Jordan Stephens on bridging the gender divide

HEADER IMAGE Jordan wears jacket & shorts: AHLUWALIA VIA EBAY, trainers: ADIDAS

 PHOTOGRAPHY Radhika Muthanna 
CREATIVE DIRECTION Tori West 
‘BOYS PLAY’ (2025) TV ARTWORK BY Trackie McLeod
PRODUCTION Chiara Maculan 
STYLING Baillie Jones 
GROOMING Keziah Cader 
SOCIALS & GRAPHICS Richie Barker 
PHOTO ASSISTANT Isabella Armora 
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Lia Matos 
SPECIAL THANKS TO Ditto Mgmt 
INTRODUCTION Eliza Hatch, founder of Cheer Up Luv

Against the backdrop of Gen-Z boys and girls globally showing increasingly divergent attitudes towards gender roles, the rise of red-pilled influencers in the manosphere, and a growing urgency around how we can bridge the ever-widening gender divide, Jordan Stephens is just the person I want to speak to. 

Alongside a successful music career as one half of British hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks, Jordan has written a series of children’s books with illustrator Beth Suzanna, has made his theatre debut in Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Young Vic and, more recently, published an acclaimed memoir looking at modern masculinity and reflecting on trauma. Over the past decade, he has advocated for greater awareness and support for men’s mental health, while also becoming a key ally in the gender equality movement. As someone who also rallies against the limits of traditional gender stereotypes, Jordan and I have often found ourselves in many of the same rooms. 

One of those rooms, recently, was at a screening of Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, Inside the Manosphere – a subject Jordan and I are depressingly familiar with. In the past month alone, King’s College published new data from a global survey which showed one in three Gen-Z boys think a wife should obey her husband, confirming an increasingly polarised split between young men and women, with older generations reporting more progressive views than some might expect. At a moment when our political climate feels increasingly fractured, I sat down with Jordan for a long-overdue chat about bridging the gap, building community and supporting one another. 

EH: To start us off, this issue is about support: what does support mean or feel like to you, and what does your support network look like?

JS: For me personally, support has a lot to do with diversity. One thing I feel blessed about is that, in my world, I have this incredible array of people around me from different walks of life, so sometimes I can tailor my need for support to people best equipped to provide it. It’s incredibly important to me that I have, within my friendship circle, men, women, gay men, gay women, older men, older women – I really do have a variety of people around me, and it helps me to have a more rounded worldview.

EH: And a more diverse perspective as well?

JS: Yeah, I think so. For me, support is having an array, because sometimes we can get locked inside. There might be some experiences that certain friends of mine will be limited in their understanding of. Communication is obviously a massive part of support; we can’t support anybody unless we ourselves are transparent, or that person is engaging with what’s needed.

EH: It’s like a two-way thing.

JS: I think so. Am I allowed to ask you back? What do you think of in terms of support?

EH: I think, similarly, you have to feel like support is reciprocated. If you feel like they can lean on you, you can lean on them. It has to be balanced. I look for support, as you do, in lots of different places. Everyone goes to the immediate ‘family’ or ‘friends’, but I think it’s bigger than that. For me, it’s my community.

JS: Yeah, community is essential. It’s hard to build a community properly. The other thing that’s really important at the moment in life, especially now, is that with my friends, I think (and I’m still scared that I don’t), I have a reasonable margin of error. A lot of people nowadays are quite afraid of being honest about how they feel or think, in case it’s problematic, or in case it’s wrong, and I’d like to believe I have strong people around me that would check me, if needs be, and also be open to the idea of me stepping out of line or saying something…

EH: …being able to pull you up.

JS: Yeah, because I’m obviously flawed. I’ve fallen into ideologies. As human beings, we have an inclination to victimise ourselves. I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think being open to understanding that we can all be victims is actually the first step towards empathising with other people’s scenarios where they’ve been victimised. Victimhood, I think, is what people get frustrated about, where people’s identity becomes, ‘I am only the person who receives things.’ That is where we don’t want to go.

EH: Yeah, 100%. You’ve actually led me quite nicely to my next question. As someone myself who’s also in the gender equality space, we’ve been in many of the same rooms over the years, sometimes without realising it. I actually went to a panel that you were on in 2019 called Power, Pleasure and Patriarchy. I don’t know if you remember. It was for 100 women, and that was the first time I saw you.

JS: At Rich Mix, I remember that.

EH: That theme – power, pleasure, patriarchy – is something that has developed quite a lot since 2019, so I wanted to ask you, how do you reflect on that, and what changes have you witnessed since?

