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Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr Joe Kort
Dr. Chris Wilson: How Men Can Break Free From Harmful Patriarchy
Patriarchal expectations of men remain strongly embedded in our society and culture, but it’s time to break the guy code.
Men are stuck in a bubble internally; they are supposed to be stoic, strong and masculine, and uphold rigid norms placed on them from the past several generations, reports Dr. Christopher Wilson, a certified sex therapist who works with cishet and non-cishet men who are struggling with the patriarchal negative and want to break free of it.
Women have been hurt disproportionately through the years by the patriarchal model – voting rights, wage discrepancies, financial freedom – but this is changing. Unfortunately, the traditional model for men is not. They feel an internal battle; they don’t want to give up their position, but at the same time, they feel trapped in a small rigid box of social expectations that they cannot step out of or there will be repercussions, they feel.
Men want emotional expression, but in many cases, their female partners shut them down because they, too, are not prepared for this patriarchal change and don’t know how to handle it.
In this Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast, Dr. Wilson will talk about why men struggle with emotional recognition, the four domains where men can get hurt, and how men can break the guy code in a healthy way and be free to be who they are, which ultimately will lead to a better society for everyone.
Chris, hello, everyone. Welcome to Smart sex, smart love, where talking about sex goes beyond the taboo and talking about love goes beyond the honeymoon. My guest today is Dr Christopher Wilson, a certified sex therapist supervisor, a certified sex therapist and an AAMFT approved supervisor. He's been working in social services and mental health for more than 20 years. He specializes in helping men, CIS het and non CIS het to process concerns regarding sexual functioning, gender and sexual orientation, exploration and kink, sexual fetish interest or questioning. He also often serves members of the LGBT community who are struggling with sex, intimacy, gender and orientation concerns to better understand themselves and social inequalities that they face. Doctor Wilson founded the Center for healthier relationships, individuals and sexualities in 2017 with a focus on helping members of the LGBT community struggling with mental health and sexuality concerns. He is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Today, he will be talking how the patriarchy negatively impacts men too. Welcome, Chris, thanks for having me. Yes, I'm so glad you're here. And it's really an interesting topic for us, because we often talk about patriarchy hurting women, but it also hurts men too.
DR. CHRIS WILSON:Yeah, and it's important to recognize before we have this conversation that like women are disproportionately hurt by the patriarchy, and we that are very visceral. We all see it. We see it in wage gap. We see it in ability to vote up until 1920 in this country, we see it in ability to have financial freedom and not having access to their own money until the 70s and 80s, depending on which laws we're looking at. So it's important to recognize that, but we also oftentimes do not talk about how it impacts men, particularly when we're thinking about men. In this context, we're thinking mostly CIS heterosexual men, but also could be applied to non cis men or even queer men in other contexts. Well,
JOE KORT:yes, I agree, totally. What are patriarchal expectations of men, in your opinion?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:So I see a lot of times in my clinical work, men who feel like they can't talk about their feelings, they feel like they are stuck in this little bubble internally to themselves and no one else can understand or even accept it. There's this idea that we have to be stoic and strong and we have to have like body ideals of masculinity and making sure that we look a certain way, that is an ideal physique. These are all pressures that men feel. One of the other pressures is around sexuality, idea of like we must always be ready for sex. And that's not always the case for a lot of men, and so they feel this strong sense of pressure to it hold these very specific, rigid sexual scripts, or rigid masculine archetypes and norms, which a lot of men don't feel particularly I would argue younger men, at this point, I would say men, probably under the age of 40 or maybe even under the age of 30, really have moved away from some of these scripts, but they're still holding on to a lot of the old vestiges as well from their grandparent generation or their parents generation. And for that reason, they're still kind of struggling internally with them, like, oh, I still have to live up to the standard, even if modern society think, okay, maybe I can move away from that a little bit.
JOE KORT:You know, the first time I have you ever thought about what you're saying is from Terrence reels work. I don't want to talk about it. You know that book.
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I don't know the book, but I know a little bit of his work,
JOE KORT:yeah, I really wish that he had continued on with that. He didn't. I mean, he did a little bit, but he moved toward relationship, but it was such an important book, and he talked about how patriarchy only favors certain men, not all men. And that's kind of what you're saying, isn't it?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:Most certainly, I would argue that patriarchy, for the most part benefits white, cisgendered heterosexual men. Yes, we can still argue that men of color are going to have some benefit. We can argue that queer men are going to have some benefit, whether we are cisgendered or non cisgender. There are benefits that come for trans men once they have transitioned and are read as masculine, they get these benefits that other men have gotten throughout time, but arguably, speaking, the highest degree of power comes in men who are cisgendered, straight and white, even just if we're looking at our country and and specifically, like all of our presidents, have been men first and foremost, and everyone, except for one, have been white, and they've all been as far as publicly known, they've all been heterosexual, though there is some debate on whether a few of them may have not been entirely heterosexual.
