Jesper Conrad: 0:10

Today we which is just me today and I will come into why in a second. We today are together with Jebetrolle Linnet, who we ended up finding a research paper on the Danish phenomenon or so-called Danish phenomenon Hugge. And I read it and it was super interesting and wanted to chat with Jebbe about it. But then a more interesting talk is what we will go into today, which is that Jebe is looking into the whole thing about being a man and the male role, how it has developed, and have been the last many months on Greenland. So that is why Cecilia is not next to me today. Normally we do the podcast together, but today we thought it could be interesting just for us. So first of all, Jebel, welcome.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 1:00

Thank you so much. Thank you, Conrad.

Jesper Conrad: 1:02

Yeah. And to shortly say it, then I hope this some tale will be hugely. And for the people who want to go down into that one, I will actually link to the study. I find it it's a fascinating paper. And then let's get on with the men. Why did you go to Greenland?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 1:20

I went to Greenland because I work in a small Danish NGO called Dergender. And I've been working for some years with a project on men's groups. So creating social spaces, they are like group processes. You basically meet nine weeks, one evening a week. And we facilitate these spaces where men can come together and share things with each other that they usually wouldn't, which for a lot of men is gives a huge emotional release and possibility simply to find a feeling that you can share more with other men and you have more in common with more kinds of other men than you usually experience. And because you could say men compared to women probably have some deficit in our ability to create trust with each other and not compete with each other. It can be a good thing to create these spaces that have some ground rules. So we've been doing that for some years. And then the Greenlandic Minister of Gender Equality, as well as other areas, her name is Naya Nathanielson. She came to visit us at our office and wanted to know about this project. And then she said she she thought we should look into Greenland and whether we could do something there, because there are a lot of social problems around Greenlandic men and how they are able to or not able to, you know, kind of fit into modernity to transform their very traditional gender role into something that works with a modern society. And so different things happen. And in the end, we attracted some funding for a research project. That's why I've been spending half a year in Greenland. I just came home a week ago. So I'm just full of Greenlandic experiences. I've been living in four cities for about one and a half months in each place, contacting local men and just interviewing a lot of men, as well as quite a few women also, about all kinds of things that pertain to well, how couples live together, but especially around men, of course. And then I'm now I'm going to write a report on that. And after that, I'll be going back to Greenland to support men's groups because there are things happening in Greenland already, and we think they can need our help. So we'll try and do that.

Jesper Conrad: 3:50

Yeah. I will share my own experience with men's group. Back in 2019, we were attending a world school family summit in Granada, and the mothers got together and had a circle. And then one of the dads, who later on became a friend, said, Hey, shouldn't we have a men's circle? And he had been into men's circle for some time at that point. And we sat down and had this chat. And I remember the joy in sharing my own vulnerability. For example, I, if people look at me, then I have the physical size of a manly man. I'm broad shouldered, big muscles, and stuff like that, a big beard. But I'm in many sense very uncharacteristically not a very many men. I love flowers. I love if there's roses, I go to them, I smell them. If there's animals, I run to them. And I just love love and a lot of more girly stuff. If you go like say that is many and that is girly. And for example, cars, I know nothing about them. And it makes me vulnerable sometimes when I'm have a car and I don't know anything. And then one of the men he shared something really fun with me. He said, you know what? You cannot mess it so much up that a professional cannot fix it. And to hear that from another guy was actually a nice, easy one for me because I was like, okay, even though I feel scared at this, I know a professional can fix my mistakes. So why not try myself first? That was really helpful. Then later on, I became more and more interested in parenting and in the whole dad role because my travel from going to work dad to now full-time traveling dad for the last eight years also had a stint where I was at home with our kids because my wife had cancer. She later survived, and I could take paternity leave for a year, which is very uncommon to do as a man. So I've tried many ways of being a man and a father, both the career dad, going to the office, and then the staying at home with the kids, and then traveling full-time with them and being there. But I've had my wife next to me, of course, and therefore I've not had this sole responsibility. So I started together with Martin some dad circles and wanted to try to do that. And I've only done three or four of them, but the effect of them is super interesting to watch. It's clear for me that it's sometimes when I've done them, it's the first time for these men to hear that other people have an experience of having a distant dad, for example. When they grew up, their dad didn't talk with them, never shared about feelings or anything. And that makes me, and you have studied it and worked more with it, but it makes me wonder why, if you have looked at why do you think that historically that have men always just been silly at sharing with their sons? I'm not sure. Why are we so bad at talking about our feelings and sharing dad to dad and man to man?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 7:11

