 What's up y'all. So, the other day I came across this video from the channel with the Parys. After I watched it, I kind of had thoughts. I wanted to review the video with you guys. If you don't know the Parys are a Christian couple. They are evangelists, I think it would be their technical term. And I think they started through poetry. But they're mostly known for the wife was a reformed member of the LGBTQ community. And she talks about her testimony changing her life through God. But they've established an audience and they in this video talk about how it's been pressing on their hearts to address men more directly. And ironically, the tour that the two brothers are on is called We Need to Talk. Obviously. I love the name. So I think I might be able to add some context to some of the things that they discussed during this video. We have Ezekiel and Preston here because one they're going on tour together. What's the name of the tour? What y'all doing? Do we need to talk tour? Yeah. Okay. What's that about? What y'all talking about? Because men don't usually talk. So what do we talk about? That's exactly it. I think the tour basically was curated to address a lot of the stuff floating around in our culture about relationships, about one men and women relationships, but a myriad of topics. But I think ultimately what we want to see is that I believe and we believe that it is a huge attack on men and women relationship. I just want to talk through just masculinity, fatherhood, manhood, Kevin Samuels, whoever. RRP. Piece is debatable. But yo. So first and foremost, I want to commend Jackie Hill Perry for taking the posture that she took with this interview as being the interviewer, as opposed to attempting to overly assert herself, at least starting out. I think the whole slogan that we need to talk is listen then speak. And I think men need to do a better job at listening to the grievances and the nuances of the female experience. And I definitely think women need to do a better job at listening to the grievances and the nuances of male experiences. I think the mistake that we make a lot of times is we project our ideals on the other. So men project their ideals of femininity on women. Women project their ideals of masculinity on men. However, I think one of the big differences is that men are the pursuers for the majority of romantic situations. So with that being the case, we have to gain a working understanding of female psychology in order to be able to at best understand her, at worst manipulate her. But it doesn't seem like that energy is reciprocated on the macro. A lot of women have never actually had to understand men, have never actually had to listen to men because it's easy to get our attention. It's not as easy to keep our attention, but that's another conversation. At the end of this particular clip, her husband said, R.I.P. Kevin Samuels, they mentioned Kevin Samuels, and she said peace is questionable. Which is interesting. Generally, Kevin Samuels represented a fire starter. That's why one of our main series is called Kevin Samuels started this conversation and not because he actually started the conversation, but he in a lot of ways mainstreamed the dialogue and mainstreamed men speaking up for themselves. Was they speaking up always done eloquently? No. Were his points always succinct, accurate? No. However, it would be unwise of us to scoff at or to dismiss the fact that so many grown men resonated with the things that he said and the principles that he espoused. So I think women need to take the Kevin Samuels phenomenon a bit more seriously and not be as dismissive and definitely not celebrate the man's untimely passing because what it says to black men at large, even the black men who disagreed with him is like, damn, we can't even disagree respectfully. When we have a difference in opinion, you wish death on us, we are saying or we're making the false equivalents that this man hurting people's feelings that called into a show. And for the most part, we're disrespectful to him initially is equivalent to violence against women. And it's not the case. And unfortunately, the other piece too is a lot of people in general women in particular are not used to men speaking their minds freely in a way that is not flattering to women, because a lot of us as men are taught to cater to women's feelings and conform our dialogue or even the presentation of our thoughts in a way that's going to be palatable to women. We're taught that from our moms to our sisters to girlfriends, because a lot of the truth that we get growing up is that nobody cares how you really feel. They only care how you make them feel. And if we don't actively pour in to men in these in this particular pivotal season, I think that we're being grossly negligent and irresponsible with what God has given us. Yeah, yeah, I agree. A lot of what you'll hear in I guess the more intellectual corners of the hemisphere is the idea that for most of American history, black men in particular have not really had a voice at scale. We've had black male leaders, you know, the likes of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, but as far as black men being able to say truths with their chest, especially truths that are critical of our own communities and our own women, we haven't really seen a sustained movement of that, partly because, you know, this country in particular has attempted to castrate the black man, has attempted to publicly emasculate the black man, particularly in front of the woman. So she cannot even see him as a man, and he cannot even see himself as a man. And I think what the Manisphere represents for a lot of men is the first time where black men have been able to publicly, bombastically air their grievances and speak their truths without having to cater to the feelings of political correctness or women. And, you know, I've been critical of that. It's not polished. It's not always clean. It's barbershop talk. However, I think we can't wholesale dismiss what's happening. I think this is the infancy stage, and we need to have a bit of grace, right, and encouragement for it to actually mature and for it to refine itself, to get to the core of some of these issues that men really have. Men are falling behind, boys are falling behind in education, homelessness, self-deletion. These are real issues. And some of them are rooted in the fact that a lot