Transcript: Episode #2 - Hypocrisy in Society

Episode 2

[00:00:00] 

Kelly: Hypocrisy in society on what constitutes inappropriate behaviors… We’re gonna cut through the BS on this. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about this subject is – there are probably a lot of examples – but the first one that pops in my head are the popularity of firemen calendars (or the firefighter calendars) versus garage posters of women in bikinis. 

Doug: One of those…

Kelly: What is your first thing when you think about hypocrisy?

Doug: I think about it more in the context of speech patterns perhaps sometimes. Like what are you allowed to say versus not allowed to say? And is that the same for both sides, meaning male versus female or not? But the calendar one’s an interesting example, right? Because it’s definitely looked at differently.[00:01:00] 

If you walk through a machine shop or a mechanics garage and you see a maximum calendar or whatever may be hanging there, versus the fundraising calendar of the local firemen with their shirts off…

Kelly: Right.

Doug: So what’s acceptable?

Kelly: It was a couple years ago that we had a local organization that did exactly that. They surveyed or got a bunch of the local firefighters to volunteer to be Mr. September, or whatever, and they said, “oh this is a fundraiser.” It was actually a breast cancer fundraiser, if I remember correctly.

They threw a big party. They made a big deal about it, and I remember the first catalog or one of the catalogs, I actually had someone reach out and say, “well, aren’t you gonna get one?” And I was like, “actually, Mr. September, whatever month he was, was my brother’s best friend in high [00:02:00] school. That feels really odd for me.”

I couldn’t spend an entire month staring at him in this calendar. I just got uncomfortable and thought it was silly. I also use the example kind of to the, what you wanna call it… the comparison of the Chippendale shows. You know, women would be like, “Hey, we’re gonna go to Thunder Down Under,” and I was like, “I don’t know… I just… that’s not enjoyable to me,” or whatever.

But the hypocrisy for me comes in with a lot of the women that were reaching out or promoting this calendar fundraiser or a lot of the women who joke about, “Hey, let’s go to Thunder Down Under” are the very vocal ones who say it is completely trash or it’s completely misogynistic or it’s whatever, horribly sexist.

If [00:03:00] in my husband’s garage, if he puts up, to your point, a Maxim poster or a bikini clad woman in the garage, or heaven forbid, you know, men look at the dancers on stage or whatever, go to the strip club and I was always… I’m not saying I agree with either or passing judgment, but aren’t they kind of the same and you’re advocating for one because it’s men, but you’re totally against the other because it’s women.

Doug: Well, it’s interesting because you could argue that the Fireman Calendar is actually more exploitative. Of the men, because they’re not getting paid to do it, as opposed to the women who are in the Matco tool calendar or whatever it happens to be. They may actually have gotten paid for the modeling that they did, and so you could argue, you know, consenting adults exchange of value for services is less exploitative than [00:04:00] convincing somebody to come in and do this for free in order to raise money for a Toys for Tots sort of thing. But it is interesting because when is it exploitation and therefore bad versus when is it some acceptable thing to do? And who gets to define and decide it?

Kelly: Right. And I know we’re ta I, you, me, I’m talking images or I was thinking that you mentioned. Verbal sayings. So now I’m curious what you think of then, when you think of hypocrisy. What’s an example of a saying?

Doug: Well, I’m not sure it’s a saying per se, but it has struck me as far more common for it to be looked down upon for men to comment on a woman’s appearance than necessarily the other way around. And [00:05:00] by the way, I think we’re starting off with the concept of “hypocrisy is bad” and I think we could touch on whether it’s actually bad. Is it okay to have two standards?

Right. I don’t have the answer to that question, but it might be okay. We do that all the time. It’s okay to have a different standard for adults than you do for children. So why is it not okay to sometimes have a different standard for men versus women on what’s acceptable? It is controversial.

Kelly: I’m going to pin that conversation because I feel like that’s an entire train leaving a different station, because that’s really interesting.

Kelly: We may come back to that.

Doug: But that is the definition of hypocrisy, in essence, is that what’s good for you is not required of me. Right? And so there is a double standard. And so, if a man in the workplace were to comment on the way a woman [00:06:00] appeared, that’s likely going to be viewed fairly negatively, outside of some very specific contexts, as opposed to a woman commenting on a man’s appearance.