I think one thing is the competition that often is happening among men, trying to be the dominant person in the room and being very afraid of losing that position. And if you look at traditional society, including what I mean, also our own, until things started to soften up, perhaps in different ways with the cultural revolution and other currents of thought in the 20th century. I mean, if you look at societies that haven't really liberalized very much in this way, then, and that includes Greenland. I've been talking a lot to men there about why they are so afraid of sharing, I mean, telling others that they have a huge pain inside, which they often do, but for very good reasons, because often they've lived very tough childhoods and very tough life. But the thing is, men are very afraid of handing others something that they could turn into a takeover later on. So even if you have a moment that feels friendly and where others are opening up, you're just really afraid that at a later point things won't be as cozy anymore. And then someone will know something about you that they can use to shame you, to make you look weak. And in a traditional setting, that would often mean looking feminine. So in a traditional setting, it's very effective against another man to point out feminine traits, or and especially if you can suggest somehow that maybe he's even a closet homosexual or something like that. And I think luckily a lot of men in our society and uh uh a lot of the liberal Western societies have moved beyond, I mean, we move beyond that fear to a large extent. And that's something that we can we can thank feminism for. And even despite of all the problems that came with the cultural evolution in the late 60s, it has also given me some free space for choosing how to be a human being and not just conforming to the stereotype. But I think it's that fear of handing others something that they can turn against you as a form of weapon. And in Greenland, it became very clear because I was talking to one man after another, and they had almost similar histories. But the reason they came to me is that I came from out of town and they knew that I would not share anything with anyone in the village that they were that they were living in. And I would soon leave, and then I would write something where they could be anonymous. And so they chose to come to me to share experiences of having been sexually exploited, experiences of a lot of suicide in their families, in their friend circles, and what this had done to them, simply the experience of pain, just admitting that there was so much pain inside, but they wouldn't, you know, tell anyone else, really, except for maybe the one friend that you really trust.

Jesper Conrad: 10:20

And how do you think seeing a society where it is more, I don't know the proper word for it, more clear to you when you talk to them that it has about losing or being afraid that someone has some dominance over you? When you then I know you have only been home for a week, but do you see some similar traits in in Denmark or the Western culture? Are we also afraid of sharing to be afraid that someone else get an overhand on us more dominant somehow?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 11:38

I think so, but I I think the current state of our society is that it is quite uneven for good and bad. I mean, the various social processes around gender roles have changed some social spaces, some so social circles a lot, and others not so much. And that's why it's difficult to generalize right now about what things are like in a society like ours. In Greenland, there was, which is a tiny population of only 56,000 living on the mainland, and there is much more a shared set of values, as you would expect from such a small society that had such a short history of modernization. So, does that answer your question? I mean, I I think usually when we talk about gender and what happens, I think we are underestimating that there has been a very, very uneven effect. And that also sometimes creates a sense of panic that you can find anecdotal evidence that everything exists, because everything does exist. I mean, you can find super patriarchal, super homophobic, misogynist environments still, but you can also find the complete opposite. And you can do a survey that creates average values around opinions, but that will be average, but very little is average, actually. And coming back to what you just said before, you called yourself a non-traditional man because you said you like these things. But I think you'll find on an individual level that that this is what people are like. And so many people come to these men's groups and they look completely traditional in many ways, but then they start saying, Well, I am not, you know, I am more special than other men because of this and because of that. But they aren't really. People are mosaics at an individual level of all kinds of things. Of course, there are some general traits that you can say that you can track statistically.