of our boys are being raised in single-parent households. So, you know, we cannot continue to simply blame men without discussing some of the nuances and the context that puts black men in these situations, because a lot of us grow up in environments that place the full weight of toxic masculinity on us as black men while we enjoy none of the benefits, right, where we're assumed to have the benefits of masculinity without the additional context of white masculinity and how our masculinity threatens white masculinity and how everything that's been done strategically over time has been done to put our woman above us and to make our woman disrespectful of us and to make our woman think that she doesn't need us. And from her perspective, she's absolutely right. But the reason why these conversations are so important to Ezekiel's point is that, you know, it's important that we have both sides of the argument. It's important that men and boys are encouraged to speak up and share their truths and not simply be lambasted and critiqued and picked apart as to all the ways that they can be better and all the ways why they allowed X, Y and Z to happen to them. Because as black men, a lot of what we are suffering from was not our doing and it was impossible for us to fight against it based on our circumstances. Yeah. And so I told Jackie I had an event in DC last week and every single guy that walked up to me was either trying out for discipleship. One guy came to me and literally said, I asked five people to disciple me and they all said no. And then he started crying. I think what's important to understand about the Kevin Samuels phenomenon again, a lot of women have used a lot of detractors have used this as an insult, you know, saying that, you know, Kevin Samuels represented a lot of men's daddies, right? A lot of men didn't have fathers growing up. And that's why they gravitated to such a problematic man because, you know, digitally he was their dad. And, you know, his nickname was the Godfather. I think to trivialize that to scoff at that to minimize that is, in my opinion, shameful, you know, because the reality is, yes, a lot of our boys are not growing up with fathers. And the blame for that rests on whoever their father, their actual father, is that neglected them that abandoned them. However, some of that blame also rests on the mother. The mother chose that man. She chose to procreate with that man. She chose to not vet that man properly. And I think that's a often neglected aspect of this conversation because we, as boys, are taught to frame our mothers as benevolent, frame the women in our lives as benevolent, these, you know, helpless victims of their circumstance. They were just doing the best they could with what they had. And we never actually acknowledged some of the resentment that is rightfully in boys towards their mothers and some of the yearning that is rightfully in boys to male authority. I remember Charleston White, problematic brother, but he's a shock jockey, but he talked about how he didn't like black men growing up because he associated black men in black authority with abandonment. And he said he wanted the black men who try to be authorities in his life to go home with him as a kid. He wanted a father. And I think for us to continuously frame that as a joke, as opposed to the reality of a lot of black men and boys are yearning for, they call it discipleship or mentorship, yearning for direction, yearning for principles, yearning for some kind of blueprint, some kind of framework and whether imperfectly Kevin Samuels represented that for a lot of men. And that's not something to be scoffed at. Back in the day in the 1940s in your neighborhood, if you saw a beautiful woman, that would be the one beautiful woman you saw for six months. Now it's like there are millions of beautiful women. Wow. This right here is such a fantastic point because I think a lot of times we only acknowledge the crippling effects of social media when it comes to women. And you know, like body dysmorphia and women comparing themselves to only fans models and women with BBLs. But we often don't talk about how that affects men. Um, the physical comparisons, you know, this guy is muscular. This guy has a six pack. This guy is six foot five. This guy has a bone structure. He has a chisel jawline. But also this guy has wealth. This guy has this car. This guy has this girl. This guy has this family. This guy has this lifestyle. We often do not talk about how that affects boys and men. Comparison is a thief of joy. And it's so true. And I think especially in our community, because so many of us come from less than ideal circumstances, it is easy to live in the fantasy worlds that social media that video games create for us. And in a lot of ways it stops us from addressing the realities that we face. And it stops us from actually improving our real tangible circumstances because we're stuck in that comparison. We're stuck in that green envy of must be nice. And again, very often we're not having these conversations as men. And I'm not even saying that's women's fault. I'm saying we need to do a better job of having these conversations and acknowledging these things as men. And then I think our sisters need to do a better job at giving us grace, giving us the grace of consideration, that even though we might not be saying these things overtly, that some of these things absolutely affect us as well and absolutely affect our self-esteem, our body image. I hate when people would take one thing that a man does and not make them a real man, as if you can define who they are by one action. God defines us as men like one. I'm working on a project called Christian by default. And it's called that because that's how I identify. I am in a, I guess, tricky place with my relationship with God. Because to be honest, a lot of things don't make sense. But a lot of the principles that are taught in Christianity and theology I absolutely agree with. And this is one of them. I do not think, because we see a lot these days that everybody has a say in what makes a man, what makes a good man. And I absolutely do not think that non-men can define men. And, you know, I don't want to hear any LGBTQ talk. Non-men cannot define men. It is incumbent upon men to come up with a criteria for manhood. I think there should be some checks and balances with, you know, the female delegation