You hear them and you help them find the courage and the honesty to explore. Wait a second. Is this because I am a woman? Or is it because I'm an A-hole? Hello and welcome to episode three of Awake at the Wheel. So today we're going to be tackling a big one. It's the patriarchy. So that can mean a ton of different things and there's different contexts for it. Specifically, we want to talk about the patriarchy and does it indeed still exist in North America? With that said, we can certainly understand that there's other parts of the world where there are a lot of problems in this area, but we want to focus on North America and what's happening close to home here. So this topic came about because I often think about this. I'm raising a young man and I want to ensure that he's not afraid to be a man. So being a female leader, being an entrepreneur, being an executive, I've overcome a lot. But at the same time, I wonder, you know, are there others who are battling things that I haven't so, Oren, The man in the room here, I'm really interested to know what you have to say about the patriarchy, what's happening in North America, especially because of your perspective, raising three daughters? Well, I have nothing to say. As a man. I'm going to as we've said before, I'm going to just sit back and shut the F up and you go ahead. But seriously, it's my age, my status in life. It doesn't affect me as much as it has affected so many young men, whether they're high school students, university students starting off at work or have gone through the court system, let's say, for a divorce. And so I'm telling you right now, I have so many men. This is actually fascinating. A lot of my new patients, they will whisper in session, almost testing the waters to see if it's safe. They say, you know what? Because actually I asked them what they think. I say what do you think about this Andrew Tate and developments there, and they all say the same thing. Look, the guy's a, you know, a d-bag or something, but he's got some valid points. Yeah. And they're terrified to say that because you see that in any other context and some bad things can happen. And I think that speaks to a lot of the topics we've been discussing, the divisiveness of it. You either like someone or you hate them. You like what they say, you hate what they say. They're either good or they're bad. But there's there's so much in between. So with the idea of the patriarchy in North America, I think about leadership because I think that's where at least, you know, with my age demographic, where it comes up the most, you know, we think about is there an imbalance in the corporate world with regard to females in leadership and what indeed is contributing to that? So with this being my second career, I have had two vastly different experiences. In my first career, I did find there was a lot of the old boys club. I found that my maternity leave really had an impact on the trajectory of my career and where it ended up and didn't end up for that matter. But then in this career, I found, I'll be frank, two old white men really helped me to build my career and get me to where I am today. So there's a great dichotomy in that, which then leads me to believe maybe it's not about the patriarchy or whatever people are calling the patriarchy. What is the patriarchy? Let's talk about that. Actually, let's define it. Well, you were saying that, you know, in other countries it's very clearly defined. It's systemic discrimination against women, where women legally or culturally or socially don't have the same rights and by a wide margin as men and men have the ability, the power, even sometimes the expectation to, you know, to abuse the power to to to treat women terribly, to treat them as property or something like that, That's in other countries here. It's a good question. What metrics would you use to decide the patriarchy? So to me, what I've seen, you know, having taught, you know, for over 20 years and having taught very many men and women, older, younger, you know, all walks of life and having worked with so many patients and clients throughout that time, if I had asked all of them the same question, I'm going to get an infinite number of answers, basically. So to me, it's more of a it's a feeling in many ways. And now, again, as you're saying, there are certain things where we where we understand where a woman will be seen differently. There's research has shown that, you know, if you give two identical resumes, one with the male name and one female name, you know, the male name is more likely to be high or more high, more likely to be hired, etc.. So there are those things. But what I tell my students, I say, whatever this image is that you think is the patriarchy, I say, Look on the ground, what do you actually see there? If you take any random individual and I'm going to give one example, because when people think of the patriarchy, their schema there are kind of unconscious reaction. A lot of times to think about is let's say violence against women. Is most violence against women perpetrated perpetrated by men? Yes, it is. Right. But if you look statistically on any given night, who's more likely to be in a violent altercation? It's a man now. He'll be assaulted by another man. Right. Right. Do