Jesper Conrad: 13:44

That's interesting. All of us want to be uh special somehow.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 13:48

Someone made some research on men in the UK about their relationship to football, because men in the UK are really expected to be very interested in football. A lot of them would watch like short summaries of the weekend games when they were on their way to work because they hadn't actually watched the games, but they knew they would be expected to be standing at the water cooler and say, Yeah, that was a great goal, and yeah, such a great game, you know. And like basically performing the male role of having watched football all weekend, although they didn't, maybe because they didn't really care that much about football.

Jesper Conrad: 14:21

Yeah, but that's fun. I actually believe that football is something you need to have been raised to. My dad didn't care at all, so I never saw any football when growing up, and whereas my wife did with her dad, so she loves football, and I can't be bothered at all because yeah, I never understood it. But I watched handball with my mom, and I still find that a fascinating game. So I think there's some traditions in the families around these things as well. One of the things that really interests me about the male role is the dad-son relationship, and it is because love being a father, I think it's the most interesting thing that has happened in my life. It is the most giving. And his story simply was that his dad said to him, he patched him on the shoulder, say, Congratulations, sons, and then he invited him for a pint at the pub. And that was it. That was all the advice on being a dad he got. It was a pat on the shoulder and a beer. Have your research mostly been on men and their male role, or have you looked at deliverance from father to son, or that part of the role?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 15:59

In Greenland, I immediately observed a lot of closeness between fathers and their kids. It really stood out as a very visible thing that I would see small kids that had hurt themselves, they would run to their father, even though the mother was also present. I saw so many young fathers carrying babies and these snuggly things. And almost every time I saw a couple walking with a stroller on the street, it would be the man pushing it. Also, when I know from my own interviews, as well as when I interviewed various social workers and people who are working in the social system in Greenland, it is very important for men when they divorce or when the couple a couple splits up, for Greenlandic men too, to try and keep contact with their children. And how often they won't be able to for various reasons. And this really hurts them a lot. And this was very clear that there is this strong emotional bond and a desire to be a father. And also to be a father in a different way. Well, that actually goes for all parenting in Greenland, to be parents in a different way and a better way than the previous generation, because so many of the people I talked to have grown up in homes where there has been violence, even sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, also a lot of fathers committing suicide, so a lot of men that never knew their father. And also, there is a whole thing in Greenland about foster care, about about children having to live at least for a while and being cared for outside their home, which can be a good thing for them for sure. But it is also a very tough experience as a child to that when this happens. But also a lot of passing on of knowledge from fathers to sons, especially around things like hunting and fishing, a lot of respect for fathers who may not have been very present, but were able to, you know, good at hunting and fishing, bringing food on the table in a traditional way. And definitely a pain. If no one had ever taught you how to do these things, how to handle a boat, how to catch and anything things about animal behavior and all the techniques involved, then this was a painful thing. You wanted to know that as a man in Greenland. And even if you have a long education in Greenland and maybe you live in the capital, and basically you're a middle class person with a middle class wife and children who go to school and handle their life well, even if that's how you live, you still want to you prefer that the meat the family eats is something that you have brought home, put on the table. And in the basement, you have not one tree, so you have three, and you want to fill them all up with what you have brought home. So yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 18:55

I would like to go back to the male dominance and the fear of sharing, and it will be a long-haired question from a bold man here, which is that it makes sense to me the whole alpha dominance. If we had lived in a more traditional culture where there were an alpha prisons where you were in a smaller community and there was the leader of the pack, kind of. But I see with the nuclear family that we live very distributed lives. You can have a friend group one place, you can have your workplace another place, and a lot of us men are also lonely and don't have a lot of friends. So it kind of seems illogical to have that fear when we do not live in this hierarchical structure any longer. So there's who are we losing it to? That's my thought about it. Is it built in us, this fear maybe? But because, and I have, of course, I take my own childhood and upbringing into my answering, asking the question, because I've lived in a small city, suburbs of Copenhagen, then worked in Copenhagen, and have had a somewhat fragmented friendship group life. So I don't have the same friends from when I was young till now. So I can understand the fear of losing the alpha dominance, but part of me is like, to whom? Because they are not any longer have a dominance in my life.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 20:34

