EP 61 - Inside the Discord Servers Reshaping Masculinity

Welcome to Engendering Authoritarianism, a partnership between the Othering and Belonging Institute and OverZero. In this special series of the Who Belongs podcast, my co-hosts Laura Livingstone, Tara Chandra, and I, Miriam Juan Torres, speak with practitioners, activists, organizers, faith leaders, and scholars who are responding to the ways political and cultural leaders weaponize gender to advance authoritarian practices. Welcome back to another interview for the Engendering Authoritarianism Project, a collaboration between the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley and OverZero.

I'm Laura Livingston, the Senior Director of Field Support and Strategy at OverZero, and I am joined by Tara Chandra, one of my co-authors on this project. Today, our interviewee is Caroline Hayes, the Senior Technical Specialist on Digital Strategies at Equimundo, Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. Equimundo promotes gender equality and works to create a world free from violence. At Equimundo, Caroline focuses on addressing harmful masculinities online, promoting healthy digital engagement, and strengthening narratives of care and connection for men and boys. She also oversees one of Equimundo's digital interventions called Link Up Lab. Caroline brings a wealth of experience. She has worked on gender throughout her career, including at the White House and the Justice Department, and we are so excited to be speaking with her today to discuss the role of men and boys and norms of masculinity in both contributing to and solving the challenges of authoritarianism. Caroline, thank you so much for joining us today. I would love to hand it over to you to share a bit more about your background and what brought you to this work.

Yeah, thank you so much for the introduction. I'm Caroline. I lead our digital portfolio at Equimundo. So I think a lot about how men and boys show up in online spaces, what kinds of messages they get when they go there, what they're looking for, how they're forming relationships with folks online. And I think a lot about how our organization can tap into broader cultural change and narrative shift interventions in digital spaces in order to reach men and boys where they're at online and think about how to bring them into spaces and communities that offer well-being and positive relationship development. And so that looks very different across different platforms and in different online spaces that we work on. But yeah, really happy to share some reflections and ideas of what that work has shown us in the conversation today.

Thank you so much. And oftentimes questions around gender and in particular its weaponization focus heavily on women, on feminists and the LGBTQ community. Not least because these are the communities that are most often targeted by authoritarian actors. But men and boys also face specific challenges that are incredibly important to address, both because gender equality means finding ways to alleviate everyone's suffering, but also because these challenges are then exploited, deepened, or weaponized by authoritarian actors, and then who are using this to introduce ideas of hierarchy and domination that undermine democracy for everyone. You have recently written about the college graduation gap, the shifts in friendship, and the general rise of loneliness, and how all of this affects boys and men differently than it does girls and women. I would love if you could tell us more about the importance of bringing men and boys into the broader conversation about gender.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions that we've had societally over the past few decades or so is this conversation about gender equality is only about talking about women and girls and issues that they face, which are many and have existed since time immemorial. And I've worked a lot of my career on addressing that and working with feminists and women's rights activists in many different settings. I think one of the things that now there's starting to be a broader public conversation about is how gender norms really affect everyone and how we're all interdependent and interrelated creatures on this earth. And at Equimundo, what we do is we spent years studying what we call the man box, or a set of expectations around dominance, self-sufficiency, aggression, and emotional suppression that really sort of restrict men and boys into this idea that you get power or status by adhering to this, like, strict set of norms. And you're— and if you deviate from those norms, then oftentimes you're shamed or relegated to lower social hierarchies than if you if you actually adhere to these norms. And so What we constantly find in our research is that these norms don't just harm women and LGBTQ people. They also limit boys' and men's emotional lives, relationships, and well-being. And so if we're serious about building a more equal society, we really have to understand how these norms affect everyone and create pathways for men and boys to really be part of the solution, not just sort of subjects of the conversation. And I think just Citing a little bit of our data at Equimundo, you know, we find that actually when you look at the loneliness epidemic, if you will, there's been a lot of conversation in media about the male loneliness epidemic, right? The data actually show that men and women report equal levels of reported loneliness in their lives. The difference there is that men are much less likely to actually seek support when they are experiencing loneliness. And so Laura, what you asked about how men and women experience certain trends that are happening across society, across genders differently, what we find is that norms around emotional suppression and lack of help-seeking behavior actually impact men and boys differently. Because when they are feeling lonely and they don't feel like they have a social support network to reach out to, and they don't feel like they have the social permission structure to seek support, when they are feeling these sort of trends of isolation and loneliness, that's when we see sort of issues in behavioral outcomes when it comes to sort of weaponization of gender politics and grievance politics and things like that come into the equation. And we've seen a lot of exploitation of that loneliness issue come from authoritarian actors sort of grifters on the internet, if you will. And happy to dive into that more, but that's just sort of one example of how we try to nuance this conversation around gender and sort of the crisis of masculinity, if you will.