JS: What an incredible question; you’ve pinpointed some cultural nucleus there. I remember going to that space. I didn’t feel like there was any disservice in that conversation, which is quite weird to think about now. I turned up to that fully acknowledging the validity, firstly, of that project, as it was platforming and giving women an opportunity to speak honestly about shit they’ve gone through and wanting there to be male support. I actually think she extended – oh my God, Eliza, you’ve nailed this – I’m pretty sure she extended it to 100 Men as well. Including ‘pleasure’ in the conversation was massive, and I remember there was an amazing artist called Hybrid Desire who drew me, and she drew everyone on the panel, and would draw little highlighted bits. She included [one moment] where, for me, I found foreplay a really interesting tension between men and women… Even as a kid, I’ve always found it so bizarre that men still think that it’s [only] them who have the power in that scenario.

EH: I’m interested that has stayed with you so viscerally since then, because that was a long time.

JS: Well, one, because the drawing the woman did was amazing, and two, because I do remember having that thought, and that conversation around pleasure and foreplay has continued and maintained. Sex is a really interesting place to discuss gender dynamics, because I think many of the things that men and women do in the bedroom will contradict their stances outside of the bedroom, or complicate them, or make them more nuanced. That’s so powerful because, in that time, we’ve had some massive shifts on the internet, namely the emergence of the manosphere, Andrew Tate and similar names. It has had a really poisonous effect on discourse. Firstly, because it’s radicalised young boys – I feel like I was being groomed online by these men – but secondly, because I do feel like it’s soured what was once an open space for everyone, including women. That project is an amazing example, because there was a desire to extend that conversation to men, hence why I was invited, hence why there were 100 men included too, whereas now it feels like everything’s polarised and in opposition to each other. That panel might even feel a little bit radical now.

EH: I completely agree, it feels like the manosphere has pushed everyone apart. We’ve gone through so many evolutions in the past seven years, but I agree, doing that panel now does feel quite radical, because we’re in such a polarised space.

JS: It’s difficult discussing it, because it’s very easy to say “feminism has made men this”, or “the manosphere has made men this”, you know? I think, ultimately, the elephant in the room is algorithmic echo chambers – you watch one video of an angry man or angry woman, and you’re going to be fed similar things again and again. I think, where there was a space to have a more nuanced discussion, it’s now harder to. I don’t think it’s completely gone, but it’s harder to. The most powerful moment for me in the years since – apart from Weinstein going to prison – the actual conversation felt a lot more watered-down, myself included. I wrote an article in The Guardian about whether I have been programmed to be a certain way, or whether I’d overlooked my complicity in certain actions and behaviours. I don’t think there was much finger-pointing. It didn’t feel like that, whereas now I think there’s a whole section of men and boys who have regressed slightly and doubled down, and there’s a tribalism that’s emerged where if “you’re not looking at how we are”, which can sometimes be valid. Then, of course, for women, it’s like, [men are] not getting this, so we’re angry now.

EH: I think what you’ve touched on there is interesting, this tribalism, because really, we are all fighting against the same thing, which is patriarchy…

JS: Capitalist patriarchy.

How do I reach the men and boys who have been easily radicalised because they feel neglected?

EH: But many people still don’t see that link, and you occupy quite a unique space, because you’re being pushed and pulled in different directions from those within your community, and from those from outside your community, who might want you to speak up on one thing more than another. I wonder how you feel that pressure and how you deal with that?

JS: The main issue in life right now is the push and pull, because, for example, I’ve had some involvement in the Women of the World Festival for the best part of eight or nine years. I absolutely love everyone who’s part of that – shout out Jude Kelly, shout out Sabina. Those women are great, and I love the festival. I love it because I like learning about the shit that women do around the world, or the places where women have been excluded, and shining a light on voices that have been quieted down. I’m into that. 

However, I have noticed over the last eight years that I don’t think the conversation on gender has improved. In fact, regardless of statistics, I think zeitgeist-wise, if I’m to believe the women I see online or in my life that I care about, the feeling is less safe than ever. In America, policy-wise, there have been some quite scary rollbacks, so I can understand it from that perspective, but also in terms of day-to-day life interactions.

