GABRIELLE STONE

Gabrielle Stone literally wrote the books (Eat, Pray, FML and The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl) on how to heal from unimaginable grief and betrayal and build the best possible version of yourself.  She's a take no prisoners kind of gal and is definitely not afraid to tackle the uncomfortable questions.  She's also a great friend and a rad human, so who better than her to be my first guest ever?  Absolutely no one. 

Let's get into it. 

**EXPLICIT SUBJECT MATTER AND LANGUAGE

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Unsided. Unsided. Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Unsided. I have with me a very dear friend, Gabrielle Stone. Some of you listening may know who she is. Say hi, Gabrielle.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hi, Gabrielle.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I knew you were gonna do that. I knew you were gonna do that. Um, it's so nice to have you here. Just um uh real quick for those of you who don't know, Gabrielle and I have been friends for quite a while now and have known of each other for even longer. And she is one of the most dynamic human beings that I have ever known, one of the most honest, straightforward human beings that I have ever known, and someone who can handle difficult conversations. So today, Gabrielle, I want to talk to you about something that is on my mind a lot, and I don't feel like as a man that it's a conversation that I can have on my own. I need to have it with a really strong female.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Um pressure. Jesus, let's just dig right in. Let's dig. I'm here to do all those things, and thank you for all those wonderful compliments. That means a lot coming from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Well, of course, and I think it's important for the listener to understand that we have a safe space between us, that we have a trust between us so that we can talk about things that are difficult, we can have different opinions about things, and we can learn from each other and listen to each other even when it feels tough. And the thing that I wanted to talk about today, Gabrielle, I don't really know how to put it into words except to say that it feels like there is a continuous war between men and women in this world, um, particularly in our new age of social media. And it's something as the father of two teenage girls that I think about a lot. Um and for those of you who may happen to be listening for the first time, I think it's also important for you to know that I'm a queer man, so I kind of stand outside of that straight, I'm white, but I stand outside of that straight white man kind of privilege. I live between privilege and the intersection of um not having privilege in many ways, particularly in today's current political climate. Um, but the thing that keeps coming back to, well, first of all, Gabrielle, you have built um quite an empire off of sharing your own experiences as they relate to um men. Um and you I'd love to let the audience know a little bit more about you and your experience and what you've been doing for the past five, six, seven years and sharing your story so bravely.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Totally. So I was married for almost two years, and this was while I was working as an actress and just starting my directing career in Hollywood, if you will, um, but on a very small scale. And I had been married for almost two years. I found out my husband was having an affair with a 19-year-old for six months. I filed for divorce, left. Shortly after that, I met a pretty well-known Hollywood actor and fell madly in love with each other, like zero to 100, meet my family, have my babies, like all the fairy tale nonsense. And he invited me on a month-long trip to Italy, uh, which I, of course, was like, duh, yes, I'll go. And 48 hours before we were getting on the plane, he told me he needed to go by himself and broke up with me and broke my heart, like my ex-husband never could have done. And I was sitting at home in my childhood bedroom because that's where you go when you're 28 and get divorced, and had a bottle of wine and tears streaming down my face and was like, well, I can either stay at home heartbroken or I can go travel Europe for a month by myself. And I took the trip solo and did six countries over the span of the month and wrote my book that became a best-selling book, Eat, Pray, Fuck My Life.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

It's a great book.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

And then you have you have an additional book to go with that, which is Yes, I wrote the sequel a couple years later, which is everything that happened after I came back from Europe, which is called The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl. Um, and those books, when they went viral on TikTok, really were able to reach so many women and men. I do have a lot of male readers once they can get past the fact that like the cover is pink and I am drinking wine on said cover. Um, but because the the root of the book is heartbreak and grief and finding your way after both of those things. And that's universal for men and women. And I think the conversation that we're going to be having today about this ongoing battle between male versus female is that people forget no matter what genitalia you might have, we're still living the human experience. And so much of that is shared. Um, I don't know why we as a collective can't grasp that more, that it's not a men versus women or me versus you. It's how can we all come together to understand each other better to have a more peaceful world?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