we call that the patriarchy or do we call that, you know, bad people doing bad things, right? Things like that. So and I say this to my class as well. And by the way, I'm going through a bunch of stuff will do to take care after. But this really upsets some of my students and it definitely has literally got me disinvited to numerous parties, dinner parties, because they talk about domestic violence or intimate partner violence, and they talk about, you know, how again, the patriarchy where every woman I know I've had one say this to me, every woman I know has been sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, no domestic violence and so on. And when I say to them, statistically speaking, in Canada and America, every credible study over the last 40 or 50 years has shown the rates of domestic violence are 5050 men and women are equally likely to be assaulted by a partner. When I say that they can't handle that because it goes against their is their schema of don't know the patriarchy, that doesn't happen to men, number one and number two. And I get it just once I hear we can dissect afterwards when we look at different types of pairings, heterosexual pairing, male, male, female, female, the most violent pairings every single time All the studies, credible studies show it's woman on woman violence. So a lesbian relationship will have more domestic violence six, three, four times more likely than they heterosexual partnership. So is that because of the patriarchy? And by the way, what they'll say to me that is, well, those women must have internalized patriarchy, internalized misogyny. All right. So to me, the patriarchy is a it's a belief system. It's an assumption. And no matter what evidence you show, people are going to always come up with a conclusion that allows them to maintain this belief that, No, no, no. Still the patriarchy. Yeah. So you covered a lot there. And the question that comes to mind for me then is, you know, if it is this this belief that people are going to take along with them wherever they go, where is that coming from, first of all? And second of all, is it an excuse to not achieve? And I hesitate to say that, but like a lot of the topics we've been talking about within the scope of diversity as a whole, are people allowing this to inhibit their progress or use it as an excuse? Right. And I do think in many cases that is true and it's really sad. So as I said, I have three daughters. They happen to be biracial, as is your son. So we have again, if I want to play the intersectional check mark game, you know, so and they know what I try to model for them via my mother. For example, my mother opened up Ontario's first store with her business partner who happened to be a woman, everyone, her accountant or like so many people in her life, people in power and so on, were all women. Every employee at her store at first were all women. A few years later, she started hiring men and by coincidence, they all happened to be gay men. So my norms were not your normal norms. And no one ever said to me, She's a woman. Therefore ABC is a gay man. None of that. So I saw the people I learned from a young age just to see the people based on their actions, their attitudes, who they are as a human being, and not these labels. So I have a different perspective, you know, for many people. I let my daughters know that, you know, I want them to to kind of emulate my mother in ways of saying she's got ovaries the size of basketballs. Okay? So I want them to, you know, to see that. And on the other hand, I also want them to see their mother, my wife, who's more of a traditional stereotypical, who happens to be Japanese. And, you know, she's a domestic engineer. And that's why she's a stay at home mom. Okay. And I say, look, there's nothing wrong with either of these if something brings you fulfillment. Absolutely. And if you're doing good by others, I say to my kids, they go, look, you know, they know their mom puts everybody first, okay? And some people would crap all over her and say, you shouldn't do that because, you know, you're just subjecting yourself to the patriarchy or whatever that gives her fulfillment. She's not inhibited from anything she. Can do, and it's forcing that upon her. And, you know, aside from when her husband and daughters are aholes, it's very fulfilling. So. All right. So in any event, that's when it gets to the point of, you know, are people using this as an excuse or whatever? I'll say that there are some people who do that. And my daughters here's the one thing and some people appreciate it and some people somehow distort what I say, which is I say that if you ever took a transcript of every single conversation I've had with any of my three daughters from day one, the range for 25 to 13 years old. So if anyone took a trans everyone, there's no way you would know whether I was talking to a male or a female because I treat it doesn't matter. I treat them to be solid, strong, good, compassionate, empathetic individuals with self agency and self love. Good humans, good regardless if they're male or female or otherwise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's my spiel. Okay, so which which of those do I select here? So I guess I'll echo as well. It's just my experience as