I had the same kind of life and experience. I mean, there is not much competition in that sense going on bit among me and my friends, and nor in in the kind of professional life I have. It's not necessarily. To thrive there to be a very dominant person. Now, I think we often underestimate how long time it takes to change things. So when you say this pattern is still there with some men, but there isn't much reason for it, I hear that's what you're saying. Why is it still around? Well, it is changing, right? But I think it is deeply rooted in some men, even though they know that it probably isn't very good for them, and they probably got divorced at least once on account of this. And maybe they have, you know, maybe their relationship to their children is not as good as it could be, and they know at some point that this is because they have this tendency to dominate, to be the alpha in the room. This is a pretty common way that relations get strained. But I think when it is deeply rooted, it becomes an automatic way of responding to challenges. The fear of admitting that you're wrong and saying that you're sorry, is just something that becomes really deeply ingrained in childhood with experiences of shame when you do expose yourself, shame you know that can be as painful as violence. And this is not only a men thing, we can also talk about patriarchal women, because there are definitely women who have the same pattern. We shouldn't forget that. But I think it is deeply rooted. I can say about myself, I don't have any desire at all to dominate, for example, my surroundings. I don't think so. But I will subscribe to some of the values that pertain to traditional manhood, like the ability to handle yourself and also the ability to be alone, and without tumbling over into complete misery and abuse. And so basically, the ability to, and I think it, I think it is actually necessary for men to be able to be alone. Not that they, not that I would wish it for anyone, but I think there is a large risk for men, because we are, we don't form the same kinds of relations that that women do. They are not as as caring and tightly knit in an everyday sense. And I don't think it will ever be like that. And my work is not to try and make men form the same kinds of relations as women do. It's just borrowing some of the qualities and creating spaces where they can play out because we need that. But I think I think a lot of men would also need a course, one course in caring for other men, and another course in how to handle periods of solitude without ending up in panic and bad choices.

Jesper Conrad: 23:37

One of the things I'm looking into and I'm very interested in is the role of the fatherhood. My day-to-day work is that I help different people, and I prefer to help nonprofits and people who work inside some kind of therapy. One of the projects is a project called the Newfeld Institute, where I'm on staff. It's a guy called Gordon Newfeld to have written a wonderful book together with Gabo Matim many years ago. Now it's just was re-released on the 20-year last year. And he talks about the alpha dominance in an interesting way, also about being the answer, being the one who has the solution or the one children can go to for the trust that we will help solve it. And when I've been looking at fatherhood, I am looking at a kind of a triangle where your identity changes. That's with yourself and your father. You go from being a son to being a father. That's something interesting in that I want to look into and unfold. Then your relationship to your partner change because now you actually need to be support for the partner when there's the small baby and all this that all that demanding there is of, and most often the partner is a woman who is the mother of the child, and there's a lot of work that person needs to do, and you need to make sure that they have the strength to do them. There, you go in a supporting role, and then there is your own relationship to the child. One of the things I've been considering about how we men sometimes end up fathering or being a dad is that as we do not have the natural dominance is a weird word for many to use, but the natural power of the connection and deep attachment that the child has to the mom, I have felt in myself that I sometimes earlier on, now I've grown, but sometimes I've earlier gone down a path of dominating by being the more forceful in my voice, in my trying to get my will true by power, where the power is not attachment and love, but being dominant somehow. If we men can understand to redefine what our role is when we become a father, because I think that some of us, and I did it myself in the start, I've heard myself shout of my kids and being the trying to dominate by force of words, etc. And I think there's something interesting in this, and that's maybe where we do not understand what you can say true power is, and become more and more down the path of true power is love. The love the child has for the parents, and that is how you you lead is by they have your trust. And it makes me think of maybe there's something in that that this is why we have a difficult time talking with our own dads as they have asserted their power by being the angry dad that yelled more than the caring dad, and that there might be a shift coming. What are your thoughts on that?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 27:10