I completely agree. And I think that's a really good jumping off point. First, I have to say that, you know, Gabrielle and I came to know each other not because of the book, but as because we her mother is a dear, dear friend of mine and a teacher and a mentor. And I knew her when when she was quite young. And then as we got to know each other more, with Gabrielle as a director and an actor and a writer and a a great filmmaker, I didn't think that this book was for me either. And I read uh a draft of a pilot that she had written about the uh based on the first novel. And then um we proceeded to build our relationship around that because I realized right away, just like you were saying, Gabrielle, that there was so much of I I then dove into the book. There's so much of the book that relates to me as a man because we are all more alike than we are uh dissimilar. And that is what leads me to the conversation. This is something I think about all the time. So a little bit of history on me for those of you who haven't listened before. I I'm queer, I was married to a woman for 15, 16 years. I now have a husband, I have two beautiful kids. And I say that only because I have, through my lived experience, looked at or tried to look at as much as I can of what it is like to be a man, a queer man, and then because I was raised by so many women and I have so many strong women around me, and because I have daughters, I try to really look at what is the experience of a woman. Obviously, I cannot walk in those shoes, but it's something I think about a lot. And I find that, you know, when we when we look back, and I'm curious how you feel about this, Gabrielle, but when I think about the battle that we're talking about, when I think about the war that I see on social media, people who build entire platforms off of hate baiting against men or women, and there are there are men and women on both sides, and then there are people who are hate hate baiting against uh transgender people, there are people who are using sexuality and gender to draw a divide so that they can gain viewers, so that they can have a story, so that they can have something salacious. And that's really what it feels like to me. Any sort of hate baiting, any sort of, you know, there's one there's one creator on TikTok that I'm thinking of. Um, and I feel like I shouldn't say her name, but she literally recently bowed out because she had built, she had amassed a following of millions of people, and it was only about picking whatever the latest man was to bash, because she would find men who were bashing women and then they would go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

You do, huh? Okay. So I find it really fascinating because I think you might agree with me that people do need to be called out for their behavior. People do need to be called out for what they're putting out into space. Um, and there are, you know, especially because there are lots of people, young, impressionable people, who are scrolling through this, and they're, you know, maybe they stop upon one person who's got some really ridiculous point of view and who who, you know, there's a lot of trashing of of uh women on the internet um in general. But what I have found that I find disturbing is that I don't find it uncommon in conversation to hear people bash men, and it it's okay. Right? Now I'm not saying anything about the culture that we have around women and how women are uh the viol violence towards women, dismissal towards women, the patriarchy, all that is very, very real. But I'm curious, you know, your book is a healing book. Your books are healing books, your books are the story of your journey, your books are the story of a man and various men who have done really horrible, unconscious things which have directly affected your life. Now you've made uh dynasty out of it as well you should, but I'm curious, do you ever think of the men that you're that you've written about in your experience? And do are you able to see any side of their experience or does it feel one-dimensional to you?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, no, and that's such a great question. So I just finished my third book, which is not out yet, um, and I co-wrote it with my husband, uh, my current husband.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Um your only and forever husband.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

My my only and current husband. And um it was so nice to have that male perspective um for my readers because a lot of the women in the demographic that I attract with these books naturally have been fucked over by a man in some point. Um, but that's, you know, a large generalization. I get messages all the time from, you know, lesbian readers who have been fucked over by a woman and cheated on by a woman, um, or a man who has been cheated on by a woman, or a man who's been cheated on by a man. Um, again, it's it's universal behavior. But um inevitably, a lot of my following becomes people who have been wronged by a man. And I always try and preach this on my podcast, FML talk, um, in you know, the the online presence that I have, that I don't hate men. I really love men. Um I think there's shitty men. I also think there's shitty women. Um, there's shitty people because they have not been raised properly. But I wrote a section in this new book about having my son. Um, I have an 18-month-old at the time. Uh, and he did something to me when he was born that shifted my perspective toward the men who have done me wrong in my past. And that's not saying I hadn't forgiven them, um, like the the two men that are written about in my book. I have, I think my ex-husband is an actual really bad person um for diabolical things he has gone on to do after the.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Regardless of his gender, he's just not a good man.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, good person, yeah. Just something is not quite quite programmed right in there. Um, but I have forgiven them for what they have done to me nonetheless. They have become characters in my story. Um, but when my son was born, I had this moment where I was holding him and just how like helpless and innocent he was, and how sweet he was. And I was like, wow, both of those men were like this at one point. Everyone was like this at one point. And maybe they didn't have a mom like me who was going to just go to fucking battle for them at every step of the way to make sure they did not lose their way, to make sure they knew how to treat people in this world, to make sure they were protected enough to learn and grow and make mistakes so that when they had someone's heart put in their possession, they weren't going to destroy it. Um, and that made me feel really sad for them. And it it allowed me to forgive them and anyone who's wronged me in a different way because it allowed me to look at their little child that was still needing so much healing that they didn't have the emotional intelligence to go back and help heal.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

That is a huge point, and something actually that I was I didn't expect you to come to it in that way because I don't know if you've ever shared that story with me. Thank you for sharing that. I and the thing that I always come back to is parenting. Always, or guardianship, whatever it is. We are not all lucky enough to have parents uh or guardians. Some of us are lost in the foster system or whatever the case may be. But we I think about this so much because we are all born these blank slates. Obviously, we have different wiring, we have different things that need to be dealt with. But when I see a bad, badly behaving human, whatever their gender is, I immediately go back to their parents. I immediately think of their parents. And what I don't like to see is people making bold assumptions about men or women or anybody and saying that's just how men are. That's just how women are. It's just not the truth. Having two children myself, they come out and they're waiting for you to show them what safety is. They're waiting for you to teach them how to treat other people. So if I see a man who's behaving badly, who treats women badly or men badly, I I blame them for their actions as an adult, but I go back to their parenting and how they were raised because that's where it began.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