far as strong women and I'll speak within the context of my current life. I'm kind of doing a tally of who the women that I am closest to in my life. My closest friends are all women who are in leadership in one way, shape or form. So did they defeat the patriarchy or are we friends because we're like minded individuals who, you know, push through barriers, overcome obstacles? And maybe that obstacle wasn't this is patriarchy. And if I go back to my experience in my old career and I was talking about the old boys club and that attitude. So, you know, certainly it does still exist. Is it the norm? I don't think so. But is it also perhaps a narrative that we're told because as a young female in a corporate environment, maybe I just, you know, subscribe to that thought because that's what I was told was happening. I don't know. That leads me to my next thought then of if it's not the patriarchy, then what is it? I think then about, you know, I mentioned raising a young man. I want him to be, you know, very balanced as far as masculine traits and feminine traits. And what I mean by that is I want him to be a balanced human being who can understand, you know, how to be tough, but also how to be soft, if need be. Which then leads me to think is part of this issue that we're calling the patriarchy. Actually, men who are insecure don't know how to handle strong women, don't appreciate, you know, women being their equals. I don't know. So what what's a strong man? That's a great point, because the American Psychiatric Association, it was the it was the APA appreciate psychiatric psychological. So it may have been psychological association in 2018, I believe it was 2018 or 2019, had a manual that they gave about how to work with men and boys. They had one for girls. They had like they have different, you know, groups. And some of my colleagues were excited because, hey, it helps us understand the psyche and how to work with them and so on. And so in theory, that's great. The problem is if you actually read the document, it's not saying toxic masculinity is a bad thing. It's basically saying traditional masculinity is a bad thing. To define what that means. One of it was about the stoicism. Another was about, you know, being heterosexual or being, quote unquote, cisgender. And so I think living up to these expectations. And the fact is, it's funny because they talk about stoicism. If you're still so stoic that, A, you're not attuned to your own emotions, be you're not empathetic or tuned to other people's emotions and see you take it to such a degree that even if you're sick or something, you're never going to get help. Obviously, that's unhealthy. Yeah, but by the same token, somebody is overly compassionate to the point that they going to sacrifice their own well-being for others steamrolled. And that's not good either. Exactly. So anything on the extreme is not healthy, but a scaled down version is, so to say, traditional masculinity, you know, and being rough and tumble and stuff like that. To see that it's wrong to teach. A side note developmentally is something that boys need. Boys Exactly. And as you said earlier, people get hung up on these labels, like, what's a strong man? Well, again, there are many different definitions, but to me, a strong man. And if you ask me, I'll say it's a strong woman as well as someone who has a sense of accountability. Responsibility, wants to be a provider, wants to take care of other people, wants to you know, the accountability is the biggest part, I would say. But once again, I hold my daughters, I hold my patients, I hold my students to the same standard male or female. It doesn't matter. So, you know, so that's that's a problem that that people want to put these labels on and that they get hung up on this masculine feminine terminology, as you're saying, like we all have, every person has a should have a balance. They don't. But, you know, we have masculine feminine traits. And if you're if you're too tilted one side or the other, whether you're male or female, it's not healthy, but it is pretty balanced. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk then about because I think a lot of the criticism from from feminists about family dynamics in general is, as you said, this being protected and being taken care of. I think that a lot of feminism denounced that and like, well, I don't need a man to take care of me and so on and so forth. And I think that that's causing a great deal of issue in terms of traditional family values and traditional family structures, which in turn I think is really impacting the way that boys are being raised, kids in general. But we're talking about men as well. I think that has a huge impact on it. They're not seeing and let me clarify, I'm again, a business woman. I'm an executive. I work my my butt off and my son sees that. But he also sees me being a feminine, loving mother and a father who is also balanced in those two characteristics. So I suppose my point is, is, is part of this a change in family dynamics and attitudes towards family dynamics and, you know, feeling like we don't need that? And the problem, first of all, you're right, it is there is a change. It's an unhealthy change. And the problem is that when you try to have a discussion