There is definitely a shift in how men want to be fathers, that's for sure. I think we can also see that by how many men want to have paternity leave, for example. And I also, at one point, I kind of had a career breakdown in my life, and I could choose whether I wanted to move abroad because I had some offers from abroad, and I was divorced at the time, or whether to stay in Copenhagen and be close to my children and have my the kind of life that I had really made an effort to create where I where they were with me one week and then with their mother living basically across the street for another week. And it was a choice between the career and the kids, and I chose the kids and then building up a new kind of work life. And I didn't even consider it for a second. And I think the idea, for example, of move moving away, which a lot of fathers have done in order to follow a career, to get the one good job offer, and then having much less contact for some years with their children. I think that would be a hard choice for many fathers to do today. Very few would choose it. So, of course, there is something happening. Now it sounds like I mean, my own story is kind of turned around because my father was trying to be very emotionally open and kind of a hippie dad. He was born in 1950, so he was 18 in 68, and that whole flower power revolution meant uh everything to him. And actually, it was he was probably his problem was basically to navigate a path where he was open but still were able to kind of contain himself. It became too with too few boundaries in the way that he did it, and he also had a very hard time understanding other people's boundaries. He's dead now, so that's why I talked about him in the past times. So, I mean, of course, I'm happy that he was my father. He gave me a lot, for example, a great love of music. He was invisible and I also play music and things like that, other things. But I but I've kind of been witness to a too rapid attempt to try and create a new man role. And I also think that informs my understanding of what happened in the late 60s. It really brought a lot of men into an area where they had absolutely no male roles to look to and complete confusion. And a lot of them then simply turned back and said, I'm gonna go back to the traditional role because what is here for me? And then in our generation is where it is more possible to create some kind of synthesis of the traditional role and the things that you'd like to pick from the new buffet of kinds of behaviors and values that is out there.

Jesper Conrad: 29:50

When you have had these men circles, what is the biggest effect and what are the challenges that most of them face? Is there the same thing people bring up? Like if you look at them over time?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 30:06

Yes. I mean, what brings them to the group is uh basically two main kinds of men. One have maybe a sort of academic perspective where they are really interested in gender, they're really interested in masculinity, they're often good at speaking about it, and they're looking for a place where they can resonate and you know have a dialogue with other men. Others are facing crisis in their life that has come up, and they've suddenly realized, for example, that they are very lonely and and they have been lonely for years, maybe forever, but it's becoming more serious, the effects of it. They become more depressed. And some have had a divorce, gone through a divorce, and have, you know, lost the closeness to their children, the everyday closeness, and maybe their children don't really want to see them for a while, and you know, they have a difficult relationship to the ex, and they can't really talk to their friends about it. And they suddenly realize that even though they have friends, they their friendships do not really contain a space for the more serious discussion. Why is life like this? Is this a good way of being a man? Well, are you others hurting as well in the way that I am? Their friends will often respond with jokes, with irony, and then you don't feel well received, and you have maybe some of that shame around having shown yourself to be vulnerable, right? So these are the two main motivations, and what they get from it. Well, they get an immediate release. What would you say in Danish would say lindring? So simply a pain relief mentally, which is a good thing in itself. And then they learn some tools for uh for listening because you spend a lot of time in such a group listening more than talking, and you have to listen in a specific way because our most important rule is that you don't give others good advice on how to handle their life, you actually hold back on advice. And the reason we do this is that we want to create a space where people feel that they can bring everything out without really encountering other reactions than you know, that others are taking it in and listening in a non-judgmental way. And some men would like advice and feel that we should that they should get more advice from the other men, but this works for us. This is one thing one thing that is characteristic of the Derogender group, that it is a very non-judgmental space. And then you can create a special session, a special evening for those who would like to present something when they really want the advice from others, and then that's possible. So you learn to listen, you learn, you're simply training your listening skills, and men have said that they have learned that they can tell others that hey, I have something to share, but I don't really need you to fix me afterwards. Like, I'm not looking for a for an action plan from you, and just listen. That's all you need to do.