JOE KORT:What do you make of them online? How vicious people are to straight white men and that they're just. Open targets. Now, nowadays, what do you say?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I think a lot of that comes from pushing back, which makes sense. I mean, we have an entire community that's had to push back, strong, really women who have had to push hard to get their rights to be acknowledged. And I think we're now seeing women feel empowered enough to fight and challenge men very publicly. Unfortunately, I think one of the things that kind of misses the mark in doing that is we're not actually appealing to the men. We're actually putting them on the defensive. So instead of actually being brought to the table, they're doubling down. I would argue that it's one of the reasons that we're seeing such a strong conservative base or such a strong we must return back to the old 1950 value ideology. It's because men are feeling like they've lost power, which in some sense they have, which is actually not necessarily a bad thing. We want other people to have power. But unfortunately, when someone feels like they're looting power, they're going to push back hard against that. And of course, the people who are trying to gain the power are going to push even harder to get their power that they deserve.
JOE KORT:I love what you're saying, especially about what's happening in the administration right now and in the world, this push back toward this conservative. Men are men, women are women, and it really does feel like it's going backwards, but it makes sense from what you're saying that it would come from this.
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I can't say that there's an easy solution to it, but the reality is like we need to get men on board with some of these positive social changes. In this context, I'm thinking straight white men in particular, but all men who you know, arguably are not cisgendered, or is that wrong? Arguably, that are all that are cisgendered, need to be, you know, on board. And that's a hard sell in some respects, because it's hard to say, Oh, well, I'm going to give up some of my power and privilege so that you can also have a seat at the table. And conversely, we need to somehow bring the same men to the table of conversations around that, which is also a challenge.
JOE KORT:Who do you think the patriarchy typically hurts?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I mean, when we think about it, typically, we're thinking of it as Kitchener women, predominantly. But we can also argue that it impacts trans women extremely disproportionately. It's one of the reasons I would argue that trans women are targeted for violence, often murdered at horrific rates, and it also hurts people of color, regardless of gender. So if even men of color and women of color are disproportionately hurt because we see the systemic power that gets put upon them by straight, cis, white men in particular. But the people that we don't always acknowledge are those just white, straight men that are also feeling pinched by the same system that they've created.
JOE KORT:Okay, that's helpful to hear. What would you say? How does it hurt those benefits?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:So arguably, speaking, it keeps men in these small, little boxes that they have to kind of adhere to, which is that if you step outside of the lines of any kind of social sphere, that's the acceptability, then it actually is going to be repercussions. And we, I've seen this sometimes in the couple they work with, where they're men and women couples, and the men are actually asking for emotional expression to be heard, and their female partner shut them down immediately. And part of it for oftentimes, the female partner is learning like, Oh, he's allowed to have his own emotions. They don't have to mirror mine, and that's okay, but that's also a hard work for her to do as well, like, oh, I have to be emotional vulnerable, and I have to be willing to be listening. That's a hard challenge for everybody, regardless of your gender. And so a lot of men don't feel like they can talk about their emotions, because they feel like they're going to get shut down immediately. I would argue that there's four domains in which men typically get hurt by the patriarchy, and that's emotional expression, which we've kind of covered. But gender expression, the ability to actually play around with gender presentation, it's such a huge thing. And of course, this changes through decades, right? You know, there were the time when the macarons were a huge success, you know, culturally and they were wearing wigs and rocking white makeup, you know. But in general, our current societies that when men step out of like a rigid box of clothing, expression, for instance, they get blasted. One of the best examples I can think of recently, in recent years, at least, was when Harry Styles rocked a dress on the cover of a magazine. Here is a straight, cis white man, as