Kelly: Again, yes, context matters. I don’t know if it’s very few contexts because then you get into cultural and what’s socially-accepted or a social norm in that area, that region. But do you have any examples of the reverse, like I think it’s a lot easier for us or society to think of guys should very stereotypical, very, I’m trying to, I’m being broad here.

Men should not comment on the length of a woman’s skirt. I don’t know. I’m just throwing it out there. But I think there’s some, I think all of us can think of [00:07:00] a couple phrases that, yep, men just do not. If this crosses your thoughts, do not say it out loud. But now what is something on the reverse doing kind of the opposite test, Doug, that you would say, “Women shouldn’t say this to men?”

Doug: I’ll give you a specific example of one thing that happened to me one day. I was in a workplace environment walking up a set of stairs, and there was a woman walking up the stairs behind me who as we were walking up the stairs, I overheard her say to me, so what are you, a 31/32 waist? And I was not sure how to reply on that front.

Kelly: So you were walking in front of her when she said this?

Doug: In front of her so that meant… you know… my waist and whatever was right at kind of eye level.

Kelly: This is an adult show, Doug. We can say words out loud.

Doug: …clearly she was paying close attention to it, but I thought… my immediate thought was I could never say the reverse and talk about a woman’s waist size or a woman’s bust size. That it just would be completely unacceptable in, you know, outside of maybe literally a modeling environment where that’s part of the deal you have to talk about. And yet this individual felt okay to say that and didn’t necessarily intend anything inappropriate by it. It was very clear that it just was passing a comment on that was interesting to them. Yet there was a very clear and immediate visceral reaction by me that there’s a double standard at play here that could never play out.

Kelly: So what was your first reaction when you heard her say that?

Doug: I said, “Holy crap, I can’t believe it!” since she just said that to me.

Kelly: But that was in your head. [00:09:00] Did you say anything out loud?

Doug: I said, “uh, yeah…” something like that. And kept going. Right? Because the other part is I’ve learned that, you know, I can be a hammer and not all problems are nails. And so I figured there was not a teachable moment in that because had I turned around and said, “Hey, what would you feel uncomfortable if I had made a comment about your bust size?” That would have taken it a totally different direction than it was clear her intent was. So I just filed it away as one of those interesting examples of that double standard that’s there. And I don’t know if it’s evidence of hypocrisy, but it’s definitely evidence of a double standard.

Kelly: So I would challenge you on… or I don’t know if this is a challenge, but I would like to say that I think if a comment like that, let’s try and make this as equal as possible… [00:10:00] Maybe she was shopping for her husband’s pants size and was trying to think about what size it was, and it just blurted out of her mouth.

Who knows? Okay, but let’s just assume no ill intent. So if a male said that with no ill intent, that same level of uncomfortableness or, “oh, that’s awkward,” I don’t think most women would know how to respond and then they would maybe say something similar to how you verbally responded, and then walk away.

No, I would say most women don’t know because we don’t. Again, we’re like, “Wait, did… what was the intent of saying that?” “Am I offended?” “Should I say something?” “Do I need to go to HR?” “Gosh, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna…”

Doug: Right, let’s roleplay this. Let’s roleplay this because if a guy says to you, what are you a 34C? [00:11:00] Most women I know would say, “That is none of your business and it’s wholly inappropriate.”

Kelly: Okay. Are you comparing bust size, though, to waist size? Like to me, that would be making a comment about your lower half anatomy. So, to compare it to the bust…

Doug: I just picked a measurement.

Kelly: I know, and we can get into the weeds with the ‘what if’ monkeys or the context does matter, but my point in bringing it up is I don’t think people in general know how to respond in that gut reaction time of, “Did they just say what I think they said? Was that inappropriate?” And I don’t know if most people would respond with a, “that was rude,” or “that makes me uncomfortable.”

I think most women go, “I’m not gonna [00:12:00] say anything because I don’t know what to say. I’m so caught off guard and I don’t want it to escalate and I don’t want… I’m embarrassed.” And then they ruminate on it or they think about it, they stew on it. And you know, again from there, the ‘what if’ monkeys start flying.