Jesper Conrad: 33:02

And imagine we learn to do that in our relationships.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 33:06

Yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 33:06

Yeah. My friend Martin, he said it in an interesting way also about this only staying in the listening space and in the sharing space. He said, if you prepare yourself to give an advice, you stand in an ego role where you are actually not listening, you are focusing on how can I shine and how can I show, oh, I master life in this sense here. And that perspective from him it hit it on the nail for me. I was like, Oh, yeah, okay, I can see it like that, and be better at actually just listening. Have you in your work? I presume you have, but why do you think men my understanding is that men are increasingly lonely, more depressed, and there is a raise in an increase in suicide among men. I do not know if this is true or if there's just a bigger focus on it, but it's my understanding that there's more talk, at least about men are more lonely. Do you have an idea why? Or is it true even historically? I'm not sure.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 34:59

There's definitely much more focus on it, and so there is research now on how many men feel that they have a uh someone to turn to that they can be open towards. And I think it is one out of four men that respond that that they don't have such a person in their life. But this is not something that we've been doing research on for 50 years, right? So I'm not sure that men are becoming more lonely in the sense of having, for example, fewer or worse male friends. Because I do see this mindset of being able to care for other men seeping in to men. I mean, it is working, it may not be working as fast as some people think it should, but it is happening. The male role is transforming, and then there could be some sometimes it takes a step backward because maybe it has transformed too much or too quickly, or you know, it's but I think it is transforming still. But we are also becoming more demanding perhaps of our friendships, and we're perhaps more ready to answer a survey and say, I'm actually feeling quite lonely. Whereas men in our father's generation, it would be very difficult to admit to loneliness or admit to mental stress, because then you have the weakness issue, right? But of course, there's also men are, I mean, there has been a historical development towards more divorce, more people living alone, many more people choosing to live or having to choose to live as singles. And I think men are often coming back to what I said before, I think men are often much worse. I mean, they don't know how to do this. They the emptiness becomes really a crushing thing for them. And so they run too quickly into new relationships, for example, or something like that. And of course, a lot of women have become demanding on what to get from the man in terms of his behavior, in terms of his language, in terms of how right now there is this whole debate about mental node and how much of the work in the home around parenting is being shared equally. And if the expectation is that this will be completely shared in a way that feels completely equal, then a lot of you won't find that probably. It seems so from the research that that there is some lack. Now, I don't know if that is a realistic expectation, but let's leave that out. But of course, that that just means that a lot of couples are splitting up. And I got divorced, let's how long is that? 13 years ago. I've been prioritizing my two daughters who are now 18 and 20. And I think I'm the kind of person who it couldn't have gone any other way, no matter what kind of marriage I had been in. I think I could only feel myself as a father and be the father I wanted to be by living alone. That was the clear truth of it. And that became very clear to me leading up to the divorce. That for me it had to be like that. And of course, I hope for people that they can, men and women, me, I mean, romantic partnerships, that people can make it work, no matter the gender. But it's really, really difficult. Living together, I find it a very big challenge. And I think it it would be good for a lot of people if they could find a good cooperation, a good friendly cooperation with a previous partner, and still have what we call a household as anthropologists, which doesn't mean necessarily living together, being romantic, having sex or anything like that, but still making everything work and also having an economic relation, which you know, ex-partners will do. I think there is mentally as well as physically in the way that we build housing. I think we should support, try and support people creating good single lives and good single parent parenting lives, because that will be the way forward for quite a lot of people, both men and women.