And it's it's difficult as a parent now because you're like, okay, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z, and I'm gonna always be there and I'm gonna always show up and I'm gonna always make sure they have everything they need. And there is still this wild card chance that they could lose their way in some big way. And then it's like, is it your fault? Is it not your fault? Um, were they predestined to come in and like live this journey? I know I mean, I know we, you and I get on the woo-woo train enough to believe that we come in with some type of plan as souls. Um so it's it's a really complicated slippery slope. Once you are a parent, I remember I wrote this line in Eat Pre FML, and I had my mom obviously read the book before I decided to publish it and work with my editor on it. And she only had one thing that she was like, I think you should maybe change this. And it was a line that I had written in a letter to my ex-husband while I was sitting in our home waiting for him to arrive to have the process server give him the divorce papers. Um, and I took that letter and then put it into the book. And there was a line that was written to his mother, who I had a very close relationship with over the five years that we were together, um, that more or less, I'll probably misquote it now, even though it's mine and I'm making this big deal about it. Um, more or less said, um, thank you for making your mother feel shame while mine feels pride. And my mom was like, I don't know if you should write that because I think you're gonna offend a lot of mothers. And my justification for it, my argument for it was I had spoken to her and she had expressed how much shame she felt from this whole situation. So I was just reiterating something that was true. But not knowing that piece of information, people reading it would be like, oh my God, I can't believe she's blaming his mother for his horrible actions, which of course was not something that I was intending to do. Um so I think there's a very it's a complicated thing when you think about like being a parent and how much do you influence them, and then how much are you responsible for any bad behavior that may come about in the in the future?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah, it is a tough line. And and I understand why your mom said that without the context and the conversation, it it can be hard to interpret. But yeah, you know, I don't think that parents deserve all the blame for everything, but I do think that this notion that men or women are inherently shitty just because they are men or women is a notion that we need to be perpetuating. And that's what I feel like is out there. That is not what you've done at all. And the reason that you have amassed such a following is because you look at the intricacies, you look at yourself, you're unafraid to put it, hold a mirror up to yourself. You do offer forgiveness, you do offer understanding, and you hold a very firm boundary about what you're willing to deal with and what you're not willing to deal with in your life. And that resonates. The thing that, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this is because I know we've had some conversations about this, but as an example, I was walking down the street with my older daughter a few months ago, and we were talking about have you heard this? I don't want to call it a joke, but this thing going around if if you're stuck in the woods, would you rather be stuck in the woods with a bear or a man?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Have you heard that? Okay. And of course, my kid was like, of course I want to be stuck in the woods with a bear because a man might blah, blah, blah. And you know, listen, I understand as much as I can being a white man living in America, but being raised by strong women and being on the outside of the kind of that straight privileged place. I understand how men can be towards women. Now, I've lived a slightly different experience. I've always, I've, you know, every job I've ever had, I've always kind of been second in line to women. I don't mind. Doesn't bother me. It just happens to be the nature of my work. Um, I have two daughters. So I'm in this world that may be a little different. But when I listened to her, I thought, wow, I have got to correct this because she's getting ready, she's being indoctrinated into this idea. You would choose a bear who's probably gonna eat you over a man. Right. Right. And I have seen the opposite question. If you're stuck in the woods with a with a bear or a woman, what would you choose? Ask to men. But I do find that there seems to be, and I'm curious about your opinion of this, if you think there's value to it, but it does seem to be that it's okay to to publicly man-bash. It's never okay to to female bash. You will find a lot of people who will come into social media and will pick up on that and they will start calling out the men. I don't I don't see a lot of calling out the shitty women. Um and and to go further to that, you know, I just have gone through a long, long divorce, and I'm still in the middle of a piece of it, the financial piece of it. And it was shocking to me to see the attorney for my ex-wife and my ex-wife pull from kind of a stock playbook of I'm going to paint him as a deadbeat dad, because everybody knows what a deadbeat dad is, and literally went through and perjured herself in court documents to call me out as a domestic abuser, as um to call out my faithfulness, to say that I was absent from my children, all things which were categorically untrue. But it was the easiest playbook. And what was fascinating to me is that it seemed like okay, well, she told me. Later, my ex-wife said, Well, I was talking to my attorney and she said, Let's just go through. And she started listing things that let's get him, let's paint him in this way.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

And that seems to be, you know, it happens a lot, right? And I can again, I can only speak from the male point of view, but I'd be curious how you feel about that because I know that there are also stock paint brushes that we paint women with in different scenarios and different arguments. What do you think that why do you think we do that? And do you think there's any purpose to it? Any value?