One thing I thought was, at this festival, the guys who come to Women of the World Festival, or an adjacent event – like I did with my Boys and Men’s night – are usually going because of their girlfriend, or they’ve gone themselves and have already [researched the event]. They’re already in that space, so I’m like, how do I reach the men and boys who have been easily radicalised because they feel neglected? I really don’t believe that a boy is born, grows up and goes, “let me get radicalised by a scammer so I hate half the world”. I don’t think they want that. There’s something missing in how they feel in society, which is why the uptake was so quick, and a lot of them are children as well. So I’m like, how do I reach those guys? Because I’ve got a lot of women who follow me and appreciate the stances I take, but I actually want to change things. The issue is, once you go into that space of, “how do I reach those boys and men?”, it’s actually a little trickier, because, if I say “this happens to guys, this is an issue”, you do get pushback of, “Oh, poor men.” I don’t know how to get to those guys. 

Interestingly, around 2017, I believe one of my brightest female friends said, “Jordan, we really need men to focus on the male community and build the male community, rather than having to just be feminist or pro-feminism”. So I agreed, I’ll focus on the male community, but last year, I remember I was put in this carousel on a feminist Instagram account of positive men, and a lot of the comments in the carousel were like, “These men don’t do enough for violence against women and girls.” I felt confused, because I thought the thing I’d do is focus on male problems so that men feel better, but then now it feels like the energy shifted back to feeling like, actually, we need men to specifically confront those issues.

EH: Yeah, I think that’s where I get lost. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, but then there will always be people who champion you, and also those who put you on a pedestal, being a role model for men, which is tough.

JS: To get to these men, because one thing that men struggle with, I’ve noticed – and I’m generalising here, but largely speaking – is moral purity. If I say, please don’t put me on a pedestal, because I’m definitely not a perfect man. I can be fucking annoying, and I’ve got two or three ex-girlfriends who definitely don’t consider me to be… Obviously, it was a journey for me to get to where I am now, but if you look politically at a lot of the more problematic men who have managed to establish themselves in positions of power, they seem to amass interest by the fact that they’re flawed. Men see this and think, he’s prepared to own his mistakes. Like, he’s got four estranged children, you know, hard relate. It’s crazy.

EH: Why do you think there’s been such a pushback on the idea that we need positive male role models to counter that? Because there has been this narrative that says we need something to counter Andrew Tate, and then certain people are then shoved into the spotlight to be like, “Here’s a man, and they’re saying something good.”

JS: I think I’m into it. We should champion men who are doing cool shit. I think perhaps it’s the emphasis on “positive”, which I know sounds intuitive, because they are being positive, but it’s a lot of responsibility. I wonder if, in society, people have an issue with there being a moral hierarchy. Obviously, we need to have boundaries on the kind of bullshit we’re willing to take. Like, some people take the fucking piss, especially in the world of stardom, that we need as a society to be like, “That’s not cool,” and all of us need to be like, “That’s not cool,” men and women. Men in our own community especially need to be like, “Fuck that guy.” Some people might have done or have programmed behaviours that they’re not even conscious of as ‘bad’, so if they are in any way worried that they might be ‘bad’, they might lean more towards someone who says it’s okay to be bad.

EH: Yes, it’s easier to project, but because there’s this idea of “they’re not a perfect person”, they’re selling something more tangible than this perfect idea of what it is to be the ideal man.

JS: I think this extends to the pushback against wokeism. You see how people just say things are woke. From my perspective, as somebody who has a general interest – and I’m sure you do, too – I just want to understand other people in the world. I would be more willing to lean into why a person is how they are, and support that, than just exclude it because I don’t immediately understand it, right? But sometimes you see the extreme. The extreme side of woke would be a person saying, “If you don’t understand this, you’re this,” and that’s how people get turned away, because they might not understand it. They’ve already been excluded from this moral club, and then they lean into other people who say, “If you don’t understand it, that’s fucking fine,” because, honestly, it’s easier. It’s hard to extend empathy to a scenario that you have absolutely no understanding of. I think that’s where the tension arises sometimes for people, and especially men and boys. It’s a very messy process. It doesn’t look nice, deprogramming, deconditioning or challenging preconceived ideas. It will be uncomfortable. I’ve been on panels before with boys with the best intentions, men with the best intentions who want to shift and change, but the things they’ll say on the way can be uncomfortable. My perception is that they’ve been conditioned that way, so there has to be this margin of error, and not to just say “you’re a problem.”

EH: It’s really important, that margin of error. I think that it is much easier to do and to work through and navigate in real life, and it’s much harder to communicate online – that’s where the nuance dies. It’s really hard to have those conversations in a nuanced way online, and that’s why there’s so much room for tribalism and people being pitted against each other. We’re really seeing that now, at the moment, what feels like very divided camps; it’s like total online polarisation.

