Masculinity and Manhood: What are they, what are they not, and where we’re headed? To answer these questions, Peter McGraw is joined by two friends from a recent Men’s Wellness Day for a thoughtful (and fun) conversation on strength, vulnerability, relationships, femininity, and the state of manhood and masculinity. You can find bonus content about male role models and learn about the new Aging Sexy eBook at petermcgraw.org/solo.
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Listen to Episode #245 here
Masculinity and Manhood
Before we jump into this intriguing episode, quick announcements and a personal note. As you may know, I’ve been experimenting with eBooks as another way to help solos live remarkably. These eBooks are passion-driven and self-funded, with all proceeds going directly towards supporting the Solo Movement. Though let’s be honest, it may be time for us to find a sponsor.
Recently, I released Personal Finance for Solos, an eBook, as well as a workbook to accompany the Solo book. Now I’m excited to introduce something a little different, something a little, dare I say, sexier, though it’s in eBook form. Inspired by a recent series on aging, retiring and dying single, I created Aging Sexy, a fun new eBook for solos who are aging forward, not fading away. It’s cheeky, stylish, and empowering. It’s a guide for anyone who wants to redefine sexy, and I think this is important, on their own terms. You can find it along with the other eBooks at PeterMcGraw.org/solo. Thanks, as always, for your support.
Next announcement, as indicated by the title, this episode addresses a big topic, masculinity, and it’s just simply not possible to cover all the topics in one episode. If you like what you read, you can listen to another 25 minutes of bonus material by signing up for the solo community, which is free at PeterMcGraw.org/solo. In this bonus material, we talk about resources and role models for men, and within that bonus material, you can learn who would be my role model if I could have any role model in the world.
Now, a brief thought before we dive in. One of the big takeaways from this episode for me is that so many of the challenges and aspirations that we have that we often explore, especially in this show, transcend gender. Whether we’re talking about masculinity or femininity, it often comes down to something more universal, how to be a good person, or better yet, a remarkable one.
In general, I think the principles that we cover on the show, how to be a good friend, how to be a good parent, a good sibling, a good single cut across the categories that we may typically obsess over. It is the human condition. How do we do this well? With that in mind, I’m thrilled to share this thoughtful conversation among 3 men and 3 good people, at least my guests, are about the evolving state of masculinity. I hope you enjoy the episode. Let’s get started.
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Introducing David Jitendranath and Kerr Shireman
Welcome back. Lately, I’ve been hosting Men’s Wellness Weekends, an experience that blends physical activity, social bonding, vulnerability, and fun. It’s been a powerful reminder of how important it is for men to connect, open up, and support each other outside the usual guy stuff. In this episode, I’m joined by two friends who joined me for a men’s wellness day. Let’s start with introductions. Share who you are and how we met. Maybe we’ll start with you, Kerr, since I met you first.
Thanks for having me, Peter. My name’s Kerr Shireman, originally from Kansas City, Missouri, and I moved to Denver around the summer of 2022. Shortly thereafter, I met Peter at a coffee shop, and we struck up wide-ranging conversations and had a lot of fun just getting to know each other a little bit. That slowly flourished into having these men’s wellness weekends and spending more quality time with one another and discovering a lot about each other that we had in common, which was great.
Indeed. We actually both broke up with that coffee shop
We did, yes.
You’re more monogamous with your coffee shops than I am.
I tend to be a loyal customer.
I’m non-monogamous with my coffee shops, but I feel like the thing that took our connection to the next level. We’re actually up in Fairplay, Colorado, at a cabin right now. We’re bringing this group of 4 back together, 2 of which you are part of. We were just talking about this. I went to your coffee shop and you had just received the Solo book.
I had just started reading it, and that was a very interesting moment. It was about 7:30 in the morning. I was about the only person in the shop other than staff, and I’m about a third of the way through Solo and really enjoying it. In walks Peter and I hadn’t seen you in at least six months. It had been quite a while.
We got to talking about the book and just all of the pressure that you had been going through around the delivery of that. At that point, I know I’m a little spent. Even just having gotten a third end of the book and all of what it has offered me, developing the vocabulary that I have now and the structure I have around being solo, I’d talked to you about that at that moment, and your eyes just lit up. It was one of the best conversations I had with you. I feel like that was a definite turning point.
For people who don’t know Kerr, he’s a very steady individual. That morning, you were just popping like a fire. You were just so enthusiastic and everything. It really meant a lot to me. As someone who writes, you sometimes toil, but in any case, it’s often a very solitary endeavor, and you don’t know what’s going to be on the other side. To actually talk to a reader and feel the emotion and see the emotion was really wonderful. Our other guest is a writer, too. He understands that. David, how’d we meet?
My name is David Jitendranath and Peter has this tendency to pick up men at coffee shops. I’m one of those guys who got picked up.
You’re one of those lucky fellas.
Full context. Peter did approach me.
I think what got your attention was me reading Robert Green’s book at that coffee shop, The Daily Laws. I was reading that and doing my morning routine, when I usually read and write. Peter had this stack of books. Your book had just been published.
The publisher makes you buy your own book. I spent about $2,000 buying my own book. I got hundreds and hundreds of copies. When people come over to my place, I’m like, “It’s weird to give someone your book, but I need to get rid of these things.”
It’s a fire hazard at this point.
People are like, “That’s so nice. Are you sure?” I’m like, “Please take this thing. It’s just a reminder that I’m not succeeding with this book.” I had some with me, I think.
Yeah, you had some and then I did get one.
You were the first person to actually read the official book.
No way. Really?
Yes, 100% because I had received them in advance of the launch. I gave you one.
That’s right. You did say it has not been launched yet because I was going to buy on Amazon or something like that. He’s like, “It’s not available yet. I’ll give you one.”
I actually bought the book. I supported Peter directly.
Kerr is a lifelong bachelor. Never married, no kids. David is a re-bachelor.
That’s right. I’ve been married for eighteen years, a long time. Two kids.
A tween and a teen.
I’m divorced.
That sets the stage. Both of you work in tech, but you’re also much more than that. Kerr is an athlete. Kerr does these very long road trips to national parks, takes time off of work and lives a very physical, robust life. David is an intellectual reader and a writer. We’ve talked a lot about philosophy, the art of writing. When I wanted to talk about masculinity, it’s something that I’ve started to think more and more about. It’s adjacent to the Solo Movement, I think. It comes up now and again on the show.