Thanks so much. That's so interesting, and I, I want to build on that and kind of talk about the different norms and the different expectations for men and boys. When I was in graduate school, I took a class on masculinity, which is already pretty rare actually in, in a gender studies department. And one of the things that was so eye-opening for me was actually reading about and studying the ways in which economic anxiety and precarity affects men and women differently. And one of the things that I sort of gathered from this class was that for women, the sort of financial precarity was often circumstantial. It was just something they needed to plan, to manage, to figure out. But for men, it was much more existential. It was something that went to the heart of their self-identity. And so just really understanding how that played out differently. And I know that's something that Equimundo focuses on a lot. So what can people who work on gender and often predominantly with women take away from your work about the way that men and boys cope with these types of challenges, especially when it comes to sort of norms and expectations that you were, you were just mentioning? And as we work to address these sort of long-term structural causes, how in the shorter term can we also prevent them from being exploited?

Yeah, one of the things that we, as you mentioned, Tara, that we really focus on at Equimundo is that many men in many different contexts, but really especially in the US, really tie their sense of self-worth to is this idea of being a provider, being a financial provider for their family, but also their community writ large. You know, over the past decade or so, we've seen massive changes in macroeconomic trends and the rise of AI and sort of this sort of existential anxiety about the future of the economy and the stability of the job market. And we're finding that sort of this men's sense of self-worth being tied to their sort of economic provider ability and these like massive economic changes that are happening are creating sort of this dislocated feeling of like, who am I as a man if I can't access this sense of status or this sense of identity that I was sort of raised to be expected to adhere to? Right. And, you know, just a few points of our data in our State of American Men study that we did last year, we found that when we polled almost 3,000 people across the US 18 to 4 ages, 18 to 45, 86% of the men in our, our sample said that being a, a provider was the top trait of what it means to be a man. And we had a list of like 20 or so different traits, including, you know, caring for my family, being a friend being an athlete, you know, being strong, things like that. Being a provider was the number one thing for 86% of men across the US. And interestingly, if you look, we also surveyed women as well. 77% of women also said that being a provider is the number one trait of what they think it means to be a man. And so you can see how these expectations are not just held by men themselves, but also the women in their lives, the potential partners. Like, they get these messages from media, from religious institutions, et cetera. And so this, like, expectation versus reality, if you want to call it that, but the online trend of, like, expectation for men is up here of what they're supposed to adhere to when it comes to financial providing, and then the reality of their lives with the increasingly unstable economy is there— it leaves a massive gap, right? There's a massive white space there. And what we're seeing in— when we look at like authoritarian trends and anti-feminist actors, they're very good at exploiting that gap, right? They, they offer like simple explanations and clear villains for why men are not able to get jobs, whether it's feminism or immigrants or social change in general. And I think the challenge for those of us working on gender is to acknowledge that that struggle is extremely real for, for men and recognize the vulnerability of having so much pressure to live up to this social expectation without validating. But we also have to not allow those sort of false narratives to be validated at the same time. Right. And so I think There's a lot of work that we have to do to offer belonging and purpose and support without the scapegoating or pointing the vector of blame in the direction of marginalized communities. And so I think there are a lot of folks who are really starting to hold on to that and get that and build common cause across different issue areas, whether that's workers' rights, and labor rights spaces, whether that's racial justice initiatives. And I think there's a really— I feel hope that there's a clear rallying point around this idea that, oh, this narrative that the system is rigged against us is widely held by a large swath of the population, at least speaking from the US context. And yet that sort of system is rigged against us narrative and mentality has been largely exploited by authoritarian actors. How can we like reclaim that and take that back and like bring men into the, into the cause of understanding who is actually holding the levers of power in society right now? And so I think I'm getting a lot of hope and seeing some traction and movement from being able to to do that. And yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of work cut out for us when it comes to the current political environment in the US. But I'm seeing the energy across different issue areas start to coalesce and come together around it.

Can I just ask a follow-up — sorry, Laura — on that? Because one of the things that I think is really interesting is, is like going back to the original point that you made, which is that men and women are equally likely to report levels of loneliness, but women are more likely to seek support when they are feeling lonely. I'm curious how you kind of apply that to your work here in terms of helping men and boys cope. Like, I, you know, I find the data really compelling here that both men and women hold this expectation that what it is to be a man is to be a provider. And so in an environment in which structurally, like, people are struggling to get jobs and things like that, how do you help men and boys cope with— that sort of, for lack of a better word, like failing to meet their perceived expectation or, or like an actually held expectation that they are providing for their family?

