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With Roe v. Wade under imminent threat, it's imperative that we consider what its overturn would mean to marginalized communities and economically constrained people, and how this could even affect progress made with the Black Lives Matter #BLM movement. To have this discussion today, I'm joined by Martin Henson, founder of BMen Foundation. Martin has spent the last ten years advocating for Black lives, addressing the systemic issues that affect Black and marginalized groups through both conventional and unconventional avenues. Martin created BMEN foundation, an organization built to support black men, as an extension of his work.
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Roe v. Wade: Supreme Court's opinion leak and the threat of overturn
06:00 This is not "a women's issue", rather a women's issue that affects every body
07:43 Getting the BMen Foundation started in the midst of #metoo
11:00 Masculinity, consent and how men who have been sexually assaulted react
(Prior Episode Mentioned: A Safer Society: Ending Sexual Violence Through Survivors’ Stories With Tim Mousseau)
14:00 What makes "toxic masculinity" toxic? How do we define it?
17:31 Creating a safe, vulnerable space for people
18:40 What is it like to be Martin Hanson, a black man in America today?
21:30 Traveling for greater perspective into race and racism
24:45 Having "the talk" with your kids about how people perceive black people in America to ensure they don't get in trouble or shot by police because of the color of their skin
31:03 The future of BMen Foundation: Breaking down barriers through conversation and vulnerability
33:15 Martin's closing thoughts - supporting women and leaning in as we handle Roe v. Wade
About Our Guest: Martin Henson, Founder of BMen Foundation
Martin has spent the last ten years advocating for Black lives, addressing the systemic issues that affect Black and marginalized groups through both conventional and unconventional avenues. Martin created BMEN foundation, an org to support black men, as an extension of this work.
Connect with Martin & BMen Foundation
E-mail: martin@bmenfoundation.org
Website: https://martinhspeaks.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-henson-06325b63/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/bmenfoundation
Facebook: https://facebook.com/bmen
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bmenfoundation
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Being A Black Man In America and Supporting Women's Rights (Roe v. Wade, #MeToo) with Martin Hanson, Founder of BMen Foundation
Hello, fellow do-gooders and friends. I'm your host Corinna Bellizzi, an activist who is passionate about building a better, more sustainable, and truly regenerative future. Every week I invite you to care a little bit more so that together we can all be a little better today. We're going to connect on racial injustice, inequality and racism. We're going to talk about black lives matter #BLM as a movement and how this movement seeks to create a more equitable society. But before I introduce my guest and really get started today, I want to talk for a moment about what's presently happening in the Supreme court. This week, an unprecedented event occurred a leaked draft, majority opinion hit news media coast to coast.
That seems to indicate that Roe V. Wade will be overturned. The reason I bring this up today is that guess who is most impacted by lack of access to healthcare, including safe abortion procedures. Sadly, it is the economically constrained people of our society and dominantly that's made up of minorities.
So what happens when abortion is made illegal in any state, the incidence of illegal abortion goes up. An interviewee from wordinblack.com sat down with Janette Robinson Flint, the executive director for black women for wellness. Jeanette gave voice to what many of us are already thinking.
She says, “I am dismayed. I am angry about the ways that the Supreme court is going. 78% of black women do not approve of the overturn of Roe V. Wade. 85% of black women will support someone they love, who chooses to have an abortion with the overturn of Roe V. Wade. What it does is put women across the middle of the country at risk.
They won't be able to access abortion. And if they have to travel to another state, there is a cost of abortion. And it is unfortunate because every woman, every black woman deserves control autonomy and self-determination over her own life. It's a basic human. You get to say, if you want to be pregnant or not.”
Now, this is not what I had planned to talk about today, but I cannot help, but lead with it today. I'm going to be connecting with an incredible young man Martin Henson, founder of BMN foundation. Martin has spent the last 10 years advocating for black lives, addressing the systemic issues that affect black and marginalized groups through both conventional and unconventional avenues.
Martin created BMN founded. An organization to support black men as an extension of this work. So, Martin, I know I've said a bleak tone for the start of this show today, but I'm itching to know what you think about all of this. How do you see the potential of an overturn of Roe V. Wade?
Yeah, I think it's going to be a fight.
I I'm angry. I'm sad. Uh, I feel. Ignorant in a sense that I should know more because I'm a perfectionist. I want to be ready and equipped to support a black women that are going to have to navigate this. In addition to the other women of color and women throughout the world that are trying to figure out how they go on to exist in Americans.