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Um God, there's so much to unpack there. There's I don't think there's any value to it. No. I think the reason we do it is when people feel like their backs are up against a wall and they have to defend themselves and deflect. Um speaking from the women's side of it, I whenever I have a video go viral that's more or less about my husband cheating with a 19-year-old, and then, you know, we got divorced. And look, all of this is like to sell a book. Um, but when it reaches the male audience, I had entire series of replying to these comments that were absolutely insane. I remember that series. Maybe you weren't sucking enough dick. Maybe you should go make a fucking sandwich. Like obviously, like the 19-year-olds, like horrible stuff that like is just so gross and so inexcusable. Um and just obviously, like, from like someone that's very sad, never have been probably with like the type of woman they want to be with, and like writing this in their mother's basement, which is fine. And the flip side of that, and I will defend the men's side because I have a son, and I will be damned if something like this ever happens to him. You look at like Blake Lively trying to take down Justin Baldoni, and everybody is like coming to her defense to support her, and then he comes with all the fucking receipts on why that's not right. And it's all of a sudden, not just like, I'm not in a stance of like believe every woman or believe every man, period. It's like, no, show me the fucking facts and bring truth to the table. And then we will look at who's right and who's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Um, and unfortunately, when big cases like that take place and they're so public, um, it hurts all of the survivors that do try and come forward, that do have valid statements, that were sexually harassed in the workplace.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

It's infuriating. Um, and I can't imagine being Justin Baldoni's wife or kids or mother knowing you know who he is as a person being dragged by this. Like that's that's life ruining. Not fuck fuck career ruining. That's life ruining.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Um it's it's so it that's such a it's such a clear way of the men bashing, the woman bashing, who gets away with it, when it's right. Um, I do think that there is more much more men bashing on platforms like TikTok and stuff like that. Um and I'll say I don't think it's right that there's more of it. I will say it is probably because women have not had a voice for so fucking long that they're finally starting to be like, ooh, actually, none of this behavior is okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Does that mean that the the shitty women behavior is okay? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Um, and I have seen a few videos on social media where men will come forward and be like, hey, um, this is my experience. This is what happened to me. And this is not okay. Here are the receipts, whatever. And they'll paint it in a way that's like, I'm like, okay, I can get behind that. I think it's when men come on and they're like, fuck this bitch, she's so stupid and ugly. Well, yeah, that's true. She's just a slut. It's like, you know, nobody, I don't talk about my exes that way, you know? Like you have to have some level of, you know, educated speak when you're when you're coming publicly to like, quote, bash people. It can't just be this vile spill of words.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

No, I agree. And I do think you're right. I think it's because women haven't had a voice for so long, women are afraid to walk out in the streets. Women are, you know, the the lives that I've had to learn so much about this, especially now that my daughters are teenagers, I think about it constantly. Just a woman feeling safe in the world. And I'm not just talking physically safe, emotionally safe. Safe to have their own safe, their own space, safe to not be harassed just walking down the street in whatever capacity. I think you're right. I think that um it's important though to have dialogue like this because I do think I I personally have an interesting perspective because I was never really given a seat at any table. When I was a kid, apparently the world knew that I was queer before I did because I was bullied for it since I was quite young and grew up in Oklahoma. I'm not a sports guy. You know, I people called me gay and fag and everything else before I even knew what those things were. Um, so I never really had this, I never I didn't have the straight white dude's table to sit at. They knew, they knew something was up. They didn't really invite me. I think that's why I gravitated so much towards women, because I find women generally to be much more accepting. Although I will say the people who have helped me the most in the world have been women, and the people who have hurt me the most in the world have been women. And but I still struggle to understand. And what I don't like is, you know, we're not gonna solve this on this podcast, but I think it's important to have a dialogue, especially with a woman like you, whom I respect so much, who is still striving to look at all sides, especially now having a son. The thing that that is upsetting to me are these broad generalizations and that it is okay in any capacity, you know, I wasn't gonna bring up Blake and Justin, but if you look at that, what she did was exactly what I was talking about with my ex-wife. She said, Oh, this is a storyline that people know. I'm gonna dive into this storyline. Who knows what her motivations were? It doesn't matter to me.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

But like, let's craft the narrative.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

But let's craft the narrative around something that people understand. Still, who knows where the truth is in all of this? Right. Who knows? I don't know that we'll ever fully know. But she stepped into a narrative and put him on the defensive, and he came back defending, and then and then she's not backing down. And here's a here's a bigger, this is kind of a uh a tangent just a little bit, but you know, I by the time this airs, I will probably have talked about the fact, or people will know that I was molested as a child for a decade. And when the Me Too movement happened, and I believe this is part of a continuation of that movement, and there's been there are many great things to that movement, I think, that have been really important in moving us forward in our conversation towards safety for women. A lot of people took it too far, and a lot of people took what I would consider, and this is maybe a little controversial, but what I would consider rather minor infractions, and they blew it up into something huge, which then takes those women or those men who have really suffered at the hands of abusers and aggressors, and they try to it minimizes, in a sense, what they've gone through because nobody knows who to believe anymore or what's right. And I think it has drawn uh, in many ways, it's drawn a greater divide between people because people are staunchly on one side or the other. So when I see someone saying, Oh, hey, someone didn't talk nicely to me on a set, you know, do you know how many times I've been sexualized on a set as a man? All the time.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

