Sharing Your Truth Without Diminishing Others: Timothy Wienecke On Sexual Assault Advocacy

Today, I sit down with Timothy Wienecke, a licensed mental health clinician, men’s advocate, and host of The American Masculinity Podcast. Mr. Wienecke brings nearly a decade of clinical experience working with men, veterans, and first responders, combined with his years of service in the Air Force advocating against interpersonal violence and sexual assault. In this conversation, we get into masculinity, consent, men’s mental health, and the unique challenges men face in today’s culture.

Mr. Wienecke shares his journey from military service to mental health advocacy, and the pivotal moments that shaped his mission to help men without diminishing the needs of others. We unpack the realities of male sexual assault survivors, the barriers that keep men from reporting, and how societal attitudes—like joking about prison rape—can silence victims. He offers insight into how definitions of masculinity have shifted, how disempowerment can lead men astray, and why the conversation about men’s well-being must be approached with both compassion and accountability.

We also explore Mr. Wienecke’s work on The American Masculinity Podcast, where he addresses suicide prevention, trauma, cultural perspectives on manhood, and practical tools for personal growth. His message is clear: men are not meant to be islands. Building genuine connections, finding community, and rejecting the myth of total self-reliance are essential to living a healthier, more fulfilled life. Whether you’re a man seeking guidance or someone who loves and supports the men in your life, this episode offers valuable takeaways for creating a culture of respect, empathy, and mutual growth.

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Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today we are going to be getting into Men's Health is a topic I've covered a couple different times on the show, and I always love it because every man has a similar, yet different perspective on it.

And then of course, I've even had women on the show covering the other side of it. And I think it's always an interesting topic to get into, and there's, there's a spectrum of toxic masculinity to femininity, and then there's masculinity that is somewhere in the middle that is kind of that perfect balance, but it's very hard for men to achieve, especially.

Nowadays where the definition of masculinity is just all over the place, especially on social media, where a lot of men are growing up in broken homes, a lot of men aren't growing up with father figures or masculine mentors. And, um, you know, again, everything in TV shows and in movies and books and the social media is just so.

Skewed. It can be hard to navigate masculinity as a young man in today's day and age, and even as, even as an older man. Luckily, we have a gentleman here today who is a men's advocate, and he's gonna be sharing with us a little bit about masculinity and what he's doing to help men Minister Timothy Winneke.

So great to have you here, and I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. Uh, so my name's Tim Winneke. I'm a licensed mental health clinician out here in Colorado. I've been helping men, veterans and first responders clinically for about coming up on 10 years here pretty quick.

And prior to that I was in the Air Force and I spent about six years doing different kinds of advocacy work against interpersonal violence, sexual assault, and the like. Um. I've always been an advocate in something. I think my first allyship award was at 22. I'm 45 now. Um, and it's been nice finding a way to advocate and speak for what men need without diminishing what other people are going through and what they need.

I think that we're finally kind of hitting this point where people are starting to talk about these things as what people need instead of in competition with each other. I think we're moving in the right direction. Right. And so you mentioned the military there. Now obviously I was in the military and we have a lot of different trainings we go through about certain things from sexual harassment and assault to mm-hmm.

You know, workplace conduct among other training, suicide prevention. Were you voluntold to be in charge of this or did you go up to the command and say, Hey. I wanna be the person who teaches all of this. I volunteer. I volunteered. Uh, I've, so I was stationed in Osan, which at the time that's in, uh, South Korea, and it's a really transitory base, right?

Everybody's there for a year. There's a lot of drinking. And so it tends to be the kind of place that if you're a perpetrator of sexual assault, it's your playland. No one knows everybody. Everybody's drunk. There's a lot of people that are vulnerable to you. And so unbeknownst to me that at the time had more assaults, like the highest assault rate per base in the Air Force at the time.

And so I was at one of the old briefings that they used to do, which were awful. The the, when I was in, in oh eight, this is when I got this briefing, it was basically just a 15 minute PowerPoint reminding you that, Hey, did you know that rape is bad? That you shouldn't do it and will punish you if you're caught as though people don't already know that.

Right. Uh, but the woman who did the briefing had kind of a hard time and I realized that she was overburdened and it got me looking into it and that's when I realized how bad it was. And so I started volunteering and that was kind of where my start to getting into human services really took off. When you say it had a very high, uh, assault rate, do you mean military on military or is this military men on Korean women, or what was this looking like?

So there isn't a lot of good data, or at the time anyway, there wasn't a lot of good data on military guys and nationals. We know it's bad, right? There's a reason why Japan kicked out the Marines. Um, but just on uniform on uniform was rough. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and we, we know that, um, sexual assault in the military has, um, like sexual assault's, terrible for anybody in any situation.