JS: 100%, and I can see how people get there, because if you are closing down youth centres and art spaces are underfunded, there are quite obvious consequences to that in terms of street violence, but another consequence of it would be actually meeting the people that online you are claiming to have an issue with in real life. Many of the people who are anti-trans or anti-gay or anti-immigrant, from what I can see, a lot of them have actually never interacted in real life with any of these people. If you were to go into a space where you can meet someone as a human being and realise that you have things in common, then you’re more likely to be empathetic.

Instead, they feel like there’s this psychological pressure. For example, the other day I did a video talking about how wild I think it is that, still, homophobia for straight men – or for all men, I guess, but particularly straight men and the heteronormative mindset in their teen years – homophobia is what binds some of the conversation. Making jokes about giving head, or “that’s gay”, or porn. Every time I talk about [homophobia], people say, “Jordan man, it’s not that deep.” And I’m going, I really think it is deep, because it’s insulting to you, to us as men. And also, what is that shutting down for us? I just don’t understand. I’ll challenge it, and then sometimes I get a comment going, “All right, we get it. You’re woke.” But for me, that’s someone going, “I don’t have the mental capacity or patience to just shift what I’m thinking.” That’s an interesting question. If I’m to empathise from a heteronormative male perspective, I think capitalist patriarchy is such a persistent existential pressure on being this type of man that has money and provides, which is almost unachievable, by the way, in the UK right now. They feel like they don’t even have space to just be nice to people, so there are all these things happening at the same time.

EH: That backlash is manifesting at the moment, harking back to traditional gender roles on both sides. We’re seeing this real resurgence of traditional gendered values in response to the masculinity crisis that we’re seeing, and some women are taking on more traditional roles as well. The rise of trad child wives, it’s happening. Both ends of the spectrum are becoming quite extreme. How do you interpret this? Because it feels a bit like a moral panic around this crisis of masculinity, or crisis of gender roles being eroded, when a lot of people – I know men and women – were celebrating that for a while, like, “Oh great, we don’t have to subscribe to such strict roles about our gender” in 2016, and now that’s totally switched. How do you interpret this moment?

JS: The elephant in the room with this shit, and you touched on it earlier – there will always be some genuine, necessary conversation to be had about societal programming and conditioning, and I think, actually, in my lifetime, I’ve seen some significant changes when I think about what boys and girls are saying to each other. When I was a kid, what was was television was [shows like] Little Britain. There was blackface on television, and you had Page Three women being paraded on TV shows, being rated out of ten. It was a lot more in the mainstream. So there have been some zeitgeist shifts, which is why I feel like the slight rollbacks feel even scarier. 

But I think that ultimately, the biggest informer of all of these changes is wealth inequality. There are loads of statistics to show that a lot of these experiences aren’t actually unique to this time. I read a book a year ago about the Second World War and what precluded fascism and some of the very minute behavioural changes, and in this book they specify sexual repression as a precursor to fascism, which I read thinking “that is insane”, because even with all the technology and everything that we think makes us a really special generation, we’re still exercising the same animal reaction to a lack of resources and a lack of power. There’s massive movement, for example, in the manosphere called the “no fap” movement, which is basically about turning your back on porn, which in some sense is actually positive, but to move against what is really an addiction. That extends to the idea of repression and not engaging at all sexually, or utilising that energy to try and form a connection. Then you get into the space of, are we entitled to that connection? That’s the really tricky, more incel area of it. 

I really believe that if there were a redistribution of wealth in society, some of that stress would be alleviated, because people wouldn’t feel so disempowered and so wouldn’t look for that sense of power.

What underpins all of this is a society where a small number of people hoard a lot of resources and wealth, and then the people beneath it are falling into tribes in some desperate attempt to regain that power. I really believe that if there were a redistribution of wealth in society, some of that stress would be alleviated, because people wouldn’t feel so disempowered and so wouldn’t look for that sense of power. That’s all I see, tribal attempts to reclaim a sense of power they might have lost in their futures. I’ve obviously had an experience when I was young of living with not much money – my mum was on the dole for a lot of my childhood. Anybody in that position knows – and I mean, for most of London, there’s this hum of, can I literally afford to pay my rent? Can I pay for my food? It’s then difficult to ask other questions of that person, I think. Have you considered the life of this person? A lot of people are like, “Yo, let me pay my fucking bills, and then we can chat about whatever.” Not to excuse behaviour, but I just think there’s a really clear line between those two things.

EH: I think people’s priorities change, and how much they can engage with social justice, when you’re actually living through a cost-of-living crisis and struggling to make ends meet.