It's okay though, because I'm a man, not because thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Not not but but not not because I'm so amazing, but because it's just okay. Right. But if I want to make those comments about a woman, and I understand I that's not who I am, that's not how I roll anyway. But then when I see a uh when I hear a woman or a man frankly say, there this has happened with some men too. Oh, I was at a party and someone hit on me and I didn't like it, or they invited me back to their room and I went, but then they made advances. And then people use it to continue to kind of draw this line between people. And we're talking about specifically men and women, but this happens in the queer population as well. There have been definitely queer um celebrities, creators who are taken down in kind of this same conversation. And I wonder, do you think that this is a necessary swing that will then bring us back to the center of understanding, or do you feel like it's gotten out of control?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Um, I think it was a good, I think it was a movement that needed to happen. I think a lot of good came from it. I also think we are now living in a world where everyone is like scared to breathe. Yeah. Um, you can't come out and say that you support something because then it's like, well, what about this side? You can't say that you're, you know, offended about this because then it makes you this. You can't like give someone a compliment because then you're sexually harassing them. There's it's become we've become so obsessed with um finding different things to bring people down so we can be like, see, I told you, see, I told you. And that's really dangerous and exhausting and toxic. Yeah. Um, I mean, there are a lot of, I don't have to tell you this, but for people that are listening, there are so many men that have been molested and sexually abused. Um, it's not a woman versus man thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Yeah. Um that's right.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And it's it's sad when, you know, I've had conversations with my husband where he's so open and loving and like very sweet. He's also very good looking.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Um, and he, you know, deals with coaching kids. He he he's an acting coach and he coaches kids and he coaches teens and he deals with their their mothers. And I'm like, you cannot text the moms and be like, hey, love, just wanted to let you know. You can't say that.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Because that could be taken the wrong way. And he's like, what? And I'm like, no, I know that you just mean it like being open and being friendly, and you know, but you're good looking and you're charming, and people will use that against you. You have to be so careful in today's world. And that's a sad conversation to have to have with a person who goes to bat for women at any chance he has. It's but it's the world that we're living in now. And you know, I will say this as a woman, and this might be controversial too, but all this talk around consent has come up and been a very hot topic since the Me Too movement. And I think that's amazing. Um I also think we as women or men, whoever's in this situation, this side of the situation, need to take some responsibility um when our behavior leads to something. So I have had, you know, my younger years when I had nights where I would go out and drink too much. I have a very unfortunate talent of being blacked out drunk, and you'd be like, she's just had a couple drinks, she's just having fun. Like you wouldn't know that like the lights are on, but no one is home or even in the building. Um, and I have had a handful of intimate experiences that I know I had. I know I went there to do that, but I don't remember a goddamn thing about it. And if I were to tell the man that, they would be shocked, scared, mildly disgusted, worried. Um, but that was on me. I I can't go and initiate things and and you know, advance onto someone whether I'm in the right state of mind or not, and have it be their responsibility to look at me and be like, oh, she might be past that line. Like, what line? Where's the line? If you can't tell that I'm like that drunk, you know, yeah, that I have to be able to take some responsibility about that. Um, and I think when the Me Too movement happened, some people were like, oh, that falls into that category. No, the five, four or five people that I had those experiences with, no, they do not fall into that category. Yeah. That was on me, in my perspective. Um, and I think we have to know where that moral compass is. Um, as the people who were potentially intoxicated, were potentially initiating things, um, did go somewhere with the intent. Um, because otherwise it's like there's such a gray area, you know. I I think about when my son, God help me, gets old enough to start having like intimate experiences. I feel like we're in a world right now where it's like, before you kiss them, you have to ask if that's okay. Before you put your hand on them, you have to then again ask if that's okay. Before you like move to second base, you have to be like, shall we move on to the like yeah, it it's you pretty much have to get it in writing. And then you probably should like document it in some way just in case they decide to fucking lie about it. Yes. And that's men or women. This is again, it's not a female versus men thing. So if you're a man listening to this, please don't be like cheering in the background, like, yeah, women are fucking crazy. Like this shit happens on the male side too. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Um well, you said something really interesting, just for a second, if I can. You said the word responsibility, and this is what I think it comes down to, and not just around being assaulted, but around how you interact with the world. What I feel like we, you know, are in a space now with social media where you can hide behind, you know, your camera, your phone, your computer, whatever it is, taking personal responsibility. So back to the genesis of this conversation around, you know, uh hate speech towards men, towards women, towards transgender, whatever it is, toward there is a piece of personal responsibility in there. And I think that taking responsibility, as you know, having put your whole life out into the world, it could have been really easy for you to write a book where you don't do any introspection at all. And a lot of people would have bought that book. But what makes your book so special is your ability to sit down and say, okay, wait a minute. So I'm taking personal responsibility for my life. If you weren't, you would have never gone on the trip to begin with. And for those of you who have not read the books, you really should read the books. They are spiritual as much as they are anything else and hilarious and honest.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