But I just say in that situation – I think we get back to the foundational – it’s inappropriate behavior. Don’t make comments about other people’s bodies.

Doug: Right, and so where’s the learning loop in here, right? What can we take from this, from this issue of hypocrisy, from the issue of the double standard, from people making inappropriate comments and create a learning loop to help our listeners stay safer out there. What can they learn to do to evaluate this thing that just happened to them and to evaluate whether it was something notable that [00:13:00] requires a different decision?

Kelly: I would say there would be a lesson. What would be the lesson for a person who makes the comment and what, or is thinking about making a comment and the person receiving the comment, would you agree? But there are two lessons here.

Doug: Well, so one, we can only speak to the folks who we can reach, and we’re primarily gonna reach the people who are gonna be recipients of this because for the most part, people who are gonna make comments like that are probably not listening to us today. They could be and, and hopefully they’ve already learned, “Don’t do that.” It’s that simple, right? So really what we wanna do is help that, as you said, that woman who has listened to that comment and then is so stunned that they don’t know what to do and may feel uncomfortable and needs to know how to reply or respond or be better prepared to deal with something like that if it comes up again in the future.

Kelly: So what [00:14:00] would you say is the takeaway since you shared a story about being on the receiving end of a comment? What would be your takeaway that you would recommend to people, whoever they are?

Doug: I guess it would be to process through the thought process of evaluating the ‘why’s’. Like why did this make me feel the way it made me feel, and do I need to do something differently in a situation like that in the future, so that you’re not having to decide in the moment what to do…

You’ll have already thought through a course of action and how to respond to this comment, you know, in the future. But you know, that’s outside the context of addressing the actual hypocrisy of what’s acceptable between one side or the other.

Kelly: So that is a comment hypocrisy, and we started out with the [00:15:00] visual, the calendar where this podcast topic originally came up for me, was a video that my husband shared. I think it was a Facebook reel and it was shared from… Now, obviously I did the research later, but at the moment, the initial connotation was, “This is a joke”.

People, you know, this is supposed to be humorous, but to set it up since we’re only doing audio here and not video, is there’s a camera on a gentleman. He looks like he’s at the counter in a kitchen, eating a bowl of soup and his face is all beat up like black and blue eyes. He’s got the butterfly strip over the bridge of his nose and basically not verbatim, or not precisely.

I told my [00:16:00] wife the soup tasted like garbage. I don’t know if he swore or not yesterday and today it tastes much better and he’s spooning the soup into his beat up face. And so it’s

Doug: the clear application.

Kelly: yesterday that the soup tasted like garbage and then my wife beat me up. And so today I’m saying the soup tastes better.

Would you say that’s an accurate depiction of it?

Doug: Yeah, there’s a clear implication that he paid a price, a physical price, in that he got battered for having commented on his wife’s cooking. And the fascinating thing for me is reading through the comment threads on it because, it’s really interesting. There are people that, they’re just so… it was clearly intended as a joke.

They, he and his wife… his wife did the makeup. I think he’s, you know, one [00:17:00] of those TikTok or, you know, Facebook style actors that does short skits, clearly.

Kelly: To interrupt quickly when I did do it, this was shown and it bugged me all night, and I sent it to Doug saying, “This has really bugged me because this would not be acceptable if we did the opposite test”. And yes, to your point Doug, I looked up, he is considered, you know, a digital creator. And if you look at his specific Facebook, it looks like one of those public profiles or business profile pages.

It’s not like a personal page. And he’s got lots of redone videos using other, you know, viral themes or viral memes. But all of his other videos have like 3000, 4,000, somewhere in the thousand range views. This video had 11 million views. Well over 2,500 comments, 99,000 shares on just this video.[00:18:00] 

Doug: So, I mean, he accomplished his goal, right? He created a piece of content that he intended to be funny, but more than anything intended it to be viewed, right? So if you think about why he did that… but the comment, argument, or comment debate section about whether it’s appropriate or not is where really I think it connects to your visceral reaction.