It's bleak. It is, it is bleak. It is exactly that.
I think the biggest thing I'm seeing in media is that women feel helpless and as if they are completely out of control of their lives. And so I know that that may sound like an extreme statement from somebody. I've never had an abortion. I have two boys, but the reality is if you're taking something away from someone that gives them autonomy, that gives them the right to be able to bear a child.
When they're ready to that, doesn't say to them suddenly, you know, I know that you really want to go this career track or finish high school as a for example, but you're pregnant now and you're just going to have to do that. So put all your other plans on whole. You know, welcome to mama hood. That being said too, some women don't want to be mothers.
And I have to say, it's their right to choose that path. Having children is a huge responsibility, but it also has the effect. I've keeping us economically constrained if we don't have the means to fully support that child at the time that it enters our lives. And so, I mean, I can say this as someone who put my career first for a good amount of time, and now I have kids and it's, it's complicated to make time for everything in your daily lives to take care of your children the way you want.
While still being able to do the other things that you need to do when your daily life to pay the bills and everything else. What happens when your kid gets sick? And now he can't go to work? Well, if you can't afford healthcare or childcare, what do you do? And so I think that this is something that affects black men.
It affects all men as well as all women. If we suddenly see this, this tide change, You know, uh, an act that was put in place in the seventies that essentially protected people from, you know, having to seek, uh, an illegal means to take care of something that they weren't ready for. I mean, I just am very worried about the state of our social systems here in the United States.
So I guess that was commentary more than anything, but I'm really looking for a check from you. Like how do you think that this will impact. And in your community
I think people really need to learn to stop seeing it as a everybody's issue that starts with women's bodies and look at it as a women's issue that affects everybody and that you should be invested in a very real way.
Uh, and instead of waiting to be waiting to get instructions, which I, as a, as a man, as a guy, I felt myself getting caught into that mode. All right. Well, when somebody tells me what to do, I'm gonna do it. Uh, but in. When we think about, even as I think about things would be men and the social determinants of health and all the things that impact.
If I'm trying to frame what's happening with men, I'm looking at it, economics, education, healthcare, access communities, experiences of racism and discrimination. But we were thinking about what's happening in the bodies of, of, of women right now. There's a whole range of health care that they're not being able to determine for themselves.
So I think. It should be important to every man, every person to, to be invested in this fight to make sure that women have autonomy over their body.
Thank you for that. Um, I, I just ultimately. I see that we're at a crossroads and I didn't expect to be here again so soon. It seems every time we turn there's, there's something more coming forward that is going to impact, or have this strong effect on social systems in the United States and other minority communities, as well as.
All people. So I'm curious. Um, really, when did you get B men foundation started? You've got to start at about 10 years ago. So this is before the black lives matter movement really started. So tell me about your early work and what you're doing now.
Well, I've been doing the activism work for 10 years. The men started about four years ago in 2018.
A big thing about it was actually me too. The evolution of Beaman expanded over time and to something that. As specific focus on black men and building support spaces and advocacy. But in the beginning it was thinking about what response should men be having to me too? And then it became in a color.
Then it became black men. Then it became, oh, we black men need their own space to process and an advocate. And we need to find support. We need to understand consent for ourselves as well as how it impacts others. So it was a, it was. I really climbing journey felt like a mountain of all these obstacles of what to prioritize and what not too, but that's, that's a lot of where it, where it came from.
Well, I have to say in this particular instance, I've often wondered what it's like to be in a man's shoes as this, me too, kind of movement in itself is also coming out more women are coming forward with allegations that they have. Abused in some ways and you know, how, how that could be discomforting to the male population.
So can you tell me a little bit about what that was like and the sorts of things that you helped men work through as the me too movement started?
Yeah. You know, I haven't had this question in a long time. Uh, I appreciate that it was, it was hard. It was hard to, to, to realize that women didn't always feel safe in a way.
Men imagine themselves being in relation to them. Uh, and so having conversations around what to do and how to do about that, it was, it was me and several men, uh, not just black men. And what we ended up doing is creating a workshop with men around sexual harm and processing through what that means and experiences that a man had engaged in.
And they're trying to figure out how do I actually. Uh, become better. How do I become accountable to a group of man? How do I, how do I really look at this in a way that shows I'm evolving and thinking differently? And then the other side of that is, uh, how are men actually understanding their own bodies and their own sense of consent that plays into it as well.
So, as I was intervening and what the, all of the things that men think that allows us to act this way also was finding out that men have stories of things that have happened to. Uh, one of the quiet, consensual and them figuring out, do they have permission to talk about that and work through that?