Defining Masculinity And Manhood
There’s a very popular episode called I Love You, Man, where I got a very close friend and then a less close friend together. We talked about some men’s issues. I also have a favorite conversation where I, at the time, was 53 and was talking to a 23-year-old young man about life, manhood, etc. In this episode, we’re going to give this topic a little more attention. We are bringing our private conversations that we’ve had into the public a bit more. Let’s start personal, about your experience, about what does masculinity mean to you.
To me, masculinity is, at least for our postmodern times, when I was thinking about this, it’s three things for me. Number one is being decisive. I had a friend of mine who said like, “I’m going to break up with my girl,” and three months later, we were having a beer, and he was like, “Did you talk to your girlfriend about what you want to do?” He hadn’t. To me, once you’ve made a decision, take action. You’re not lurking around in the bed, “Should I get up? Should I get out and do whatever I need to do for the day?” Just get out of the bed.
Decisiveness.
The second thing is men have to play to win and not play not to lose. There’s a difference between playing to win versus playing not to lose.
There’s work in psychology called having a promotion focus or a prevention focus. Promotion focus is focused on success on achievement and prevention focus is avoiding bad things. You’re saying that masculinity is about having a promotion focus.
Exactly. We put ourselves out there in harm’s way if we need to, to make things happen. It’s never about protecting your resources, what you have. It’s more about going out there, taking risks and playing to win.
This is a very David thing to say. He’s an entrepreneur and David is in flux right now with his career. One of the things that he said to me that that really stood out, I’ve thought about it a lot, is he said, “I’m willing to go to zero and have to start over again.” This is a man in his 40s with dependents and so on like that. He is very entrepreneurial in a way that, frankly, I’m not. I see that in your own behavior. What’s the third?
Maybe we are hunters, like I’m tapping into that pre-modern world versus the gatherers, which is more resource protection. There’s a little bit of that to it in terms of like going out there, you could get killed, but you still do it.
You may win big, you may come back with nothing.
Yes, 100%. That can very much happen. The third thing is I really think this is especially true for our times. I don’t want men to apologize for anything that has happened in the past. Live your life with no apologies, being a man.
What’s an example of that?
I think there’s all these systems that we’ve discovered, like systemic racism, systemic patriarchal society and all that that we’ve looked back at history and discovered like there’s oppression and all these things. What we tend to forget is in that process, human nature itself, I’m an astute reader of Nietzsche, and Nietzsche is precisely making that point in all of his books, is we as a modern man and in the evolution of things, we forget we come from animals. A lot of times, to me, that’s just part of who we are as human beings in general, not just male and female. For lack of a better word, if somebody were to say, “You were part of the patriarchy, you were the oppressor, I don’t want to have it. No apologies for that.”
You want to move forward.
Yes.
I’ve been reading Camille Paglia and I think she would very much agree with you. One of her themes in her writing that I found very provocative is how close we are still to being animals. The nature of nature, we dress it up. We’re polite. We live in a polite society, etc., but just brimming below the surface are a lot of animal instincts.
I bet you to say it’s brimming above the surface in certain cases.
In certain cases, certainly. That’s right. All you need is conflict to figure that out that’s there.
A little bit of alienation happens when you deny it because then you’re suppressing your instincts and nature, and then without even you knowing it, unconsciously, you’re alienated from who you were.
I think, as a man nowadays, it’s easy to be on your heels. There are cultural winds blowing against you. The way I’ve characterized it in the past is that men are unpopular. That seemed to peak during the Me Too movement. There, it was often a broad brush and a tendency to overlook the great value that men bring to society as builders, as achievers, as inventors, as protectors, providers, etc. One thing that I want to address right here before we get to Kerr is we already have mixed two terms, and that is men and masculinity. I just want to be aware of that distinction because those two things have some independence from each other, I think.
For me, and actually, before we move to me, I was curious about the third item, David. Don’t apologize for being accused of being part of the patriarchies, as per your example. For me, I haven’t had, I think, a lot of discussion with folks to warrant me putting that as maybe 1 of my top 3. I’m curious, in your life experience, or I don’t know if this is contemporaneous or maybe more in the past, like if you had a lot of interactions with folks where you felt like you maybe had to defend or be in that position where you have to call it out now?
A hundred percent. It’s not necessarily seen in just everyday interactions. If you order a coffee from a barista, she’s not accusing you of anything like that, but there’s an undertone. I do sense that women have this thing about, in general, once you talk to them, they feel that’s an intellectual exercise that they have done, and they’ve gained this knowledge about how systems were in the past.
It still is presently. The patriarchy’s still very much alive.
There is no denying that. It’s there in the subtext of the conversations, more than just coming up constantly. I’m not getting into debates with anybody.
It’s not overt.
It’s just part of the subtext.
I certainly see this. This is alive and well on social media because that gives you a chance to step into a lot of different worlds. My feeling about it is I have certainly had an experience where I interact with a woman, even on a date, where I realize she does not like men in general. She seems interested in me specifically, but the nature of our conversation, the comments that she makes, the tone around certain topics. I could be wrong, but my sense as someone who pays a lot of attention is that for whatever reason, perhaps quite legitimate, she does not like men. I withdraw from that relationship because my feeling is it’s just a matter of time before I get lumped into it.
The systemic level of that argument is going to overtake whatever interactions you had with that individual.
Yes, I believe that.
I’m very fortunate I have a lot of women in my life as coworkers, as collaborators, as friends, as lovers, etc. One of the things that I feel, maybe because I’m sensitive to it, and also because I’m the kind of guy who is probably polarizing, is that these women like men. I saw my friend Mary and she was like, “I like men. I enjoy their company. I like their differences,” and so on. You can pick up on that, I think, to your point, David.
There are many women who like men genuinely despite all of this. I think I’ve met Mary. She’s a great example. I’m not saying all women are like this.
No, certainly not. By the way, we have to acknowledge this. This is going to be a largely one-dimensional conversation. The flip is very true. I know you’re being a little bit cheeky when you say misogynistic, but in this world, if you do a deep dive into masculinity, as I did when I actually first started the Solo project, it was originally going to be focused on men’s issues. I very quickly pivoted it to being unisex, in part because it was just a practical matter. The pain points of being single for men and women, there’s a lot of overlap. There are unique elements to it.
Moreover, I think that women feel the pain of being single more than men do. I was like, “I don’t want to eliminate not even just half the population, but even more than half the population.” I pivoted, but I did a dive into the manosphere, these online forums, these YouTube videos, etc. While there are positive messages in there, to your point, David, around achievement and self-sufficiency, there are also a lot of men who hate women. Don’t disguise it. You’re not even trying to pick up. It’s right there. I just want to acknowledge that this is not limited in any way. This goes back and forth across the sexes.