to include their input and help us become better. But this idea that women know better, it is an idea that I'm seeing circulate a lot. And it's an idea that is absolutely rubbish. And I hope that through active listening to men and deference to men actually being able to express their real experiences without you projecting your assumptions of what it should be like, or what you would do if you were a man. I think we can move closer to a place where women have an appreciation for manhood, men have an appreciation for womanhood, as opposed to us just projecting our ideals, our uneducated ideals on the other. They feel like that the culture and society is trying to over-feminize men. They feel like, I don't know if you remember the conversation we had with the guys the other week, but they were just like, you know, one, I think there has been an emphasis of therapy of men sharing their, you know, their personal feelings. And that is a fantastic point. And it goes back to what I was saying about the projection of femininity upon masculinity. And it's like masculinity is inherently toxic. And an un-toxic man is in touch with his feminine side, his therapies and all this good stuff without the consideration as to why some of these things don't necessarily appeal to men in mass. Right. And part of the reason I know last year we saw the therapist go viral for saying that she works with black men and they are just the worst clients. We saw another therapist recently say she no longer wants to work with black men. And then ironically, a website called Therapy for Black Men took her off their website and then she complained about it. Right. And it goes back to that ego. It goes back to that condescension. It goes back to, you know, Dr. T. S. Johnson talks about the baked in contempt that a lot of our women and girls have been socialized to have for black men. This idea that black men are squandering their advantages without the additional context as to, okay, how do men see this particular situation? And the thing with therapy is like for the most part, and I'm not even saying this is necessarily black women's fault, but for the most part, that's what you have to choose from. Another black woman who is going to tell you why it's all your fault. Another black woman who might lack the self-awareness to even remove herself from her assessment of you. Another black woman who might actually need more therapy than you do. And is looking at this as an opportunity, another opportunity to be over and lured over and be in charge of black men. And the reality is the emotional needs for women are different than the emotional needs for men. Men in my experience don't need catharsis the same way women do. And talk therapy is mostly catharsis. And I think it has its place, but I think for us to simply just say, oh, you need therapy without considering the nuances of how do men think about and respond to this? And should we just be wholesale pushing it on them and wholesale, you know, almost talking down to them if they're not enthusiastic about it? Without considering, okay, maybe men need a different thing. Maybe men need time with their boys. Maybe that pickup game is equivalent for him to 30 minutes to an hour of talk therapy for you. But this idea that our emotionalism and our catharsis has to look the same as it does for women, in my opinion, is idiotic. And in my opinion, it really dismisses men as people and men as individual, nuanced, different people who need individual, nuanced, different things. And to be fair, I think men, we need to do a better job at articulating those things, generally, and more specifically to the to the women in our lives. And I think, you know, imperfectly, that's what the man is fear is attempting to do, or the good parts of it. The reason why, you know, the whole Red Pill community and these men voices have been so popular is because it catered to hurt misunderstood men who felt like the culture in society was stripping their voice away. Right. And they was able to disciple these dudes in a lot of toxic ways to be quite frank. And to be fair, he is absolutely right. And I don't think this is unique to the church. I think most industries cater to women, primarily because women are the largest consumer base. Right. There's there's the intersection that we fail to address a lot of times. And that's the intersection of not just culture, but economics. Right. And as a business, as a business entity, your number one purpose is to maximize profitability. So you want to target the people who are actually either spending the money or influencing the money spenders. And the reality is, even when you work in real estate, even if the man is the breadwinner and the man is the one making all the monies a doctor, he's a surgeon, he's an engineer, a lawyer, you have to convince the woman to fall in love with that house because she pulls the strings of that massive financial investment. Ultimately, it's going to be the man say, but she is the influencer. And that's what I've kind of been preaching to women that that's that that is where their power is the power to influence the power to seduce the power to persuade not the power to force. Unfortunately, a lot of our women are assuming that masculine role of force and domination, but that is not their ministry and pun intended. You know, that's not where their power lies. And the reason why you see the church cater to women, the reason why you see Hollywood cater to women, romance novels cater to women, social media cater to women is because that is who spends the money. So it makes sense. Right. It makes sense that you're going to see a movie about female warriors who are bodying grown 200 pound men because that's how women want to see themselves. And if women are the ones spending money on movies, I am a filmmaker. I'm a film studio. I'm going to make what they want to see. I'm going to make Captain Marvel. Right. I'm not going to make a movie about some black king. I'm not going to make another shock Azulu because the men are not going to the box office. So in our critique of the culture and our critique of even women, we have to own some of that responsibility as men. If we want to see more deference to catering to us, we have to spend that money deliberately, whether supporting content creators that we believe in, supporting films that we believe in, whether it's emancipation with Will