far as I know, who is idolized by girls and women around the world, and yet he got crucified in the media for wearing a dress, something that is literally an article of clothing that, up and through the 1930s and 40s, young boys would have worn because it was just part of what children wore. But we have this kind of rigid idea that men are supposed to wear, you know, only wear polos, or only wear, you know, button up shirts, you know, T shirts like that. That's the look that you get. And then even like color, right like color or design, like I'm wearing a shirt right now that has quite a bit of color in it, but this is a extreme color for me to be wearing. And and for a lot of men, they wouldn't want to wear something of this color, or they wouldn't feel comfortable, I should say, wearing this kind of color because it's vibrant and bright. You know, I can think back to a conversation I had with one of my friends who is a gay black man who happens to wear more colorful clothing, and admittedly, he rocks it with extreme confidence. Love him for that, and I personally, despite the fact the work I do, I would not feel nearly as comfortable as he does wearing the same color. Now, part of that also has to do with it. I'm a white white person, those colors just aren't going to look cute on me. The reality is that, like he he goes about the world wearing things that are a little bit more feminine and look. And he has so much pride in doing it, and that is awesome. And we need to see more men do that, regardless of sexual orientation or regardless of race. That allows us to have more freedom in who we are, whether that is the clothing we wear or being more emotionally expressive or using hand gestures more often, I tend to talk a lot with my hands, and that tends to be considered a feminine trait. And so it's breaking a little bit of the social conventions around gender expression. And the other two areas are around sexuality, and within that, to some extent, body image, I see a lot of men who struggle with this idea that they have to always be confident and know how to have sex as if, like, they're somehow like, oh, we all got a manual when we came out of the womb that you know how to have sex. No, you're learning about sex just as anyone else. And it just happens to be that you were born with a penis. And the reality is that I also see in other contexts with sexuality, such as not being able to explore around sexual orientation. A lot of men get crucified if they've decided to explore with other men, even if they discern that they are truly straight, 100% straight, they get crucified or they're doubted. Oh, well, you did one time, so therefore you must be gay. Nope, one time, it makes the experiment. And I've also seen this in abuse. What I've seen in that context is when men have experienced early child sexual abuse, oftentimes they don't see it as sexual abuse. They see it as an experience they were supposed to have, or that young boys are supposed to be given the opportunity for sex. And so they were given the opportunity for sex, therefore they must have enjoyed it, whether they actually or not, whether they were emotionally ready for it or not. And so these young boys grow up to be young men that I oftentimes work with, and they're having a lot of shame and guilt around these early sexual experiences, and they have a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that it was abusive. And I think back to a dated reference at this point, but there was an episode of Glee that happened somewhere in 2010 and it was one of the teen characters comes out as having had been abused by an older female when he was a younger kid. And all the boys go, Oh, you were so lucky. And he's like, okay, yeah, yeah, you're right, I was lucky. And in all reality, you can see the pain in the character, and he's feeling so troubled. And Mr. Shoes tries to step in, but he doesn't even really know how to challenge it, because he's like the dominant narrative. Of course, he should be like, even if he can logically, the teacher know that that wasn't appropriate. And I think the final area, and this kind of really touched on some of the work you do. You know, we have the term died, which you coined. And I would say that there's a lot of men that feel like they have to have, you know, anal intercourse, or, you know, vaginal intercourse, and I've worked with men that just don't care for it, or, you know, maybe they care for it, but it's like, not even on what I like to call the top 10 menu items for them, like they don't like they'll do it. It's okay. It's somewhat enjoyable, but not going to be a highlight. I was even talking to a gentleman earlier this week, and he was just talking about the fact that, like, yeah, he's heterosexual, cisgendered, and he enjoys it to an extent, but it's not going to be the thing that he's actually going to be driving over to a partner or to have a hookup. It's not going to thing that he's going to ask his significant other to engage in unless she really wants it.