It's the truth. So we are lacking taking the ability to take personal responsibility for things in our world. So we look for the quickest scapegoat. How can I shift the blame to those outside of myself? Now, to keep this about myself, if we're talking about assault, which I think is is literally what this whole court issue boils down to, whether it's actually physical assault, whether it's verbal assault, whether it's economic assault, whatever it is. Um I could go through my life blaming the person who molested me forever and taking no personal responsibility for what happened after that time. Because you see, we can, you know, it was very real what your ex-husband did to you. But moving from that point and out of the victim mentality and processing that for thousands and hundreds of thousands of people to see, you have to move into personal responsibility. What am I going to do now? And that that's the part that I think people are missing. We get stuck in the conversation about he did, she did, they did, while I sit calmly in my corner having done nothing.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yes, yes. Okay, so I want to go back to when you said that people aren't going introspective and taking personal responsibility. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the exact comment, always from men, on my videos saying, okay, but did you take any responsibility for why the marriage failed? Did you do any reflection on why both of these relationships failed? You must be the problem. And my response every time is, yes, motherfucker, I did 280 pages of introspection. Um, thank you. But the difference is the hateful intent behind those is oh, well, obviously you're the problem. Why did two people choose to leave you? Which, by the way, is not that fucking insane. People have multiple relationships that end all the time. And a lot of times they're the one getting broken up with, or they're the one doing the breaking up.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

So it's a weird comment in that sense. But when you this is one of the things that I talk a lot about on the podcast and in the books, and people tend to get triggered by it. And I do not care because it's so fucking valuable. You have to look at the patterns in your life, whether it's continuously being fired from a job or the type of people that you're attracting, or whatever it is, if it's happening more than twice, there is something that is within you that is attracting that into your life. So do you deserve the assholes that are cheating on you or the people that are gaslighting you? Absolutely not. But you're attracting them for some purpose. Right. And until you look at that and take some responsibility for that, you're gonna keep fucking attracting that shit until you wake up and realize that there is something within you that needs to be shifted so you can attract something different. So my personal responsibility wasn't saying, oh, I didn't suck enough dick or make a good sandwich, two things that I do wildly well. Thank you very much. Um, my personal responsibility was to say, okay, why did I attract two people who abandoned me in wildly different ways? What is going on within me that I need to fix to adjust who I'm gonna attract in the future? This goes back to losing my dad when I was six years old, very traumatically. Walk, as you know, walked in, found him dead on the floor from a heart attack. That was my first experience of when I love someone, they die, and men in my life abandon me. That wound was reopened when I was in high school and I lost my high school sweetheart in a car accident. When I love a man, he abandons me. So I was subconsciously attracting these people into my life. So my brain could be like, see, we're right. We knew this was gonna happen. We're safe. We we're we got it.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

That's that's the lesson. So, yes, when it's being introspective, it's taking responsibility, not for the shitty things that are happening to you, because that's by no means your fault, but there is a reason why. Why you attracted them. So it's are you going to learn the lesson and do the work and heal from it, or are you going to keep repeating?

SPEAKER_00 40:07

That is a play, that's a victim mentality.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

And nothing, nothing but a void can be created from a victim mentality.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Yeah. I remember so clearly when I was in high school and my hormones were coming in, my mom's hormones were going out, and I was having some meltdown about something. And I turned and looked at her and I was like, well, yeah, because I lost my dad. And how am I supposed to feel about that? Or something, you know, dramatic in teen year. Um, and she looked at me and she was like, That is the last time you will ever use your father's death as an excuse. You can be sad about it, you can cry about it, but it will never be a reason why you act shitty or don't accomplish something or do something negative in your life. Yes. And it was that's that's the lesson there is you come to a fork in the road and it's like you've been sad about it, you've drank the wine, you've ate the ice cream. Now, are you going to take the solo trip and write a book about it, or are you going to go cry about it and like make some bad decisions? You know, it's like you have to allow things that have happened to you to be a part of your story, but they don't define you.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

No, absolutely not. And that's where we get stuck. We get stuck in the definition. So then you have the memes like if you're stuck in the woods with a bear or a man, which do you choose? With a bear or a woman, which do you choose? And just in the very, in the very act of not thinking thoughtfully and critically and saying, Oh, I choose the bear. That's that's being stuck in a place of victim mentality where you are choosing to say, that thing that is outside of me is now dictating everything that happens in my life. Every shitty thing that shows up is because of that one thing.