Yeah, something that I'm focused a lot in my work on right now and hope to get into it further is the skill development around social connection and how, like, the, the ways in which men and boys are socialized oftentimes don't have that, like, level of depth or attunement to others in their lives. And they're actually socialized to not practice things like curiosity, follow-up questions. So it's not just, like, the ability for you yourself to emotionally open up to someone about what you're going through, but it's also having the skillset, and it is a skillset, to be able to ask follow-through questions when you're having a conversation with someone and sort of that mutual exchange and dialogue of what other people might be going through who are sitting across the table from you is, it can be vulnerable to feel like, oh, I'm too interested in this person. They're going to think that I'm creepy or overcurious about them. There's an anxiety-inducing element there that actually comes up in a lot of our focus group interviews that we do specifically with young men of like, oh, if I show too much interest in someone, they're going to think I'm a creep or they're going to think I'm being too much. So there's an element of skill development when it comes to being able to practice the act of like being curious about other people that enables that sort of two-way dialogue, that enables that greater social support muscle to, to be able to be built, and there's sort of the larger cultural change work that we need to do around like not shaming, you know, not adding shame to when men are being like— want to express emotional vulnerability, which I think I would say that there's been a broader recognition of like sort of the boys don't cry issue. I feel like people are more attuned or accustomed to being able to recognize that that's sort of a social norm that we set. We do this in a lot of different ways, and whether that's through our work in schools with teachers— we have a Beyond Gender Stereotypes curricula that's more like traditional social norm and behavior change work that, that we do on our programs team— and then also increasingly a lot of my work that I lead is in spaces like Discord and in online environments that we can actually build systems design to incentivize people. And there are many men in the communities that I lead work on to be able to practice that curiosity and open up with one another. And how do you build the social permission structure in the spaces to enable that to happen? So some of the ways that we've been thinking about how to actually put that into practice, not just kind of talk about the fact that this is a trend that we see.

Thank you. That's amazing. And something you were saying earlier about how this expectation that men be providers is coming from all different directions. We see it on social media. We see it from religious institutions and figures. It's something that is spread across multiple channels. And something that we think about a lot and something that we talk about in our Engendering Authoritarianism report is how politics and culture are really inextricably linked. And we identify this strategy called change culture as one of the ways that authoritarians are introducing ideas around hierarchy and also just building support for more authoritarian forms of government. And they do this through 2 ways. So first, through co-opting existing cultural institutions and using gender as an entry point to take over these institutions and then push different ideas in them, but also through introducing ideas around masculinity and around gendered grievances in online spaces that are seemingly apolitical or benign, but, but using this as a safe space to introduce ideas around gender and hierarchy and push for these expectations that you were sharing earlier. And really all of this just emphasizes that when it comes to really everything, but especially when it comes to gender, politics and culture are really intertwined. And one of the clearest pathways into anti-feminist narratives or narratives that are weaponizing gender is through social media content that is purportedly apolitical. And so you've already spoken about this a bit, but I'm wondering if you can share more about how you see this happening in your work and how Equimundo works to address it.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is probably one of the most important pieces of information I would like to share with folks who work in the gender space is that the, like, the division between politics and entertainment is just absolutely collapsing in front of our eyes and has been. How we've previously sort of perceived of as you watch the news and that's politics, or that's like you're getting information about the state of the world or what is happening politically. And then you have your procedural show that you watch and that's— I'm watching that for entertainment purposes. That sort of neat division is absolutely collapsing in front of our eyes where the podcast circuit is now basically the same thing as a press junket, right? And so this is showing up across our research as well when it comes to norms around masculinity and, and sort of information about gender and identity, and how that's being tied to political cause in sort of the, the digital content that we analyze. So, a few years ago we did a report called The Manosphere Rewired where we were trying to really— this was a few years ago at this point when we were looking at the data around young men and actually how young men had the highest level of agreement with our man box statements. So those are like anti-feminist statements or restrictive norms around masculinity that I had mentioned before. And we were just really surprised about 4 years ago that it was the youngest men in our sample that actually agreed with those norms at higher levels. And at the time, this had sort of gone against prevailing thinking, right, about, oh, Gen Z is the most woke or they're the most, you know, young people are more progressive. And in the case of the men in our sample, that was not the case. And so we were like, what is happening here? And so we started to deep dive into where young men were learning about gender and where they were learning about politics. And a lot of the research at the time had been when it came to sort of gender and politics and sort of the issues that were coming up had been in sort of the more fringe spaces on the internet, right? 4chan or incels.is or some of the, you know, dark web, if you will. What we were interested in was actually looking at mainstream platforms that at the time hadn't really had a lot of research into when it comes to these issues. And so we looked at TikTok, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, Twitch, and fantasy football leagues to figure out like what types of questions were men and boys asking about, who were they following, What were they interested in? And we found that like a lot of the what we know, what maybe we can get into this a bit more about, like what we call the manosphere narratives were so deeply embedded into mainstream content that was targeting young men. So, you know, someone might arrive looking for advice on a relationship or personal growth and gradually encounter messages about dominance, gender hierarchy, resentment towards women, a lot of the pathway into anti-feminist or anti-democratic ideas doesn't begin with a search about politics. It begins with content. And we, we kind of separated this into different categories, but content about fitness, finance, dating and self-improvement were like the big categories that we had found. And you have a lot of content that blends advice on things that are like really helpful, like how to make a protein smoothie or whatever, with values-coded content about politics and like who's bringing you down, right? Or you might call it red pill ideology. And so a lot of the, the content that we looked at was like deeply emotionally engaging. It provoked a sense of fear or urgency in the viewer. There was a sense of accountability. So like, oh, you have a step-by-step guideline in terms of how to get swole or how to gain muscle. And so you can see that progress in your life and at the same time offered this, this like a group of people to place blame on for why you're feeling you're suffering or you're experiencing kind of mental health issues in your life. And so this sort of blend of content that was like actually deeply helpful with content that was— is harmful for, you know, many marginalized communities, including women was what we were finding coming up as like, okay, this isn't expressly political content about a certain political administration or a candidate, but it has like values that are deeply tied to certain political movements that have been exploited by political actors in ways that are very smart but also very concerning and, and harmful. A lot of the work that we're, we're trying to do is to really get a better understanding of the threading of the political messaging with the cultural content and how we can sort of push against that and offer sort of like the emotionally engaging and like sort of inspiring or motivational sense in towards the narrative direction that, you know, for gender equality and progressive cause.

What you're saying reminds me so much of something that our co-author Miriam often says, which is if you are in these online spaces and someone is telling you that you need to start working out and to go to sleep earlier and to stop drinking and you will feel better, and then you do all of these things and you feel better, you're going to be much more trusting of that person when they start subtly introducing other content. And this is content more about social hierarchies and who is responsible for all your problems and political content. There's already that trust built. They've already built the sense of credibility from seemingly apolitical things. And then, you know, the door is open for, for more political content that's laundering ideas around hierarchies, and sometimes not even laundering because the trust has already, has already been built.

Right. And sometimes, like, in our space, we say, oh, there are harmful norms around masculinity, so you have to unlearn or deconstruct masculinity. And that's sort of like, while yes, sure, that can be a little bit overwhelming and sort of nebulous if you're a young guy and you're like, I have Okay, deconstruct something. So what do I do? You know what I mean? And so I think we've been not as good, speaking for myself, about like offering that sort of North Star, blueprint, or guide, you know. And of course, like, so much of this is about expanding your sense of who you are and like what's possible. And some of that just comes with the uncertainty of, you know expanding gender expectations. And there's not like a playbook for that necessarily, and I don't think there necessarily should be. And yet at the same time, it presents a very enormous challenge for us in the digital spaces that we live where everything sort of has to be clear-cut, fed to you at high speed, constantly sort of peppered in your face. It's a uniquely large challenge that we have ahead of us, but I think we're starting to get a sense of like how we can do that more effectively.

This is such a great transition to talk about one of Equimundo's specific interventions, which you oversee, which is the Link Up Lab. So can you tell us a little bit more about Link Up Lab? What is it and how does it work?

Yeah, absolutely. So coming off of the research that I had mentioned before about looking into these sort of mainstream platforms and what men and boys were finding, who they were connecting with, the messengers that they were— that were resonating with them. We thought a lot about our portfolio at Ecomundo and how so much of it is really focused on small group education and learning and health systems, school systems, etc. And we thought about, you know, what exists out there? Where is the evidence base around like how you actually effectively do social and behavior norms change in online spaces. And it was pretty hard to find. As I mentioned, a lot of it was like tertiary prevention work, maybe where you have someone who might be already radicalized and like how do you connect them with like support services or something like that. And what we wanted to do was much more upstream than that. That's sort of the focus of our work at Equimundo. And so we partnered with an organization called Futures Without Violence based in California to pull together sort of a strategy for thinking about how we can help young men who spend a lot of time on these platforms build stronger relationships, meaningful social connection, and healthier engagement in online spaces that also has like off-ramps to in-person activities built into sort of the design of the initiative. Because we know we don't wanna just keep people on screens more and more and more, but also have to think about sort of the, the ways in which our digital or our screen-based time connects us to sort of in-person resources and communities and relationships. The core idea is that basically digital spaces, time spent on them shapes behavior. And rather asking how we just remove harmful content, we're asking ourselves how we design these digital environments that actively help men and boys promote some of those elements of strong social connection, which I talked about, which is trust, deeper communication skills, emotional regulation, a sense of belonging, and a sense of civic engagement even. And so obviously this is very aspirational and big visionary thinking, but I think that that's sort of the place we need to be at and not just be reactive to sort of, oh, this is what these online platforms look like and they incentivize bad things. So we'll just have to take that as it is and try and push back and be reactive to that. But rather, how do we proactively develop what an online community could look like or what online content can look like that shows the change that we actually want to see? And so we have sort of 3 buckets of our overarching strategy: click, connect, care. So click, Capture the attention in the spaces where men and boys are scrolling, searching, streaming. So connect with the existing digital community leaders and messengers who are already doing this amazing good work but might not see themselves as like healthy masculinity people, right? There's a lot of great content creators, streamers, moderators on Discord who we're working with who aren't like, oh yeah, now I'm a healthy masculinity person, but are actively improving the well-being of men and boys through the work that they're doing. And lastly is care. So actually, that's like the systems design and technology solutions and interventions we're building to make sure that the spaces, when we bring someone into a digital space, the community that they're in not only has like the human capacity through the community leaders who are there to help support the development of this person, but also like the systems in the background. So the onboarding rituals, the bots that exist are designed for that sense of like building the care muscles that we strive to build for young men and boys. And so that's the overarching vision. I'm happy to talk about more of the specific projects and it's a sort of an innovation hub or innovation lab. So there's a lot of different like experiments we're running that sort of ladder up into this larger vision that I was just sort of outlining.