That brings to mind for me an earlier episode, where I interviewed Tim muso and two Musso has a career, basically helping people develop better policies, other companies that can support a system where people all feel safe and where something doesn't happen.
That is untoward. In his case, he had been abused and high school and our college rather, and didn't even know what had happened until years later, this person sent. Pictures via social media of him and compromising situations that he had no recollection of and where it was obviously him, because the tattoos he had were pictured and things like that.
And so it's quite possible that he, you know, had been drugged or roofie or just after he passed out, you know, having a fun night out in college was abused. Now the specifics of that are unimportant, but the reality is that he's a man that came from. And is talking about this in an open way to help normalize that journey and that story for other men, because men have so often been silent when something comes up that is, you know, that challenges their masculinity in a way, because we've somehow tied this abuse to masculinity.
And if it happened to you, then. You're somehow at risk in that way, like your masculinity is questioned or challenged, at least that's how I've perceived it from the men in my life. Who've opened up. And so I wonder what you would have to say about this concept of, you know, connection to masculinity in the me too movement, since you know, you've, you've been so adept at working in this particular way before.
For a lot of men, concepts of maleness and masculinity are really boiled down to being strong.
Uh, being cool, sometimes being cows to being unaffected, uh, navigating through life's journeys without a lot of wear and tear. So you you're supposed to just be man up, be strong enough to navigate. And that's what makes you a strong man. So I have to tackle these ideas of what a strong man would, uh, a vulnerable man looks like to be able to get to the point where men can share their stories in a way that can allow them to move to the next step.
So as it relates to. The interesting overlap between how black men do this and navigate their, their bodies. And the relationship that we have too, is that by way of incarceration, you know, and let's say something like stop and frisk, which an argument can be made for this sexual violence. You don't have access to your body and who you can't determine who can do what to you and then your, your, your body is placed in incarcerated stays or systemic control, which a lot of men can connect to.
When we start thinking about women, having those similar lack of control. Well, in a, in a very different way, I think there's space for, for men, black men to be like, Ooh, here's how it feels on my body is not under my control. And I can extend that in a way that other groups of men might not be able to do.
To be able to lend to this fight as well.
I think this brings me to another question I had for you because, and running something that is focused on also celebrating a group of men, um, sometimes you'll get a question about, at what point it becomes something like toxic masculinity and. I don't see it that way at all, but I just wondered if you've come in contact or had to confront this type of a question before about how you have what could be a healthy masculinity and when does masculinity become toxic?
Yeah, I, I didn't engage it from the position that, uh, masculinity exists without a value orientation first. And then when it becomes harmful to them, Say toxin, masculinity, nest, they refer to, and sometimes you get in situations where their primary designation of masculinity is that it is toxic. So what I try to do is show them that by way, for black men, specifically, by way of having to navigate the world of oppression and white supremacy, we've had to develop a different type of masculinity, just.
Just because of that and across the world and across cultures, masculinity to exist in a lot of different ways. So when we overlay all masculinity as inherently toxic, I try to reframe that into a conversation around which parts of masculinity have you found to be toxic in your world and in your alive, or that you may feel constrained by whether it's coming from you or is impacted.
To, to allow people to have space, to talk about it in a way they understand it and also show them that there's masculinity. You can be a lot of different.
Well, and that women can also have masculine attributes. It's, it's just the reality that we're all have the feminine and the masculine embodied within us.
And I think we get in the habit in today's world of talking about something like the divine feminine, but we don't do the same with regard to masculinity. And I think that there's a miss in there, you know, is it, it, we, we hear about masculinity almost spoken of in a negative way. I think it's all what you make of it in a way, but it would be nice if we can get our language centered around what really matters and, and not be so critical of sex or gender or masculine versus feminine.
I mean, they shouldn't necessarily be completely opposing they're complimentary as well. So, you know, you and I both have feminine and masculine attributes. As one evil or good, not necessarily, they're just different sides of a coin. And so I think if we can reframe our thinking that doesn't make me a bad feminist to say that I embrace my masculine attributes, as well as just time and place and understanding, you know, when you should express what parts of your psyche.
So that's at least how I see it. And I wonder what your perspective would be, you know, considering the flip side of the coin, the femininity and masks.
Yeah, there's duality and there's multiplicity and all the ways that we exist for some people, the masculine, feminine is not even a way that they like to characterize themselves.