I’ve never been a basher of women for whatever they’ve done their accomplishments or anything like that. I think you are 100% right. In the manosphere, especially, there are some men who really are about that, and that’s their message. For some reason, it sells. It’s very commercial.
It’s easier to stir someone up. It’s easier to play on their bad experiences. I will say this. One of the things that I think is very clear is that in the same way that Mary likes men, you like women or you wouldn’t be my friend. You wouldn’t be here because I curate along these dimensions. Kerr, you were saying?
When I think about my views on masculinity and maybe how they’ve changed over the years, and if I think about growing up, to me, the focus was always like, I guess, within the familial realm where the masculine could be defined as the man of the house or the provider, the protector, the decider, things like that.
As a young adult, I chose not to take that traditional route of marriage and kids where I could maybe embody some of those things in that context. Those roles weren’t available to me, at least in their traditional societal terms. Not that I rejected them per se, but I evolved into thinking about it more along the lines of independence, determination and the will to succeed. Also, accountability. Accountability for your own behaviors, for being a good person to others and so on. That’s how I define it now.
It is true. I’ll just say this. I did a little bit of looking into what are the traditional definitions of masculinity. I think it’s very difficult to talk about masculinity without talking about femininity. It’s a yin and yang.
You only have a few of, I guess, these traits or roles or however you want to define that you’re talking about if you only talk about masculinity.
Masculinity refers to traits and behaviors that are socially and culturally associated with being male. Things like strength, assertiveness, independence, confidence, etc. You hit on some of those, David. You hit on some of them to occur. Femininity refers to traits and behaviors culturally associated with being female, such as empathy, gentleness, emotional expressiveness, and nurturing. I do like this yin and yang of those two.
However, what comes up is this like a social and cultural thing. Yes, there may be some genetic inputs to this, for example, testosterone leading to aggressiveness and so on, but a lot of this stuff is in the ether, is about social norms, is about cultural norms, about how you ought to behave. What does it mean to be the man of the house? The father, the husband, the protector, the provider. It’s something that is built on an old model, in some ways, around hunter-gatherers.
Who was doing the majority of the fighting against other tribes? Who were the people who were bringing in the big game? That was also complimented by more traditional gender roles for women around gathering, nurturing, etc., and that you needed both of those things functioning highly and well and together.
Sometimes, it’s overlapping. Men would gather, and there were some cases of women who went hunting, etc. These things are, can be a little mushy and a little messy, but in general, we have a world where you’re being taught very early on through watching your parents, through media, etc., about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, and you shifted a bit.
Through my life experience, I shifted what I viewed, if you were to try to pin down, a few characteristics, what that meant to me as a person. When I talk about it, it’s coming from, I suppose, my life’s lens as opposed to David, you’re doing a lot of research and reading about these topics, as well as you, Peter. Maybe I’m not as astute as you folks on that. All that being said, when I had this discussion with you folks, it was about who I’ve worked with in my life, whether it’s friendships, relationships, family, etc., versus doing more, I suppose, rigorous research.
The Rules Of Masculinity
What are some of the rules of masculinity? Rules that you either were taught or that you’ve observed in the world?
Number one, I think men should define masculinity. I’ll tell you a little bit of an example. This Barbie movie, you guys, I haven’t watched it, but I know about it. Do you know about this movie? I was part of a social club in Boulder called Highland City Club. Have you guys heard of it?
No.
At that time, I was a club member, and we used to have discussions around topics. Every Monday, there’s a community table. We had discussions, and one of the discussions was about the Barbie movie. Most of the club members are Gen X and Boomers, so a lot of traditional type of like what you were saying earlier, what I call tradcon views of men and women. Tradcon stands for traditional conservatives, that type of view. There’s a lady, a 30-year-old woman, at our table, and towards the end, the community moderator said like, “We want to hear from this young person, and let’s see what she has to say.”
She was very eloquent. She spoke really well about feminist theory, the different waves of feminism, how the fourth wave of feminism has defined what we call divine feminine. She went on to say, “We are on track to define what is divine masculine.” To me, I was so enraged when I heard that. Of course, they all clapped. All the Boomers, the Gen X, they all clapped. “So eloquent, so well said.” I left that room. I had to hold my tongue, not say anything mean. Anyway, I just walked out thinking like, “They get to define what is divine masculine.” To me, that definition of masculinity should come from men. I am anti-women and feminist theorists defining what masculinity should be.
One thing I have to just note here is I’ve never come across masculine theorists. We’ve never talked about X wave of masculinity. It may exist out there, but I’ve not come across it in any way.
The best version is Manosphere, which is terrible. There are all kinds of people there. It’s not intellectually rigorous.
It’s not at all. What is it?
Again, going back to the point of like, so here’s where we are. In the postmodern world, we cannot return to tradcon views. We cannot say women need to stay at home and men need to go to work. There are some people like The Daily Wire and all these podcasters says, “Let’s go get back to traditional values.” I am not that guy. To me, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Now, we’ve got to figure out what’s the best way to move forward.
I would say this. I am pro-choice. My feeling is if people want to create a life that is more traditional, they should be able to do it without judgment. I think that’s very important. One of the things is women deserve economic opportunities, equality, the ability to vote, etc., and they should be able to do what they want with that. If that means that they want to stay home with the kids, by all means, go ahead and do it that way, I feel very strongly.
Being Placed In A Box
I also agree with you. Going backwards is a mistake, in part because one of the things that we don’t talk enough about is how the patriarchy oppresses men. The patriarchy’s not good for men, either. It’s certainly not good for women, but it’s also not good for men either. Moving backwards in that way hurts both genders. I agree with you in that sense. Have you ever felt boxed in by what it means to be a man, especially as a father, as a husband?
Personally, I do what I want. I’ve never had that for me, for myself. I have heard that from others who have felt boxed in, and some of them stay in really bad marriages, continue to be there for maybe religious reasons that they have to be a certain way or whatever. They continue to provide, and that’s what the Bible tells them to do. I’ve met those types of people. It’s not affected me, personally, if that’s your question.
I have male friends who are working themselves to death. Working jobs they don’t like, feeling the pressure of being a sole provider. They have a more traditional relationship, for example, etc.
I felt boxed in by just expectation around having the 2.3 children and X, Y, Z. The culture I grew up in was resolutely Midwest, and just had a high preponderance of folks who take that more traditional path and discovering that I may be wanting to do something different. There is essentially no support for that. In fact, the system around you try to keep you to conform to those expectations. I felt boxed in that way, but not necessarily with the work stuff, but I know folks who literally have worked themselves to death. I learned some lessons from viewing those folks firsthand.