JOE KORT:I love these four areas, and i What do you think about this? I don't know where I learned this, but we stopped touching little boys by the age of eight. We and I think I learned this from Terrence real that we teach them to turn their backs on vulnerability and emotionality, and then they grew up to be these men that don't know how to be vulnerable, can't be emotional. Touch is not anything more than allowing themselves to be sexualized or through a sexual and then there's four ways they emote. They emote through sex, work, sports and violence. Have you ever heard this?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:Oh, dumb. Heard this, and I've seen it in the work I've done, I would actually argue it starts even earlier than that. I would say that somewhere between like, five and 10, we start changing the narrative around young boys, instead of, you know, the boy who scrapes his knee and the girl who scrapes his knee, the girl's gonna get coddling and comfort, the boy's gonna be told to get be tough and be strong. That's probably gonna shift a little bit between, like. Five and 10, you know, and by the time kids get into elementary into middle school, they're definitely starting to feel those messages. I oftentimes can think back to like, somewhere between about age 10 and about age 12, somewhere where, when I was graduating from from grade school and going into middle school, there was a definite shift in my understanding of like, what I was supposed to do and not supposed to be able to do as a male socialized person, and crying was not allowed going by. Was feeling sad. I would cry privately in a room and no one else would know, and I was still a little boy. That's not something little boys should have to feel. And unfortunately, men oftentimes feel this as well, and they hold on to this well into adulthood. I would argue it's one of the reasons that we see that men over the age of 50 have a much higher rate of suicide, because they are holding all these feelings in for so long and feel like they cannot speak up, even if they don't feel the way that society tells them they're supposed to feel. So another great example of this is that, you know, Michael Kimmel called it the guy code, which is the idea of like, we actually are silent, and we silence ourselves, even if we think something else is wrong that other men are doing. And this is a, definitely a tenement of the the patriarchy ultimately, like, Oh, can't upset the balance at all. So we've got to go ahead and stay in the status quo. And one of the most public things I can think of, in reference to this, there was a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a group of old like older males, and she was violated by these young men. And there were a couple of young men who didn't take part in it, but they didn't actually tell anyone that it was going to happen. They walked away, but they didn't actually stop it. They didn't tell the men to stop they didn't go and contact somebody else. They stayed silent, because otherwise they would be upsetting the balance of that patriarchal system in that moment and they weren't willing or weren't confident or enough to do that.
JOE KORT:Wow. How do you think, or why do you think men struggle with emotional recognition and processing?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I think it comes down to a mix of socialization and biological makeup. We know that from studies that look at like trans males, experiences that after they've transitioned and they've been on testosterone over a period of time, they have a tendency to not be able to connect to their emotions nearly as well as they did prior to transitioning. So that that does speak to a biological difference, right? Something about testosterone, and I'm not an endocrinologist, but something about testosterone holds us back from feeling our feeling. And I would argue for that reason, we have a tendency to feel anger as like the main thing that we can grab onto, because it's something that we're allowed socially to do. We're socially allowed as males, to express anger. We're socially allowed to express a desire for a goal. We're socially allowed to express a desire for sex, and on rare instances, we might be allowed to cry. And I always say the rare instances are like, you're getting married, you have a death in your family, your favorite sport team loses the Super Bowl like these instances. Maybe you can cry, but otherwise, nope. Must hold in those emotions. And though I do think it's a mixture of bio, biological and social messaging, you know, just thinking back to, like, being a young kid and not being able to express my emotions despite the fact that, like, I wasn't the most masculine kid on the face of the earth, but I still clearly took that message again from an early age of Nope. Stuck it up. Hold that in.
JOE KORT:It's me too, and I suck it up and hold in. How I walked, how I talked. Joey was like the sissy boy, and, you know, be a man, and we're going to show you how to be a man. And it was awful,
DR. CHRIS WILSON:yeah, and that goes back to the gender expression piece right now. I talked about it in reference to clothing, but gender expression is also physical attribute and the way we present ourselves. And like I said earlier, I talk with my hands a lot. Can't, let's see, because the screen right now, when I, when I was lecturing as a professor, I would actually talk a lot with my hand, and that's considered, typically speaking, to be a bit more of a feminine trait. It's probably one of my strongest feminine traits. There's actually a funny picture from years ago, my husband and I were witnessing one of his mentors do this dance performance, and there was a moment where I'm like, rocking some sort of like, I can't even mimic it, like, some sort of gesture like this. And I'm like, I don't normally stand like that, but apparently I do just a funny moment looking back on it, but it certainly kind of articulate the fact that even in looking at that, I was still uncomfortable. You know, I'm a therapist who works through all this stuff regularly with clients, but seeing myself in a. Relatively Stark, feminine or queer stance. I was uncomfortable with it, and still even looking at the picture, I think the picture was taken like 10 years ago. At this point, looking at the picture even now, I'm like, oh, that's cringy, but I can accept and embrace that, because I guess that's who I am,
JOE KORT:right? Because you were talked out of being that way. So it's foreign to you, but it's part of you, yeah, how does, how can men help themselves?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I think part of it is breaking that Geico, you know, talking when men are seeing things that are not okay. I remember the story of a young football player, I think football, and there were some other players making jokes about raping women, and he stepped up and was like, This is not okay. You all need to stop saying this right now, because he recognized like it was not okay. And part of the reason he recognized it, whether he was like, my significant other was sexually assaulted, this is not okay, these are not okay jokes. The more men can do that, and it's not an easy thing to do. The more men can do that, the more we will all have a society that accepts people as they are. They will accept variation and differences. And ultimately, I think that's the reason this conversation is so important, until we get men, particularly cis, straight Hetman, to really start to see how this hurts them and conversely, hurts the rest of society. We're not going to see a change. Yes, women have been carrying a hefty burden in trying to make social change, probably something about time, and we need to start carrying some of that, whether we're fifth and HET or not, if we're a male socialized person or a male identified person, we need to start taking on some of the ownership of those changes, and that means breaking the guy code. That means being free to be who you are, and that means dressing in a way that might be more feminine. It might mean sharing with a partner that you're not feeling super sexually confident that maybe you are worried about your penis size, or you're worried about your body shape, or you're worried about sexual performance, these are all things that like, the more men can do these things, the better they're going to feel, the better society is going to be, and the happier relationships are going to have.