So I wanted to ask a little bit more about the specifics, but it sounds like there's so many different options. So I'll just sort of ask a couple of maybe follow-ups, and you can pick a specific intervention that you think is promising or interesting to anyone watching this.

Great.

Which is sort of like, how did you design the interventions, right? It sounds like a really great space to test out different types of things. So how do you think about designing interventions in an online space? And then are there any challenges that you did not expect? that you've had to work around?

Yeah. I think the, one of the key design principles is that men and boys are going to these communities because they love them, right? Like they love this topic. So say, I'll give an example of a Discord server that we work on that is an esports team for Call of Duty. And there's like hundreds of young men who are in this at this Discord server and they love playing Call of Duty with one another and they often ask questions, support each other, etc. Sometimes we've gone into a space and been like, oh, there's harmful behavior happening and we need to stop it. Instead of taking the approach and the design principle of like, oh, there's bad things happening, let's stop it. We came into the space and the conversation with these the mods on this community who deeply love Call of Duty and love their community and love playing. with this sort of reframed approach, which was like, we really want to see— we know there's probably some people in your community are struggling, and we can help like support your community so that it is more caring and that people are able to like have a more holistic and well-rounded and connected experience. And like, that's what we're here to help help you build. And we know that the work you're doing is really important. Like, a lot of these moderators on Discord aren't paid. They don't have any formal training or support or resourcing. And so what we found was like a white space in resourcing that they didn't yet have and wanted to provide that for them to help them do the work that they're already doing better rather than tell them what was wrong, what was wrong with them and what was wrong with their community, right? Like, here's what we can offer you. And so that, like, approach opened up doors for us that I think folks who sometimes work in sort of the violent extremism space and, and that sort of thing don't necessarily always have the mandate to be able to do. And so through that, I think one of the challenges— to your second question around, like, what a challenge that we had to work through was, was a lot of the language that we came in trying to use around emotional regulation and like attunement. So the depth of your relationship, like, was not landing for these communities. We work with a lot of gamers and,you know, amazing moderators who are doing amazing work, but like couldn't really understand. They were like, why? I don't understand that social emotional learning, like, what do you mean? What does that mean? How does that relate to my job? I don't understand. And so we actually brought on a few gaming experts and esports coaches, people who have worked at the intersection of esports and sort of wellbeing to help us literally translate the language that we were using in our sort of methodology and theory of change into gamer speak. So like things like emotional regulation became tilt control. So like when you're tilting in gaming, it's like when you're crashing out and you're like, you're rage quitting. This is some gamer terminology. And so all of our like learning outcomes that, and our behavioral outcomes that we wanted to see, everything is totally translated into the language that like gamers would understand and actually find useful for the game itself. So like clear or communication skills became clear comms. That's a little bit easy to understand, but so attunement became clutch. So the ability to like show up and be there for people in your community. And so, you know, there's still like a little bit of, not tension, but the challenge was just like us being able to help ourselves understand the, like, what our value proposition is for working with these communities in a way that would be like valuable and understandable for them. And so that was like probably several months of translation work that we had to go through and sort of reframe work that we are still continuing to learn how to do. But ultimately, I think we have a pretty clear path forward. And one of the things that I've loved that we built is what's called a skill tree. So, and this is like a pretty native thing for gamers. When you enter a game, you have a skill tree. So, if you do this activity, you get this badge and then you gain the skill and sort of like this interactive— portal that you, you can see your progression in the game through the different skills you pick up in the game. We've translated all of our sort of like methodology and put it into a skill tree that actually is like interactive and you can use in the dashboard that we've built on, on Discord. And so that's just like one example of the ways that we've tried to we've tried to integrate the sort of healthy masculinity work into the native world of some of these digital communities.

That's awesome. And it segues really well into my next question, which is that Equimundo makes a specific effort to connect with men and boys at the level of everyday interactions. And I think part of this is exactly what you were just saying, learning how to speak in a language that resonates with your target audience and with the people that you are hoping to engage in this work. Groups and individuals who are working on gender are worried about norms of masculinity at a broader level and aren't thinking about it at this everyday level. And I'm wondering if you could share more about why Equimundo's interventions focus on smaller moments rather than at the level of norms and social expectations. And what I'm hearing from you is that it's really kind of like a false choice between the two. The everyday moments and engaging at that level can really ladder up to broader norm change work. And so I would love to hear you share more on that.