Jesper Conrad: 39:07

Yeah. It's an interesting point about the divorces. I was actually thinking about it right before you said it, because my mind went pondering on as culture change, more and more living alone. And that means also that, yeah, then the question is what you prefer not being lonely, but having a shitty marriage where you argue every day versus being alone, living alone. Uh and now where you don't get shunned by society with getting a divorce, which you did 100 years ago, it was like off limits. Then I understand many people prefer to live alone, but then we maybe haven't yet understood fully how to skew culture in a way that supports the more single households, as you are talking about. It also made me think about churches and how they have had an historical big role in local communities. And I do not look at myself as a Christian, but I've been raised in uh in Denmark with the Lutheran Christian history we have. And I, as many Danish families, went to Christmas at Easter and Christmas, church at Easter and Christmas, and as a young adult, I got my confirmation and stuff like that. But the role the key the church had, when we removed that from society, maybe something was left out. Maybe the priest actually had a role of being the one you could confide in that wasn't dangerous for your hierarchical structure or dominance being defended, or you could be afraid of. So I'm thinking that sometimes when we make these cultural shifts, that we forget to look at what we left behind. I actually think that there was a lot of good stuff in the churches. And we went to me and my wife and our kids went to the States one and a half years ago and saw the culture around the churches they had. And I was like, oh, I wouldn't go to the preaching and everything, but the culture, the community they had, it was so beautiful and powerful. But you need to buy in on all the rest they were selling to. Be part of the community, of course. And that's where I'm looking at sometimes what are we losing behind when we left the church in Denmark, how we did it. Going from there to working with gender roles in Denmark right now with our male roles, are we in the right direction? Because there's also a lot of focus on bulking up for a lot of young men that it needs to, you need to almost look like a superhero, and there's the Andrew Tate characters and the Jordan B. Peterson in you need to suit and tie up and be like very manly. And that seems to me like it's use in the too much direction after maybe having a soft direction. What do you think?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 42:16

Well, I think there is a very diverse landscape out there, like I said. So I hope that in a hundred years from now we will understand what gender even is. Because right now the conversation is kind of stuck in a nature track and a culture track, and both camps, which also kind of align with a left-right or nature-right, culture-left division, right? And people are very afraid of admitting that the other side could have some truth in what they say. Now, of course, I work in an environment where gender equality is very high on the agenda, and I'm an anthropologist, and I grew up in so I grew up in a leftist environment where people are very reluctant to admit that there could be anything natural to gender. I think they should soften up on that position. I think there is too much fear out there of listening to the other side. I also think the right side of the spectrum should admit that some aspects of traditional male role are actually quite harmful men even in their own private life and in their own emotional development. And they would feel they feel better if they can, you know, if they can learn to work around those aspects. I think that there is some people are talking like about a backlash, a reaction against gender equality, against feminism, for example. I think we should not panic too much. I think sometimes people are some reporter is handing a microphone to a young man, and then he's saying something like, I don't like feminism, or you know, when I become a grown-up man, I want my wife to stay at home and do some cooking. First of all, he knows that he is provoking, you know. I mean, they can read this landscape and they know exactly whom they're talking to. And young people want to provoke. So I think that uh sometimes very anecdotal things about some young men coming out of a museum and someone asks them, so what are your views on gender equality? Oh no, they said this, we have a huge problem. I mean, let's take it a bit easy on that. I also think that a lot of men, for example, men our age may be experiencing negative reactions simply to, you know, being the middle-aged white male. They feel that they are the type that everyone is allowed to speak to speak badly about. And if you have that historical global mind where you say, okay, sure, we are now in a phase where there is a huge reaction against the patriarchy. I can take some heat for that. That won't bother me. Then it won't bother you too much. But if you are in a vulnerable place, if you have gone through a divorce, if maybe you lost your job and you feel that it was unfair, and these things, and you're listening to too much shit that is basically coming towards you in a sexist way, where you suddenly feel stereotyped, you know, then it is natural that it creates a counter-reaction. So that is on my mind, actually. To, I mean, what I really would like to is to find some space in the middle between these two fronts and see how there can be some space of dialogue and truth, even in the middle of the political spectrum and the spectrum of gender wars. And I agree with what you said about churches. I also would sometimes wish that they had a more natural place in our everyday life, in the way that you can find in communities, for example, in the US. And I actually go to church myself and consider myself a Christian. And I wasn't baptized, so that I did that 10 years ago after having some very positive experiences of going to church. And of course, priests have played wonderful as well as really harmful roles in local communities in the world because they have also been self-interested power players and very judgmental for some people. But the ones I have met have been wonderful intellectuals and there has been so much space. A space that you cannot find with a psychologist or even with a men's group, or I mean, you cannot really you cannot find it in a secular arena. It needs that extra space that religion can provide. Yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 46:44