And I was like, all right. Yeah. They, they just move in that way. I think we should make sure that we're understanding the way that we're both perceived and the way that we feel internally and trying to navigate that in a way that gives everyone as much dignity as possible. Yeah. And even with things that are like around being vulnerable, sometimes people will interpret that from me as being feminine.
Okay. That's a, if that's the term you have for it, um, is, is just an expansion of the way I would like to be. Uh, and I don't have any restrictions personally on how people label it, whether masculine, feminine, neutral. It's just that when they come across my masculinity, I don't want to feel it. I'm unsafe.
I'm making them feel unsafe. And if there's very specific things that I can do. Create a more supportive atmosphere and that's what I'm trying to do.
I think that's great. And honestly, there's power in being vulnerable because you connect with people when you're vulnerable and they develop an emotional bind to you in a way.
And so I really feel like it's all of our jobs to just be a little bit more honest and vulnerable. And the day to day, you know, started this broadcast. I had muted myself on one thing and nothing. So two minutes of dead air, you know, might've shaken me up a little bit, but the reality is it's okay to make mistakes.
And if everyone's perfect all the time, then what's really interesting about life, right? So I have a serious question for you, but I'm, I have no expectation of really what the answer is going to be. It's just, I would like to understand what it's like to be. In your shoes as a black man in America today.
And it's a really big question, but I would just like to get a purview, a snapshot of what it's like to look through the lenses that you wear in your daily life, where you live in the world.
So my articulation and my intelligence, me refining that has been a function of survival as a black man in America.
Because if I'm not T. And I am not gentle. I'm not making people aware of how occupied the space. And I look dangerous if I come into a space looking at neutral and I'm like, oh, well, what's, what's wrong with him? Like, is this something do I need to feel like I have to prepare myself for some violent encounter.
This is coming from the other people. If I do not have some way of softening. Existence in the, in space. That's that's the everyday that's the, all the time. And then the advocacy piece is because the way that people think about black men is inherently so racialized. I have to come out and create advocacy around the things of black men exist through when they experience in ways that were vulnerable and ways that we're human, because otherwise it wouldn't happen.
So a big part of this is just survival. If I didn't have to have a defense around being a black man, I will be very different, but because I have to be on guard, I have to be thoughtful. Uh, I have to be expressive as, as a way to diffuse tension, very unique and specific ways. It's a, it's an intellectual text for sure.
For sure. Uh, I can remember being when you're younger, you know, a lot of people have anxiety around working in groups. If you have, you know, we've been in school. That whole thing. I remember if I was in a group and if I stumbled or stammered on any answer to any question, they not asking me nothing else.
There were some time because I, my one chance to make an impression. Opposite to what they already perceive me has been belong. Wow. Now, oh, he's just, he's not smarting. And why he's saying that's just one example. So you learn to navigate in all of these unique ways and over time. And honestly, through the, through the movement, I learned more ways to articulate that because I had to think about identity and vulnerability and space, and I'm like, all right.
If I, if I'm only considerate to everybody else's space all the time, I actually got. How to ask them to be considered our mind and in a way that gives me my own humanity. So that's the long way to answer what you asked me. What does those are? My thoughts?
I think we could dig a little bit deeper. Have you spent much time outside of the United States?
No, no.
This is one of the questions I've often asked my friends of different races when they go to other countries, how do they experience being their culture and do they feel the same kind of racial strain? And it's very interesting to see.
You know, white people in other countries like France say, oh, racism doesn't exist here. And then be in Paris and talking to some young kids of Arabic descent who speak Arabic. And they're speaking Berlin, which is like a French in reverse. And I'm learning to speak Berlin with them because it was kind of like, um, a more, I'd say structured pig, Latin it's basically its own language.
Right. And then later speaking with that same person who has a white French person saying, oh no, we don't ex we don't have racism here that doesn't exist. And then I say, oh, do you speak for our land? And then they say to me, oh, say , which means it's mostly the Arabs that speak Berlin. And so even in this instance, This person is showing their true beliefs.
Like they may believe that the French culture is not racist and that they don't have racism, but it's still. That being said, friends of mine who have traveled to France of different cultures have not felt the same racial strain that they felt here, at least in, you know, 10 years ago or so that's when I was traveling more on an international scale, it's pre pre having children.
And so I just am curious if you've seen some of that same thing. With men in your group with BMN foundation, have you heard different perspectives when they traveled abroad and other spaces versus their experience in America?
Yeah, absolutely. It and it wasn't until, so I'm from the south, from Arkansas live in Boston.
