What is the very modelling of modern masculinity?
The other night I was listening to Josh Szeps and Tim Minchin discuss my inability to discuss this. It felt both hilarious and confronting as I have enormous admiration for men, yet it was clearly so evident by Tim and Josh’s response to my chat on Uncomfortable Conversations that the struggle and concern I had about discussing this in public is real - because of the assumed intent about this conversation.
We are fucked if we have to qualify everything every time we speak.
So, I’m just going to try my best and hope it’s taken with the best of intention.
Following @MaggieDentauthor’s appearance on the show this week - I had a moment to reflect on what it even means to be a man in 2024.
The way we have reframed the role and place of women in our community gives us a far more wonderful world to be in than 30, 50 or 100 years ago.
Feminism has given women the choice to be feminine, masculine, a CEO, a stay at home mum, girly, sexual, powerful, none of the above or all of the above, each of those choices to be seen as a choice to be respected - and yet I wonder - while we have been rightly reframing the role and place of women in our community, and seeing the benefits that we all share from that, have we been paying attention to adding similar amounts of choice to the roles and place of men and boys in our community, or a similar amount of respect to those choices?
Somehow in talking about this, there’s a lot involving the Murray-Darling river system but you’ll understand that when you hear the episode.
This is just a tiny bit of a longer essay - search Better Than Yesterday in your podcast app.