about this, the people who are supposedly the most compassionate and tolerant are the least compassionate or tolerant because they're going to call you all kinds of names. Either you're misogynist or you have internalized misogyny. Again, there is a conclusion already baked into their belief, and every answer will always end up at that conclusion no matter what you say. It has to be, you know, the patriarchy or misogyny and so on. And so when we talk about, let's say, a the family dynamic family structure, if someone says, statistically speaking, having two parents, okay, and let's say you have two men or two women, okay, well, if they balance out the masculine feminine side, you can make it work. Okay. But it's also tricky because if I were a single father raising my daughters, when there's certain things that, you know, that women go through, I can read up on it and so on. I can try to fake it. But it's different than a woman who's actually gone through it herself and vice versa. So to deny that or to say that by even hinting at it suddenly now I'm, you know, I'm homophobic or something like that, it's like that's how people shut down these discussions. It's the antithesis of critical thinking. They're ready to pounce with labels. And that's just like with the patriarchy as well. And I'll say, Well, anyone who throws these labels out, you know, almost without thinking, there's it's a string of things, you're a misogynistic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah that shows that they don't have the critical thinking, which means that they don't have the mental, emotional, psychological wherewithal to discuss difficult topics with the nuance that they deserve. Right. And to boil it down to just something as, you know, finite as well, it's it's the patriarchy. And that's not that really demonstrates that lack of critical thinking. So I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I want to go back a little bit to the work world in the corporate world. And I'll say to our listeners Oren and I don't talk about a lot of these topics ahead of time, but over lunch we did mention to each other my experience with media that I've consumed talking about female executives having to act masculine. And I really take issue with that because I don't think that I've, you know, faked anything or behaved in a certain way to, you know, to trick my way into the position that I'm in. I'm just myself. And what that is, is that hardworking, honest, respectful, integrity filled person. So I don't really buy into this, you know, women have to act masculine or excessively masculine in order to to achieve things. Right. And by the way, I think you said when you were discussing during lunch that act like a man. Yeah, right. Yeah. And if someone said act more masculine, I'd say, okay, you know, sometimes you need some of that masculine trait, right? And a woman can have that just like a man can. Just like a man who's in a powerful position. He has to have the feminine side, the compassion in so far, right? Yes. But for people to either say, yes, you're selling yourself out or it's unfair and so on, there's only one thing, like there's a few things, but one of the few things that's truly unfair and it's funny because I had Jordan Peterson come to my classroom before he came to the Jordan Peterson, and I asked him this question. I said, look, there's what about the fact that men don't have to give birth? That is the biggest disadvantage in the you know, in the business world where women have to be. Hugely. Huge and anyone who denies that is right. And his answer was basically, well, yeah, too bad He wasn’t saying it uncompassionately, but I think that's just the way our bodies and our, you know, our designed. And that is an unfortunate that's. The straw that we pulled. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, so we can't just throw up our hands and go“too bad” is obviously insufficient. You're right to deny that it's real is a distortion, is delusional. Right. But and I think some societies I think has been pretty good, have tried to compensate to some degree. But the reality is that it sets people back. And I've had a number of patients who are that's a interesting one, is usually lawyers. So they are women. They were ambitious, they were climbing the ladder. And as soon as they had a family or had a baby coming back to work, they had a very different perspective. And I'll I'll echo that. It was hell going back and I'll share know part of our my husband and my story as far as deciding who was going to take the parental leave, because at that point husbands were able to take anything beyond the first six weeks. Both of us were at similar points in our career as far as positive trajectory. And you know, working towards management leadership positions. But the fact remains that it wasn't about, you know, I'm the woman, so I have to stay home. It was a he made more money than I did. And we were going to go down to one income. So logistically speaking, pragmatically speaking, that's what made the most sense. But I wasn't expecting the huge hit and the huge impact that was going to have on my career. I was pretty bitter about it, pretty angry about it. But to be quite honest, now that I look back on it and look at it more