Yeah, I think like there— social behavior and norms change is an interesting field of science, and much has been written about what works, what doesn't work, etc. But I think what we're trying to experiment with, at least, is— and maybe to give a few different examples of like to build off of kind of what I was previously talking about, about our work on Discord, is that ultimately, yeah, norms are experienced through everyday interactions. People don't wake up one morning and decide to reject or embrace a social norm. Usually they're often learned through conversations, relationships, communities, and their repeated experiences. So our approach is to create opportunities for people to practice healthier ways of relating to one another. In the spaces that they love and like trust and get a lot of joy from. Because if you design a healthy masculinity training that people like don't enjoy being there for, then they're not going to repetitively show up unless you make them. And like oftentimes social norms aren't changed by like forcing people to attend a training or believe a certain thing, right? And so, but over time, those experiences, those repeated behaviors or interactions can help shift broader expectations about masculinity and gender. So you know, like one of the ways that we enable people and we're testing out some of these like repeated behavior patterns is in one of the Discord servers we work on, it's a Space Marine 2 Warhammer server. It's a game, very popular. And in the, in the lore of the game, there's what's called a healer. And so your role in the game is to go around the battlefield and heal your— revive your teammates and offer battlefield medicine, etc. In the fabric of the community on Discord, the person who is the healer in the game also has the role in this Discord as like the mental health and healer of the community. And so like when people are going through hard times, they'll know to reach out to this person, his name is Sean, to get support. And if someone is crashing out on the Discord, they know to reach out to Sean to help that person feel better or something like that. And so this is an approach of basically like— and so a lot of what we're doing is incentivizing moderators to take up these different roles and connect it to the values of the community. That way you're like incentivizing people to, like, repeat this pattern of asking for help in a way that they can feel, like, connects to their values and their interests and their sense of identity. And we're not, like, forcing people to attend a training on, like, you know, mental health service that they should reach out to, but it's someone that they can trust and they, they understand has their back and, like, gets who they are, right? And so, that's sort of just a small example of, of some of the things that we're testing and trying to work from in order to create Of course, it's a small little initiative with one person, but hopefully we'll learn enough and we'll gather the evidence to be able to replicate those methodologies into other existing spaces.

And something that really stands out to me from that is that it's modeling the exact type of behavior that you're hoping is replicated outside of this online space in real life. And then for there to be someone in a position of leadership within this space who is also offering that help, I think is modeling this as well. And I think that's so powerful.

And one of the things that I think is a tough balance in this kind of— when just these interventions that you're doing in general is sort of like finding a way to bring men and boys into the conversation in a productive way that doesn't also blame them for responding to these pressures and social changes and things that they're experiencing. and scrolling through on social media and what they're seeing. And so I think you kind of answered this a little bit in terms of the conversation about the healer and that role of sort of showing care and then developing the muscle of reciprocation of that care and building that kind of community. But in general, I think one of the things that we— what we really liked about your work is that you devise these interventions in ways that maintain empathy and approach men and boys with dignity and respect, and this idea that they're like, rather than sort of blame, which is I think what happens in a lot of spaces. So can you talk a little about how you think about, you know, just men responding to these pressures in their lives and designing interventions that sort of understand that reality for them? Absolutely.

I mean, this is the crux of the work, right? Like, I Everyone across all gender identities is navigating loneliness, uncertainty, economic pressures, social change. And so holding that to be true for men as well can be like a very good starting point of like, oh, we're both dealing with our existential crises about AI. Amazing. Like, cool. Let's talk about that. Like, how is that affecting you as a man? It is like a good you know, sort of conversation starter that we might use. But, you know, like to the, to the question around how do we devise interventions with empathy but also have accountability really at the core of it, one of the, the things I like to talk about a lot is like my work in pro-social behavior design and sort of the idea of care doesn't just mean like I'm only working on Like fluffy, happy, smiley things all the time. And I just, I only want people to have like, you know, happy experiences or something like that. Prosocial and care means like understanding that humans mess up and we make mistakes. And like care for one another means the ability to like call, like be very clear when calls, be very clear in your communication and to call something out when you've been hurt. Being able to have that emotional intelligence and articulation of when something doesn't feel right and the ability to recognize and name when you've actually done something wrong. That's part of human care for one another. And I don't think we should shy away from this idea that relationships are richened when we have the ability to be able to do that. And so we shouldn't run away from accountability. Accountability can be a scary word, but I think it's And it's, you know, sometimes takes people off guard, but I think it's like a really necessary conversation to have and something that can actually deepen our relationships with one another. And so I bring that a lot into the work that I do. And, you know, like, for example, we work with mods on Discord who have amazing, what we call like respawning systems. So instead of just banning someone from their Discord forever, they have like a council of mods that if you mess up in the Discord, you violate the community norms, they'll put you into an appeals server. And instead of just like banning someone forever from a community that really matters to them, they'll work with you to figure out what had happened, if you had hurt someone, or if it was sort of just like a comment that was not targeted at anyone. And they'll have a system for being able to appeal to come back into the server, and they'll have like a council member like sort of coach you and help you through that process. And so It's not as if these mods, like, attended a restorative justice session that we held or anything like that. They just recognized that that was a community need that they, they had. And it didn't have to be about, like, holding men accountable for wrongdoing. It was just like, oh, they love this community. They want to be able to come back into it. How do we do this in a fair way that, like, brings people into a conversation about understanding what went wrong so it won't happen again? And so I think there's a lot of, like, models that exist out there that we can take into our work that really don't shy away from, like, naming wrongdoing and harm, but also maintain a sense of, you know, allowing men to see themselves as, like, stakeholders in the creation of, like, community well-being. And so, yeah, I, I think we've come a long way in this conversation as a society. And I think we have a lot of ways to go. But what I'll say is just like run towards accountability. You know what I mean? Like, it's something that I even personally, I try to reflect on. And I don't like to just like preach about this to other people about how we do this in our work. But even I have to like tell myself, oh, were you direct with your friends when you were hurt by that comment, or did you apologize in a way that made sense for them? And I think like that even personal reflection from my own relationships in life helps me do my work a lot better and in my work with, with men and boys in general.