Smith, where he's, you know, a black, he's representing a black man who actually took ownership against all odds of his life and his destiny, whether it's Nate Parker and his version of Birth of a Nation, where he's killing white people on camera during antebellum slavery. Like we need to support what we want to see more of. And I think one of the unfortunate consequences of the fact that a lot of us as men have been feminized is we stay in a place of complaint and catharsis as opposed to movement and action. And movement and action in this case is not about complaining about the church catering to women or complaining about movies and Hollywood and culture and Oprah catering to women. It's about funneling and consolidating our resources so those same industries can cater to us. Those same industries can speak for us. Money talks. If I go into a space and everybody celebrates the pastor, they listen to the pastor, I come in and I can disappear. I could die and nobody would know. And so I'm not needed here. In fact, the reverence and respect only goes to one place. That is a very often dismissed aspect of masculinity. A lot of, for millennia, a lot of what masculinity was. And I say this in a kind of crass way was how well can you die? And what I mean by that is how well can you die in service of us? And us might be your family, us might be the state, us might be the kingdom. And dying might be whatever you would rather do for whatever needs to be done. Whether that meant marching into a battlefield, knowing you're not going to make it home. Or whether that meant marching into a coal mine knowing that you might not make it out. And it was necessary for us to build the world that we enjoy today. But there is still that covert expectation that men are background. Men are fodder. Men are guard dogs. And men aren't necessarily people. Men exist to serve. And I think in a modern context where those same expectations aren't necessarily as overt, men are trying to work out a new identity. And I think that's why you're seeing the rates of suicidality so high. Because in trying to work that out, and in that being encoded in our DNA, we lose sight of who we are, who we're supposed to be. And some men choose to not be anybody. And that means either literally dying or figuratively dying and just becoming basement trolls or online trolls. And it's something that I think we don't do a good enough job at acknowledging. So it's not that men are not people. It's that for so long we've spent more time encouraging and rewarding men for being the opposite of a person, for being calloused. And then now we want to complain that men's feet are rough without Biblical reference. Volunteering to help wash and help manicure men's feet, men's proverbial feet, obviously. What has the nation of Islam, Hebrew, Israelism, and what is it? Red pill community? Is that what it's called? Yeah. What are they doing right that the church isn't? That's a fantastic question. And again, I'm a Christian by default. The red pill community, I think it's speaking to the nuanced challenges of masculinity. It's speaking to, you know what, you're not always the problem, man. It's speaking to why did women ask us to become this and now penalize us for who we are? It's speaking to why do women say one thing but really mean another? Why do women say one thing and reward another? Why do women claim to bring it to the church, to want a man of God, to want a man of integrity, to want a man of discipline, to want a man that's well thought of in his community but their vaginas get wet for the thug, the bad boy, the player, the Casanova, and a lot of these boys growing up without fathers, nobody actually explains these nuances to them. So there's also that red pill rage when you realize that everything that my mom or my aunties or my sisters or society told me about women is a lie. And for a lot of boys that happens through a traumatic experience, the church doesn't do a good enough job at acknowledging that or even telling men some of boys, more specifically some of those harsh truths about the world. It's just believe in God and do what God says and your reward will be, your reward will be. And I have this same critique when it comes to the church's relationship with blackness. I remember somebody said, black people are the only ones who are convinced that heaven only exists after death. White people came into Africa, told us to get on our knees and close our eyes while they robbed us blind. And again, the church does not do a good enough job at acknowledging or even dialoguing with some of these harsh topics. Most pastors avoid the odyssey. Most pastors use Job, the story of Job, to just say that God is sovereign and he can do whatever he wants. And that should be our expectation in life. Women can do whatever they want, but it's still in the great. It's for the greater good and it's in the larger plan. And your ability to endure and your ability to have long suffering is equivalent to the measure of man that you are. You know, God gives his strongest warriors the toughest battles. And I think a lot of people in general, but men in particular, are saying, you know what, that's bullshit. And the church isn't even willing to provide any clarity. It's, Hey, don't blaspheme. Don't ask those questions. So yeah, people are going to gravitate to people who are or places that are willing to dialogue with that, tackle those tough, rough truths of reality and the human experience and psychology and the pathology of women as it differs from the pathology of men. And I believe that the church did a better job at being human. It could better disciple to men and boys because the reality is, whereas women in some ways deal with the world as they wish it was, men have to deal with the world as it is. And we prioritize that. So if the church continues to be a bubble from the secular world without acknowledging the fact that, Hey, my sister's in the church probably wouldn't have looked at me twice. Probably still don't look at me twice because I got a button up shirt and I have a good job and actually like want to treat her well because she's not used to that. And there's a psychological basis for her not being used to that or even liking that. The church has technologies things and tell these boys the truth. That's what's going to set the boys. And I think the church free. You know, men just hear how much