Jordan Stephens: What do you do when your dreams are shattered? A lot of the time, if you’re a boy growing up in a capitalist patriarchy, you’re told that your dream is to gain a massive level of wealth that gives you financial freedom, and with that financial freedom, you’ll be able to support a family. Every human wants to feel needed and have a sense of purpose that is necessary, right? Unfortunately, because of the setup of capitalist patriarchy, the accepted idea of being needed as a boy or man has come with providing capital. 

We are learning in real time how to create sets of tools that aren’t around money. This might lead to what we call the “male loneliness epidemic”, whether we believe in that or not, or whether everyone has a loneliness epidemic. I’m actually quite open about this, but there’s an argument everyone feels lonely, but men having to develop the idea of how to feel needed outside of just earning money is a relatively new idea, and I think it’s fucking breaking their brains, because how do you find honour and dignity when you’re told a lie about your ability to earn anything? And then they identify with it. If I turn around and go, “you know what, you actually don’t need to be a millionaire. Just earn enough, take part in your local community and feel a sense of belonging in your area”, they’ll fight for it, like this is the worst idea. You’re trying to tell these people that capitalism isn’t going to save them. The first people you’ve got to fight are the ones who are most affected by it.

You’re trying to tell these people that capitalism isn’t going to save them. The first people you’ve got to fight are the ones who are most affected by it.

EH: It’s a difficult conversation to have when we live in a world of glorified celebrity culture. How can you unpick patriarchy and capitalism when it’s the only thing that you’re being fed?

JS: My mate Gary Stevenson made a really interesting point the other day. Most people know him for talking about wealth inequality, but he made a very poignant observation about the abstract perception of wealth, which is the idea that “being really rich is a great thing” is actually quite new. If you look back at old stories, Charles Dickens, for example, a lot of the wealthy people in those novels are considered to be burdened by it, like Scrooge. He’s rich and lonely. Or even the royal family, or whoever it is, I don’t think there was always this idea of “Wow, that must be so fantastic.” You imagine this idea of God, and that feels quite isolating and dreary.

EH: You need to bring back Muppet’s Christmas Carol.

Jordan Stephens: Right? But now we’ve somehow reappropriated it to where we need the money, so people take us seriously. One of the most ancient Eastern philosophical principles is that possession is the root of all unhappiness. That’s gone out the window in the West. People don’t think that. They’re like, “No, give me shit.”

EH: Thinking about this time, when it feels like we are taking one step forward and five back, is anything giving you hope at the moment? What is giving you hope for a more progressive chapter?

Jordan Stephens: Listen, the mad thing is – and maybe it doesn’t always cross over, because I know a lot of women who feel incredibly disillusioned – if you want to look for the worst parts of the people that you don’t like, you can find that very easily. You can get lost in these corners, and even as a guy, you can find yourself in corners where I’ve watched videos of women being like, “I wish there were no men on the planet.” 

Even though we do have boys who’ve been radicalised, and we have this real issue with some of the younger generations growing up in the manosphere, I’m now seeing some of them deradicalise themselves. A lot of boys have come out [of the manosphere] and obviously, concluded that hating women isn’t going to help them, partly because they understand they’re not going to have sex with anyone, and they’re certainly not going to form a relationship. – they realise [that some men] grow up saying, “girls are fucking stupid,” and then they grow up like, “I’m so alone.” I see those boys and the radicalising, but I also see more men my age are trying to be good fathers. They’re trying to break generational cycles. It’s by no stretch all men, but in comparison to my own childhood, some of the ways in which these men talk, I’ve personally never seen before, so I have to be hopeful about that. I’ve seen a lot more men leaning into the idea of therapy, and it has been normalised as a conversation. Whether or not men do it is another question. Maybe they’ll push back now, but I watched a video of a guy in his car talking about therapy yesterday, and it was completely normal. He was specifically saying what his therapist told him, and that’s pretty fucking cool.

EH: It is amazing how far we’ve come in that respect, where it’s actually not taboo for men to talk about getting therapy anymore, right? Even ten years ago, you wouldn’t hear men talking on podcasts about having a chat with their therapists.

JS: It’s easier to rage bait and find the men who are saying mad shit, but I do have faith that there is a good proportion of men who – and I mean I think this is the worry and the cure – because I think in their worlds, they’re being great. There are people who push and say, “Well, it’s not enough, because they’re not extending their worlds”. The biggest paradox of men online is that the best men I know have no intention of filming a podcast every week; they’re just being good dads, being good partners, and getting on with their lives. Or they’re teachers, or they run a charity, or they’re at the community centre. Even though it feels like the world’s crumbling, I do think that there are those men out there. 