unknown 41:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

And I and I or that one man is the reason why I would rather be with a psychotic bear in the woods.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah, or that one woman, or whatever the case may be. And we're I think we are actually programmed not to take responsibility. I think that, and I'm talking by how we're indoctrinated into our society. I think that, you know, the powers that be, whether they're religious or political or whatever, they don't really want us thinking for ourselves. They want us divided. So to me, this is just another extension of that division, which stops us from thinking critically about the patriarchy and why it exists. About the fact that men are not allowed to be in touch in many ways with their emotions or their sexuality. Frankly, I'm gonna say something a little controversial, but I think a lot of um assault against women would go away, sexual assault and physical assault, if men were allowed to express themselves emotionally and sexually without being put into a box. I think um men have a very, speaking as a man, we have a very high drive for being sexual. It is, there's there's a physiological reason for that, an evolutionary reason for that. Um, but men are taught that their sexuality is a bad thing or that they are supposed to be in the dominant, powerful place and conquer something, conquer someone. Um and women are seen as whether it's, you know, the reason that there's so much hatred towards queer people is because there's so much hatred towards women. There's so much hatred towards femininity. The same is true of transgender. Um, why there's so much hatred because you can't control the dialogue of the patriarchy and keep people powerless if you admit that there are so many variations to sexuality, to mentality, to gender, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't think people want us to be aware. I don't think they want us to take responsibility. I don't think that people want us to be open to critical conversation. And these people I'm talking about are the systems that run us and govern us.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

I agree with you on the if men were able to express themselves emotionally and sexually. Unfortunately, the flip side of that coin is I would trust a man like you to express themselves emotionally and sexually. I would trust a man like my husband to express themselves that way. Unfortunately, it's the people who are in my comments saying, suck better dick, make a better sandwich, who will take that notion and be like, well, I'm allowed to express myself sexually. So I'm gonna like have you anytime I want and like you, you know, yeah, and do it in a um not ethical or responsible way. Yes, let me that's the that's the concern.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Well, let me back up because I I think this is this is interesting, and this is why I want to talk to you about it. Um, because when I talk about that, I'm talking about from a young age. I'm not talking about men now. You know, like there are a lot of women who are willing to share emotion, they can share a bed, they can cuddle with a woman, and they're not seen as a lesbian or queer. That's that's what I'm talking about from a very young age. Like I remember I was dating a girl that I very much loved as much as you can in high school, and I saw her father scratching her brother's back when he was like 12. And I remember thinking, oh my God, that's horrible. That's sexual. Like, what's something happening? But what had happened in that household is they were teaching their son that there could be affection between men, that he could be soft, that he didn't have to be hard, that he didn't have to keep up some machismo. And I haven't spoken to him in years. I don't know what ended up happening to him. But my point is, is it was shocking to me. And having grown up, or I I've grown up, there's something that parents through religion very often put into their boys' heads and women's heads, a different message, but into the to the men's heads of that being soft is weak. Having anything that is deemed feminine is weak.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Um, and that we have to conquer that femininity, which comes out in conquering.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

And it's wild too, because I have friends, some where I'm like, yeah, that tracks, and some where I have been shocked, where my son has been out with their kids, um, also boys, and they have been like, you know, my my son will go over and like uh look at a baby doll. And I'll, you know, be like, oh, look at the cute, it's like a little baby, blah blah blah. Do you like is do you want to get one of these or like do you want to like, you know, and the the moms will be like, oh my god, his dad would freak out if and I'm like because he would want to play with a baby doll? Yes, exactly, or a Barbie, or and like these are people who I would be like, Oh, they're a that's a he's they're a really good person, they're really good parents. And now I'm like, why would you ever bring a kid into this world if you're not cool with like them playing with a fucking baby doll?

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Because they don't think for themselves, because they're gay. Yeah, they were indoctrinated. That's what I'm saying when I say it goes back to the parents taking us full circle here. And I know in in this way we're we're on a similar page, but I also appreciate how you offer me a greater perspective, right? It's it's really important that we go back to and just reiterate again. When I'm talking about men exploring and being open with their sexuality and their beingness, I'm not talking about as adults suddenly feeling like they can go out and conquer everything. I'm talking about back to childhood. If you as a parent believe that it is not okay for your son to be soft or your or your daughter to be strong, you've been indoctrinated into something. You've been indoctrinated into a belief system of some kind. There it that is a not that is not a question. It's non-negotiable. Nobody, your precious son did not come into this world with an idea of men versus women. You have to teach him. Yeah. He will learn and you'll do as much as you can, and then society around him will mold him the rest of the way. Which is why I think we have to continue the conversations as a society. Anyone who comes with a blanket statement about anything should be looking at why they believe that, the intricacies of it. Because there's very little that is black and white, right? Violence against other people, that's very black and white. No bueno. We don't do that. Assault taking away another person's rights, no bueno. But how did we get there? How do we get to a place where we're even looking at that? You have the people, like you said, that just are born into this world, and no matter what you do, you can't quite set them right, and we have to deal with that. But generally, I believe that more people, if they were not indoctrinated, if they had the opportunity, if they had a mother like you or your son, he's very lucky because he's gonna get to have all of the conversation. And your and your husband, Tay, you guys are are you credit to your parents, credit to yourselves. You're able to really look and have honest, critical conversations, which means you're gonna put a son out into the world who's going to treat women well. And he's gonna treat men well, and he's not, you know, that's your responsibility. But we as parents need to be committed to all that because that is where the conversation changes. Once you become teenagers, adults, it's very hard to change the paradigm that you live in.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Whatever the belief system is.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