they suck, suck, suck because people are only focused on the manifestation of a lot of the foolishness that they putting out there and them not going to church, but they're not getting to the nitty gritty. Like why do you feel rejected? Why don't you feel hurt? And so I feel like this tour is going to do a good job of getting to that. And, you know, I talked about that with Umar Johnson's, you know, recent viral clip talking about how men, black men are to blame for the ills of the black community. And part of the reason why a lot of men are no longer listening, whether to the church, whether to a lot of public discourses, because a lot of men are tired of owning all the blame. And it's like, you know, I understand as the leader, you should assume responsibility. As the leader, you should assume blame, right? You know, you should default to okay, it's me. I dropped the ball. I could have done X, Y and Z better. However, we can no longer continue to like address all the nuances of why black women are the way that they are. The black community is the way that it is without taking any time to acknowledge some of the specific insidious things that were done to black men, to castrate black men, to emasculate black men, to imprison black men, to make sure that black men couldn't take their rightful place as husband, as father, as community leader. And how that's affected the psychology of black men and black boys throughout the centuries. And it's not to say it's black women's fault. That's never been the point. At least that's not ever been my point. But it's to say that black women owe us the same grace that we're expected to have for them. And the reason why a lot of men are checking out is because they have failed to receive that from their mothers, from the churches, from their communities, from their friends, from their colleagues, and from random interactions with black people, and particularly black women, in their daily lives. And we need to acknowledge that if we claim to care about and see value in the participation in the presence of black men, we can no longer behave as if black men and boys are inconsequential. So Kevin Samuels, when he popped out, I feel like he kind of, and I could be wrong, but it feels like he opened the door for a lot of podcasts, a lot of content that feels hypermasculine. And by I mean hypermasculine, I mean inordinately unbiblical kind of this establishing of leadership in a way that feels like you're superior or dominant in a way that doesn't look like Jesus. And I can, I think, listen to y'all, I can see how that is appealing because it's a way to reestablish dignity and leadership that may not actually include gentleness and humility, right? So I guess my question would be, can y'all define for us what masculine leadership actually is? I wasn't a fan of Kevin Samuels, but I had an appreciation for him. And part of the reason I had an appreciation for him is he represented male audacity, black male audacity. And I'm always a fan of black male audacity because that's what the status quo is afraid of. And what we're seeing with some aspects of the red pill, the pseudo masculinity that we're seeing happen, the domineering masculinity we're seeing come out of it is an overcorrection, if we're being honest. It's an attempt to write the pendulum by swinging it as far right, pun intended, as it can because for so long the attempt has been to swing it far left. The attempt has been to pedestalize castrated masculinity. The attempt has been to idealize deference to female perspective, female leadership, female authority. And I think a response is, and we see the same with politics, right? The response is to try to, it's going to go to this extreme. I'm a fan of it coming back to the middle and coming back to a place where it works for both of us. And maybe not even coming back to, but let's strive for that. One of the things that he was critiqued for was the fact that he wasn't married. He was married, I think, two or three times during his life. They didn't work out. And most men's pushback has been that the same dismissiveness that we see shown towards Kevin Samuels for not being married is not shown towards certain female authority figures. As long as they say something that we agree with, there's no need for us to critique whether or not they're qualified to or they have the experience to say it. And then I think the other thing too is for a lot of men and boys, they've noticed that some of the most out of touch men that we come across are men who are married. For a lot of men, marriage represents emasculation. It represents a castrated state where you defer to your wife. And to a lot of men, that doesn't look like leadership. Now, it could be. And maybe those men aren't doing a good enough job explaining some of the nuances of it. And I encourage men who are married to do that. But the idea that a married man is more of a leader or a proven leader than a man who might be currently single is nonsense. But I think the main person to look at is Jesus. And Jesus wasn't married, but he was a son of God. So he was married to us, his church. All right, so let me go on a Christian by default tangent real quick. I've said this to people that I've had conversations with them in confidence. But the idea espoused by the church is that Jesus represented perfection. And Jesus was God's opportunity to experience the human condition so that he can better relate with us, which to me is problematic primarily because if you are an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, omnipresent being, there is nothing that you need to learn. You should already know it. There was no additional insight information perspective that you need that is not already within you. So the concept of sending a human version of yourself to experience humanity and then save humanity from the sins that you programmed humanity to be susceptible to, from my perspective, seems like a waste of time. However, I think it's an opportunity for us to consider our humanity juxtaposed against Jesus's humanity. And I've heard some conspiracy theories that said that the church changed the story of Jesus to make him essentially a monk, but in reality, Jesus had children. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who the church then turned into a prostitute. I don't know if any of that is true. However, I think that would be a better story for me personally. A Jesus that actually lived. A Jesus that was in the world. We're supposed to be in the world, not of the world. A Jesus that was in the world. The current story of Jesus that we have was not a person who was in the world. It's a person who was operating on a completely different plane. And obviously he's God, but that's always been my struggle with the concept of Jesus. Jesus does not know what it's like to be jealous, what it's like to be heartbroken by a woman, what it's like to have sex. And that's why in my opinion, Jesus was not... I'll put it like this. Jesus was not a quintessential human. He was an ideal human. And I'm guessing the ideal is from a God's perspective. But that's the odyssey. And that gets complicated. But if somebody in the comments wants to have that conversation, comment below your thoughts. And he modeled Christ's like sacrificial love, even when the church rejected him. And so I think what Christ's like masculinity looks like is it is both lion and lamb. And again, to use Jesus as the benchmark for masculinity. Love your wife like Christ loved the church. The church killed Christ. The church didn't dialogue with Christ. The church saw Christ as a threat. Christ wasn't even necessarily communicative to the church. He came in flipping tables. Because again, he was operating on a different level that the church wasn't aware of. Now, how does that translate to male-female relationships and dynamics in a world that now champions clear, concise, therapeutic like communication. Where women are asking us to be more vulnerable than Christ was to the church. And more communicative. And more clear, more concise. And again, it goes back to the expectations that are placed on men are superhuman. How can you be the lion and the lamb? You're either a lion or a lamb. Now, extra dimensional being can conceptualize that, but to place that responsibility in human men just because we have penises, it's not fair. And I think that's why so many women are dismissive of men's grievances and men's sufferings and men's experiences. Because again, men are just supposed to be able to bear it and figure out a way to navigate it and have all the answers and be strong, but soft when I want you to be. And hard when I want you to be. And the idea is we're supposed to get a woman who multiplies what we give her. And she's a helped me in the whole nine. Even though some men's experiences have been doing all that and the woman being a liability. And we don't address that. At the very least, what we'll say is he should have picked a better woman. When the reality is that wasn't the agreement. The agreement was it didn't matter the woman that I picked. She was my helped meat. She would conform to my leadership. She would conform and appreciate my self-sacrificial posture. But that's not true. So to expect regular men to be Christ without enjoying any of the benefits of being a omnipotent being and benevolent being and all that good stuff like is unfair. And I think again, men should aspire to be better. Men should aspire to cover, but it should be a covenant. I do this for you. You do this for me. These are the responsibilities and the privileges that are associated with said responsibility. But also these are the responsibilities. This is what I expect for you. And I think most men would be okay with that arrangement. But what we asked to do is just give no matter what, kind of blindly and don't expect anything in return and be thankful if you get something decent. She wasn't a bad woman. You just weren't man enough. You just didn't have the authority that she could follow. So it still falls on you even when it's not your fault. One of the things that has risen in this whole red peel understanding is finding women that are easier to manipulate, to control. Yes. A lot of men are being pushed. They call them passport bros. If you guys know I'm introducing all type of stuff. Y'all know I'm not a fan of passport bros at one point. We even had a U2 beef. Well, let's passport bros and more SYSBM. I'm not a fan of Save Yourself Black Man. Passport bros is nuanced to me. However, that was a gross mischaracterization of passport bros in particular. This idea that they are looking for women who are more docile, women who are more easily manipulated, as opposed to women who are more agreeable, women who are more physically attractive even. Because the reality that we have to acknowledge and this brother knows this as a Nigerian. I don't know if he's first or second generation. Specifically as an Igbo man, American women are not taught to compete for men. The rest of the world is. So as the world becomes more accessible, as travel becomes more accessible, you have brothers who are working in tech and they can literally work anywhere. When he experiences a woman who doesn't think that he owes her the moon and the stars, but instead thinks that in as much as he needs to prove his value to me, I have to prove my value to him. And he compares that to American women. He's going to go that way 10 times out of 10. And it's time we start being honest about that as opposed to framing. There's almost a narcissism in that framing. These women is lowly, uneducated, poor, ignorant women who are just who just want to be maids. When the reality is a lot of these women are bilingual. A lot of these women are educated. Now, obviously, the economies of the countries that they live in are not to the extent of the economies of the United States. And that's why I tell passport bros to be careful and not get caught just like dating a girl in the hood, right? You might just be a way out. But to not acknowledge the fact that on the macro, American women are, their brand is not the best compared to foreign women, but instead branded around men seeking control in the whole nine is dishonest. Because if we're being completely honest, comparing American men, I'm Nigerian, he's Nigerian, comparing American men to most of the men around the world. American men are some of the most accommodating men in the world. A lot of them, especially in the black community, are coming from single mothers, single mothers who didn't even like men, single mothers who might not even have taken care of themselves physically. So certain things that would be mandatory for a man in another country to demand and expect from his woman, American men are a bit more flexible with that. So when those