Thank you. That, that is incredibly powerful, and I think something that all of us can and need to, to reflect on also. I am wondering if you can share how the work has been received by the public and also those who are working in this space, it might seem to people who are working on feminism or women's rights or LGBTQ rights that focusing on men and boys in this time is a misdirection of resources or is unfair. But something that you have said that I really love is that you are working to make gender equality not be this zero-sum competition. to really emphasize how gender equality means uplifting everyone's— everyone and everyone's gender. And I'm wondering if you can share more on that.

Yeah, I think the response has been generally encouraging because people are recognizing the need. I think we've— like the feminist movement and activism, which I've been a part of for my entire career, has come so far. And there's a recognition of like, oh, there's a backlash happening. You know, there's a lot of people in power who are like struggling with having to maybe let go of some of that power in order for equality to happen. And that comes with backlash sometimes. And it also comes with, you know, the changes in society that I had been talking about a lot around like macroeconomic trends. like rapid technological advancements, etc. And some of that has been reflected in and captured in really critical sort of cultural moments like the show Adolescence on Netflix, or even the Louis Theroux documentary. And so, you know, a lot of the conversation that I bump into is a lot of panic around these things. And I don't— While panic can be useful in generating motivation and resourcing for trying to solve some of these challenges around masculinities and men and boys. And I think it's good there's attention being paid. I also, I hesitate to call the issue like a crisis because I think crisis is not always the most like generative or productive way to frame this situation and bring like men and women and people of all genders together in common cause because it tends to sort of create an us versus them dynamic. And so, you know, a lot of what I'm trying to do and how I'm trying to frame the work is this, this idea that, like, work we could do around, like, social connection, well-being, pro-social engagement really benefits everyone, and everyone wants to be treated with dignity and respect. And how do we do that and capture the, the ways that— specifically in work with men and boys— the ways that that has sometimes not always been, like, afforded to men and boys, this ability to practice some of those skills I was talking about around, like, trust and deeper communication, etc. And, like, the growing recognition that that can actually improve the lives of men themselves and also people of all gender identities. I think the other challenging bit that I still come up against a lot is the idea of working in online spaces and how there's this large, broader— so some— I've had to deal with a lot of conversations around like, oh well, people shouldn't be on screens, we just need more third spaces for people to go to, and like the internet is bad, and like let's Why are you doing work online? Like, you're just going to make people spend more time online. And so that's been like a challenge that I've had. But, you know, I think of my time growing up when MySpace was around. I don't know if you all remember AIM and MySpace, but my mom was like, you're not allowed to have MySpace. Turn off the computer. You can't have it. You can't have AIM. And so this sort of like banning and shutting down of a conversation about the realities of like how I was trying to form social groups and communities when I was 13 made it really difficult to talk to my mom about issues I was having when I was ultimately, yes, using those platforms even though I wasn't allowed to. And so because I wasn't allowed to have MySpace or AIM, I didn't feel comfortable talking to my mom about the issues that I was experiencing when I was on those. And so I think there's sort of a learning moment that I've had around like Yes, I think there's a lot of harm with online— these online platforms, of course. And there's a lot of issues that we need to work out with policymakers and the tech industry in general. And I do a lot of policy and advocacy work in that regard. And we can't shame people for realizing that, like, these platforms are the realities of where their identity and relationships are being formed. So how can we help them, like, move through that process and that experience in ways that, like, actively serve them to the best of our ability. And so that's also something I'm very invested in, and I want to spend more and more of my time trying to focus on simultaneously while pushing against the very real issues around online harms.

That's awesome. AIM was like such a backbone of my social life when I was in high school. You work out so much of, I think, your, like, social anxiety because you can, like, rehash moments in private with your with your friends and things like that. And so I do think that that was a really important tool for like navigating social life when I was, when I was younger.

— and make away messages that shared all of your feelings through emo song lyrics, like, let's not forget!

Exactly, yeah, My Bloody Profile.

Yeah. You know, it kind of was a way of like communicating, I think. I don't know. I mean, you know, I don't— I'm trying to remember like, you know, how my male friends used it, but I do remember it was kind of a way of communicating like, I'm not fully okay. And people would actually like reach out if you put you know if like I noticed a friend had like a weird emo away message, then I I would reach out and be like, "Hey, are you okay?" You know, and so I think it's it was kind of an early way of like asking for support in a moment when you needed it actually.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

RIP AIM. We're gonna sort of transition to you know thinking about advice for others and some of your own personal reflections. But before we wrap up. this section, I want to ask kind of like, what are the next steps of this work? Where do you envision it going? You know, if you could lay a roadmap, what would you be focusing on next?