Maybe this is a hot take, but one of the most topical discussions right now is this argument against pregnancy and marriage from women around the world. I don’t like the pushback I’ve seen online from men. There’s been the Diary of a CEO controversy, but I’d like to believe that there will be more men vocally in support of those movements too, because I think that it’s a real necessary call to action for men and women. I would love to live in a society where women feel loved and supported enough to want to have children. That seems like an important thing to want to do, and it would be nice to get to that place. 

EH: That leads me quite nicely on to my last question, which is – as we were talking about before, like rage baiting, and red-pill influencers – there’s quite a lot of stuff that we can get caught up in online that feels difficult to engage with. What advice can you give for people who want to engage compassionately in these issues, but in real life, in everyday life, and offline as well?

JS: Sometimes when I feel a little bit overwhelmed thinking of the macro, I try to reduce it to the micro and think about what I would do if it were just me in a single relationship. It helps because I am in a heterosexual relationship, so Jade and I obviously have these conversations about gender or power, but there are some relationship rules that I think apply on the macro level, too. For example, obviously treating a person with contempt for an identity or an immutable characteristic – even if you’re angry – I don’t think people respond well to contempt. If I made someone feel like I was disgusted by them, I don’t think they’re going to be like, “Let me reflect on myself.” I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it’s also not my position to police someone’s response. 

What I’ve concluded is that generally in life, if we feel we are missing something from the opposite, if I am frustrated about something in my relationship, I might start ruminating on that, and in that space, I might have unconsciously begun to withdraw what it is that I want from my partner, like they’re not giving that to me. I think even Esther Perel said this, there’s this Loop Rule, where if I then give what I want more of, the chances are I’ll get that back in return. As a tip, I have to remind myself that I just want to give what it is that I want and hope that it will be returned. I think that’s quite a good principle to have in life.

EH: Bring it back to basics. Treat people how you wish to be treated.

JS: I think I have to acknowledge that if we feel hard done by as people for whatever reason, it is very easy and very human to stay within that mind frame of being like, “I wish this, I wish that,” or “Why is this not happening? Why is that not happening?” But actually, when I look back on it, I shouldn’t assume people know that of me. I might feel frustrated by some of the dialogue I see from women online, but I think it’s really positive for me to continue to be a guy who’s outspoken about how much I appreciate my partner, and also how much I appreciate the platonic female friends in my life I’ve always had, and also how much I appreciate women in society and how important that is. For me, there’s no downside to that being cultivated in male communities. I can say, “this has happened to me”, but also I would be nowhere without the wonderful women in my life, and maybe I should focus on that, and I just hope that that’s done in return.

EH: You’re just saying empathy and practising empathy in all its forms feels like the undercurrent.

JS: It is empathy, but it’s also remembering that if I value something in life, I can just give that. I can’t force that on another person. I can’t expect somebody to live by that same value. I can hold a compassionate boundary, so if I’m like, “Okay, you’re not the vibe because I don’t feel like I’m getting this back from you,” but I can’t hold that boundary if I myself haven’t lived by that value.

I’ll throw that back to you, because you’re in this space and you’ve done a lot of work, you’ve run a successful campaign for nine years. What advice would you offer to somebody navigating all of these issues to not feel disillusioned?

EH: Doing so in an impactful way offline, because I think you can get so caught up in it online, right? Being in this space and doing both work in these online spaces and offline, I find that when I’m having these conversations in schools with young people and young boys, meeting them where they’re at is really important; coming into those conversations with mutual respect and mutual empathy and understanding that where someone is at is going to be very different to where you’re at, and knowing that both of your experiences are valid. But knowing that you have to bring them along with you, and not just expect to be like the goalpost is here, you have to get here now. It’s just not realistic.

Jordan Stephens: That’s a great answer, understanding that not everyone is where you’re at.

EH: Not everyone is where you’re at, so you do have to bring people along. That is frustrating as well for some people, because in the space that I’m in, and especially in some feminist spaces, there is this expectation like, “why should we have to teach? Why should we have to lecture? Why should we have to constantly put ourselves out there as women”, and they’re constantly taking on that educational role.

JS: Honestly, this is brilliant.

EH: But I agree to that as a concept, but when you are actually on the ground doing the work, you have to accept that you have to meet people where they’re at, otherwise you can’t make any kind of impactful change.

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