Now it wasn't a lot moved across country, uh, realized that people experienced race in very different ways. So I didn't even know how to have the conversation because. Racism was primarily happening through this like black Southern experience that was going on. You can give here people coming from all different types of places and they have very different concepts around what's happening.
What's not. Um, so I, I know a guy that he's, uh, black and German, he was talking about his experiences, racism and how it lives and how it exists. So I think one of the things that happens as a function of colonial. That it creates these separations and divisions and, and you know that the racism is there as a black man.
And that's similar for all the people I've talked to. It's like the, um, you know, have you be like where's, where's Waldo, everything that using the book? Yeah,
I think so. The red and white sweaters
He's in there somewhere. And that's how you think about racism. If you're going somewhere new, he's like, I know it's here somewhere.
I got to make sure I'm aware of what, what the rules are. So I don't really get caught up in anything. So I think that particular journey, even though I haven't gone overseas, this is something that I'm playing everywhere I go. That's that's the new unique, what are the rules for black people here? I've never had to say that out loud, but that.
That's the overlay that comes to mind.
And how might you experience microaggressions? Like that example I gave about that French woman that was very much kind of a micro, aggressive comment that she made. And if I had been with somebody else in that group who was Arab, they would have taken offense to that.
Right. And so it's a simple thing to modify your behavior a little bit, but the reality in my mind is you shouldn't have to. I mean, the fact that. Black parents and today's society have to sit there, black boys down and have the talk about, you know, how you have to react with police. If you are pulled over whether or not you can wear a hoodie and have the hood up over your head, how you can dress and how you react to people around you dictating whether or not you might be shot.
And so, I don't know if you ever had the talk from your. But I'd love to know what that experience is like from your perspective Lu.
Yes. I've had to talk, so I've had to talk and with my daughter, I just had to give her the talk. So we're starting to the talk is that we talk, we say it's singular, but it's, it's, it's multiple talks.
So I remember when I was younger. Captains were cool. I liked them. Maybe they weren't cool, but I was into them and this was before.
Okay. Yeah. So it was a thing. So, uh, this was before they started making them paint them like orange. They don't, they don't paint them black anymore. And my mom would not let me get one. And she was like, nah, it looks too much like a gun because I don't want you. This is before I had any sort of conscious.
Around any of the, the racial stuff that happens in your, your parents wanting to shield you. So that, that was the earliest memory that I have of that. There's been many, many conversations since then. So where my daughter, she's 11 just started having this, this dialogue around what race means and all of these other things.
She didn't know what the Klan was. The KU Klux Klan was. And I had to tell her here's to the history of kind of how black people have been through. And it was rough. It was hard for me cause I, I cried. I broke down because I have to break her innocence in some ways to tell her that I wasn't as explicit.
But what's implied is that they used saying us from trees. If we didn't walk the right duration of sidewalk, looked at somebody too long or all types of stuff. So it's it's conversations. And then now we have the Roe vs. Wade stuff. That's another conversation I have to gain plan with my mom, her mom, you know, her grandparents just to get, how do you communicate this to your child?
Uh, so we'd all comes with it.
You have me thinking about a book by John Ronson that I read years ago called adventures, where with extremists, where he takes, um, a deep dive into these groups, these extremists. And as a Jewish man, essentially, I won't say infiltrated, but he was doing an investigative journalistic piece.
Right? So he was interviewing people that are a part of the KU Klux Klan, including the grandmasters or dragons or whatever the heck they call them. Right. And he was continually terrified that they would discover or suspect that he might be doing. And that that could result in some negative demise for himself.
And the same thing happened when he was confronting somebody who is more of a, a Palestinian extremist, and somebody who might be defined as a terrorist. So it's an incredible book. It's a really interesting and entertaining dive into these extreme sus extreme sides of humanity. And also very, very revealing about this kind of dark underbelly of humanity and how we are essentially a manipulated into believing some of the things that we believe through like this slow kind of erosion and how today the KKK has gotten very.
Why as to how they talk about their beliefs and focusing on nationalism and things like that, to try and drive a conversation pride in your country and things along these lines, which are, I think, quite alarming. And in reality, things like the American flag emblazoned boldly on a truck now makes me wonder about that.
Person's. Belief system. Right. And, and it's in my mind kind of crazy that we've gotten to a point where the icon of our country has become something that is actually becoming polarizing because one group has. So co-opted the symbol and an emblazoned way with, um, this kind of perspective of Trump's America and some of the inborn racist comments that tend to be present in that community.
