refuses to

say sorry. So if they can't cancel him, then

he wasn't cancelled. So I

think we're past the point where they're actually doing

that. They're not ripping us off YouTube because we said men

So I don't think we'll actually get cancelled for anything. And

we can, you know, speak pretty freely about our beliefs. And

I hope that continues through over the course of the decade and

achieve that balance by both sides of the story being more freely spoken about.

What's your opinion on women that are

in successful positions, a lot of their traits you

would call a masculine trait. So, you know, like their competitiveness, their

drive, all of these things that successful women

have, you would attribute what they have

So you wouldn't attribute it as masculinity, but if you

break down character traits, there's about 20 core character

traits, and then some of them are more prevalent in

males and some of them are more prevalent in females. But that

doesn't, that doesn't mean a woman

can't have more of the trait generally found

in masculine or men. Does that make her more masculine?

Does it mean she has a trait that's more commonly found in men?

Yeah, maybe. I don't know if that makes her more masculine, but

it does mean she's got some traits that are more common in men. Those traits

are associated with high-paying careers. Stuff like agreeableness and

So in that instance, why

are Women in those successful positions celebrated

and like seen as a beacon of what everyone should look

up to. Yet a man with the similar attributes

that hits the same side, they're just like, Oh, that's

Yeah, because it's representing a minority in

that space, obviously not a minority in the general

population. And to be fair, women were suppressed in the workforce

for a long time. We're on a pretty level playing field now and there

are some absolute beasts of women like the CEO of

YouTube, all these women that are crushing it.

So I think that's why they're celebrated because for a long while they

didn't have the ability or it was a lot tougher for

There's definitely no gender pay gap. That's another

episode. On that note, guys, let

us know what you think masculinity is. What does that actually mean

to you and how are you sort of implementing that learning

into your own life? You can follow us on Better Blokes on

Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, anywhere you can watch or

listen to a podcast. Thanks for watching and we'll catch you on the next one.

Be better. Thanks for tuning into today's episode of Better Bloke. If

If you want to learn more about everything we're doing, head to the description, hit

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