My feeling is in the same way that we’re trying to address the wage gap between men and women, we ought to be addressing the age gap between men and women. It’s currently 6.9 years in the United States. If you’re born a man in the United States, on average, you get about seven years less life. It’s influenced by a lot of things.
There might be a biological element to it that is difficult to address. Maybe we will be able to someday, but some of it is the work that men do. They do more dangerous work. They’re more likely to be murdered. They’re more likely to commit suicide. They’re more likely to be incarcerated. They’re more likely to be homeless. All these things, so both on the positive end of being that provider and then on the negative end of not having the support, we just die younger. I think that’s not okay.
I think that there should be a cultural conversation happening about both of those gaps because they’re both important. I didn’t have a father at home. He was largely absent. I was raised in a feminine house, a female household, so a mother and a sister. I feel like I greatly benefited from that. This is going to sound bad, but I feel like I understand women may be better than a lot of guys from having just been in that world. I like women. I love women. I adore my sister. Even when we were sibling rivals, I felt deeply connected to her. I was bad with girls when I was a young man. I befriended a lot of women. I friend-zoned myself a lot.
That ended up being a very good thing in my life, because I stepped into their world and I had conversations with them as a friend. I felt like I was able to develop a feminine side, to have the yin and yang, but I felt lost as what it means to be a man. As a young man, when I went searching for those answers, there wasn’t a male version of feminist theory to read. There weren’t men talking about that.
I did some reading. I was telling a story about a series of essays that I read in Esquire and so on. I felt like the media betrayed me. I was watching these Sylvester Stallone movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, which in some ways were good. It was about having a robust life, which resonates with me.
It was about being big and strong and muscular and things like that, which actually, I think, is independent of being a good man. I think being fit is important, but the size of your muscles tells you almost nothing about the goodness of your manhood, I believe. I didn’t believe that at fifteen. I thought this is what you had to do to be appealing to women, to be a good guy, so to speak.
That’s generally promulgated by all media and across when you talk about entertainment, whether it’s news, literature, what have you, those views are why we are even having conversations like this now.
Women have their own version of this that they experience around ideal body types and what they are supposed to be. For the Esquire of the world, there were the Cosmopolitans of the world that didn’t always have healthy messages and no crosstalk between the two.
I would slightly say it’s a feature, not a bug that you don’t have masculine theory because men are, by nature, experiential. We do learn by doing things. It’s disingenuous to expect some theory. That’s something that the modern younger men tend to want to look towards. We don’t have any examples or role models. I actually flip it on its head and say, “What do you need a role model for?” A lot of times, it’s an excuse not to do things that you want to do because you will not find it. To me, the way men handed things to their generations and sons and others was more by doing things and having them do things with them. That’s why I would call it a feature, not a bug. It’s slightly different from what you’re saying.
I want to hear what you think about this, Kerr, because I had to figure it out on my own. I had a grandfather who was a very traditional man, and I think it helped a lot. If you think about this as a yin and yang, he never modeled vulnerability. He never modeled enough nurturing.
I don’t want to model that to my kids. I’m going to be very different there.
Which do you not want to model?
I don’t believe in men being vulnerable.
I disagree with that.
I will wholeheartedly disagree with you as well.
Slightly different. Does that mean I’m not an emotional person?
Yeah, I get that.
I am definitely emotionally integrated, emotionally intelligent, and I do cry on occasions, that does happen, but it’s not in a way where I am sharing something that, “I’m going through this tough time,” or anything like that. To me, that’s a feature of masculinity. This is a great example. When 9/11 happened, there were five air flights that were crashing into all these big monuments and locations. The one that was destined to crash at the White House, the plan was subjugated by five guys who went and rushed and was able to take over the terrorism.
It crashed somewhere else. They all died. One of the guy was talking to the operator and he was saying like, “Tell my wife I love her. She’s pregnant. I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to share the fact that I’m actually under terrorist attack and I’m going to get killed.” He was showing resilience and strength in not revealing that situation. He was a Christian Guy, so he just told the operator, “Just pray the Lord’s Prayer with me.” He just said the Lord’s Prayer, and he said, “Let’s roll,” and he went on to tackle the terrorist.
Is that a sufficient example to talk about normal as people’s lives like ours, though? How many times are you going to be on the plane in 9/11?
That example, to me, reveals something about men, that strength matters.
I don’t know that I would characterize vulnerability as a discussion and use that argument to counter it as just throwing it out.
Give me an example of what is vulnerable, being vulnerable.
Sure. Growing up, I had your traditional family unit, and with all those structures that were in place, it was still a fairly an egalitarian household. There wasn’t a lot of dominance on my father’s side and submissiveness on the mothers, as an example. That being said, I wasn’t encouraged ever really to talk about my feelings, whether they were good or bad. That’s just not what boys do.
Boys don’t cry. That’s like the classic thing. Suck it up. Toughen it up. This is part of the cultural thing, is like you’re supposed to behave in this way.
I would bottle things up if I should have dealt with something or looked at something introspectively or talk to somebody who was a party to my negative feelings. At the time, I just didn’t do it. That festers and becomes something that it shouldn’t and then comes out in inappropriate ways and at inappropriate times. For me, that was a function of being stoic or being strong and not showing that I had weakness.
As I have gotten better at dealing with my emotions and talking about my feelings and such, I feel that when I’m being vulnerable, and this is very specific to a situation. For example, let’s say you’re friends with somebody. Somebody the opposite sex. You’ve been friends for a while. Maybe there’s something going on there. Maybe you want to approach this person and talk to them about those feelings. There’s something at stake there.
If I go and express my feelings to that person in that situation, in my own personal definition of it, I’m expressing vulnerability because I’m taking a risk. I’m saying, “Here’s my feelings. You now have them. You can do what you want with them.” I feel that that is a way to define vulnerability in a much different way than when you’re talking about it. When you say the man cannot be vulnerable, I disagree for the reason I just stated.
Maybe we agree to disagree there because I think being emotionally intelligent to me is being able to articulate in a manner that is fitting that you are able to share perhaps some friction or something in that relationship with your friend. Boys don’t cry. I don’t want boys to cry, but I think there’s a way to express it. You talked about bottling up feelings. I don’t want that to happen either. At least for my boys, I don’t want that to happen.
Do you talk to your boys about not crying?
No, I don’t do that, but I think I do want them to express themselves in a manner that is fitting to being boys.