And when Kelly talked about the opposite test, this is something she mentioned in our first episode, where she will evaluate a situation that happened by changing up the roles and putting it in the opposite context. So, you know, evaluating this case where you’ve got a husband presenting as a battered spouse, who got beaten up because he disliked his wife’s cooking, swap the rolls, make it a battered wife who you know, has been beaten up for some comment that she made to her husband that was deemed disrespectful and nobody would stand for it… is really where you landed on it. And the fascinating [00:19:00] discussion for me in the comment section is the number of people that are stepping up and saying, “It’s okay, this is just a joke. You people have no sense of humor.”

“This is just a joke.” And I’m not sure they would say the same thing if the in the opposite test. I’m not.

Kelly: Willing to bet money. They would not say the same thing if it was the opposite.

Doug: Certainly not in the same ratio. But the interesting thing about it is, the real question is, is it ever okay to joke about being a battered spouse, irrespective of whether it’s male or female?

Kelly: I guess that was to me, once I thought through and processed, trying to remove emotions. Doing the opposite test is to me, no. Like there are plenty of things that we can be funny about. Domestic violence, interpersonal violence is not one of them, and that is a hard boundary for me because [00:20:00] I have had men reach out and talk about their experience in an abusive relationship via the DMs because they’re not comfortable with society’s reaction, or I shouldn’t say they’re not comfortable. That’s not the right word. It hurts them more. It almost retraumatizes them more to put themselves out there and be honest and deal with society’s gaslighting. Well, you’re the guy… you were getting beat up by a woman.

I mean, it’s awful and it’s horrible. So I have a special place, I know I mentioned in the last episode when I did the opposite test with, you know, every man, ex, whatever… That was one that I had a lot of pushback from and I ended up having a really good conversation with an individual, with a guy who had gotten out of an abusive relationship. And he shared his [00:21:00] struggles with me on some of the conversations he faced, or doubters or gaslighting. And so to me I was like, you know what? This is just off the table for me. It is never okay to joke about relationship abuse.

Doug: So, our core topic carrying us through today is hypocrisy and are there acceptable uses of that hypocrisy or not, in essence? Right. So I think we’re landing on here that, from our perspective, it’s probably not ever okay. And there’s clearly gonna be people that chime in in the comments that are like, “You guys need to lighten up Francis.”

Because a lot of people thought it was funny that he was joking about it. And I guess the question in many of these cases is, ‘Does that inherent hypocrisy embolden a bad actor [00:22:00] later?’ Right? Does that embolden somebody else or provide them context to allow them to be braver and engaging in that bad decision later, right?

As opposed to serving as a constraint, a societal constraint on people that holds them to reasonable norms and morals.

Kelly: My opinion would be yes, that it makes it easier to then push the envelope a little more. To me, it’s boundary testing. Well, if this behavior is okay, what if I take it a step further? and see how that comes across. Oh, that’s okay. I mean, it’s drawing the lane in the sand and then wiping it away, drawing another line a little further away, wiping that away.

That’s what I envision. And that’s where I think this, yes, I get it. I have a sarcastic sense of humor. I [00:23:00] try to find a sense of humor in everything. But there are things where… and I would say that growing up and maturing is a big part of it. I know there are things that I laughed at in earlier stages of my life that I look back on now and I cringe because I have more awareness and more education. Had more life experiences and I think that’s kind of the point, or one of the points, of doing this show is we’re not here to judge you if you’ve made a mistake in the past. We’re trying to have the conversation to expand your mind and consider other perspectives. That’s why too, I love the male/female dynamic of our show, so that it’s not always going to be black and white.

There’s going to be a lot of ‘context matters’. But we are trying to bring that conversation forward to engage deeper [00:24:00] conversations to engage listeners that may not have otherwise considered a different perspective. But hey, yeah, I agree with Doug, but I don’t agree with Kelly. Oh, wait, maybe I do take some of what Kelly said into consideration or vice versa. But if we don’t have these conversations in my mind, then we say stuck in old patterns that don’t serve the greater.

Doug: We’d love for you guys to go watch that video, right? A link to it is in the episode key, so make sure you watch it and chime in on what you think about this. Chime in on this issue of ‘apparent hypocrisy’. You know, as I sit here and think about this, I’m still not sure where I’m landing on the the concept of this double standard being acceptable.

I don’t… you know, I’m trying to think through, back to the visual [00:25:00] example of the calendars and, you know, is it okay for some people to say, “Yep, the fireman calendar is okay, and the bikini calendar’s not? Does the hypocrisy matter? Does it undermine something? And I’m not sure yet.