factually, to your point, that's just the way it is as an employer, I'll say, and this isn't to denounce anyone taking a maternity leave by any means, but as an employer, I can understand that if somebody goes away for a year, the employer has to figure out what to do in that person's absence. That's just the way it is. Should they be treated poorly when they come back? Of course not. There's laws that protect them and so on and so forth. But the fact remains it's going to have an impact. Right. And that's the difference, you know, let's say between Canada or the states and other countries where we have laws in place. So when people talk about the patriarchy in countries where they don't have that, where it's truly systemic discrimination, you know, we don't have that there. There's individual in the law books. The laws are pretty clear. You not discriminate based on sex. Now, do some people do it? Yes, I do. They often discriminate against men in that regard as well. Yes. If so many men today and again, here's the thing. The black and white thinker, they hear me saying, here's the other side. Yeah, right. And they think it's a zero sum game, thinking that if I'm saying, you know, men have this disadvantage, that I'm somehow negating the disadvantage that women have, like, no, they can both be true at once. Right. And I'm not saying, oh, poor men. All I'm saying is when you talk about some unfortunate circumstance for women to pretend that men don't have their own would be ridiculous. And by the way, for the patriarchy and this is a bit of a trope, I hate to bring it up, but it's true when you say the patriarchy, well, let's see who's got the longer lifespan by far women, right? Who dies in wars and who dies at work, men, suicide. And additionally, there are so many metrics on which or by which men are doing much more poorly than women. So if we're a patriarchy, we're doing a pretty crappy job. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. At least in Canada. And then the sad thing is, again, it starts we talk about as the very first episode these ideas get promulgated so widely in academia and it just becomes a fact, right? And if you deny it, it's like you're denying gravity. And so it starts there and then it seeps into other places. And if you look at it in the universities, grad schools, high school and all the way down, yeah, girls are doing better than boys on virtually all metrics academically. Yes, absolutely. All right. Boys have been failed. And again, it's I'm not saying that girls have it easy because there's a lot of crap that girls obviously have to go through in school, university and so on. But to just say, well, let's only focus on them to the exclusion of the males, we're doing 49 point something percent of the population a huge disservice, which actually makes 100% because when one side does poorly, everyone everyone does poorly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the challenges here too, is, you know, the trickle down that that's having is, you know, one of the boards that I sit on there is a substitute chair that was sitting in and lovely human being but apologizing for being a man and apologizing for being cis. And it was such a bizarre experience for me to see this because why why does that have to happen? And this leads me to the thought of raising a son. I don't want him to apologize for being a male. He has nothing to apologize for. Like many of the things that we've been talking about across these episodes, there's balance in life. There's balance in the world. We need both. We can't exclude one group to promote the other group. Right, Exactly. And I would say to two things along those lines, and people don't think about this thing because again, the patriarchy is a concept. It's very easy to talk about abstract concepts because it's divorced or detached from the reality on the ground. And for people like us, where we work with the real people and we see it every day, we can't do that. We shouldn't do that. We're being derelict. Our duty is if we do. So I'll just tell you couple of stories. One of my patients many years ago was a woman, and she had been horribly abused by her mother and she therapist after therapist. A therapist was tell it, we're telling her. A you can't say that because you're betraying women. These are feminist therapists. And B, besides, a woman wouldn't do that. A mother wouldn't do that. So they're denying this patient story. They're denying it time and time again. And it left her distraught. And, you know, it's and I saw the impact and the fact and it just it made me so like so I had such disdain for anyone who would say that would deny her experience. That's one. And then which I decided as therapist, it's not even remotely our job to determine what did or did not happen. Right. Exactly. And another therapist now this this is a male who he was he was an alcoholic. And the person kept trying to tell him the therapist was trying to tell him it was because of your father is because your father was like, my father is a really good, solid guy. And if anything it was his mother. But again, they're trying to they were trying to ram down this ideology on him because these incompetent and unethical I'm going to put quotation marks around professionals or