I’m going to take a step back here. Humans should not be made to feel bad for having a cry.
A hundred percent. Same page.
Why then hang your hat on this statement about boys not crying? To me, that ethos, that expectation, was very harmful to me. In my inability to, for example, cry or to do that and not feel ashamed of myself for doing it. I’m just going to say I disagree and part of the reason I’ve never had kids is because it’s so complicated to raise them and to make these decisions about whether or not you go this path or that path with what you teach them and the value set that you teach them. I’m honestly a little off-put that you’re raising children with that being a lens simply because I feel like it might be emotionally stunting for them because it was for me.
Let’s be clear on what I’m saying here. I’m not saying that bottle up your feelings and suck it up. That’s not my point. There is a way to express what you feel, and that’s part of maturity. My kids have cried and that has happened. I’ve never stopped them from expressing. On a personal note, that’s how I’m raising them. I’m just saying in terms of when you say boys don’t cry, what I mean is more a matter of being able to express in a way.
Granted, it’s very hard for a child to express. They don’t have the words to say the things that they want to say, but as you grow as a man, to me, you should be acute with the words you want to articulate and how you want to say your feelings. I am not for bottling up stuff, but I am for expressing things in a manner that is fitting of your maturity, your growth as a man.
I would say I agree with all of that.
I think the word vulnerability to me is a lot of times used as a manipulation tactic by men and women. Women use this by nature all the time. They reveal something that is a weakness or something that’s deep within them. That’s in the nature, to gain something from men, potentially, or the interaction, whoever they’re interacting with. You’ll see this in the corporate world. People share something, they reveal some secret that they have, not like some crazy secret or anything like that, but some weakness that they have, like, “This is one of my thing,” and they expect something in return. That, to me, is manipulation.
It’s a pretty wide-ranging talk here. I agree generally with what you’re saying about being able to articulate your emotions in a way that makes sense to whoever might be involved, whether it’s just yourself or the workplace or your family, or a significant other. I still maintain that you can and should do that and have the opportunity to do so. It still is appropriate, whenever you feel like it, to be able to cry.
Embracing Your Vulnerabilities And Emotions
Let me see if I can find a little bit of common ground between the two of you. I actually enjoy listening to your differences of opinion and perspective. I want to go back to this yin-yang metaphor and talk about my own personal experience. I think that to be a good man in contemporary society is to have a strong sense of your masculinity and to be unapologetic about it, that there are problems in the world that are best solved by decisiveness, by assertiveness, by confidence. Being nurturing and empathetic is not appropriate for a man, in my opinion.
However, if that’s the only lever that a man has to pull, a masculine lever is to ramp up the assertiveness, the confidence, the aggressiveness, even that is too limiting for the present day. I believe that. What I think you have worked to do, and I see it in you, is that you have worked to develop another lever, a feminine lever, one that has, that you can nurture yourself, that you can be sensitive, that you can be vulnerable in this way.
Too many men don’t have that lever. They’ve not developed it. There’s no cultural conversation around it. They don’t have role models who are pulling it when it, and the issue for me is when it’s appropriate. I’ve cried on this show, and I feel like I’ve worked very hard through therapy, through psychonautics, through my conversations, my relationships with both men and women, to recognize that those two levers are important, and to pick the moments where they’re at.
To go back to my grandfather, he was a very good man as defined by his time. He had a rather limited repertoire of behaviors, though, that he could draw on. I love this man, and he was very good for me, but he was, at times, very bad for a young boy who was really struggling and was really having a difficult time.
All he could do was pull the one lever, which was the man-up lever there. There were times when I needed that, and I needed it to be shown to me, and I needed to be reminded that that’s an important thing to be able to do. There were times when it was just overwhelming to have to always man up as a boy in that sense. For me, as I talk about this difference between masculinity and manhood, is that they’re not equivalent. Actually, the best men have the ability to be feminine when it’s appropriate. I think one of the most powerful sentences that I think that a man should be able to say is, “How does that make you feel?” That sounds very difficult.
In fact, I do ask that with my kids. This is why you’re running this show, Peter. You’re so good at this. I think the spectrum of emotions is also emotional maturity, like being able to, just like how you said, different levers that we can operate. Understanding that we have a spectrum of feelings and emotions, even as a man, and being able to express it in a manner that’s fitting, that, to me, is emotional growth.
Again, you can’t have masculinity without femininity. You can’t have manhood without womanhood. These contrasts exist when it comes to, for example, close connections to women, whether it be familial, friendships, as a romance, intimate partners, etc. I like to say that a lot of the women in my life want their men to be men. They don’t want me to be feminine all the time. They appreciate the fact that I can do it, but there are times when it’s important to be able to be assertive and say, “This is not appropriate. This is not okay.” There are other times when it’s important to be able to say, “How can I help? This sounds really difficult.”
I like repertoire as a way to say that and to think about these two levers. I think that while like my grandfather’s generation only had the one lever, one of the things that I think is happening, especially amongst the Zoomer generation, is that it swung the other way. I talk to women who are like, “I cannot find a man who’s masculine. It’s a major turnoff.” I’m hoping that this conversation, as messy as it is, and how unpopular it may be with people reading, especially you, David, is useful.
What happens is it drives the conversation either underground and into private, and then other men can’t hear it, or it’s in the manosphere. The thing about the manosphere is it’s filled with a bunch of disagreeable dudes. They don’t give a crap what you think about them. You almost need to feel that way to wade into this topic, in a sense, because it isn’t normalized to have public, vulnerable, assertive conversations around being a man, about masculinity. As I like to say, finding a way to balance femininity in an appropriate way.
When we think of it in those terms, where in a single person, you now have more of these levers to pull. Some of them might be traditionally defined as, “Here’s my masculine lever, here’s my feminine lever. X, Y, Z.” Understanding that these are the kinds of things that, if you’re a fairly well-rounded individual, you’ll have more of these levers at your disposal.
Why are we talking about them in terms of yin and yang then if, as a person, you can come to embody both? I feel that women should also embody these masculine traits at times if they want to as well. Certainly, everybody should embody any of these traits as long as they are maybe appropriate for the time and the place and so on. I feel like maybe part of the discussion should be about, as we’re defining femininity and masculinity, does it even make sense to define it that way anymore.
I may be mixing my metaphors in a way that’s not coherent. I would welcome a different view of it. As I see it, suddenly, there’s this word called toxic masculinity. For some people, any masculinity is toxic. That doesn’t work for me. To me, toxic masculinity is pulling the masculine lever when you should be pulling the feminine lever. That’s what it is for me. It’s toxic to toughen up when you actually really need to soothe yourself. It’s toxic to lash out when there’s no real threat. These kinds of things. Right now, I don’t have another way to think about this. If there is another way to think about this, I’d love to hear it.