Kelly: That’s definitely one that intrigued me when you brought it up because I am, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. But your example of parent and child standards makes sense in my head. So it’s almost like the opposite test in this situation. Okay, if I can accept that double standard, what happens if I flip the script?

And make it the male/female standard. And again, I’ve gotta put a pin in it because otherwise my thought process will start going that direction. And thinking of examples I do have what?

Doug: I haven’t even brought in the idea of the impact of feminism on [00:26:00] it and the approach there. 

Kelly: Ooh. Okay. Yeah, definitely making a hashtag for that one to discuss at a future topic. There you go. Share Thrive Unafraid with your friends. We are going to have many good discussions on this. I did have one other topic or one other example that I wanted to bring up and share, and it’s in regards to stalking. So much and I feel like I’m hearing more and more, and I will fully admit, maybe it’s because I watched the Netflix special series on I Am a Stalker.

Doug: For our non-Midwestern listeners, Kelly said stalking, not stalking. Like you hang a stocking over the fireplace. So just gotta…

Kelly: Thank you very much for translating my yes… very Midwestern way of…

Doug: Anyway, continue.  Youwere watching Netflix. You were…

Kelly: [00:27:00] In the September 2021 Journal of Threat Assessment Management, published by the American Psychological Association, they had one of the very few, if only, understanding females perpetrated studies and the findings, and two things that really jumped out at me and surprised me about this study was the analysis of, and I’m quoting:

“The analysis of the empirical literature suggested that female stalkers pose a similar level of violence risk as are male counterparts. Although this risk is often perceived as non-threatening” (so women aren’t as scary as male stalkers) and then, “although the lower rate of female stalking contributes to the lack of knowledge of this phenomenon, there are broad social factors which influence the perception of women as stalkers.”

“These [00:28:00] social factors include gender socialization, which regard women as less dangerous and men as more capable of defending themselves, men being less likely to self-identify as victims of a crime or report crime, men not receiving adequate victim support, and men being less likely to feel or admit fear for their safety, which is often unnecessary component to stalking definitions.”

And my conclusion really was that the inappropriate behavior, again, needs to be brought into society’s conscious level no matter who is displaying the behaviors. So often, if a female is obsessed with a male who, for whatever reason, we joke about it, we laugh about it, we make fun of, “Oh, she’s following him. She’s trying to find out where he works, where he lives. Whatever it [00:29:00] may be. Almost like a heartthrob… like teen idols or so on and so forth. 

But when we do the opposite test and then it’s a male following a female to her home to try and figure out where she lives or following, trying to figure out where she works, then there’s a lot different attention put to that or society says, “Yeah, no, that’s not right.” And so I thought that was an interesting opposite test. An interesting hypocrisy of we will brush off when women seem obsessed with a male, but  we don’t wanna brush off when a male is obsessed with a female. And now I’m not saying stalking. Ever-condoned and just to be clear, which is actually unclear, the definition of stalking varies, but it’s ‘two or more unsolicited contacts [00:30:00] after they’ve been told, “do not contact me anymore”, no matter what the medium is that they use to contact an individual.’

Doug: So if I go back to the beginning of what you started talking about there, perception conflicts with the reality of it. Right? I think you said that actually female stalkers are more likely statistically speaking to pose a threat. Right? Certainly than they’re perceived to…

And so again, that hypocrisy in action, that double standard, I mean, we all remember the case of the female astronaut who drove halfway across the country while wearing a diaper. You know, nobody lauded that scenario. Everybody recognized that that scenario was just batshit crazy.

And so I do think generally speaking [00:31:00] though, a guy’s gonna get a punch in the shoulder, and an ‘attaboy’ that he’s got a female who’s enamored of him that much, that she’s a stalker, more than the woman who has a unwanted male admirer for sure. And I don’t know what you do with that other than to say that you gotta treat ’em both the same.

The person being stalked needs the same. Needs the same skillsets to recognize the risk. You know, there may be a size dynamic in the male/female aspect of it, but arguably speaking, either individual is just as capable if they’re an unhinged individual causing harm to the other person, whether through reputational harm or physical harm with the use of tools.