But within the military it also tends to have, um, kind of an almost incestual flare, right? Because it's almost always somebody, you know, right? The idea that somebody's gonna jump out of a bush and tackle somebody. That's just not how it works. And there's usually some kind of power differential, you know, it'll be a sergeant going after and junior enlisted.

And because of that and because of the trust that's there. Uh, it splits units. I'm sure you probably saw it a little bit when you were in, right? Where somebody comes forward and then people take sides. Right. Because it's now one person saying something and another person saying another thing gets ugly.

Yeah, for sure. And I know there was a big incident on my base where I was at, where they actually gave all of us rape whistles after it, and it was essentially. Um, this guy, they were, everyone has PT and, um, the one woman when she went to leave her room at like, you know, four or 5:00 AM he just pushed her back into the room and, and locked the door.

And I believe it was, again, like you said, someone from her division that mm-hmm. Knew her schedule. Right. They all knew each other. And it usually is, like you said, someone close. Um. Even on the same ranking level often. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, rank to rank. And even, I mean, I was really shocked when I went to bootcamp the amount of people who were, um, you know, sneaking off to different areas of bootcamp, finding spots to have sex or to do stuff, uh, even with.

You know, the gender separated divisions at the time. I know there were co-ed bootcamp divisions. They got rid of it during CVID and I believe they are back to it. Uh, but even when separated, you know, the amount of stuff, like people meeting up in the bathrooms, even at bootcamp, which it's just insane to me.

You know, the, when I was at bootcamp, the number one thing on my mind was getting out of bootcamp, uh, sleep and showers. Yeah. Anything that could get you held back or in trouble. We're not doing that. Right. You know, people passing notes. I know, man. Like sticky notes and love letters. No, people, people, yeah.

It's not smart. But like I, I was in at 28, that's when I joined up and so I just think back to me as a 19-year-old and. At 19, I was very singularly motivated on women. Like I would've certainly taken risk and done some stupid things, and that's not, that's not assault, right? It's just kids. Yeah. Like I call 'em kids, young adults.

Being young adults and exploring things is one thing, but the where the lines are and how to know. Whether something happened to somebody gets complicated for folks. And you're right, man, basic, like I don't, there was a couple that got caught behind the dumpsters at basic. I'm like, this is just, neither of you have showered in three days.

That's a dumpster. Like I, I get a need, but that is insane. Well, I think you mentioned an important part. You know, most people in bootcamp are 17, 18, or 19. You know, you got people who are turning 18 in bootcamp, but also I know, I think they, I don't know if they banned it. Or if they just changed it to very different connotations there.

But when I went through, we had what was called the tea video, and it likened, uh, sexual consent to drinking tea. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't give tea to a sleeping person. If someone says they don't want their tea anymore after you've already made it, you don't give it to. Right. They got rid of that. Um, and I remember there was a bunch of arguments, uh, in bootcamp during the video between Sister Diviv and Brother Div on different ideas of consent.

Uh, you know. It, it, it, it was insane because we had a, uh, gentleman from Africa and, uh, you know, the instructor had asked the question, is marriage, you know, a contract for Consent for life? And he said, yes. And the sister division got very mad at him. But in his culture, he explained that it's, he said that where he's from, that, you know.

Marriage is consent. Uh, then I remember we got very angry with him and I can't speak, you know, I don't know exactly where he came from and how true it is or not. That's what he said. Right. Well, it's true. It, it was true here. I think it wasn't until the eighties that you could be charged with raping your wife.

Like pre 80, a wife was not allowed to say no, or, or man, but you know, that's not generally how that one goes. Right. I dunno the way, so I've done a lot of training on consent and I think different people need to hear it different ways. Right? There are guys that are so scared and so confused and really don't understand like how to pick up on cues that the t video is simple enough that it's really helpful.

Yeah. And then there's people with some social acumen that that's, it's almost insulting, right? Like, oh, I can't like see a smile and know when to compliment or not. This is ridiculous. So what I advise people to do is look for enthusiastic, continuous consent, right? Do you really wanna sleep with somebody who's just like, okay, is that a good time for anybody?

Is anybody having a good night that way? No. Consent should be voracious excited and like not just willing, but wanting, and then all these problems go away. If you just wait for that moment where everybody's on board in a big way, it goes better. But I think what happens is, is we get focused on what our need.

We get focused on the singularity in the moment, and we get wrapped up in our own story and lose track of the other person. And that's where things tend to go off the rails for folks. Yeah. So you mentioned, um, oftentimes it's not a man, you know, being forced to have sex with his wife, right? Mm-hmm. But on, on the contrary, there are cases of, you know, men being sexually assaulted.