same American men encounter a woman who cooks for him on the first date, encounter a woman who treats him like a good man and assumes that he's a good person as opposed to assuming that he's a threat to her, like a lot of American women have been socialized to do, obviously he's going to gravitate to that. And I think it's the responsibility of us to tell the full story instead of just framing it as oh, these men are predators. No, some of these passport bros are in their 20s, they're good-looking guys, they get women here. But when they spend a week in Atlanta versus spending a week in Colombia, there's really no competition and we have to tell the full truth. I was told when I married my wife when I first got with her, there was one of the ladies in the church saying, you let your daughter, you let your son, I'm sorry, you let your son marry an American woman. How can you do that? She would divorce him because there's this understanding that, hey look, American women are difficult, they run to divorce and all this stuff. And the reality is we have to address it. There is a modicum of truth to these rumors. We have to address it. And again, I'm not just talking about men's experiences and romantic relationships with Western women. I'm talking about just your experiences at restaurants with a female waiter at a hotel with a female clerk at a store with a female cashier. Like we have to address that. We cannot just continue to gaslight men and say, no, it's the women you're choosing have attitudes and the women that you're choosing are belligerent and disagreeable. We have to address it because at the end of the day, the world is just going to become more and more accessible. Men are going to become less and less willing to even engage in these dialogues. And they're going to make those decisions and a lot of women are going to turn around and be like, we're all the good men. They're in Colombia. They're in Japan. They're in Kenya. If I had it my way, they'd be in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa. So if we don't want that to be the case, we have to stop gaslighting men and acting like men are making these things up. The reality is Black women, especially Black women in the West, have a certain brand. And it's sad to me that whenever I or other men encounter a Black woman in the West who doesn't fit that mold, it's mind blowing, but we have to address it. Similarly, Western men, we have a certain brand too. And we can't act oblivious to it as to why the woman is hesitant to come back to our place or hesitant to devolve certain information and all that kind of stuff. But it seems like the grace isn't reciprocated. The understanding isn't reciprocated. But again, I think it goes back to women don't feel the need to have to learn the perspectives and the struggles and the nuances of the male experience. So it's easy to gaslight and say, oh, Western women are going to divorce you. Who told you that? Where are you meeting these women? None of my friends are like that. The reality is, yeah, they are statistically yes. And so when you look for a yes woman, what you're saying is I don't want to be like the son of God who came to love a difficult church. That's exactly what you're saying. Again, to hold men to a Christ-like standard is inhumane, literally and figuratively, in my opinion. There's a book by David Dieter. It's called Way of the Superior Man. And that was essentially the premise of the book. I think it was a good book for a lot of reasons. But basically the premise was the measure of man that you are, your level of superiority as a man, is directly correlated in your ability to navigate the inherent difficulties and sometimes contrarian aspects of femininity. So basically, if you are a superior man, you would want and subsequently handle a difficult woman. And the reality is boys who grew up with difficult women, men who've lived their entire lives around difficult women, difficult black women, they're not buying that. Now, again, the question was asked earlier, why are men leaving the church? I think that's one of the reasons. When will the church acknowledge that, hey, women, stop being so freaking difficult and definitely stop being difficult for the sake of being difficult, for the sake of constantly G-checking and poking at the man that you've chosen. He should find peace in you, not difficulty. Yes, inherently they're going to be difficulties just because of the difference in our nature. However, this shouldn't be a deliberate game that you're playing. With how far can I push him to see what he's capable of enduring? She easily irritates you because you don't even like her. That's what I want to get to. Thank you for going there. Again, it goes back to the reason why I think not only are men gravitating away from institutions like the church, but also gravitating away from, quote, unquote, better leaders because they're married and they found themselves in long-term partnerships that a lot of us learn are really just a facade. But the reason is that to make the moot point that a woman who is more agreeable, more amenable, just easier to deal with is a maid, is being classified as a maid, and a woman who's difficult for the sake of being difficult is being classified as a friend. It begs the question, what kind of dynamics did you grow up with? And why is your paradigm of friend primarily challenged, primarily difficulty, primarily tumultuous? And we see a lot of these brothers, unfortunately, they're the ones who are married very early. And they think because my mom was difficult and constantly testing my dad that that's normal and that should be expected from my wife, my girlfriends. And I'm a man because I'm willing to tolerate and I'm willing to placate to that. And again, we have to project things out. Boys are saying, no, fuck that. I'm not doing that. Men who've been divorced, who've been in relationships, who've had the opportunity to step outside and see that, oh, wait, this isn't what other men are experiencing, are saying, no, fuck that. But again, the idea is that these men are classified as the leadership we should follow when they're failing to acknowledge that some of these things are not normal, but they've been normalized. And that some of the onus falls on women. Some of the onus falls on the paradigms that were set for you to think that this is normal. It's not normal for women to just be