So I think it’s important to challenge these assumptions that it’s acceptable or less threatening just [00:32:00] because the female is doing it to a male victim.

Kelly: I think to me the takeaway and what I would want listeners to say is, “Okay, there’s a lot to this study, there are a lot more statistics and you know, depending on that, was there an intermittent relationship between the female and male in the past? That will impact the levels of the stalking behaviors and where they’re ranked on a threat scale.

To me, it gets back to “Stay curious.” Don’t dismiss “Oh, isn’t that cute?” or like you said, “Attaboy! You have a female admirer that’s very persistent…” do not dismiss behaviors so quickly simply because we think, “Oh, that individual isn’t really a threat.” Why? Because they’re female? Um, why? Because they seem [00:33:00] scrawny or littler than you…?”

And again, we can go into so many other discussions on that, but to get back to that foundational skill is: Get curious really. You have someone who is very adamant about getting in touch with you or isn’t stopping even though you’ve told them to stop that behavior. Tell me more about that. Or tell me who this person is and why the field, which is ever expanding, of threat assessment, and it’s is growing and it’s getting more and more I wanna say educated in that there’s more studies that they’re focusing on. They’re putting more attention to learn as much as they can… don’t be afraid to reach out and seek advice from people, from experts, because a lot of times the behavior, whether it’s someone at work making an inappropriate comment or an admirer that [00:34:00] won’t stop, so many times we dismiss it. 

“Well, I don’t wanna bother. That’s not really an issue. It’s not really a big deal.” Go to the expert, go to the HR person. Go to the non-emergency number for law enforcement, for stalking behaviors, because the biggest thing those people want is for nobody to say anything. They don’t want to be called out. And that’s assuming that they know what they’re doing, that their intentions… they do have ill intentions. They don’t want things to be said out loud. And so to me it’s that: Get curious with that behavior. To your point that you said earlier, earlier about the why’s, why did that make me uncomfortable? And what action should I take in the future?

Or what action should I take now? because I’m seeing a pattern of behaviors,

Doug: So, I mean, that segues into kind of a discussion about emotional boundaries [00:35:00] and understanding emotional boundaries.

Kelly: Which is perfect because that’s our daily habit exercise for this episode. It’s almost like you knew that, Doug.

Doug: Yes. I can read.

Kelly: Yeah. So the emotional boundaries, which to me. You’re hearing about it more and more I think because of mental health, self-care discussion. But what are your emotional boundaries and how can you verbalize them to inform others?

Because to me, if you don’t know what your emotional boundaries are, you can’t enforce them because you don’t know where they are. And I did, I found a great article on Psychology Today that will help anyone get started with this exercise. And I’ll put the link in the episode key so you can read it. What you want from it and get started on this exercise.

You can download it from thediamondarrowgroup.com. That’s where all the episode keys will be hosted is [00:36:00] on our website, thediamondarrowgroup.com. But I can’t help but think that emotional boundaries are really the start of even before physical. When it comes to personal safety, like that’s the start of personal safety, is recognizing when some of those early micro threats to your boundaries are tested, are in those non-physical ways by playing on emotions, by playing on what you’re comfortable with mentally.

Doug: And so it’s interesting because we try and avoid, as you call it, the ‘what if’ monkeys in the midst of this show. But actually everybody needs to do a little bit of ‘what about ism’ as they’re going through this understanding of themselves. There’s learning this, setting emotional boundaries, because you have to have thought through some of that and doing it.

It’s not overwhelming. This [00:37:00] article that we’ve got for you guys is a place to… Right, it’s five steps to think about on setting emotional boundaries and what you want. What if your goal is to pick up something a little bit more today than you knew yesterday about yourself and about how to stay safe and take personal responsibility for keeping yourself and your family safe out there?

Kelly: Excellent wrap up! With that, thank you all for listening to this episode. We’d love to see your comments, your feedback. You can go and make sure to follow @thediamondarrowgroup and @texasspydad on Instagram to keep up with even more real advice between these show episodes. Again, thank you so much for listening.

We appreciate your support. Remember to leave a show review wherever, whatever platform you’re listening to us on, and share it with your friends. And Be bold, Be curious, Be kind, and Stay sharp so that you [00:38:00] can Thrive Unafraid.