I just did an episode the other day on a man who was sexually assaulted by his father. What can you say about those statistics and the need for awareness around those events and for people to speak about that? Yeah, so, um. It's, it's really interesting. So I've been doing different kinds of advocacy work and since 2009 around sexual assault, and the reporting has changed drastically in that time.

So when I started the data was one in 17 guys had suffered an assault. Mm. Which is soft like that. That's incredibly low. Part of why it was so low though, is because the FBI On their crime statistics used to not count it as assault. If you penetrated, so if you're a man and you penetrated somebody else that couldn't be considered rape, and so that removes roofies.

That removes coercion, that removes any number of things like a young person, uh, like a 3-year-old, can get a hard on, which is something that's disturbing to think about, but particularly with very young people, they're not aware and understanding of what their body's doing to, to consent. Right. And so that changed and that's part of how our reporting got better on track is because all of a sudden a lot of these things were counted.

Um, the stories that get the most attention and the stories that men are most comfortable sharing tend to be about being a, being hurt young. And that's saying something. 'cause it's an incredibly uncomfortable, very vulnerable conversation. Right? Most guys that are assaulted as an adult are very reticent to even acknowledge that it happened to them.

Uh, you, you see it happen a lot when it comes to a heterosexual guy, uh, getting assaulted by a gay guy, and a lot of heterosexual guys don't understand how the prostate works, whereas if you stimulate a prostate, you're kinda forced to ejaculate. And so if you're a heterosexual guy and you're being assaulted and they hit your prostate and you ejaculate it without that knowledge, it makes it very confusing.

We're like, oh, did I like this? Like, what the hell? Like, like, what's wrong with me? How did this happen? And then they just kinda spin and stay in their own mind about it. They don't get the help they need. Uh, we are seeing more and more men come forward in care, which is really lovely. Like I remember the first time I heard about a male survivor looking for resources and he wouldn't go within 90 miles of the base for resources.

He was like, I want a therapist, but I'm not going anywhere near base. I don't want there to be any chance that anybody knows this or sees this or anything. Yeah. But I need help. And I think the, the mental health paradigm is changing, right? Younger guys are more willing and interested in mental health across the board.

And so we're also just getting these stories now that there's a, an emotionally intimate environment that's safe for men to share these things. And so now the data is, uh, one in six. Or seven, depending on where you look, has been assaulted. One in four have had, uh, some kind of, uh, sexual violence upon them.

So that means grabbed, harassed, touched against your will. Um, and that's pretty soft too. I think a lot more guys have experienced that than are reporting. Because it's just a, unfortunately, an incredibly common occurrence. And for comparison, uh, the current data is one in three women have been sexually assaulted.

And I don't know what the data on sexual violence is, but I know it's more than that. So, one thing I saw in, uh, one of your social media posts, and it, it got me thinking, uh, you mentioned joking about prison rape and mm-hmm. Uh, that is joked about and talked about a lot. But at the end of the day, it is sexual assault and sexual violence.

Um, people yeah, tend to justify saying, oh, well it happened in prison so it doesn't count almost right? Mm-hmm. Which is obviously a terrible mentality to have. What can you speak on about that? Well, so it per, uh, perpetuates this idea that sexual assault happens because somebody's horny sexual assault happens because of control.

It's not about whether the other person was attractive. It's not about what was going on with them. It's because the person doing the assault decides to take out something they want and take it from someone else. Right. And so the jokes around prison rapes are, oh, there's no women around, so of course guys are gonna sleep with guys 'cause guys have needs.

No, it's, that's still rape. It doesn't matter. It's rape. And so one, by making the jokes about it and making it casual and making it something that only happens to others, it's gonna discourage anybody in your life from coming forward and telling you that this has happened. We know that it's one in six have been assaulted, but one in four men have been made uncomfortable by somebody else's sexuality being forced upon them, which means that the men in your life are experiencing this.

They're not gonna talk to you if these are the jokes that are running around. If they're not gonna open up to you, you're not gonna be able to be there for them. And so, uh, I'm a big comedy fan. Really love standup comedy. I like the, the art and the profession of it where someone who is really good at what they do can make something very uncomfortable, very funny, right?

I'm not trying to like, um, prescrip comedy, but for those of us who aren't comics, it's pretty easy to find other things to joke about, right? You can come up with a different joke. It's not hard. There's a lot to be funny in the world with, you don't need to use this one. Yeah, I get what you're saying and I, I agree.

It's a lot of time. It's about, you know, shame and, and control. And I had an episode of my show, uh, about Callisto, which was a, uh, nonprofit made to help stop and track repeat sexual offenders. And one of the thing we talked about was kind of how. The demasculinization of men may be, you know, perpetuating, um, men wanting to commit sexual assault or something to feel masculine and talking about different ways that, um.

How men who are hurt in their masculinity in different ways, especially by women, will, uh, sometimes get, like you said, uh, vengeful, so to speak. Yeah. Uh, in, in that wanting to be, you know, to, well, I would shame someone to have power over someone. I would frame it more in a, uh, a lot of guys feel disempowered.

Right. Um, I was on the, I was on the front lines of Me too. I was an advocate during Me too. It was, it was happening and I remember at the time I was very excited about it. I'd seen a lot of people get hurt. I'd seen a lot of guys get away with things and I was really excited about there finally being some accountability in the world.

And I still am. There's plenty of monsters out there that, you know, I'd be happy to put a bullet in, but we. It's one of those things where there's the pendulum, right? Where all these things have been happening, no one's talking about 'em. It, it's incredibly difficult to get justice for these things. Sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prosecute because everything in you, after you've been assaulted, does things to make it hard to prosecute.

You wanna shower immediately, you wanna pretend it didn't happen, and so you go shower, you try to hold it together, and then three days later you go to the police. There's, there's no evidence now. And even more if it's an acquaintance thing, it's just two people in a room. So now it's your word against that person's word.

It's why on average it takes nine survivors coming forward for one person to do jail time. Um, so for the, the disempowering of men, I think what's happened is we haven't given men and young boys guidance on how to be good men. So with, with me too, the toxic masculinity thing started right? And I, I was on board for it.

I think there's a lot of ways that masculinity gets misappropriated, misused and hurts people, but there was never another side of that conversation, you know, in publicly, like these big public, broad sweeping things. And so when you're 13 and you're trying to figure out dating, and all you hear is that if you want sex and you're a man, you're bad, right?

Um. You stuff it. And so you have a lot of guys either getting really small or getting tired of being small, and then there's all these guys online telling them that it's women's fault, that a man's role is to punish and dominate women into submission. And they've been stuffed for so long that that starts to sound good.

And what I think is really tragic is the guys that are putting that forward are taking advantage. If you, uh, I unfortunately have to listen to a lot of these guys because of the work I do. You know, I've gotta listen to these podcasts. I've had to listen to a decent amount of Andrew Tate. Tate and his delightful.

They're miserable people, they're lonely, they're angry, and none of what they say lines up with ability to connect with people. Right? And so I think this idea that that sexual assault comes from the disempowerment of men. The answer's complicated, right? It, it can be part of it. I think if we can start making room for people to have a little grace as people figure things out, like I think of what would've happened if there were phones when I was 14.

I remember I was sitting in a class, right, seventh grade and there's a cheerleader in the room, and it was the first time. In my life that I couldn't take my eyes off a woman. Right. She was literally stunning. And I catch myself and I, I like, I have no idea how long I'd been looking at her. By the time I noticed I was looking at her, but then I was like, stop looking.

And I couldn't. Right. Just that awkward teenage moment of like, right. And I think about what would've happen if somebody had a phone and a camera at that point where, and like recorded that on me and what would've happened to me. Versus what actually happened, which was me going and like talking to a friend and talking to my dad.

I'm like, how do you deal? What happened? Like, what is this? Like, she was very pretty, but that's not, I don't, I don't like that. How do I do this? Right, right. And don't me wrong, like that doesn't mean that that young girl should have to put up with a drooling idiot. Right. But we can have a little kindness for that drooling idiot.

We, and I think we're getting better about not equating the whole spectrum of ways that we fail in intimacy with the worst thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so that's the hope I. I think the one heartful thing about the the benign survivors coming forward, statistic is when we hear these numbers right, you know, one in six to one in four guys, depending on the type of violence, one in three women, our minds immediately jump to that one in three guys are rapists and we're not, most rapists are serial.

So it's a very small population of men doing a lot of very bad things to a lot of people and not just women. Because again, it's about power. It's not about sex, and that's why it happens so much between men and men. Most guys that are raping other men aren't. I would be surprised if they consider themselves gay.

They're just trying to take power. Hmm. Yeah, I know when I, I did an episode on tracking and stopping repeat sexual offenders. Um, part of it was basically the, the software will let you know if other people have reported the same person. Mm-hmm. And then connect you if you want to do a joint case, because like you said, it often takes more than one person stepping forward.

We also talked about the idea of not bad men, not good men. But good men who can do bad things and bad men who can do good things, you know? Mm-hmm. We always make it so black and white, but really, you know, people are gray. Uh, we talked about how some historical, you know, rapists and sexual assaulters were great people publicly and, and did great things and then, you know, did some terrible things.

Uh, and I think we talked about the villainization of men. Like you said, we jumped to that one in three men are rapists and that, you know. How have you as a man felt being someone who, who speaks on this? Because I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of stuff from people either online or even people you know, calling you, you know, a femin Nazi or saying you're not a real man.

Be or, you know, like, how have you dealt with, with this and, and on the other end. Dealing with maybe women who are saying, Hey, you shouldn't be here because you're a man, and men are, you know, villains. Like, have you faced complications? Yeah. In trying to be a part of this. Yeah. And it's changed over time, right?

So when I first got started, I started in the military. So half of the people that showed up to help were men. Right. Um, but when I got out. I was on college campuses. I was usually the only straight heterosexual cis guy that ever walked into any of these spaces. And it's still a bit of a problem. Like if you look around at the different, um, marketing for like sexual assault and domestic violence centers around the country, they don't market.

Men aren't in the marketing, right? They're not marketed as survivors and they're not marketed at help as helpers, which I think is a huge missed opportunity. There's a lot of guys suffering violence and there's a lot of really good guys that if they knew they could and there was something to do, that they'd show up.

Right? And so yeah, initially when I started it was, so I look like who hurts people, right? I'm a six one white guy with a big beard, and statistically we're, who hurt people in this country. And military, which I know just as a veteran, a lot of people assume that be, at least what I've heard, you know, from the younger, you know, generations.

The women, when I was like doing online dating, it was like, oh, you're in the military. You beat women, you're a misogynist. You know? Or only believe the traditional wives you have STDs. Like, that's what I always heard, at least. Well, you were probably trying to date around the basis I, this is correct. This was a lot of these women.

Said, Hey, we've had our fair share of military men. No. Um, you know, and, and that is one of the issues with dating near base. You know, I, I had a guest on the show, he shared a story of, there was a bar near Fort Bragg where if, uh, the women would come up to you and just say what rank? And if you weren't high enough rank, they wouldn't talk to you.

So, uh, try to outsource if you can, don't date near the base. But yeah, I think that's, uh, a lot of that is just the, uh, the culture around. But the, I, I get it. On both ends because I look like this and because I'm walking into spaces where everybody in that space is trying to help with this, which means most of the people in that space are survivors.

Most of the people that show up to work at centers, um, if you talk to most clinicians, like mental health clinicians and like they have a story of some kind or they wouldn't be doing this job, right? And so some of it is just accepting that when I walk in, I'm triggering one in three people in the room just by being there.

Hmm. And what's been helpful about that was when I was first getting started, right? I got outta the Air Force and I went into a counseling program and part of the focus of my counseling program was on multicultural counseling. And that's important because we go crazy by culture, right? My favorite example of this is schizophrenia, right?

We Americans, we get very grandiose and violent, right? We think we talk to God and we get paranoid. English people, when they get really far into schizophrenia, go completely catatonic and disappear into the world. They create, the brains look the same. And it's because the way our cultures frame these things out, it changes how they come out into the world.

And so it's a really important thing to look at from a mental health perspective if you have to meet your patients within the cultural context that they exist in. Right? But coming outta the Air Force, the Air Force is very masculine centric. It's very white centric, and I'm a big white guy, so it was great for me.

Right, and so that first year in the program, I kinda had to get my teeth kicked in, right? I had to like be made aware of some things that I wasn't aware of, but by the end of the year, I was feeling like I was starting to get it. Do you know what I mean? I was learning a lot. I was paying attention, I was listening to people's feedback, but I was still getting the same amount of critique in my classes.

And it was really starting to frustrate me because I knew I was getting better and I knew like, yeah, of course I'm gonna make mistakes and I'm gonna slip up and I'm gonna need to be checked on things just like everybody. But like why isn't the negative feedback changing? And luckily, I had my friend Valerie.

Valerie is a petite Hispanic woman who, uh, is very, very direct. And so in one of our first classes together when we were talking after class, uh, she looked at me right in the eye and said, you need to shut the F up. You're talking too much. You're not learning. And I'm tired of it. I was like, you're gonna be my new friend.

This is fantastic. Thank you so much for telling me. And so if she was in a class with me and something like that happened where somebody got really upset, I could kind of process it with her and be like, okay, so what was that? Was that me or was that them? And she didn't necessarily know, right? But she would have an idea.

And it just gave me the room to figure out like, okay, did I do something that I need to work on? Or did I trip on something that doesn't belong to me? And so it's what I've kind of come to is no matter what happens, if somebody's upset in a room, I can be kind. I can be kind, and I can make space for their hurt without taking on some kind of big guilt or big responsibility for it, because that builds resentment, right?

If I'm always just trying to be small and palatable, I can't be in a room and make a difference. Right. And, and that's helped a lot and it also has just gotten a lot better. Um, once I started showing up into some of these centers, they started getting more guys, right? Like once there was a guy at an event talking about this stuff, a few of other guys that either had experiences themselves or loved ones that had experiences, people wanna show up for this.

I mean, think about how divisive our politics is right now. And the one thing that for a minute, everybody in the country was for was releasing the Epstein files, right? Like everybody's like, no, no, no, that's hurting kids. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, no one's for That's do something right?

People want to engage on making people safer. People want to engage on making sexual violence and interpersonal violence go down and there are a lot of really good guys out there that if they just knew there was opportunities for them to impact it, they'd show up. And so. I think for me it's been really wonderful over time to see there be more space for men in the space and just more men that are better at being in this space.

Like I was raised in the eighties. You were a nice guy if you kept asking. Right. That was consent back then. Once there was a yes. Didn't matter how you got to the Yes, which is just trash behavior. Right. My favorite movie is, uh, in high school was like something about Mary, which is just a movie about three stalkers and the least creepy one, getting the girl at the end.

It's not, it's not great, right? I think guys now, uh, if they're paying attention and they're trying, they do better and they do better in those spaces then I certainly did when I was young.

Yeah. So I wanna tie this into, you run the American Masculinity Podcast. Yeah. What was kind of the inspiration behind that? How tied is it to your work now? Or is this kind of a separate part of your life? No, it's all pretty well tied together. So probably like five years ago, I started to get more and more uncomfortable with the Me Too push.

And at this point I'd been doing work with primarily men and, uh, for four or five years. And I was just like the, the, the fever and pace of the movement and the, I. Kind of misaligned punishments, right? The very powerful men are still getting away with things, and the very unpowerful men are getting hammered for mistakes, right?

And there's just not a, there's we, we haven't quite dialed in how to have real accountability as opposed to punishment. And it was really bothering me and I couldn't really speak to it. At the time, all the guys that were speaking to it were kind of men's rights guys. They were the guys that were getting up and getting allowed about how hard it is to be a man.

Yes, but that it was women's fault. That all the woes of men are because of women, which is crap that is incredibly disempowered. It doesn't help us get better, right? Your life is not, if your life is only someone else's fault, you're never gonna have a better life. Right. And then, uh, some guys started to come on the scene talking different about it.

So we got Scott Galloway, I don't know if you're familiar with him. Uh, he's really, really wonderful at speaking to how guys are struggling without diminishing the struggle of others, right? He's like, no, no, all that's all that's happening. And that's horrible for these, for women. And it's horrible for these people.

And this is where young men are right now. This is horrible too. These two, we can hold these two ideas at the same time that the people need help. And then the one that really kind of turned it for me was Richard Reeves put out a book called Of Men and Boys. And about every five years there's a book written by a guy about just like how kind of guys struggle in the world.

Uh, but he's a liberal policy wonk for a a think tank in DC and he had data. Right. He had like reams and reams of just really good data, pointing out the different ways that we were having a hard time, but he also was acknowledging the hard time other people had, and all of a sudden there was a nuance in the conversation that I felt I could join.

Right? Where you can advocate for something without advocating against someone else. Right? We can talk about how men and boys are struggling without talking about why women shouldn't have what they need or how it's all women's fault. They're grown men around these men too. Okay? Like the grown men through me too, failed young boys.

It was just as much our fault as everybody else's, right? And so that really opened the door for some more nuance conversation. And I also, I'm pretty, I'm pretty known in Denver for the populations I work with, which means that I'm pretty full. Uh, I gotta turn away A lot of guys that call and there's a lot of guys that just can't afford therapy.

Right. It's expensive. Not everybody's got insurance. It's hard to get to. And so the other kind of push for the podcast is making something for guys to walk away with something, whether it's a story from somebody else that makes 'em feel not so alone or like an actual thing to go try for the problem they have.

I want, I wanna help more people in the world than I can help one at a time. Yeah, I get what you're saying. And that whole victimization and self-pity and blaming others, not just on that large, large scale, but just in our own individual lives is something that we should, you know, not embody. And I, I like how you said it, not diminishing, you know, what our struggles are, but not also putting down others.

Right. Or blaming others. Mm-hmm. I think that's so important. And so. What do you talk about on the podcast? Obviously, uh, some of the stuff we talked about today, but also men's, you know, suicide, race, depression, anxiety, you work with a lot of different topics, correct? Yeah, I, uh, so far we're on episode 15 is released and at first I didn't quite know how to do a podcast yet, so a lot of the first episodes were me talking with other clinicians about our work and it was a great conversation for me, but I don't know that anybody else really wants to hear those.

Um, but we've been able to move it more towards specific topics for men and a focus on how gender impacts them, right? So I had on a suicide expert to talk about suicide and men and what that looks like and why it's such an epidemic for men. Uh, I had on a trauma therapist expert. He's a, he's a buddy of mine.

Uh, I love him to death. And he's my trauma nerd. Like he's the one I call who's read every book ever on trauma. Mm. And so we had a great conversation around how gender impacts the way we express trauma, the way we exhibit trauma, and also how trauma transcends gender, right? Like there's just ways to be hurt and human.

Um, I also, one of my favorite things about America, what makes us amazing is how many different people we have here. The most diverse country in the world. We're the most individualistic in the world. And it's also really fun talking to different men of different backgrounds on what masculinity means to them.

So the first interview I had was with a colleague who's Hispanic, and he came on to talk about machismo and Hispanic men, and it was a great conversation with him. And then I was really lucky on episode 14. I'm really proud of this episode. Uh, I found a Black Lives advocate. Black Lives Matter advocate named Martin X and had him on, and where I'm at in Denver, there aren't many black people, right?

I've got a black friend and he's great, but he's got a lot of white friends, so he really doesn't need to have the race conversation with all of us, right? That's a lot to put on one person. And so Martin came on and we got to have a conversation around like, Hey, I'm a white guy in the world and I'm, I'm really trying to do better here.

Like, here's what I'm trying, what's working and what's not? What should I be doing? What am I missing? Here's what that's like for me, and we just had a great conversation and, um, I've gotten some feedback from some folks. It's the conversation that most white guys wish they had somebody to have it with, but don't, you know, I, I like those moments and then I.

I also put out some tools, right. Just as, uh, usually like once a week I'll do an episode, like a shorter episode or develop out like a worksheet or something on the stuff I tend to start people with for the different problems that come in. Right? Right. Like the three tools I like to use for anxiety or, uh, a leadership assessment or, you know, you're leading or you controlling are the two kind of big tools I've made so far.

Um. I've gotten, I think like half a dozen different allyship awards for being able to move through spaces that aren't like white guy spaces. And so I put together a guide on if you're a white guy trying to go somewhere that doesn't belong to you, how to behave. Right. And what to do to do that better. Um, if you, if you've never done that as a guy, please look at the guide and learn from all the various mistakes I made learning how to do this stuff.

Don't go in cold and trip on something. It goes a lot better for you. Yeah. Uh, yeah. What, what I see happen a lot with my patients is they'll go to something where it's outside of their cultural dynamic and they're doing their best. Right? They're showing up with the golden rule in mind, right? Like, I wanna go and behave like how I would wanna be if somebody was in my house.

Right. That's a great rule. It's a good baseline. But then they make a mistake and they get called out and it kind of puts a bad taste in their mouth and they don't wanna go back. It's either too scary or they're too angry. Right? And so just having a little bit of like knowledge going in softens that quite a bit.

And it means that your mistakes are mistakes. They're not critical mistakes. Somebody might correct you, but that's okay. You know? You know what you're doing. I know, man, it's been a lot of fun. I've really liked the podcasting and this has been fun, man. Just meeting other people like you that care about people in the world and you're trying to make the world a little better, you know?

It's great. Being a, being a counselor is a kind of a lonely gig, right? Yeah. I get what you're saying. And, um. Yeah, podcasting is interesting too because it's like you meet so many people every day, but it's, I've also found podcasting very lonely, right? Because mm-hmm. You and I are gonna get off this call here and I'm going to go back to being alone in my cold studio and go walk my dog into Georgia Heat.

But, um, I have met a lot of amazing people and I did want to ask if you do telehealth, um, or are you in person only? Uh, actually I'm only doing telehealth at this point, but I'm also only seeing guys in Colorado. Okay. Uh, I think in the next few years where the licensing is pushing for an interstate compact where most states will be signed on, but it hasn't happened yet.

Okay. And it's important if you're looking for help to go to somebody with a license, uh, and not because there aren't great coaches out there and people that aren't licensed, but it gives you a little layer of protection. Right. If they mess up bad enough, you at least know they had school and, you know, learned something.

Yeah. A lot of coaches can say a lot of things on their website. Yeah. Yeah. No, I. I've met plenty of people, uh, through my line of work who do a lot of things, but, uh, I'm still gonna have your website and power change.com in the description below because even if people aren't in Colorado, you have a ton of resources, the link to your podcasting and contact information.

So even if they can't, you know, if they're not in Colorado area, they could still get some useful information, correct. Yeah, I think the easiest ways to do it is I'll give you my link tree that, um, just brings you to a link of all the different kinds of work that I do and have up awesome. Um, but also, uh, empowered Change ce.com is the therapy website.

Uh, the easier website to probably remember is the podcast website, www.americanmasculinity.com. 'cause I'm, you know, very not egotistical that I can call my podcast American masculinity. Like I can speak for every guy in American. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I get that. Uh, what I want to say is, I mean, you've, you've given a lot of great takeaways, but if you wanted to kind of put a bow on it, so to speak, what is the one thing you wish every guy knew that you either learned the hard way or from all the different men you've worked with, you've kind of gotten this same pattern?

Mm-hmm. The big thing is there's this myth in America that men are supposed to be an island that we're supposed to be able, yeah, connection's great, but we should be able to not need it, and it's nonsense. There's never been a point in human history where we've ever been alone and been well, it's against the Geneva Convention.

It's torture to put people alone and always be alone. So most guys want some kind of connection. Most guys wanna be around people, but whenever it's hard, they have this little voice in the back of their mind going, you shouldn't need that. You know, stand up, be strong. You don't need anybody. It's not true.

Uh, one of my colleagues, uh, said it best. I think where our whole job is convincing guys. They don't have to hold it together all the time, but they have to hold it together most of the time. Right. You gotta find your people. It only takes a few to really make your life change. I don't care if it's through a church men's group therapist, but don't expect one partner to complete everything that you need in the community.

It's just not reasonable. It's not possible. Yeah. I think that's really beautiful. I talk all the time about the importance of connection and community and you know, having, I like how you said, you know. Our lives are so complicated, so many moving parts, and to expect one partner to fulfill all of those, you know, like there's a lot going on and I think especially there's a lot going on in your life that your partner might not be.

It's not their field of expertise or it's something that you don't even want them, you know, associated with or, or that you want them to be a part of. So I think it's important, like you said, to have some, even just a few contacts, like you said, who can really make a huge difference. And, uh, you know, I've talked before on the show about just like.

Those people that you can call at any time if you need something that they're there for you, you know? Yeah. Um, and like you said, however you meet them, whether it's through podcasting or church group, uh, you know, local social activities, whatever, you know, it's, and I think that's part of the problem with, um, a lot of the newer generations, it's not getting out and doing as much socializing, you know, there's so much.

Behind the screen. And again, there are great connections to be made online and with people virtually. Uh, but I do think it's important to get out there and play soccer or go out to dinner or, or do board game nights or whatever it is, and just spend time physically in the presence of other people. I feel like social media is a genie that's not going back in the bottle, unfortunately, in a lot of cases.

Yeah, of course. But the, the way to know whether you're doing it well or not is are you using it to get out with people? That you can enjoy. Yeah. Um, you know, there's a, there's a story and data around how lonely we are as a country. Americans are more lonely than anyone else in the world right now. And the only thing that's changed in how we spend our time from the seventies is we've quadrupled our screen time.

And so the other thing to remember is that as you scroll through your phone. Your dopamine's getting drained. It's like little trickle out. And so yeah, you're tired after work, you wanna relax. You don't wanna think too hard. You bring up your phone, you're swiping through whatever, and then all of a sudden it's seven o'clock and somebody texts you for dinner and you're like, oh, I'm too tired to go out.

Too tired to go out because you just spent all the energy that you would've had for that. Watching TikTok videos. And I'm just as guilty as this is everybody else, right? Like, this is not me throwing stones. But that's how you know you're taking it too far. You know, try to limit your time on it. Use it to empower a life.

Don't use it to replace a life. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, that I agree a hundred percent. So like I said, we're gonna have your link tree description below for people. Check out, whether it's your podcast, resources, whatever it may be with you. But, uh, Mr. Winneke, I just wanna thank you for coming on the show today.

Everyone, please go check out the American Masculinity Podcast. And it's not just for men, right? Would you say it's something that women can take away a different perspective from as well? Well, it's for men and people who love them. You know, I, the, a big part of why I think the conversation is changing is because there's so many mothers of sons that are worried.

People are more worried about their sons than their daughters most of the time. And don't be wrong, man. There's a lot going on with women. They need a lot of help too. Um, I never wanna take away from that, but I think people are looking for ways to see what people need as long as they can have the space to see it without feeling attacked.

Yeah. So I encourage everyone to go check that out and, and learn something new. Like you said, it's not just those conversations on masculinity, but also just cultural behavior and everything like that. So definitely encourage it and we will have you back on in the future when you hit a hundred episodes.

Oh man, I appreciate that. Slowly but surely, it gives me something to aim for. Yeah. And yeah, and if any of your listeners, the other thing is this podcast is new enough and. Anybody who needs a like a tool for something, just lemme know. I'll make an episode on it. It's not hard for me to do. I'm more than happy to give you what it is you're looking for.

Just need to know you need it. Yeah. Well, Mr. Winnick, thank you. And until next time, thank you. Take care. I.