Deconstructing Masculinity with Tony Porter: Part 2

Published Sep 18, 2024, 10:00 AM

We pick up where we left off in our last episode with our guest Tony Porter, author of Breaking Out of the Man Box. Iyanla and Tony continue their wide-ranging conversation and unpack how to keep men accountable, how to foster healthy communication, and how to encourage men to support women in leadership roles.

Tony also leans in and helps listeners understand how to reframe the dynamics between men and women, how to prevent violence against women, and highlights the harm that the collective socialization of men has on all genders. 

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I am a Yamla. I've been very open about the fact that I was not always good at making my relationships work. I have been divorced three times, twice from the same person. In other words, I have seen a lot and failed a lot in my relationships. So I am here to share with you what I learned along the way, because I did take copious notes. Welcome to the R Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the R Spot. If you were with us last week, you heard me and my guest, Tony Porter, an author, a activist, an educator who works toward eliminating a racial and gender inequality. Tony is the author of Breaking out of the man Box. He's talking about reimagining manhood and eliminating the impact of the collective socialization of men that have put them on what he calls remote control manhood. So we are going to continue that conversation today because it is just too good to cut out anything. I want you to hear it all, and here we go. I want to ask you some questions that I get.

All of the time.

I get all of the time from women and so that we can hear it from you, so that we have a a better way of dealing with the men in our lives and be a better way of raising our sons. That's my concern, because we're raising future husband's future fathers. Okay, here's a question that I get all of the time. He doesn't communicate. What can I do to help him communicate? He doesn't communicate? So we understand the collective socialization. We understand the man's fear of being vulnerable or looking weak. We understand his resistance to asking for help. But as a woman with a man, I love my boo. He's here, he's you know, the father, mito. Whatever, how do I support assists?

What do I do I think understanding the collective socialization and the role that plays in the lack of communication that we bring forward as men, makes it easy or what helps us to work with man in a way that makes sense or make that way that's productive, because we're not just these guys that don't you know, to just say, you know, I can't get this guy to talk. I can't get him to communicate with me. If we can think differently more about how we have been socialized, not to communicate right and to use that to help help you in the process of getting him to open up. So particularly, let me start with boys. Women do this with boys better than men do, by the way, because men, again it is not just about not a the ability to ask for help, we don't like to offer it. So women will teach their sons to communicate in a way that men don't, and actually, through that, boys will when they do want to talk, or men, when they do want to talk, they're going to talk to a women before they're going to talk to another man, because that's who was in their lives to talk with when they were boys. Men we disconnect from each other when it comes to that level of intimacy. Women stay at the table. But for me, it was teaching my sons. Just telling me I'm good, everything's cool, and I'm good wasn't enough. We had to have a conversation, right, to teach them to talk about their feelings, to teach them to have conversation that include how they feel. That that's a process, ongoing process. But let's say you get with a man and he ain't there yet, he didn't have that teaching or that experience, and now you're trying to jumpstart this thing. I think you gotta have patience, gotta have tolerance. Don't take it personal. This is not in a personal saut on you. Right, there's a baby step process, right, it could be very well could be a babyst process. It could be a seize the moment when he shows up in that way. But when you seize the moment, don't overwhelm him, right, Don't overwhelm them when the moment's dead, right, and give them, give them some room just to let it out, to say what it is he wants to say, without being bombarded with a thousand questions. Right, give him the space to kind of guide the ship a little bit. And then every now and then you can turn it somewhat. But give him the room to kind of guide it a little bit. Right. Uh, those are the kind of factcause yeah, yeah, because I know, particularly when you get excited and you know, because you see an opening or whatever, or even when you're mad, right, when you're when you're upset with him, that's when it really happens more, and not when you're upset with him. I think as men, though, we need to be held accountable. It's not about letting us off the hook. Either there's a level of accountability, the level of maturity, if he has a friend. Far too often, like we're blessed as men if we got as as young members say that ride or die. We're blessed if we have that, because we end relationships so easily as man. It's not just what women is with anybody, right, and women have lifelong relationships much more than we do as men. That y'all take hand of each other in a way that we don't collectively as as as men. But if he happens to have that person in his life and that person is a good person, that kind, if she can rely on that person and ask to build that kind of community around that man, it's best served obviously. Well, success is greater when we can teach theself boys as they grow into being men. But we already have men now that need a hand here. So my best advice is tolerance, patience, right, don't overwhelm, but look for yours and opportunities. And when he's dumping, let that boy dunk right, and then figure out how to be there with him. Put your arm around him, give him a big kiss, something that tells him I can come back and dump again tomorrow. And also it's important for women to be hay with men sharing their feelings and emotions because again, the same lessons that we've been taught as it relates to what it means to be a man, women have been taught the same thing. So a lot of women don't want that man sharing a lot of feelings a lot of emotions that you know, they believe that that's my space to do that that ain't for him. But what I'm saying is, if your man is not sharing his feelings and emotions, it's not like he's not stuffing them away. And when he stuffs him away, they come out sideways because they're coming out somewhere another. You know, there was a time, and that was a time. I just haven't had the opportunity of sometime. And I'm in front of a room, say a couple of hundred people, and I would ask the folks in the room, raise your hand. If you've never seen your father cry. Probably about a third of folks in the room hand go up, and I'll say keep your hand up. And those of you who only seen your dad or father figure cry once, please raise your hand. Between once and never, two thirds of the room easily, easily two thirds of the room has their hand up. That's killing us as men, right, that's killing us as men. So it's really really important that we raise our boys to learn and be able to share who they are emotionally, and we cultivate that with our men as well. And a lot of it is on the shoulders at this particular time, a lot of it is, unfortunately on the shoulders of women.