mental health professionals were given a script. They were told, this is how it is. This is the kind of thing you see in the APA booklet. Now, they don't say that explicitly, but if that's where your knowledge comes from, from ideology, that's not backed by reality, and then they're, you know, again, they're bringing this into treatment or in any other capacity, the damage it does to somebody that's the lack, that's the exact opposite of empathy, because you're not seeing from the other person's perspective. Right. So I think that leads into, you know, what is our responsibility within our profession when it comes to this topic of patriarchy and ensuring that people are recognizing if they are indeed being treated poorly because of their gender or is it something else? Right. So first and this is going to be a theme in every podcast, we have critical thinking, no black and white. You look at it with nuance, you look at it on a case by case basis. You can use this knowledge of, you know, the patriarchy or whatever you want to call it, as a sort of as a guideline, but it's a very flimsy, flexible guideline. All right. You look at the person's experience, you don't tell them what is reality. You hear them and you help them find the courage and the honesty to explore. Wait a second. Is this because I am a woman or is it because I'm in a hole? Okay, right. So for example, I will have many different ways, but is it an individual thing? Is it a systemic thing? Things like that? And if it's something that you can change, it's in your best interest to do everything in your power to to adapt and to change. And because it's too easy for someone to say, well, I don't want to be like a man, I want to be a woman. Well, you can be a woman and be like a woman. But if there's keys to success, why not look at them? You don't have to do that. There are other ways. But the fact is, other people have broken out of these rigid constructs of, you know, woman men, whatever else. Yeah, okay. That is funny because our field, the field of psychology, a statistically more and more women are entering the field, whether on the academic level, the teaching or in the profession itself. Many of the men associate a disproportionately high number of the men happen to be gay or or non-heterosexual of, you know, a variant. You know, that's different from, you know, your standard male quote unquote. Okay. And so the field is changing and it may change for the better for some people, but for others and you have far more experience with this because of the population that you work with and maybe you can talk about that. It's doing a disservice to people who may not need touchy feely hugs, you know, emotions that they need another way to find how to recoup and, you know, be resilient. As you talk with that, maybe with your. Yes. So the client population that I usually work with or typically work with, I'd say 80% of my clientele are first responders. And, you know, not to put people into a box, but generally speaking, these are tough individuals, men and women. And and absolutely, they have to be because of the work that they do and what they see and experience and so on. So having these touchy feely conversations, I don't think is really going to cut it. You know, the choice of words that I use sometime in the tone that I utilize maybe would be acting like a man. But indeed, what it is is me matching where they're at. And that's a term that's used often in our training and in our profession is, you know, meet the client where they're at. But I feel like that's not happening that much anymore. Right. And they're being forced to have to go by a different operating system than what works for them. And again, it goes to the black and white. If we know in the first responders and you know, that that there's a culture of toughness some so many times to their detriment. Yes, unfortunately. Right. And so over the last number of years, thankfully, there's been a shift in perspective and they are able to talk about and everything like that. Right. But the person, the skilled therapist or psychologist and so on has to be able to know how far do I go in this direction? Far in that direction. Right. Don't impose something on them or especially when they're not ready. Yeah. I have cops and firefighters and veterans break down and cry and everything like that. Great that we're reaching somewhere. But I don't tell them you're going to have to do that when they feel safe. Don't judge comfortable enough. That's what is going to happen. But, you know, and. Facilitating that comes from speaking to them in a manner that makes sense to them and is appropriate. It makes it safe. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, and so there are so many areas in which, you know, we can just attack or from which we can, you know, deal with this issue. And so I would think that future podcasts, we're going to be, you know, dealing with these more and more and more. Right. But so I'm going to ask you if, let's say a male or a female or both comes to you and talks about like I'm I'm having difficulty, you know, dealing with the patriarchy. They may not use those words, but that's the implication. So what do we do with this? Yeah, So I would say, you know, whether it's to a male or to a female and you've you alluded to this earlier, too. It's it's more about keys to success rather than, you know, do I have to behave a certain way or look a certain way and so on and so forth. And I'll use myself as an example here, I think is my favorite color and it's what I usually where most of the time I wear makeup, I do my hair. I am outwardly very feminine, however, and this isn't me saying I act like a man, but in terms of many of my qualities, I would say that I'm leaning masculine. I'm tough, I'm outspoken, I'm assertive, so on and so forth. There's a number of different qualities, but that doesn't mean that I'm behaving in a way that is disingenuous to who I am. I've identified what are the keys to success in terms of the goals that I have, the things that I want to attain in life, and I govern myself accordingly. I think that it's pretty simple. If we break it down like that. Right, Exactly. And it's individualistic and idiosyncratic, whatever works for that person. And they but but they have to be honest with themselves. And so if someone being a woman and, you know, being very sexually sexy and this and that, if it works for them and she does and she genuinely does not feel that she's you know, she's exploited being exploitative, is that she sell yourself short or anything else like that. If that works all. The power, so be it. Or if you use that and you incorporate it with a tough mind and a savvy mind and so on. And that gives you that extra edge and so on, so be it. Right? We know that statistically speaking, a man, the taller the man is, he's going to have a higher salary. You know, it's it's not a simple cause and effect relationship, but the fact is there are certain attributes, there are certain behaviors and tendencies that will help males or females or this or that function better. Right. So as you said, it's helping the person find what works best for them. And you were saying about, you know, not being disingenuous to yourself, you want to be true to yourself. And I've just got one more thing, and this is going to be a word that's going to come up through all of our podcasts. I always promote in my classes and in my sessions. I tell people I say, the key and this back story is this. I'll say another time, maybe. But the key to knowing whether you're succeeding in life, whether you're winning in life, if you ask everybody, the most common word you're going to get is happiness. And happiness is good. But you know, I don't sell happiness. You can rent happiness for an hour. Yeah. Okay. The best answer is fulfillment. Yeah. Right. And I say to people, there's two types of fulfillment. There's fulfillment in the moment. If, for example, going out and dressing sexy, whatever else like that, that feels fulfilling, it feels good for you the moment, great, do it. But the second type of fulfillment is you project yourself to the end of your life and you look backward and if you say, You know what? I spent my entire life just going out looking sexy, you're probably not going to feel so fulfilled, right? Yeah. So helping somebody and I say the combination of meaning and purpose, right? Male, female. Doesn't matter if you find what is, you know, it gives you meaning and purpose, fulfill. Whatever that is. Whatever that is. And it feels like and it resonates with you. You're not lying to yourself if you have to adapt or adjust certain things. If you're too soft that a woman and you need to tough it up a little bit, so be it. I tell people there’s a spectrum, you’re not going from 0 to 100, you’re going from 0 to 8, maybe 20. Toughening up’s not a bad thing either. And I think, you know, it's a whole other conversation. But that's one of the things, too, is that a lot of these attributes have been demonized. Right. Exactly. And and again, and if you're a young boy being told that being tough or stoic or wanting to, you know, to to take charge, that is somehow toxic masculinity, what does it do to you? Right. And if you're a girl who sees a boy doing that and now you're terrified because you think he's a monster again, we're not raising healthy minded children. And those healthy, unhealthy minded children become adults. So in any event, again, I know that this is going to be, as with all of our topics, it's going to permeate other podcasts, I look forward to that, and until then, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. Until next time, everyone. As much as we love listening to ourselves speak, especially me, we would love to hear from you as well. So our emails are in the description below. If you would, please write to us with your questions, feedback, comments, topics that you'd like us to cover. We can do this together, the two of us, but it's much better if we do it together. So we look forward to hearing from you. And we are going to have a segment called Roundtable where we're going to discuss the the feedback and the questions and so on from our audience. And we will we will take it to the next level. We're going to help you be able to deal with some of these issues that you might be bringing us or it's going to be a topic for us to explore together. And we really look forward to building a community, a community of like minded people who want to do right by others, not just for themselves.