Yeah, I, to be honest, in a lot of my work in online spaces, I am working with content creators and trying to push out more healthier messages, working with different, like, like-minded creators. And I think that's important. And I think that the AI slop of it all is very real, and people are getting really sick of social media and algorithmically recommended feeds. And I think more and more people will turn to sort of a glorified group chat, if you will. So like places like Discord, Telegram, Signal, et cetera, where people feel like they can be in community that are and spaces that are less surveilled, more encrypted. They feel like they can sort of not be as sort of performative, you know, on some of these sort of content platforms. And so, yeah, and with the rise of AI and people not feeling like they can trust what they're seeing or who they're interacting with, I think the glorified group chat, as I'm calling it, is sort of the space that I'm really interested in thinking about how like norms change can operate in. where you have trusted spaces where you feel like you're part of a group with a collective identity rather than sort of the fire hose of content that's getting spewed at you, of people you're not even following, right? And so I think that's where, like, the trend of where I'd like to see the work go in, in online spaces and, and with men and boys, rather than continue to, like, play whack-a-mole with, like, the bad content creators who are saying horrible things. Like, yeah, that's one strategy to try and take them down, but actually thinking about how relationships are generated in online spaces that I'm, I'm more interested in sort of moving towards that like community architecture landscape. And then the other thing that I've just been like really concerned about is the economy of intimacy and like how AI companion, things like AI companions are sort of capitalizing on loneliness. And when loneliness becomes like a business asset, that's just an existential problem. And so, you know, I don't necessarily have a specific suite of solutions or programs in line to think about AI companions, but I do think as a field, we should be really tapped into how they're being used from like a, you know, for therapy and for relationships and not leading with shame, of course. And that would be like my advice to the field is like not pathologizing people for wanting to like have supportive emotional, tools in a place where, you know, in the US at least, therapy is impossible to afford and our healthcare system is a disaster. Like, you can't shame people for wanting to take advantage of these tools. And yet, what's the right way to build out, you know, a coalition of advocacy around getting those technologies in check? That's something I think we have a lot of work to do, and I'd love to continue to think through in the coming years.

That's so excellent. You've segued us perfectly to kind of the next section. We're gonna start wrapping up here. But the one question we wanna make sure to ask is that this is, you know, this project is supposed to help people understand the different veins of work that are being done. And so we're kind of asking everyone this, which is if there is one thing you would want the listener of this interview to walk away knowing, what would it be?

I think that across our digital environments, many of the design choices that shape our experiences have removed friction from the engagement and really like anticipate our needs before we even articulate them. And that can feel convenient in a lot of ways, but it can also mean that like effort becomes less necessary and with it, a deeper meaning in relationship can become harder to find. And so I would just say that, like, leaning into building intentional friction in the work that we do and even the relationships that we have, not necessarily like driving towards conflict, but rather like, how problem solving together so that we're not just like offloading all of the issues that we're having on technology, but also like remembering what the humanness of conflict and repair can really mean for a deepening of relationship and satisfaction in life. And so it's my meta last few words of hopefully inspiration, but also provocation for anyone listening.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think so much of what you've said really hits on what gets to the core of relationships, which is that like there's so much growth and repair after conflict that, you know, like stating your needs and having someone meet them is such a powerful thing in a relationship. And, you know, learning to have healthy disagreements where you can fully be yourself without feeling like you need to perform a particular persona. I think these are all, you know, such important goals for all of us and, and many of our relationships. We like to wrap up with a few personal reflections. So just, you know, if you could share kind of what affects you the most from doing this work, and, you know, we'll give you the last word on anything that we didn't ask you about or that you didn't get to share that you wanted to make sure to communicate before we wrap up this conversation.

I think that I I'm so impressed every day. The more and more I meet people who aren't like part of the gender equality violence prevention field, the more that I'm getting involved in like gaming spaces and going to you know, gaming conventions and like showing up in sort of these not traditional spaces. So not the classic like gender equality conferences, but I'm actively trying to push myself to go to spaces that aren't on their face like super relevant to our organization historically that has broadened my like political imaginary of what is possible in terms of the work that I do so much. Because people, a lot of the people that I was talking about today through the mods work on Discord and whatnot are just finding creative solutions to issues that they're having in the communities that they love and care about so much. And it wasn't as if they had like a theory of change that they were following with like these KPIs that they had to hit in order for their, their community to have well-being going on, right? It's just like, oh, I'm someone who loves this community deeply, and I'm just gonna I'm going to use the tools and resources at my disposal, disposal, which might be far and few between, in order to make something happen here. And I'm just like, constantly inspired, and I get so much creative energy from, from folks who are, who are making it work in those different ways. And I think our field has so much to learn from them because of the decimated funding environment of sort of the gender democracy fields writ large, of like how we can get creative in the spaces that we love and leaning on the people that care about the issues that we cause about or care about in order to, you know, like keep moving forward and putting one foot in front of the other. So, yeah, that's, that's it for me.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Engendering Authoritarianism, a special series of Who Belongs. The Engendering Authoritarianism project is a partnership between the Othering and Belonging Institute and OverZero. For more information on the project, and to check out our additional resources, visit us at engenderingauthoritarianism.com.