I'm going to recap those notes. I want to get a couple of more of these questions. And here's the other thing. Let me just say this. When I work with men, I give them a list of feelings.

I've got a very extensive I got a list, I got a positive list, I got a negative list. And because so many men don't have the vocabulary, their emotional library is good, bad, right, wrong, angry, happy. They don't know anxiety, they don't know disappointment, they don't know frustration, they don't know melancholic.

So I give them a list and I say, okay, use it, and they use it.

Okay.

So here's another question I get asked by women all of the time. Let mean, this is how they say it. They'll give me a scenario and I say, okay, well that's disrespectful. They'll say, well, how come he can disrespect me, I can't disrespect them.

It makes sense. And we're back to communication, right and how we communicate, how we do or don't communicate with each other. And you're right, my thoughts are very important to me for women or feelings are very important to her. And then how do we in a very mature way find that sweet spot in how we negotiate That is important. Maturity is very very important in respect to what we're talking about. Humility is very important, and respect we're talking about the ability to be humble and remain teachable. It is very important to what we're talking about. Understanding issues of gender as it relates to equity and equality, it's very very important, I think for men to understand understand that, understand, like I said, those three aspects of men with less value plus property plus objectification, because in those experiences with women that's in there for us. We need to understand what their experience has been like being victimized by that, and what our experience has been like not only being perpetrators of that, but many of us are not in an overt way but with benefactors of it regards to understand to that, I think it's just really important for us as men to spend time really exploring healthy manhood. And if we explore that, you know, what it means to be a healthy man. That means you're asking for help, you're offering help, you're accepting help. It means that you're willing to share your feelings and emotions openly. It means that you're willing to be vulnerable. It means that you're willing to work toward being your authentic self. It means that you're taking an interest in the experience of women and girls in sexual conquests. Is not a goal, you know, all of this encompasses being healthy men. I'm not here to be an authority in any sense of the word pretty much or nothing, but definitely not on the experience of women. But I do know and truly believe if we accompl some of the things that we're talking about as men, you know, and various times in my life doing men's groups, we would talk about the reality that men and women may come to a situation or come into a situation where we both have like let's say, a laundry list of issues. I still today believe that if we as men work on our issues alone, just work on ours. But in that relationship with her, her laundry list also begins to shrink as we're working on ours, because there are things on our lists, you know, that are really impacting her, that's contributing to her list. We just work on our list long, Let's just work on our stuff alone, right, I believe in a male dominating society which we still live in, her laundry list begins to shrink, right, But there are many things on her list that has come by the way of, you know, the trauma that she's experienced at the hands of men, and our level of maturity to be in that space and understand that and what we then take personal and what we don't. That's the work of men, you know. And I really believe that when men, you know, join on with other men, create space, have these kinds of conversations that you and I having today with the battles for it, with the better for it. And I'm also going to say, you know, most of the spaces that myself the other men of our organizations get to speak to men, I would say probably still seven out of ten times is women organizing the event or the activity for us to have an opportunity to speak to men? Right? One of when you do prevention work, you know, it was hard to measure. One of my own personal measurements is when we at least get to fifty to fifty fifty percent of the time we're invited by men and fifty percent of the time we're invited by women. And we're not there yet.

And we'll talk about that when we come back. Welcome back to the rspot. I want to raise this with you because I got you hearing you from New York, so I know we think kind of a like. I have been very, very troubled and disturbed by the language used toward Madam Vice President as she pursues this new position as president of this country. And my disturbance has been I've heard a number of white men call her out of her name, stupid, non intelligent. In addition to the one who shall remain nameless, I won't utter his name out of my mouth. But others have jumped.

On the bandwagon.

They've questioned her ability because she's not doing it the way they do it. She needs to do an interview, she needs to do this. She need you know. But I have been very disturbed by the silence of black men at the way this sister woman has been spoken about publicly.

I believe for us as men see, I do my work from a place of being unapologetically pro black women. Now, if you don't understand what that me like, I can have white women that will be upset when they hear that. But the truth of the matter is when I say I'm unapologetically pro black women, that means I also care about you. But what it means is that I sent to the experience of black women, and that allows me to be in our live of all women. But if I start out by centering the experiences of white women in the country like the United States of America, which is a racist class in other forms, a group of pressing constructs, I really ever get to black women. I got to reach in too deep. So if I start with black women and work my way out, all women will benefit. I am unapologetically pro black women, and I say that proudly, and I say that out loud, and I'm not and by doing that, I'm not doing anything special because I should be that. So it's not like I'm saying that. Don't get me no pat on the back for just simply doing what I'm supposed to be doing. But I need to say it out loud for other brothers to hear it said out loud. I think the misogyny that we're not aware of that's in us also contributes to silencing us right in the face of these other men who would, dare you know, speak about Black women and the way they do for us, it almost goes as black men that we're speaking about specifically right now. For us, it almost goes over our head the fact that they're speaking about black women to a place up they're just speaking about women. I don't even know if we connect fully with the fact that they're speaking about black women, that they're speaking about women from our community. I don't even know how to what degree we connect with that, because the misogyny runs through our beings, as do minds too, all Right, I have to constantly confront it, challenge it, do some self wrapped when it comes upon me. Right now, I don't think in a male dominating, a white male dominating race construct such as the United States of America, you can't get away from this stuff. It's in us, and denying that this in us will land toward us doing more harm. I also joined that call of brothers and we raise a lot of money, and it was a lot of brothers on that course. So it's a lot of us that are really down with our sister. That's not even a question. We are down, but you're gonna always have. Unfortunately, the men who are not, and the question, the real question right for them is to really grapple with the misogyny that we're taught that's in us as men that contribute to this. But I'm going to also lift up the brothers that are all over this I was so so proud to be on it wall. But these same black men that you're speaking about would be silent if it was any woman. The challenges we're not connected to her blackness, which then tells us we should have a high level of responsibility. It's the fact that we're not connected to her blackness because this is how men talk about women in general. Now, of course they take it to a whole nother level when they're talking about black women, right, and as them talking about black women, I mean, we should be offended if they're talking about any woman. But by virtue talking about black women, it should go to another level for us. Why shouldn't it? Of course it should, but for many of us as men, it doesn't. It doesn't go to another level or responsibility or accountability. So it just says we would sit through them saying that about a white woman, will sit through them saying that about a black woman, because for us, the sexism runs deep, the male domination runs deep, and our responsibility to black women do not co opt that, and it's unfortunate and we have to be reminded about that. But I'm fully aware of what you're saying and what you're sharing, and there's a responsibility as an accountability on us as black men to understand that and to be aware of that and to teach that to our boys as well.

Let me ask you this. I lived in a violent relationship for nine years. My husband was physically violent, emotionally violent, all of that, and I'll never forget one day we had this big mashup. I can't even say it was a fight because he was six four two sixty.