You are just saying that’s a metaphor to make your point. I agree with you, Kerr, on this. Instead of saying masculine or feminine levers, that’s what I mean by emotional intelligence and emotional integration. It’s being able to show that spectrum of emotions that we all feel as human beings in general.
It’s not just emotion. It’s also behavior.
Of course. Emotion leads to behavior. When we say boys don’t cry, that means internally, you are feeling an emotion and you are told to suppress it. That’s what we mean by that. However, if we are allowed to express the spectrum of emotions, to me that is a sign of emotional growth, emotional maturity, emotional intelligence. We all can arrive at the same moment and arrive at the same conclusion in different ways, but I think that’s essentially what we all three are talking about. At least that’s how I understand it.
I actually think that your question, Kerr, is a good one because I haven’t considered any other models because we don’t have a masculine theory. There’s no one writing about alternative models, at least from a male perspective. There might be women who are writing about this. Aside from Camille Paglia, I have not read much feminist theory in the last bunch of years.
Should Masculinity Be Redefined?
I think I want to pose just a question to ponder for the reader and for us, which is, is there a better metaphor? Is there a redefinition of masculinity that we should consider? Is even talking about masculine and feminine not appropriate anymore? Is it an outdated concept leftover from hunter-gatherer times gender roles to the agrarian age, which gave rise to the patriarchy and these vast inequalities between men and women, which now were only starting to undo in this very clumsy, slow way, and that in many ways, is not zero-sum?
That’s one of the things that, when I think about men versus women, they talk about the battle of the sexes, etc., battles feel zero-sum. Is there some positive-sum way that we can think about men, women, masculinity, and femininity, even if it means giving up those terms and having a different way to think about a different model, so to speak, that’s less gendered in a sense?
That’s where I was coming from with it, because when the basis for the entire discussion are terms that are gendered to begin with, and as a person, if I am trying to embody a trait that is considered other gendered, there’s this like system level friction associated with that. That’s why that thought germinated for me.
I think it’s a wonderful idea. I’ve never thought of it beyond this very limited scope. I’ll tell you this, both of you and to the readers, I’m going to explore this idea because I’ve never considered it. It shows you how culture shapes our perspectives and our conversations. We might be running on old software, so to speak, that we need to update.
What happens to old software, David? Entropy takes over. Entropy is a thing.
I think one of the things that looking back in this is to recognize how limited we can be, even if we are seeking to be elevated and thoughtful about this because we’re operating within a set of cultural constraints. It takes a lot. To bring this back to the Solo Movement is, I feel exactly the same way as I do about romantic endeavors.
I needed to learn about the relationship escalator, and I needed to learn about the rules of the relationship escalator in order to extract myself from it and from the guilt that I felt and from the roles that I was defaulting into. It allowed me to craft a new set of relationships. What I think we’re triangulating on here is once we can understand the rules, we can then start to bend or break them in a way that is going to be beneficial to us and the people we love around us, and even to society, more generally.
Besides my own personal interest in this topic and my own tussling with it, this actually came up. I actually did a Q&A with Julie Nirvelli, a very good friend who also likes men or she would not tolerate me for very long. We had a listener send in a thoughtful set of questions. I thought that the questions was so big that I was going to do a separate episode. That’s what prompted this, me bringing David and Kerr here together.
What I’d like to do is read this post made by a member of the Solo community and then have us talk a little bit about it. This is more tactical than theoretical. He writes, “I’ve been volunteering with the homeless community in Portland and it made me reflect deeply on aging and men’s issues. I’ve met men dying alone, some on the streets, some isolated at home due to poor health.”
“I wonder, can we talk about suicide rates in men and how solo men can protect themselves with age? What are some skills we need to avoid social isolation, especially if we grew up without love or stability? Can we bridge the empathy gap? I know men whose pain is real, but often dismissed. How do we hold a space for men’s suffering without it becoming adversarial or turning into men bashing?” Big questions, but they’re all interrelated. If you think about the pain of social isolation, for example, that is actually akin to physical pain.
It is. For me, I was extremely socially isolated prior to my moving to Denver.
To being friends with me.
Yeah, Peter’s the reason. Some of that was self-imposed. Other pieces of that, and Peter, I’ve discussed this with you in the past, was feeling that I was on an island with my opinions and the kind of life that I wanted to lead in the place where I was trying to lead it. Coming here was a massive change positive for me in just finding like-minded people, the Solo Movement in general, and other folks like in my neighborhood, in this city, in this state. That the isolation factor is real and it’s pervasive. I’ve found other folks who feel the same way. Once you get them to open up about it, it’s much more frequent and much more affecting on a personal level than I thought it were.
What led to that isolation? I’m surprised to hear this about you, in some ways.
There was a confluence of things that caused this, and I would say maybe the most major input at the time was COVID. There was a forced aspect to it, socially speaking. I was talking with a lady friend of mine about this, actually. I fooled myself into thinking I was much more of an introvert that I really am, because this was forced upon me. I’m like, “I’m trying to make this work the best that I can.” Coming out the back end of COVID, I didn’t have a lot of friends that I saw on a regular basis. The friends that I did have were fairly distant at the time. We had also drifted apart on the value spectrum, and there are a lot of reasons that they go into that.
Politics are hot right now, especially.
Very hot button. It was the confluence of all those things that really got me thinking, “Maybe I just need to change scenery.” When you think about these thoughts on like aging, getting older and making the best use of your time, for me, if the scenery isn’t good, change it. There are other scenes vastly different and a lot of folks, myself included, can get myopia and think that, “It’s not that much better at place X or place Y, but it can be.” You won’t know until you try.
Making that physical move for me was very big hitting on all those things, really. I would say the isolation thing mostly, but the empathy gap as well, because there are other people that are suffering in the same way in silence. We should not be silent about it. I think that’s on the empathy gap piece, the silence, the reticence for men to talk about their feelings and to talk about these things that bother them is really the biggest contributor to that.
I like to believe that pain is pain. It doesn’t matter the gender of the person who’s experiencing that, especially when it is unwarranted and unnecessary in that way. I think a lot of men’s pain is ignored because boys aren’t supposed to cry. You’re supposed to be tough. You’re supposed to man up. You’re supposed to be good at dealing with pain in this way. That’s one thing when you’re hiking through the wilderness or doing something in that way that’s very challenging.
That’s intentional.