JOE KORT:I have a question that I love to hear your answer to this, because people don't talk enough about they talk a lot about misogyny, but and people don't even know the word for the hatred of men. I'm sure you know it. Yeah, misandry, yep. Yeah, misandry, right. So how much of this do you think is based on misandry?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I think that one, the complicated one. I think missandre Ultimately, it's actually impacted by the patriarchy. I think there is a certain level to where women internalize some of those messages that the patriarchy is that about men, and they they lobby that back towards men. So for example, the times when men will start speaking up about their feelings, women will oftentimes shut the men down, and part of that is because they're not used to or accustomed to listening to males talk about their feelings. So the same system that's telling them not to talk about their feelings about teaching women to not learn to hear males feelings, women are often really great at conversing with one another and supporting one another and actively listening, but in the work I've done, I've oftentimes seen women really struggle to hear their male partners out. I also think this comes from a place of, to some extent, self preservation for women, in some respects, having to fight for rights, it's got to be a daunting process, and I'm going to acknowledge the fact that I am not a female assigned person, so I don't want to try to speak for women in that way. But from the client I've worked with, the friends I have, the family room, I have that I've seen have to fight for every step of the way to get the things that they need, I think that end up causing women to oftentimes attack men in ways that are not healthy or constructive. The term toxic masculinity gets thrown out there a lot, and oftentimes I cringe when I hear that phrase, because you're basically telling men masculinity is that what you represent, what you feel is a bad thing. That's not the intention of the message, but it what gets translated. It's similar to when people were using the phrase defund the police. Well, they're not actually saying, let's defund the police and take away all our funding. What they're saying is, hey, let's look at other ways to use funding to help other challenges that are happening, and maybe that will actually lighten the load for the police officers. I would argue the same thing can be said for dealing with a system of patriarchy, if we can find ways for men to be able to be more emotionally expressive and for women to listen more in those emotional space. Of it's going to offload the emotional burden that women have to keep take on, and hopefully free men to feel more open and honest and be true to what they're feeling in their life. And that might take some of the burden off of the patriarchal system as well.
JOE KORT:How would you say that patriarchy, patriarchy shows up in couples therapy,
DR. CHRIS WILSON:shows up nobody way, probably more than I can kind of capture in a few minutes, but I would argue that it shows up with men shutting down and feeling like they can't voice their opinion. It shows up in female partners, oftentimes eye rolling or ridiculing their male partners. It shows up with particularly around sex therapy with men feeling like they are supposed to know how to have sex and that their female partners also think that the male partner is supposed to know how to have sex. It shows up with the idea that men are afraid to learn what they need to know about sex from their female partners, or, in case, male male partners, where men feel like they should know, and it's like, Nope, you shouldn't. And what you you know, what you experienced with the previous female partner, might not translate to your current female partner. And that's really, really important to recognize that. I think there are all ways in which I think one of the other ways too is body image. We didn't really get to touch on that one too much, but I would say that men don't feel very confident sometimes in their bodies, and it's really hard for them to sometimes actually voice that in couple therapy, because they're the idea like, oh, well, men aren't supposed to care about their bodies. Well, no, men have always cared about their bodies, and probably we are out in a current time that it's more than ever a society that says Men are supposed to look a very particular way. And so they definitely struggle to voice those opinions, and also they struggle to have their female partners hear that. One happen. The other thing I would say that, going back to the idea of doicism, I've had a number of female partners when their male partners start to talk about their feelings, they just can't process it. Kind of going back to the idea of women needing to learn how to actively listen with male partners, and males needing to voice their feelings, but they genuinely have expressed struggles to me about like, I don't know how to be the supportive person right now for him, because I'm used to him. If one of my clients said I'm used to him being my rock, like I don't know how to be the rock in this situation, because I'm used to him being that person. Now, I don't think this is true for every couple, and I don't think it's true for often younger couples nowadays, but I would definitely say that couples who are 40 plus, oftentimes, the gendered storm, gender norms, and that is derived, arguably, from the patriarchy.
