Hey, this is Glen Dunn's Wyler, filmmaker, producer entrepreneur. And this is the second episode of difficult questions. This one is about sexism, man. It's taken me a long time to figure out how to talk about this one. Specifically. I want to focus on how true is it that women are objects and men are resources. Because As a good feminist from the 90s, I see progress in equality and then I see us backslide and and I just keep wondering why why is this happening? Why do we keep going back to these old standards for for gender and for societal positions and the things that come along with that and the ceilings that come along with those positions. So I wanted to explore this and obviously we want to hear your thoughts as well because I found that by asking the difficult questions we can come up with solutions again, I don't have the answers.

So going back to biology, I think men and women want different things. I think men want to attract women and they are into the chase. And I think women want to find a stable partner that they can pair bond with and ultimately raise a family. And I think these these two things biologically are just constantly infiltrating our modern lives. I mean, men are attracted to the female form and they crave sex and I think women are attracted to success and they crave an exclusive partnering with someone. So we get into the idea of this patriarchy and I think men have built these opportunities for themselves to attract women and women have helped them to build this system in order to secure safety and security for themselves and their offspring in our modern world with our modern options, we don't necessarily need the man to go make the money and the woman to raise the child.

Women have more options. But I think we keep I think we keep having these cravings even in our modern world with the modern options we have and that is somewhat setting us back or setting us from moving forward and staying forward. I know that even as economic options, this idea that men are attracted to the female form, well, there's money in that if you're a woman, so you are actually rewarded for objectifying yourself. There are there are people that will pay you for pictures of you. There were there are whole industries that will pay you a good living. Two objectify yourself. And I think at some point there's this feedback loop where women are looking for validation and they get rewarded for being an object.

The thing I always wanted to remind myself of is that many different people have many different priorities and women do not always need to be objects and men do not always need to be resources. However, this does seep back into the way we live our modern lives At some point, men want to attract women and how do they attract women? Well, they show their stability. They show that they have some accomplishments. They show their wealth and at some point women find themselves rewarded for becoming objects for men to see, I think perfect example of instagram and how someone can build this following just by being you. I mean the return on investment, that's hard to walk away from someone is going to give you attention just for being you.

Just for being an object where I think men, it's all about what you can build to attract women. And so men are constantly trying to do things and women are trying to be something. And even in relationships. I see this talk about with women, it's it's who you're with and with men, it's what you do, right? So your accomplishment as a man is based on what you do, Your accomplishment as a woman is who you have attracted. And I think all of this, this, this personal stuff then works its way into the work world. Uh, there's this idea of protection, right? So I think as a man, at least when I grew up, um the idea was I was my own protection.

There was no protection around me other than my mother being my protector. When I was young. And as a woman, I think you might be looking for external protection. And please I would love to hear feedback on this. But this is this is often what I hear. So we look at people who need protection. So Children or um executives in special situations and if we look at women needing protection, well our women special or are they equal. And I think men in their life views as needing to attract and and show their accomplishment and protect their family and protect their women have a problem or trying to navigate Well, are you special or are you equal? And there's some animosity built in that, I'm sure at the same time you have women that are not wanting to be seen as objects that are needing to succeed in the business world.

Yet you constantly have men hunting and you have men because men never stop hunting. Men are always looking for opportunity to attract women, even ones that they shouldn't be trying to attract ones that they work with and these frustrations kind of build on themselves. So what do we do? And I think it's, it's three things that that can help. One is intelligence. You're either born with it or you're not. Two is training. I was really fortunate that I grew up with really strong women in my family to include my mother. And I remember my, I started early with this kind of what I call a sex drive monster right in my head. Oh, women's body parts. It's exciting. I don't know why. And I was trying that sex drive monster on. I think when I was about eight and I was writing something at school and it was something and I didn't know any other women. So I was writing about my mom's boobs or something.

Of course she found what I was writing in my backpack and she said to me, Is this what you think of me? And that was all it took at eight. I was corrected because I think that is the third part. And I'm not only training training of respect for the opposite sex, but being corrected if you're rewarded for a behavior, you're gonna do it again. And I was fortunate to be corrected early on. So I think that the way that we can stop this idea that men are resources and women are objects is to constantly challenge that at every point. You know, I always had problems with dating norms. Why am I paying for the food? What what, why, why is that? Why am I buying something on valentine's day? What does that mean? Isn't that isn't the relationship enough? Am I a resource or am I a relationship?

And that always kind of confused me. It doesn't equate with me with equal. I think that we're different, but we're equal. And those are those things are problematic. We need to redefine role models for Children and redefine the role models for the gender roles because those standard gender roles don't need to exist as they did in the past. The fairy tale life as a man. You were supposed to attract a woman, you're supposed to raise a family and you're supposed to provide for your family as a woman. You're supposed to find a good husband, you're supposed to have babies and you're supposed to raise a family and live happily ever after. I think one is very active in this fairy tale and one is very passive. Women's women's fairy tale is very passive.