And so. I don't know what more to say about that particular subject, except that it's important to keep our doors open and conversing about these things so that we're not essentially brainwashed as people. Um, because there, there can be a slow erosion through, you know, softening language about specific groups.
The KKK is a hate group. Like let's call it what it is, right. Not guide it or kind of couch it in terms like nationalism at any rate. That's where my head is.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's how it would really spins out sometimes. Uh, also America is like a geopolitical superpower for somebody somewhere.
We, we represent that and that before the internal homegrown hate groups, we got became bigger. That's how people feel and think about America. But at the same time, I think it's sometimes it's easy for us to see these things as extremes because they're more visible. You know, you see somebody doing something vastly different from what the norm is.
KKK hoods, walking around burning crosses, but the slow erosion that you've mentioned that oftentimes come with economic hardship where people get started leaning farther into the, you know, the homophobic stuff, the transphobic. Uh, now it's enough about, uh, uh, women's rights. They don't catch themselves falling deeper into these identity funnels that make them feel important and when they're feeling anxious.
So that's a lot of the work that I'm doing is to really break the stigma of all of these topics about coming at it. And just talking about it, talking about men of vulnerability and masculinity, again, talking about community with, with trans folks talking about homophobia. And incarceration, like, that's how you, you, you, you demystify all of these anxieties
Or the systems of incarceration.
The fact that it's mostly a privatized system, which is built for profit, you know, and to keep people in jail, which is. Uh, warped system in so many ways. And so I'm really just curious about what your future lien is for BMN foundation. Where do you see the foundation going and growing over the course of the next couple of years?
Yeah, absolutely. So we do the monthly. Every second Sunday, we have our next one coming up this Sunday, actually from five to seven, this digital checkout, even foundation.org. And you can sign up for it or the right, my vision for the next, you know, five years as a happiest, all around the nation. Spaces where black men can come together and support each other.
And talk about the stigmas and talk about advocacy in a very specific way. Uh, using research to support the findings that we know happened that brought people together in a room and. Openly and more vulnerably. It decreases the levels of mental health distress. It gets them more connected to community.
They get to have a more fulfilled life, increase their wellbeing. I'd love to see that for. All over the U S all over the world. Uh, so that's what I'm pushing for those spaces. Cause I know we just don't have enough. I've been on this kick lately. We don't have enough psychiatrists, therapists, mental health workers to deal with all the trauma that we exist under on a daily basis.
So we need something to be able to do in the meanwhile with each other to support the average person who's going through a hard time or who just wants to know. I won't be mad at you,
Right? Well, I applaud the effort and I wish that for you. I hope that there is one day soon, a chapter and my local area and the Santa Cruz mountains, perhaps.
So a great place to go camping, get outdoors and, and have some events like that here. And so thank you so much for that. Now, if there was a particular question that I haven't asked that you wish I had, or some thoughts you'd like to leave our audience with today, what would it.
Yeah, I've been really thinking about, well, first of all, I have to say, check out the BMen Foundation.
You've been foundation that, or really, I'm really thinking about men, making sure that we lean into what's happening for women right now. And I'm thinking about a lot. This is my personal reflections. One of the ways that I can use my platform and my brand and my name to, to engage those conversations.
That are accessible for men without being a burden for women. That's where my head is at.
Especially with what's happening with Roe V. Wade, presently. I have to say I completely agree. And I, the one thing that I kind of leaned back on, anytime I'm talking to in not-for-profit that is focused on social systems or social advocacy, social impact in some way is that we really are all in this.
Because together we thrive. And when we separate ourselves, we falter, we crumble. We don't do as well as we might. And I think it's also really important to open those difficult conversations and reach across aisles with people that may not agree with you because doing so, and especially being vulnerable with them and asking questions can disarm them and you can affect change.
You can actually influence people that way. And so I applied what you're doing. I appreciate. The support and the love and all of that. No problem. Thank you very much for taking this time with me today and for just being so open and willing to talk about Roe V. Wade, because that's a tough subject for many people.
Yeah, no problem. No problem. It's um, I'm in it. I'm in it with you. So I just had to make sure I'm this as effective as possible and supporting women and in navigating this
Fantastic. To connect with Martin, I encourage you to visit BMN foundation.org. And if you're active on social platforms, you can follow Martin's work at BMen Foundation.
Thank you now as always for being a part of this pod and this community, because together we really can do so much. We can care more and we can be better. We can even regenerate our social systems and save this planet. Thank you so much, everybody.