JOE KORT:I love all this. This is such an important topic. What is the one more message that you would leave people that we haven't talked about?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I would probably say, the more that we can have a society where we allow men to have freedom in who they are, and we stop trying to put men in these narrow, rigid boxes, and we fight our own internal inclination to be in those narrow, rigid boxes, I think the happier society will be, and that can be whether it's a style of dress. It can be a sense of confidence or non confidence in sex. It can be just owning the fact that we have body image concerns. All these things can help us break that narrow, rigid box that keeps men feeling trapped, and in many ways, keeps women trapped, and it keeps trans folks trapped and people of color are trapped. So yeah, the more we can let people be who they are and whatever that might be. Yes, there are some men who really do believe in the masculine archetype, and that is true to who they are. It's not a front, it's not them just trying to fit a mold. That's actually how they feel. But there are a lot of other men who are like, I want to rock fun painted nails, and I want to wear a skirt and I want to have one hair. You and I are both old enough to remember the 80s and the awesome hair band of the day like that was breaking the standard norm at the time. And you know, a lot of men would feel really uncomfortable doing that right now. In fact, just a couple years ago, the whole man bun trend with a craze for a while, and there was a lot of backlash, even in that like a lot of women talking about how they either found it sexy or not sexy, a lot of men how they felt like confident or not confident in that style. And the more that we can just accept people for who they are, how they want to present in the world, who they want to love, the more we can break some of these rigid boundaries that the patriarchy stepped up, the better everyone's world is going to be.
JOE KORT:I agree with you. And then you bring up man bun. That always makes me so mad. Man bun, it's a bun. It's not a man crush, it's a crush. It's not a bromance, it's a romance. We have to be reminded that, yeah, I'm having these feelings or I'm having this hairstyle, but I'm still a man.
DR. CHRIS WILSON:Yeah, and it's great that you're calling me out on that. I use that word without even thinking twice. I didn't mean, yeah, no, I love that you call me out. Actually, I had a I did a presentation on this topic a few months ago, and one of my colleagues called me out on the fact that I was making this assertion that a lot of male spaces had eroded, which I don't think they were arguing against that, but they were also like, yeah, female spaces have eroded too. We don't have them as much as you think we do. And I'm like, You know what? That's probably a good thing for me to take in, because I would have made a presumption, based on what I see, that those spaces do exist, but they probably exist in a much more, smaller microcosm than they once did, and where men probably started seeing the eradication of a lot of male male spaces back in the probably like back far back since, like the 1960s and 70s, women have probably experienced that more in the last few decades, and so they're feeling the same pinch of like there's not a space for me to just be with other women. And men really use to have a space that just for other men. I'm not saying that we need to be that rigid where it's you know, we're completely segregating everything by sex, because I don't think that's healthy either, but I think there is a certain level of a balance between, yeah, we need to have spaces that are all inclusive for everybody, and there can be value in spaces that are gender specific.
JOE KORT:Agreed, totally agree. So where can people find you? Chris,
DR. CHRIS WILSON:so they can find me at the Center for healthier relationships.com, which is my practice's website. They can find me on Instagram, Chris wolfsonphg.com, or on Facebook, at their other relationships, individuals and sexualities.
JOE KORT:And are you gonna write a book about any of this?
DR. CHRIS WILSON:I do have some definite outline in place for a book. I just haven't got there yet. I'm actually in talks right now to do a presentation, possibly with the cognitive behavioral Institute in Pittsburgh. So I have to give that together, and when I get that together, then I'll probably have more resources to actually pull together to start actually creating the chapters of the book.
JOE KORT:I hope you do, because it's a lot of wisdom in what you said. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me, yep, so you can hear more of my podcasts at Smart sex, smart love.com and you can also follow me on Twitter, on tick tock, Instagram, Facebook, they're all at Dr Joe court, D, R G, J o, e, K O, R t, or you can just go to my website, www dot Joe court.com thanks for Listening until next time. Stay safe and stay healthy. You.