Yeah. And as I said, I think we sometimes, when culture changes, forget to look at what we ran away from and say, hey, should we remember to pick up the good things and bring them with us? What change are you seeing in well, first of all, looking at the time? I know we should almost uh round up, but I am curious about the next step of your Greenland journey. With which focus are you going up there? Is it to start men's group or will it be too dangerous for them because it's such a small community that they actually would be too vulnerable? What is the goal of the next travel up there?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 47:24

Well, the goal is to find the answers to those questions. So so I have learned something and I have uh created a lot of networks with some of the men who are interested in this stuff in Greenland and who are working with something there. So the goal is to support those already doing good work so they won't burn out, which is often a risk for someone doing this kind of social work and not having a network around them. So I and their gender will support those with funds, with professional support, with supervision from a psychologist if they need that, with the all kinds of practical help. And in other places, we know that nothing is going on, but there, you know, it's a question of going, they're looking for men who are involved, for example, in youth work and asking, would you like to try this to be a facilitator? One thing I know is that there is a very clear understanding in Greenland that men are in trouble and that men are suffering in terms of their mental health. Everyone knows this. It's not like in Denmark, where a lot of, I mean, you will find people who scoff at the idea of men talking about emotions because they think it's some hippie bullshit, right? Yeah. You actually won't find up there, uh, that up there. Even if you go to the most traditional environments of fishermen and hunters, they are simply everyone, people have lost so many friends and fathers to suicide, and they have seen so much, so many bad things happening that it does open doors to go there and say, I will do my best. I know I'm a Danish person, I don't come with any kind of fixed solution, but you know, I have some funds to help this along, and then I want to learn what can work for you people, and they see the need and they want to play along, I think. So, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 49:13

Nice for the people listening. If they want to follow along on your work, I presume uh most of it or a lot of it might be in Danish, but how do they find out more about the organization you're part of, the work you're doing, also if they should want to support it somehow?

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 49:33

Sure, they can go to theirgender's homepage, it's uh dergender.dk, and you can join and be a member and follow our work. And and then we of course have all the usual social media, especially our Instagram and our LinkedIn profile, are active. And I also on my own personal LinkedIn profile, I profile some of my work. And actually, my whole trip to Greenland is on my Facebook in open posts. So you can go there and read about it if you're interested, from the more personal angle and then the more professional angle is on LinkedIn. And in around May next year of 2026, there will be this report coming out. It will actually be published by the organization called Equimundo. Equimundo is an international organization working with uh men's mental health and their values and gender relations and these things. And it's for them, they funded this research project. So there will be a report published. I hope it will come out both in Greenlandic and in Danish and in English. And of course, we will also post about that everywhere.

Jesper Conrad: 50:41

Perfect. I will share all the links for people to follow along. Jeber, thanks a lot for your time. It was super interesting.

Jeppe Trolle Linnet: 50:49

Thank you, Jesper. I really enjoyed it.