You choose it versus the emotional pain, especially of social isolation. I had Rhaina Cohen on. She actually has a new book about friendship, and we were talking about friendship. There’s a story that she had in one of her articles about a man who was so desperate for physical connection, he was like hugging a post in his apartment, like a beam. It just broke my heart that he had no other outlets, that he had become so isolated in that world. You can see how that can lead to suicide because suicide is largely about escaping deep pain. A feeling like there is no pain and better options.
Isolation as well.
That’s right. That’s there. Men, because they are masculine, they’re better at succeeding with suicide. Their suicide attempts are more violent in that sense. Of course, men, in general, are more violent, not just with women, but with each other. I think that we’re not having enough of a conversation. For the person reading, Kerr, what are the skills that you see are necessary? You mentioned one that I talk about a lot, which is trying. I’m just always like, “If you want friends, you’ve got to try.” It’s going to likely be asymmetric. Are there other things that come to mind for that?
Trying is a catchall. On more specific notes, when we talk about isolation in particular, you’ve been to a lot of coffee shops. I’ve been to a lot of coffee shops. David, you go into the coffee shop. It’s sometimes a very isolating experience, which is so ironic.
You’re alone in public. This is a particular form of solitude.
It is. One thing that I noticed was you go to the coffee shop, almost everyone has their earbuds in, and everybody’s minding their own business, but it doesn’t stop there. They’re creating their own little personal bubble. You’re not invited to be social. You’re not invited to talk with these folks. One thing I started doing, particularly after moving here, was at the coffee shop that I frequent, if I see somebody coming around more than a couple times, maybe 3 or 4, I will just go up and introduce myself.
You would not believe how friendly everyone turns out to be. This little bubble that’s there is very easily popped. Most folks actually crave this social interaction. Just the random, “How are you doing? How’s the weather today? What are you up to X, Y, Z?” Much more so than just sitting there for 2 to 3 hours and pounding away on your keyboard.
Maybe getting on social media to see what other people are doing.
Don’t get me started about that, about the isolation factor of social media itself, but in a sense, just being social because it seems to be a lost art these days. I feel in my own personal experience with experimenting, being more social in that setting, it’s not that difficult. We are, as a society, I think, overblowing, not the impact of the isolation. The impact is real. It’s pervasive, but the ease with which we can just very easily address just the fabric level isolation that I am observing in society.
There’s research that’s emerging about the power of strangers and talking to strangers and how we’re often intimidated to do it and so on, but how often fruitful those conversations are. Obviously, I’m sitting with two pieces of fruit right here.
What fruit are you, David?
He’s just a little sour. You’re a little sweeter. David, hearing these topics around suicide, social isolation, empathy, men are bad, men are tough, they should just toughen up. These conversations, which men internalize, what are your more tactical?
I think, number one, solitude is okay.
Chosen solitude.
Yes. I’m an immigrant. I grew up in India, so America, in general, is extroverted, in my opinion, or it’s more suited for extroverted people. A lot of times, there are introverts who can actually benefit from chosen solitude.
I’m pro-solitude.
That’s number one. The other aspect is a lost art of comradery, especially among men. Men have this tendency, or at least in our times, it seems like you need to have a social circle of men and women. I actually advocate for friendships with other men. To me, this is an avenue where I have comradery. I’ve gone hunting, I go fishing. I do a lot of those types of activities where it’s usually is not just about that. Granted, sometimes, we talked about this, Kerr, like the motorcycle club that you were part of. The conversations tended to be a little more not what you wanted to engage in and things like that.
The hobby’s great. Maybe the social aspect is a little wanting sometimes.
I sometimes do put myself out there in those situations, knowing that I’m not in it, but I enjoy the energy, the other things that come from it. I used to go hunting with my ex-father-in-law and the conversations were not very diverse and very evolved. They were going to base-level conversations. You guys can get the picture, like a hunting crew.
I think there’s a fair amount of those activities that you’re talking about going in, and you know what to expect from the shape of that interaction versus interactions like these and others that are much more dynamic in nature. There’s a lot more of the former and a lot less of the latter.
There’s a lot of watching the game together, playing golf together, boys being boys, but it’s too shallow sometimes.
Yeah, and it’s okay.
It’s okay, but sometimes. You need someone who’s going to pull the group to go a little deeper.
Yeah, it does happen. Sometimes, the group may not want to go there, and it’s okay. To me, what I experience in that sort of group is the comradery. I don’t agree with everything that they say in the hunting group or everything that they say, or in the podcast circle, but I’m here with all of us as men in whatever way we are interacting. That is a lost art of comradery. We need to bring that back.
My version of this lately has been the sauna. I’ve been doing sauna dates. Rather than meeting for a drink or coffee, let’s get one or more guys together. There is something very vulnerable about being naked or near naked and sweating and being in this stimulating but slightly unpleasant environment that I think can open up some vulnerability.
It also can be a safe space. You’re enclosed in this place. There’s no phones, there’s nothing. You can have those moments of vulnerability. I love it. I love that. I don’t know how to describe it for the person who’s not done it, but this is not like a bunch of men singing kumbaya and hugging each other and crying. It’s a lot of teasing and fun, small talk. How’s life, and then sometimes going deep?
I think that the proactive nature of male friendships is very important. A lot of men as they get into middle age in particular, especially if they have a partner, they look to their romantic partner to be a source of support. When they don’t have that, or if she leaves them, at least in a heteronormative sense, they are lost because they put everything into that one thing. Women generally are better about having more breadth and depth with their social circles.
An example of this is like these wellness days that I’m doing or the dilemma dinner that is we’re going to do. It started out as dilemma day. It doesn’t have to be just men, but it’s also been unisex. It depends. I pick depending on the topic or depending on the situation, but you come together, you share a meal, and everybody shares a dilemma that they’re facing in advance so people get a chance to think about it. You then have a frank conversation where you are eliciting feedback. You share your dilemma, and then the group elicits feedback.
It’s a tremendously supportive environment. It’s not one where everybody necessarily agrees. Actually, it’s really great when people disagree because you get a chance to pick what you think is the best solution to your dilemma. Another thing that I do, and I actually might bring it home with this example, is I have a three-person men’s group, for lack of a better term. There’s not even a term for it, to be honest. I have a friend, Ethan, and a friend, Jeff. They are both family men. They fit that very traditional role of provider, but yet they are elevated. They have both of those levers to pull.