And that's scary. It's scary to like raise little people and then be like, okay, society's gonna shape the rest. And then you look at your society and you're like, our society kind of sucks in a lot of ways. Like, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Um, and so yeah, it's really important to keep that conversation going. I think one of the blanket statements that I have come up against recently that I've had to look within myself and be like, okay, why do I feel so much guilt around this? There's been a lot of talk, you know, recently about privilege and um acknowledging your privilege and being like, okay, yeah, of course you were able to accomplish X, Y, and Z. Look at your privileges. You've never had, you know, you're white. You're you never had to come uh home and worry if there was food on the table. And I didn't. I was always very like I'm able to acknowledge that. I'm very privileged in that sense. I am a white woman. My mother has always been very incredible and loving, and we always had enough, um, oftentimes more than enough. Um, but there's a flip side to that coin. Um, I've experienced a lot of trauma in my life, like losing a parent at a at a young age and being the one to discover that parent is a huge thing for a child to experience. Um so and and you know, and then losing a boyfriend um pretty traumatically, and you know, going through infidelity in a marriage and getting a divorce. So it's like I've had to yes, be like, okay, I I am privileged, but it's been other people that have reminded me like, yeah, you you had stuff on this side of the worksheet, but look at all the shit you checked off on this side of the worksheet. Like a lot of people didn't have to experience that or go through that. Um and I think it comes down to us as people needing to have a little bit more love and space in our hearts for others. Like who's a human condition? Who cares if someone is a Nepo baby? You have no idea what hard shit they've gone through on the other side just because you know, they've had money, or who cares if someone came from nothing? Like, what if they had the most amazing loving family that like you know supersedes any financial gain? Like, I just feel like our world right now is so ready to point the finger and be like, you're fucked up, you're wrong, this is why, instead of like being open to looking at what they could add to the conversation or what they could heal from.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

I agree. That's compassion. And I would say, you know, you that's an excellent point. And what it brings me back to again is personal responsibility. If I look outside of myself and I say, oh, well, he or she had that, then that excuses why maybe I haven't achieved something that I yet want to achieve. Right. If I want to moan and complain about what that person has or didn't have in order to overcome something in their lives, it takes the focus off of me and it puts the focus outside of me, which I interestingly enough, I think encompasses this whole conversation because we're talking about I didn't think this was going to be a conversation about personal responsibility, but I really think that's what it is. Whether it is men versus women, whether whatever ideology you're it's up against, whether it's comparing yourself to someone else's success, all the things that are exacerbated by our fascination with social media, which by the way, I think social media is a beautiful thing, but we've just become, we're using it as this tool to rid ourselves of personal responsibility, to talk into this void and say, well, let me point some fingers at why this is happening. When really, if we would all this is gonna sound so Pollyanna, but if we would all, if we all had the capacity, or a lot of us had the capacity to sit down, break ourselves out of whatever paradigm we've been indoctrinated into, paradigm of belief or or whatever, we would be able to really be thoughtful about who we are, where we've come to, how we've shown up in this world, and take personal responsibility. We would start to see that a lot of the opinions that we hold about other people or how the system is set up against us, they kind of have to fall away because they serve no purpose.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

We want to look and we want to look at a group and we want to say that group is the reason why.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Right. And that is never the answer. It is never the answer.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

Gabrielle, I love you so much. I'm so grateful. And we'll we'll do more of these. I appreciate you taking time this morning. I know your your son had a temper tantrum, and yet here you are.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

And yet I still love him and don't hate men, even though he screamed at me in my face for 30 minutes straight. Still love the little fucker.

unknown 54:19

Good mom.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

I love you and um and thank you. And tell everybody where they can what they can check out again, just in case they missed it earlier. Your books, your, your everything. Podcast?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Yeah, yeah. Eat Pray FML, which is the first book, um, and The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl, can both be found on Amazon or on my website, eatprayfml.com, if you want a signed copy uh the podcast I am no longer actively doing, but there are four years worth of really amazing content that Christopher has guest episode um on a few of those as well. Uh the podcast is FML talk, and then I'm still active on the Patreon version of that. Um, but you can find everything on my Instagram, which is at Gabriel Stone.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah, go find her because it's you're gonna learn a lot, and she's just a dynamic, amazing human. And I love you, and I can't wait to talk to you again soon.

SPEAKER_01 55:06

I love you too. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

Okay, bye. This is Uncided, Uncided, Uncle.