I'm five to five.

And I remember afterwards and I was going outside with my black eye covered up or whatever, and he was coming with me. We're walking out like nothing is wrong. And a neighbor who lived on the third floor came down, walked up to us. His name was mister Charlie. His wife's name was Miss Ruth. And he said to my husband, he said, mister, I'm gonna tell you this one time. If I ever hear again you put your hands on her, You're gonna have to deal with me.

Now.

Much to my shock and surprise, he didn't say anything. He didn't say anything. He just walked. You know, we just kept walking away. I was both scared to death and shocked. So my question is, if you are a man and you know a brother, man, whether you know him or not, your neighbor, your nephew, your brother is being violent towards a woman, what do you do? What do you do?

Well, that's a great question in many cases, because your neighbor could have put himself in harm's wife right, And that's a personal choice that men make. And I'm not taking that choice off the table because we are in an epidemic of violence against women and girl. But that's a personal choice. But the truth of the matter is, and he didn't and the man who knew your husband. But because the point is, most of the time, men who are close to a man who's abusive knows he's abusive, or at least knows by his behavior that he definitely has a tendency to be abusive. And in many cases, it's not a situation where we're putting ourselves in harm's way. It could be my cousin, it could be my brother, it could be my son. Right, we know that they're abusive or have the tendency to be abusive, and we are absorbing that behavior and not challenging it. So much of that is rooted in again just doing tradition. She's his property and he can do with his property as he chooses. Right when we walk down the aisles and the person officiating the service says, who give this woman away? And first of all, you don't give nothing away and let you own it. And the dad gave her away, she is now his right to do it as he chooses. And like I said in the beginning, there wasn't a time where women were to property man. We know that's not the case, but we know it's tolerated, right, very much tolerated. And so there's a couple of things for us as men to teach that the boys right to redefined. Man who has a respects to women's property, for men who are in relationship with men who have these behaviors to challenge that, to speak to it. You know, the world I envision is a man who's assault on his wife. Ten men from the neighborhood knock on his door and say, your brother, we're here in peace. We're here and love we as men, we don't live that way. And that when he goes to work and he got the four or five guys that he plays cards with at lunchtime, they say, you know what we heard about you, when we heard about what you're doing. You know, we welcome at this card table until you change your way. When he goes to his son's little league baseball game, the coach says, your son is welcome here.

Man.

We love your son, but I'm not dealing with you until you change your way. That's when we say that men, that women can end this on their own. They would have already. When we say it's the number one call for the last thirty years for the police departments, that simply means a criminal justice response is not going to change this what's going to change this is when we collectively as men say we've had enough, right, that's what's going to change. This is on our shoulders, it's on our watch right. That's what's going to change when we collectively as men say we'll no longer going to tolerate this. And it's not about violence. It's not using violence to end violence. It's about our relationship with each other as men. We make sure we tell each other the stories that are going to benefit maintaining this collective socialization. Because, for example, you hear every man has heard a story that if you get involved, she's going to jump on you too, right out. And if you ask men, have you ever experienced that? Most men say no, But I heard about it right, that if something's going down and I get involved, she's gonna jump on me too. Now that's not to say it's never happened, right, because it has happened. But the reason she jumped and you were defending her and she jumped on you also because she knows that she's gonna hold her responsible for you correcting his behavior. Right, So if I can jump on you or yell also tell you to mind your business, that will lessen the assault I'm going to experience when I get home. We're gonna still beat me up when I get home. You're gonna say I was looking at you, you were looking at me. Maybe I like this, dude, Do you really know that guy from somewhere? Because why else would he be in our business? All that's going to be on the table when she gets home. But at least by yelling at you and curse it at you, except you're telling you to mind your business whatever, whatever, whatever, that's gonna lessen the assault. And as men for us, that just simply tells us she likes getting to beat So we just now we have the greenlight just in all situations mind our business. Right. So it's just really important for men to have these conversations to educate ourselves, get off of remote control and stop doing tradition.