difficult for the sake of being difficult. It's not normal for women to be belligerent. It's not normal for women to be argumentative. And again, we can address those things and put them in the proper white supremacist context, but to continue to grade men and, but by our ability to tolerate and navigate nonsense. To a certain degree, I subscribe to that, but to have that as a macro message without telling the full story is absolutely not sustainable, especially as we become more individualistic as a culture and as a society. And boys are saying, no, I'd rather just play video games. I don't want to deal with this difficult ass woman. No, I'd rather just go overseas and get with a woman who actually likes me and that it's clear we have a symbiotic relationship. She brings me peace. She wants to cater to my needs just like I cater to hers. Instead of it being a one-sided proving ground 24-7, that it's never, I've never done enough to prove that I'm a good man to her. And my ability to keep on running and continuously run faster, even though she's getting less attractive over time, because I'm getting used to her and because she's aging, it's nonsense. And we have to be honest about these things. We have to stop gaslighting men and boys. It does seem like some men enjoy men more than they enjoy women, but they marry women because they're supposed to, but their affections, their time, their energy, their vulnerability is giving space for men. And what's, what's ironic about this is it's being framed in a way to shame men without acknowledging maybe those men find other men more pleasant to be around because the majority of women have assumed this posture of being perpetually inevitable challenges. And I don't find peace in being around my woman. Like, are we willing to engage in that conversation or are we just gonna try to assume these subtle homosexual jabs at men? The reality is, part of the reason some men enjoy being around, and I'm not even a man who enjoys being around most people, let alone men, but part of the reason why some men enjoy being around other men as opposed to women is because it's easier. The expectations aren't as high. If you tell your boy, I'm gonna call you back and you don't call him back, he's not throwing a hissy fit, but your girl, she is. If you're spending time with your girl, but it seems like you are thinking about something else, she's gonna make a big deal out of it. Your boy is just gonna let you be. So again, we can also make that same argument for women. Some women enjoy women time more than male time, and that's why they'll project female expectations on the men in their life. Men know you're not a man, so I'm not gonna project male expectations on you, I'm gonna just go whatever I need from men in that moment, I'm gonna go find it in men. But again, to characterize it as this heterorheurotic thing is dishonest, it's disingenuous, and it's incomplete. I need to talk to a friend right now, if I cannot find that in my home, that's a very tragic situation. I agree to a point, I think your, especially your spouse should have an established friendship with you. However, I don't know if your spouse necessarily needs to be your best friend. Just like I would say, I don't think your co-founder, if you're starting a company, needs to be your best friend. I think marriage is a purpose driven relationship primarily, and you should prioritize your purpose with each other over if you guys do the same drugs, metaphorically speaking. But I would agree that I think that would be ideal if we were, appreciated the same kind of things, but I encourage men to look for their compliment. Same with women, and your compliment isn't necessarily gonna be somebody that you gravitate to initially, because they're going to fill in your blind spots. And in order to do that, they might not have the same appreciations that you have, the same hobbies that you have, the same things that otherwise would make two people great friends. But again, marriage, especially as an institution, was never established throughout history, has never been established based on friendship. It's been established primarily based on purpose. And I think in the modern sense, maybe it starts leaning towards a friendship-based situation, but I think that's also going to follow a higher divorce rate, or it's gonna follow, you know, maybe a different paradigm where it's not marriage, it's some other arrangements. But yeah, perfect world, I think he's right. Like if me and him have plans, and then Kianokal, I won't even get met. Like I know dudes, listen. And this is part of the reason I've, you know, often said men love more authentically than women. Because, you know, based on my observations, men tend to not project the same expectations, the same pseudo-human, let's call it that, pseudo-human expectations on their woman, as I see women project onto their men. Men typically don't expect their woman to be, their woman to be their world. Like I have friends over here who fulfill this purpose. I have business partners over here who fulfill this purpose. I have gym buddies over here who fulfill this purpose. But you see the growing sentiment amongst women is I want to find one man to fulfill all the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental demands that used to be fulfilled by my village. And again, in an ideal world, I think that's a beautiful thing. But like, I don't think it's sustainable on the macro. Number one, number two, I don't think it's a fair expectation to place on one human being and then be perpetually disappointed when they don't live up to it. I want him to be high earning, but I want him to have all the time in the world to spend with me. And there's no grace given to the negotiation necessary for a man to fulfill all these expectations. And I think it again is part of the reason why men are drawn to rather spend time with other men or rather spend time at the bar or get home and sit in the car for 10, 20, 15 minutes an hour before you even go in the house. Because this Superman cape, you want me to wear 24 seven? It's just heavy. It's uncomfortable. Let me be a person. Let me not be a constant walking, talking disappointment in your eyes. And even if I can't articulate it, I feel it. If you want to see more of this, please click that like button. It helps tremendously and share. 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