You uh find a man, you attract a man and he takes care of you. And I think that's the idea in in what a princess's right, Someone takes care of a princess. The princess doesn't have to do anything. So I think you're always looking for someone to provide you something a resource. If you think you're a princess. And I think if men always look at women as conquest, well then women aren't people, they are conquest to move on from. And I think that in this success model for boys, we never tell them to respect people around them too and especially women as equal because boys get wrapped up in their testosterone in in conquering in moving forward.

I think if we teach Children to stand on their own two ft to try and gain what they need to succeed personally and would do that with respect and control. I think we can get a handle on this. So I think that's one thing we can do, we can just challenge what it is to be a boy, what it is to be a girl and really just focus on respect, respect, respect training And both people have sex drive Monsters, right? Both sexes have sex drive monsters. There's things that, that attract you. I remember being I was a drummer in a rock band and I just was on stage and I got off stage when my friend said, hey, my friend really wants to meet you and I just thought why I'm sweaty and I can't think straight. I just poured my heart out on stage. But she was somehow attracted to the accomplishment that I had done on stage.

Where I think we need to ask ourselves, what, why are you attracted to that accomplishment? Do you know that person? Ah I think these are constant things that we need to challenge ourselves to both male and female. What do we do about cat Colin, what do we do about men that are yelling rude things out to women. The first thing I think is defined as rude. This is not respectful. And I think men get into their own heads about opportunities while I always have to attract women and maybe this will attractive woman. No, that will never attract a woman. And the problem is I think some of them are getting rewarded for that behavior. So one woman might respond to that or might accept that at least and one woman won't because we ultimately are different people with different talents and different resources and different intelligences and we want different things.

Men and women. So I wonder if that's always going to be a problem. But I think training could help. A friend of mine talked about having a class where we had kind of gender training where women understand that there is this sexual power that they get over men when they hit puberty and they have to know that they have sway in a room just because of who they are. And then you have to know how to handle that. Because on the other side of that, men can lose their minds and they need to understand that they can't lose their minds. I think especially men are rewarded for not exhibiting control, but we need to be rewarded for exhibiting control for exhibiting respect. At some point, a woman may want to have a child and I don't no if that is a choice or that is a craving, right?

The same ideas men craving sex. I think that some women do. And there are people that I've heard that say women biologically crave this and I know there are exceptions to the rule. But how do we work with respect through that need and through that reality of raising a child and having to take yourself out of the workforce in order to have the child and how you can still stay in the workforce to return to the workforce and how a man could help raise that child more than they have in the past. I know one of the things that really throws me is this idea that we ex we we accept men being absentee fathers. Well, as long as you're earning money for the family, you don't have to see your kid. I don't think that's acceptable. But somehow historically we've accepted that man goes and works, woman raises the child. So we're constantly challenging those gender roles at the same time.

I know some women that really just want to stay home with their kids and if they can do that, why shouldn't they get to do that? It doesn't help the woman that doesn't want to stay home with the kid. However, being personally responsible, being working out your own situation, that other person's desire shouldn't matter. I think I've been wondering what the incentive for change would be. Why would men not want to always be on the hunt? Why would women want to not allow a man to pay her way if it were being offered? What is the incentive for those people to challenge those gender roles? One of the things that I did want to touch on is this idea of equal pay for equal work. And I don't know, I've heard a lot of anecdotes from women that have said, I've had to put up with my salary being adjusted because I'm a woman and absolutely, that does not make any sense.

But I don't know that other people are going to solve your problem for you. I think that in the work world, in this patriarchy that we've set up, it is all about competition. And ultimately it is about you saying I am worth this, I have this value and this is what I bring to the table. So I need to be paid this much because an employer will always look to pay you less whether you're a man or whether you're a woman. So I've been in positions where I've been doing the same job, but because someone had seniority, they made more than me or because they were better at it, they made more than me. So trying to figure out how to let's say there's a talk about making a law equal pay for equal work will define equal work and define equal people. Because even though I constantly loved the idea of saying, we're equal, we're equal or equal. What does that mean?

Equal opportunity, equal intelligence, equal in drive, equal and talent. Because we're all different and I think you ultimately have to fight for yourself because no one cares about you more than you do. I will say that I have worked with a lot of successful women and I think that they whether it's a personal relationship or whether it's a business relationship, they're on a team and they always look at it as them being on a team and whether they're leading that team or part of that team or whether their husband is a team member or their partner is a team member. These gender roles are constantly challenged because we're looking at what you can bring to the table and what can I, what I can bring to the table and how we can both succeed in this situation. And I think ultimately that's what will push us forward training, calling people out on their bad habits or their sex drive monster and really just pushing forward to try and make us a a successful team and focusing on what can make us a successful team instead of what he or she has.

That I don't because I think that he or she has, that I don't builds animosity and animosity gets us nowhere. Uh, this is my best attempt at trying to cover this. Please let me know what you think. Please let me know what you missed. This is the third iteration of what I was going to talk about because man, it's a deep, deep subject and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks