"The New Macho" — Shame, Foster Fatherhood & Redefining Manhood

Full Transcript

Transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

Adriel Hampton (00:00)
Welcome to the Conscious Fathers podcast where we offer insights and support for men and the most important job you'll ever have.

Hey men and those who care about men, I'm Adriel Hampton and today's guest on Conscious Fathers is Boysen Hodgson, Operations Director and Communications and Marketing Lead for the ManKind Project. Boysen's also co-host of the ManKind Podcast. Really excited to have Boysen on the show today. We'll be talking about Boysen's personal journey, his viral essay "The New Macho," his extraordinary family, and why Boysen defaults to gender-neutral pronouns when meeting young people these days. Before we get started, I want to introduce my co-host, Jeff Swift.

Jeff Swift (00:36)
Hey there, I'm really excited about this conversation today.

Adriel Hampton (00:38)
All right. Well, let's say hello to Boysen Hodgson. There's so much to talk about here. Boysen, I want to start with your early life. You spent your childhood in upstate New York, an idyllic time you describe as straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. I come from the countryside myself, and so I recognize some of it, although I'm a lifetime Californian. Can you tell us about that life and how an abrupt change in your family circumstances set up major contradictions in how you thought about manhood?

Boysen Hodgson (01:04)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm honored. Thank you, Jeff. Adriel. This is great. Yes — so what I said about it is it kind of looked like a Norman Rockwell painting with a lot more facial hair and bad polyester, because it was the '70s. I grew up in upstate New York, way upstate, north of Syracuse closer to Lake Ontario. In the town of Cato, New York, which is the intersection of two rural highways. There used to be a stoplight in the center of town — now it's just a stop sign.

I was the son of the local veterinarian. My dad was a vet, now retired. If people ask me, "Did you grow up in a barn?" — yes is the answer. I was that prototypical Gen X kid who got kicked out of the house early in the morning. By eight or nine years old I was getting on my bike and riding the mile and a half to Cato to hang out with my best friend. I spent a lot of time in the woods, building hay forts and snow forts and tree houses. It was idyllic. I have beautiful memories from my early childhood.

It was also an incredibly sheltered existence. Very homogenous. White people and cows — white people, soybeans and cows, if you want to get specific. When I was about 10 or 11, there had been stuff brewing in my parents' marriage for quite some time. And that's when it blew up. It went from this incredible, small, lovely thing to chaos. It felt like overnight to me as a 10-year-old.

I took on a whole lot of stuff at that time. Even at that young age — how was it my fault? What did I do wrong? What was it about me? And that set the stage for my young years and teen years and into my early adult years, where I walked through the world thinking the rug was going to be pulled out from under me any second, thinking it was somehow going to be my fault, thinking I should know what to do. And the coping mechanisms I took on were disappearing. I was the good kid. My mother gave birth to six boys. I grew up surrounded by men and boys in a very boy-centered culture in upstate New York. And I learned how to put on a mask and hide what was really going on and just get by.

Adriel Hampton (04:04)
That's something else we have in common, Boysen. I'm the oldest of six myself. The first four were boys and then my mom had a couple girls. Was that period of your life when you started describing yourself as a seeker, or did that come later?

Boysen Hodgson (04:09)
That was a little later. In my preteen and teen years, I existed in this very bipolar world. My mom was a single mother of three boys, then four, then five. My dad was a serial monogamist with lots of toys — Corvettes and motorcycles and four-wheel-drive trucks. So I was solid upper-middle class at my dad's and poor at my mom's.

I think this paradox, this confusion I was always living in, led me to some bookshelves when I was 15, 16, 17. My mother had all these esoteric books. I started picking up books like The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck and Alan Watts's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. My favorite book to this day is called Das Energi — this crazy little book by Paul Williams, who was actually a rock and roll critic. I started absorbing this sense of being a seeker, a wisdom seeker, a spiritual being — not knowing a whole lot else until I got out into the big world.

Adriel Hampton (05:39)
I remember reading Alan Watts in my own way and having that same feeling of inner knowledge. That's pretty intense — poor and then upper-middle class, your mom with one lifestyle, your dad with another. Did you move out in your 20s and strike out on your own?

Boysen Hodgson (06:01)
I graduated from a regional high school called Red Creek. My graduating class was 52 kids. I had a calculus teacher who basically said we didn't have enough discipline to get by. I was like, I'll show him. So I applied to Cornell and got accepted. Moved to Ithaca, and my whole universe kind of shattered being around other kids with European vacations and trust funds and the Greek system — all this stuff that made absolutely no sense to me. But that was my awakening. I'm really grateful for the time at Cornell. It's not where I finished my schooling, but it's where I started and had my eyes opened to what the world looked like outside upstate New York.

I left Cornell after a couple years, stayed in Ithaca, was a townie, worked in restaurants and bartended before moving to Western Massachusetts.

Adriel Hampton (07:30)
So it was that part of your life in Western Massachusetts when you describe that the pain became so great you knew you needed to make a change — something that led you to the path you're on now.

Boysen Hodgson (07:43)
I took on a whole lot of coping mechanisms around hiding, not revealing who I really was, not knowing what I really wanted. People-pleasing, trying to be the good kid, good boy, good man. When I moved to Western Massachusetts I was still living that life. I went back to school at UMass, was managing a bar in Amherst, and ended up in a long-term relationship where a lot of those things I had hidden, a lot of those patterns — dishonesty, not being forthright, not understanding my own emotional state, using all this "wisdom" I'd accumulated through reading books to try to manipulate people and keep them in place.

I was hiding a severe pornography use, hiding from a lot of other things. For about six or seven years, my universe got smaller and smaller. I lost contact with most of my family, had no close friends. By the time I got to about 30, nobody's fault but mine, I had created a world where I felt alone and isolated and angry all the time.

Adriel Hampton (09:30)
What was the point of change for you? How did you get from this small world to being a guy who could start helping redefine manhood?

Boysen Hodgson (09:42)
My mom died. In 2002, my mom passed away. She had a long battle with cancer. Something in me shifted, and all of everything I'd been repressing started to bubble out — coming out of me sideways, all the unhealthy stuff. I got into therapy, one-on-one therapy. Through that I started realizing how much of myself I had repressed, how much I was avoiding, how much truth-telling I was avoiding in my life. That led to the demise of that relationship.

I will say — I'm sorry to all the women that I dated. On the surface I was a lovely guy. And I was definitely not a person who was fit to be in long-term relationships in that way. My world collapsed. I left the relationship.

About six months later I met Kendra, who is now my wife. And very early into that relationship I was already starting to reproduce the same patterns. Still putting the same stuff into the machine and thinking I was going to get something different. Karma is cake — those are all the ingredients I put in.

I knew about men's work. I knew about the ManKind Project, this crazy weekend called the New Warrior Training Adventure, from other members of my family — my brothers, several of whom had done it. My dad did it. My stepdad did it. Cousins who did it. And I was like: no thank you, I have my books, I'm all good.

But in late 2003, I was seeing a chiropractor in Greenfield, Massachusetts for low back issues. He did a release on me. I had tears streaming down my face — obviously deep emotional stuff coming out. I came into the hallway and Wayne said, "Hey Boysen, I can see you're going through some really serious stuff. Have you ever heard of the New Warrior Training Adventure?" And I was like: screw you, Wayne.

And then I signed up.

Adriel Hampton (12:48)
I want to introduce folks to your essay, "The New Macho." I'm going to read a few lines and we'll link to it so folks can read the whole thing. It says: Knows how to cry. Knows how to rage without hurting others. Has let go of childish shame. Knows how to listen from the core of his being. Can you tell us how you came to write that essay and about the responses you got?

Boysen Hodgson (13:21)
So that was 2010. I did the New Warrior Training in 2004, got pretty involved in the organization quickly. I complained a lot about the marketing and the website. When you're in a volunteer-run organization and you complain about stuff, they give you a title and sit you in a chair. So that's what happened to me.

Through being part of men's groups, how I described that early time was: I surrounded myself with men who loved the shame out of me. I became able to talk about my past, tell my story, take responsibility — with my head up. I could allow tears to come down my face without hiding. I could feel my emotions without hiding from them.

In late 2009, early 2010, there was a Newsweek article where the writer coined the phrase "the new macho" — talking about Brad Pitt and this era of sensitive, strong men. I sat down and thought: I like that. And it just flowed out of me. I shared it on social media and it took off. Back then, that was before a million hits on a video was a thing. But I watched those numbers climb into the tens of thousands. I got questions about including it in books, about writing a version for women.

And here's where we get into structural masculinity. The reactions I got a lot from men were: this was obviously written by a chick. That was a refrain. Or: this dude's gay. This is not a real man. All these things guys put out. I don't argue on social media, but I would respond: "Hi, I'm Boysen Hodgson. I wrote this." But it's indicative of just how much we police ourselves as men — how much men police masculinity to keep us fit into expected roles.

Jeff Swift (16:37)
How did that line up with your practice of being honest about yourself? You've got a bunch of men online saying you must be somebody else.

Boysen Hodgson (16:44)
The fuller response is: I am not all of these things. I aspire to be some percentage of these things every day. If I can read through it and say — yeah, today I did that, today I took responsibility for this part of my life, today I looked out for my brothers, today I told the truth as an act of self-respect — then that's what I'm aiming for. I'm not trying to tell you that you've got to be anything. I'm telling you what I want to be in the world. And this list is not complete. That was my note when I first published it: this list is not complete.

Adriel Hampton (17:44)
I appreciate that it's something you strive for. I was reading it like — how long was he part of this men's work before he achieved the new macho? Because there's a lot of great stuff in that essay, and I have a long way to go.

Boysen Hodgson (17:53)
Let's go talk to my kids about how well I'm doing on a day-to-day basis.

Adriel Hampton (18:04)
I'm going to share something from my life. It has to do with my reaction to that essay, to thinking about the pain that leads us to change, and also how our kids are these incredible mirrors. You cannot lie to your kids. You cannot hide from your kids.

For me, I was in my 30s, in this mode where I felt like my job was to provide for my family. But underneath it, I had major emotional conflicts. I was pushing them down. I was depressed, angry, working too much, drinking too much. And of course, my kids could see that.

I had just moved across California and taken a job in Los Angeles at a tech startup. I was logged in just about every waking hour. And one day I was driving my boys home from swim practice. They were about eight and ten at the time. My older son Kai, he's sitting in the back seat and he just says — "Dad, I'm not gonna lie" — that was his thing at the time — "sometimes we're scared of you."

It hurts just to say it right now. Because hearing that from my son just broke me open. Scared, afraid was how I often felt around my dad. And it was the last thing I wanted to pass on to my boys. I wish I could say that hearing that from my son, I immediately changed, became a conscious father. It was just the start. It was one of those moments that I'll never forget — how it felt, where we were, how he sounded. What it did was reawaken me to the kind of man I wanted to be. It was just the simple truth I needed to start me on the journey of becoming a conscious father.

So Boysen, I really appreciate that sense of not having arrived. I'm not there today. I certainly wasn't there over a decade ago when my son brought that to me. But I wanted to share that because so much of your journey reminds me of the road I'm on myself. I've done the New Warrior Training Adventure, a lot of therapy. But it was my children that taught me some of the toughest lessons and showed me that mirror.

Adriel Hampton (21:00)
When you joined the ManKind Project, you were dating, hadn't yet married Kendra, who you've been with 20 years now. Can you share about growing your family — what that's taught you about yourself?

Boysen Hodgson (21:39)
Kendra and I have been married 20 years, together 22. I want to say a couple of words about conscious partnership. I could not be who I am as a dad or a person without my wife's support. And I dare say she would not be the woman and leader she is without my support. That was a choice we made very early — to always support each other in reaching and improving ourselves. We've both done a lot of individual personal work and continue to do shadow work together. Without it, there's no way we could have gone through what we took on.

We chose not to have biological kids very early. That was a question we returned to over and over. It was an expectation from both families — when are you going to have kids? Years into our relationship, we took a trip to India. My wife was a yoga teacher. We followed a pilgrimage route through the southern part of India. There was a moment where my wife was in the middle of a room in a tiny village, surrounded by all these kids. I had never seen or experienced poverty like I saw in India.

We came home from that trip and said: maybe we should adopt children. We started talking about it in terms of India. Then one day, walking the dog in the cemetery where we normally walked, the question occurred to us: well, how many kids are there right now within 50 miles of where we're standing who need exactly what we're talking about? Who need the kind of stability we have, the kind of love, the kind of personal growth we've done together?

We entered into becoming foster-to-adopt parents in the state of Massachusetts. This was 11 years ago. We went through the process — state training, additional training around trauma-informed parenting — continued to do our own work, got a couples therapist.

The call came on a Tuesday afternoon: "We have two children, they're siblings, they need a placement urgently. Are you guys ready?" That's what it's like being a foster-to-adopt parent. We met our kids, who were 10 and 7 at the time. They're siblings. They have many other siblings. They had lived a whole life before we met. And that's how we became parents. We're a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-orientation family. Every part of that became true from a Tuesday to a Wednesday. The kids are now 21 and 19, and yes — they have been our teachers in so many ways.

Jeff Swift (26:42)
What were some of those lessons you picked up from these two kids that all of a sudden on a Wednesday you're fostering?

Boysen Hodgson (26:53)
The first one is that I don't get to source my identity by being a parent. That was a really important and fairly painful lesson. My older kid Lee, for about a year and a half, basically just told me over and over: I hate you.

Whatever props, flowers, cookies I was supposed to be getting as a dad — nope. Having a men's group and having Kendra who's done a lot of work was essential, because it was depressing. It was sad. It was hard. I knew that wasn't about me — it was about a lifetime of trauma and disappointment and betrayal and abandonment. But then it becomes: okay, in the face of somebody who is basically showing and demonstrating over and over that they don't like me, don't respect me, don't want to be near me — how do I create a safe and nurturing and loving container? How do I hold boundaries and just demonstrate love over and over? He builds trust. It's the new macho, right? He creates trust through his intimacy, through his actions.

The first time I got a real hug from Lee was like a miracle.

Another huge lesson: your kids are independent beings with their own path, their own destiny, their own choices, their own histories. This doesn't really matter if you gave birth to them or adopted them. They are their own beings. How do I learn to respect that dignity and autonomy while maintaining guardrails for safety, modeling challenge, inviting questions about reality? Is that what reality looks like to you? What's it like to be you? Let me take that in. Let me hold space for that.

In terms of race, sexuality, orientation, gender identity — both my wife and I were like, we're liberals, right? We've been around. I spent a lot of time around queer folk in my life. Very different than having your kid come out to you. Very different than going through gender-affirming care in the state of Massachusetts, where we're gifted with very strong support — whole clinics dedicated to effective, conscious, respectful care for kids.

And yet it's still hard. It's still hard to explain.

Adriel Hampton (31:17)
Do you think you would have that perspective if it wasn't for your kids?

Boysen Hodgson (31:40)
I struggled some with it early. And a lot of the struggle — I've heard this from many other parents of kids who are trans or non-binary — is that we care about our kids and we don't want to see them get hurt. Having a kid who comes out means there's a fear they're going to get punished, that it's going to make their lives harder. And that may be true.

And I would rather have an alive kid in the exploration of all these identity factors, who is free to talk to me about it. Who is free to change their name tomorrow if they choose. I'm more committed to the connection. I'm more committed to the relationship than I am committed to my strictures about what I believe to be squared away.

Jeff Swift (32:45)
You mentioned that you can't get your identity from your role as a parent. How have you been able to help your kids embrace their own identity?

Boysen Hodgson (32:56)
I love the concept of discourse — the philosophical concept of discourse. Your gender is a discourse. Your sexuality is a discourse. My identity as a dad is a discourse. It's a conversation. It's a back and forth. What Kendra and I have done over and over is continue to ask questions, to invite the kids into deeper understanding of themselves. So there's always an opening for shift. How's that feel? Is that fitting for you right now? That's not all you are.

We don't want to get stuck in any identity — over-identification with a single thing. I don't want to over-identify with a diagnosis. I want to continue in the discourse of how I am related to something. What we get is kids who have had the freedom to self-express, and now it's: where do you show up most comfortable? Where do you feel most like yourself? Pursue that.

Adriel Hampton (34:32)
I love the discourse framing — Jeff and I are both rhetoric graduates. He has a PhD, I'm a lowly bachelor's in rhetoric. So you got us with the English major and Shakespeare. You've talked about the support from men's work going through this. ManKind is one of the most stable groups in that discourse — 40 years of history since the New Warrior Training started. What is your personal contribution to the discourse around manhood? What do you want men to know?

Boysen Hodgson (35:50)
When Brandon and I started the ManKind Podcast, it flowed — "where we break the molds of modern manhood to prove that there's more than one way to be a man." For me, that's where I land. There is more than one way to be a man. There is more than one way to express yourself. More than one kind of nurturing. More than one kind of strength. More than one kind of emotional expression.

How can we support each other to encourage men to step fully into what's been locked away inside of them? Manhood is always going to be a pendulum, always swinging too far one way or another. But there's a lot of evidence that strength is good. Your discipline matters. Your sense of foresight matters — man, woman, anyone. We don't have to call them masculine or feminine. We can invite deeper inquiry into: is it a healthy expression for you? Is it getting you what you want? Is it supporting a bigger "we" around you?

Men have incredible emotional gifts to offer when we feel able and supported and have the tools to fully express in a way that doesn't dominate others but lifts up communities. Same as it ever was — men have been doing this forever. Maybe we just sometimes forget. So can we remember together?

Jeff Swift (38:02)
I love that question — can we remember together? This has been really great. I feel like we've barely scratched the surface. What are a couple resources you'd recommend?

Boysen Hodgson (38:36)
If you're a male-identified person and you don't know The Will to Change by bell hooks — go get it. It's a beautiful book that invites a lot of this inquiry.

I'd also love it if you'd check out Rebels with a Cause by Niobe Way. She's a researcher in New York City who works with boys ages 11 to 13, watching this transition. When she gets up on stage, she's so compelling: "They can teach us. You want to know what we need? Go ask a 13-year-old boy and listen to what he says. Listen to what he longs for, what he had, what he thinks he's lost." Young people know what relational skills are. Young people know what generosity is, what compassion and empathy are. And if we listen, there's a lot of answers for us.

Adriel Hampton (39:58)
Thank you, Boysen. We really appreciate you being here. What a great conversation.

Boysen Hodgson (40:04)
I'm grateful. This was fun.