It's so good to meet you.
I am so happy to talk to you and hear more about what masculinity means to you.
I know it's kind of a broad topic.
It's funny because when people say that, I don't think they really.
I don't, I didn't understand masculinity for a long time,
I think now, you know, now that I have, you know, nieces that are in their 20s and, you know, one of them is married, another one's getting married, they're dating.
And you see them with, you know, the guys that they're dating, you know.
And you want to see the best in these guys.
And you want to see, you know, so it's like it's not a judgmental thing.
It's you want to help them. And they're you know, they're looking at you because you're older.
And now I'm like starting to understand it's like, yeah, I can impart this information that I have on what it really means, you know, to be a man.
It's not, you know, bulking, you know, or hulking guy, if you will.
It's the let me hear you out.
It's the having an ear, you know, listening without judging.
You know, sometimes it's best to just listen and not talk.
You know, sometimes you don't need to actually say anything.
You know, I think it's very much at least the way that I was raised.
It's very much a guy thing to want to solve things, to want to fix things, which is probably how I ended up in the tech industry, because I like to fix things and I like to like solve things.
But, you know, it can be very detrimental in life relationships.
You just need to let things evolve as they may.
You just need to be there to listen as a friend.
And I think that to me
is one of the many definitions of masculinity, what it means.
Because you've gone through life.
I grew up with Dominican parents and I don't know how much you know about, you know, Hispanic men, but it's very much a male dominated world.
Growing up in a Hispanic household, the men do not listen to the women.
The mothers run the household because that's their job.
But the men make all the decisions.
If the man says, no, he's not eating chicken today, he's eating steak then he's eating steak.
So I think it's really interesting that you were raised with values like that or in a household like that.
And now you seem to have such like an in depth, in-touch perspective about masculinity.
You're like. You understand that it's it's kind of got this duality to it.
Well, I think it has a lot to do because I was never
it always seemed like I didn't fit in my family.
I love my family.
But I also didn't fit in there.
I was very much, you know, closer with my sisters than I was everyone else.
And the one thing I will say that my parents instilled in me is somewhat right and wrong, which is ironic considering they didn't realize when they were being wrong.
So they instilled that in me.
So I was able to see when things were right and wrong.
It's like, no, you shouldn't treat people like that. You shouldn't talk to people that way.
It's not right. It's wrong.
You're, you said you're married.
[Gabriel] Yes.
And you said you don't have kids?
I do not have kids. So that's, it
It just didn't happen for us, you know.
It wasn't in the cards biologically for my wife and I.
My brother got married at, I don't know, 18 and had kids very early on with his wife.
I think that was way too young personally for me and ended up not working out for a number of different reasons.
And that wasn't you know, it was just like, well, if your wife isn't able to give you a child then you need to,
I'm like, no, I made a commitment.
It's like it's not about just having a kid it was like because the the thought was you need to reproduce.
You need to be, you know.
In order to be a man.
In order to be a man, you need to reproduce and you need to go and have kids.
And if she can't give you a child, then you need to go have kids.
I'm like, what about just being happy with what you have?
It's like, yes, you know, initially when you find out you're not it's not one of the best feelings in the world, but you move on.
Why do you think that that is such a tenet of masculinity, like the idea that you have to reproduce?
I don't know. But whatever it is, it's just such a misunderstood.
It's such a misunderstood mindset.
It's like that it's flawed because just because how many men out there have reproduced, have made children?
I'll use my brother as an example.
He has three kids that we know of, two from his wife and one that's not from his wife while he was married and it's like,
is he a man? Because he's not in the picture.
I spend more time with his kids than he does.
You made these kids. Is he a man just because he made kids?
I mean, if I wanted to be a man and that was the case, then, yes, I would go cheat on my wife and go have kids somewhere else.
Like, how does that make sense? How is that being a man?
I think it's more of a man to just kind of own up, say, I got to take this one on the chin.
It's not meant to be, so move on with life.
I want to switch gears a bit to talk about your M.S. diagnosis.
You were diagnosed at 38?
Yeah.
I would just love to hear kind of how that has affected you and particularly your view of your own manhood.
It was a shock. A lot of things came to mind.
One of the more selfish things that popped into my mind right away because we're talking about masculinity was how is this going to affect me?
Am I going to be, am I going to be able to have sex with my wife?
Am I going to be able to perform?
You know, like in that sense, certain things you just take for granted. It's like walking.
And now all of a sudden, you know, for a good few months after my initial diagnosis, you know, I was walking with a very visible limp just because everything was just sore on my left side.
And it was just. What do you like, okay, how is this going to affect me?
How is this going to change? You know, I don't want to be a burden on anyone.
Well, I mean, do you think that there is some shame around asking for help?
Yeah, absolutely.
I absolutely was raised that way that it was you know, a man doesn't ask for help, you know?
And if you're going to do it, you know, it's going to be you're gonna ask another man in private.
You know, you're never going to be public about it.
You're never going to say Jen, you know.
I could use your support.
Yeah. Can you help me?
It's like but I didn't have to do that because luckily, you know, my wife was there.
You know, again, my nieces who are amazing, my sister in law, my sisters, you know, my family was just amazing.
So I didn't need to ask for help. The help was just there.
I just needed to not be stupid enough to throw it away or push it away.
Which hopefully I think I wasn't but yeah. It's just so. Yeah.
The help was there before I even asked for it.
That's awesome.
But even then, you know, when I did ask for it, when I did need help, when I couldn't do something, it was there. And I asked because
yeah.
One question that I just realized is, do you think that kind of environment you were raised in has anything to do with your parents being immigrants in addition to being Dominican and that being Dominican culture?
Oh, absolutely.
I think, you know, my parents being immigrants and coming here, they felt like they had to work so much harder than everyone else.
And I think there was an air of elitism there, like well we worked hard.
So, you know, anybody else should be able to do the same thing. This is a, it was a different time when you guys came here, you know,
things were maybe easier to do back then than it is now for someone coming.
So you having that mentality of, well, we did it, so why can't you do it?
It's the wrong mentality.
Instead of trying to help someone and say, well, this is how we did it, you know, if this avenue is no longer available, let's try to explore what avenue is.
And I think that's the mentality that was wrong.
That goes back to what you were saying in the very beginning about listening and how you feel like a man is someone who listens.
And hears others.
[Gabriel] And again, people just want to voice.
You know, you look at what's going on in the world right now with a lot of these immigrants and refugees, you know, people that claim to be pro-life, I'm like.
They have lives as well.
Yeah where where are you? Where are they?
You know, you have people being separated from their families.
Mothers just want to be heard when they're asking where's their kid.
People want to be heard. So who's listening?
People you know, you need to listen. It's not just saying I know what's right.
I know what's best for you. I don't.
I know sometimes what's best for me.
[Jen] Yeah.
But I'm not in your life. I'm not in your relationships.
So I don't know what's best for Jen.
I don't know what's best for you and your significant other if you have one.
I don't know that.
But if you listened, you could. You could.
If I listened. I could potentially.
Yeah. That's really interesting.
I feel like we don't, we don't align masculinity enough with the idea of being able to question something.
Yeah, I think that's a really poignant way of saying, of putting it.
Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you.