We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back to the our spot. Let's get back to the conversation. Wow, wow, wow, Tony, you have given us just I'm just I got my little paper. I'm just going crazy. Thank you for helping us me and anyone listening. This collective socialization. I've never heard it crystallized like that. That men are taught women are of less value, that they're objectified, they become the property of men, which then humanizes now and that dehumanization often leads to the violence against women. As women, as we are dealing with our men, understand that that collective socialization has put them in a box of domination, power control, also where they don't ask for help, don't offer help, and don't accept help, which then leads to all manner of mental, emotional, and then physical malady. I say, I say it's arrested development because men are not willing to be vulnerable or to to you know, acknowledge fears and weaknesses. They have a rested development. As women, you're saying, when we want to get into or support our men in becoming a reimagined version of manhood, that we've got to be patient. You said that that his disconnect or his withholding withdrawing is not personal. You said, don't overwhelm him with questions. If he's speaking or sharing or dumping, don't overwhelm him. Be grateful for the fact that he's talking and that he can come back again because maybe now he experiences you as a safe space. Don't make him wrong. I added that you didn't say that, but I'm saying that. Don't make it wrong. Let us learn to respect his thinking and not be offended that he doesn't understand our feelings because very often his emotional library, his language, his voice for sharing that isn't there.

Let me just add one thing to that piece. Then I don't want the same time to it look to it to appeal or look like or the experience to be that. We still don't need to be held accountable and we've wrong, and that's part of this conversation. We still need to be accountable is the negotiation of it, all right, I'm not taking accountability off the table right where we need to be accountable as men. We need to be accountable. At a call to men, we talk about reaching in and grabbing the hearts of men, ohn right, and that we can have accountable conversations that can also be loving and kind and respectful. And that's how we go about engaging men. It's very important to us that whether we have whole day or one hour or thirty minutes, that men leave our presence thinking and feeling differently than they did when they entered. And that means grabbing the hearts of men. But we know that it could be a long journey from the head to the heart with a lot of roadblocks and detours and obstacles, and we know that to be true, right, But that's the work, that's where change happens for us is at the heart is about transformation, not transaction. Men live in transactions, but here women do transformation much better. But that's what we're talking about here, about transformation. How do you help him in that space of transformation?

Tony Parter, author, educator, activists committed to creating gender and racial equality, committed to reimagining manhood. What's the final call you'd like to put out to men right here? That's my first question. My second question is how can I support you so?

And I appreciate that, and I can answer both of those questions in one voice as in the name of a call to men. We want men to join us. We want men to join this effort, to join this movement, to become part of solution and ending this epidemic of violence against women and girls. And we are not just ending in epidemical violence against women and girls, also promoting healthy, respectful manhood. Remember that this collective socialization, also known as the manbox is not only forcing epidemical violence against women and girls, it's killing us as men too. So I want to ask men, you know, just reach out to us. We want everything social media call to men. Our website is to call Themen dot org. There's tons of information there. It's all free right, you can download it, you can make use of it is there for you to take and become part of the solution. And my dear sister, you're doing that work right now by having me on your show and then introducing me to your audience of follow us. Is no more than that, can we ask? So sisters and sisters been doing it all along. They've been at the forefront of a call to men. When you think about how organization you might think as all men know is half men and half women, and women are very much in leadership at a call to men and helping the guide this process. And so we appreciate you and your contribution to it as well. Have always been a big fan of yours and uh so just an on and the privilege to be in your presence and have this opportunity to chat with you.

Thank you. I'm going to send them a Call to Men dot org A call to men dot org. If you are a mother, if you are a man, if your father, let's reimagine manhood, eliminate remote control manhood. And my big concern is it's killing men. You know the number instances of heart disease, heart attack, suicide, prostate cancer, it's raising and I know nothing happens in a body that doesn't first happen in the mind and heart. Thank you for being with me, Tony Porter. If you're a mother, if your sister, if you're a wife, go to the website, find out what you need and make sure that all the men in your life that they have access to it, because we've got to get them in the space. We've got to get them in the space so that we don't lose them and that we can begin to neutralize this collective socialization. I hope you got some notes. I hope that you heard something. I hope that you listen again and again. I hope that you let your sister friends and your brother friends hear this because here on the our spot, we are about creating better relationships. So I'll be back next week. In the meantime, I want you to stay in peace and not in pieces.

Bye.

The r Spot is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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