I usually initiate, but they always agree. Every three weeks or so, give or take, we do an hour and a half Zoom call and we each have about 30 minutes, roughly. Sometimes, someone is in crisis and we spend the whole time on them, but generally, about 30 minutes each, where we just update each other on our lives. Maybe we have a puzzle, a dilemma, maybe we just want to just get feedback and whatnot.
It is so wonderful and it’s so important, I think, for all of us. We all always look forward to it. We’ve been doing this for years now, and it’s been incredible to watch these men grow and evolve and improve. We were having this conversation. I was telling them that I was going to be talking to the two of you about this. Ethan’s background is in ecology. He started talking about evolution and about the human species. He made this observation that I’ve never considered.
We’re not a cloning species. We’re not like honeybees. Every honeybee is exactly the same. We’re not perfect replicants of each other. If you think about it, even your brother or sister is vastly different than you, even though you share so much of the same genetic material. That variety of our species is a feature and not a bug. I wish I could take credit for saying this. Ethan was saying when we think about what it means to be men or women, when we think about what it means to be masculine or feminine, there is no one way.
There’s no one man. There are men. There’s no one masculine. There are masculinities. In this way, I think that’s evident in this conversation that we have here. One of the exciting things about it is it shows that it can be in flux. That it can change and evolve in the same way that humans have changed and evolved over time in that way. The question is not what does it mean to be a man. It’s like, what does it mean to me to be the kind of man that I can best be?
It’s very existential. You have to work out your masculinity with fear and trembling, as the Bible would say. It’s your own salvation, so to speak, and men who don’t do the work, suffer.
Message To A Younger Self
Indeed. Especially in a world that is not tuned in to their suffering right now, to the point of this gentleman I’m talking about, his experience in Portland. I want to end with a question for each of you, and I don’t remember if I prepped this. We’ll see. I got really high one night and I rewrote my bio on my About page. It’s a story about visiting myself as an 18-year-old, my present self coming back to an 18-year-old and telling him what his life is going to be like.
It was a very fun endeavor because I got to walk down memory lane with myself, and I got to envision assuaging, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but telling my eighteen-year-old self, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be more than okay. It’s going to be remarkable and difficult. If you could go back to your eighteen-year-old self and give him a message about being a man, what would you tell him?
This is a great thought exercise. Oftentimes, we’re having some discussion with our future self. That’s what a lot of this is about, in terms of, do I have enough levers to pull? If I don’t, how do I create those? Whether we think about it that way or not, having a discussion with our future self, so to flip that around. To say, “Now, with all of this hindsight and context and all these things that I’ve learned, what would I tell myself 3, 5 years ago?”
For me, number one, and I don’t think this will be a surprise based on the discussion, that it’s okay to show vulnerability. It’s okay to talk about your emotions. It’s okay if you want to cry or if you don’t, and you should not be feel made to feel lesser than as a result of being, in your words, David, like emotionally complete, perhaps. In my words, in the way, my parlance, vulnerable.
I think that is number one for me. I just did not have a basis for that at that time. Number two maybe would be, should your personal choices about how you want to live your life not align perfectly with those of societies at large, do not feel lesser than as a result of that. I was made to feel lesser than on myriad levels with myriad people.
If I may, the mark of manhood for many years was getting married and having kids. We have no great wars anymore. We don’t have some of these traditional markers that were used to be like, “You are now not just an adult, but you are a man.” You’re living in the vestiges of some of these things and deciding to opt out of them.
When you opt-out, that’s where the isolation comes in. The topics we’ve talked about in terms of just feeling like you’re alone on an island, making those decisions. Number three maybe would be don’t be afraid to change that scenery. Coming from the resolutely Midwest background that I came from, 90% of the people that I know live within a few miles of their parents. They are legitimately living happily constructed lives and are having a good time at it. They’re just doing it differently than I wanted to. If the scene around you is with a bunch of folks that are making you feel like you’re not doing the right thing or that your choices are not as good as theirs, then change the scene.
That’s great. Thank you.
Thank you,
David?
I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s book. Why do I write so well?
So humble.
The man knows his strengths.
That’s how I think about it. I really don’t have anything that I would change with my life. I’ve had a great marriage that lasted, gave me two boys, and now I’m single and enjoying my life. Life has been, overall, great. I grew up in a Christian family and all of that, so very much like meet a Christian girl, marry somebody and those types of things. Very religious-based ideologies and ways of living. Talking about ways of living, since I’ve discovered philosophy as a way of life, to me, existentialism is a philosophy that I follow, which is what we touched upon in our how you said like, it’s individual. To me, it’s personal.
What works for me is not going to work for you. I’m big on being able to, if I were to go back to my eighteen-year-old self, like, work out your way, and that’s going to be different from what is out there. You can pick and choose the things that you want that’ll work for you, but at the end of the day, it’s your own life. It’s very existential. It’s like man against the world, so to speak.
We are thrown into this world of existence and we have to find our clearing as we navigate the forest. That’s how I see life right now. I’ve had a great life. I’d be happy to die today. Life has been wonderful and it continues to be wonderful, despite financial ups and downs or friendships and all of that, but it’s got a weird way of working out somehow. I’ve had a great life. Thanks for having me on this show.
Yeah, this has been great. We’re going to wrap here and I’m going to add some bonus material that’ll be available to the Solo community, which you can sign up for PeterMcGraw.org/solo. We also have a channel there where people talk about episodes, and I have a feeling this one’s going to have some robust reactions to it. We welcome those conversations. As part of the bonus material, we’re going to talk a little bit about resources, so about what are some places that you might want to read and so on. Check that out. Kerr, David, my brothers, thank you for sharing your time, your perspective, and your moments of vulnerability here.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us, Peter.
Cheers.
Important Links
- Solo
- Solo Movement
- David Jitendranath
- The Daily Laws
- I Love You, Man
- Listeners Questions #2 with Julie Nirvelli
- Making Friends the Center of Life with Rhaina Cohen
About David Jitendranath
David Jitendranath is a tech entrepreneur and a neo Renaissance man. He grew up in India and immigrated to the US in 99. He had a successful marriage and is now enjoying being a Solo.
Among many things David is always learning and experimenting. He also enjoys playing music at open mics riding his motorcycle and writing on Substack.
About Kerr Shireman
Kerr Shireman is a Kansas City native who began a new chapter in Denver in 2022, drawn by a deep love for the mountains and the outdoors. Happily a lifetime Solo, Kerr has built a strong community of friends in his new home. He’s enjoyed a great career in software development, though is not defined by his work.
A wide range of interests sustains him—music, movement, reading, travel, and time spent in nature form a steady core. While he often gravitates toward solitude, he also enjoys meaningful conversations with engaging people.