01 - Masculinity Isn’t the Problem—It’s the Starting Point

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00:00 – What Is American Masculinity?
 01:02 – Who Is Tim Wienecke?
 02:06 – Reflections on MeToo and Cultural Shifts
 03:11 – The Problem with "Toxic Masculinity"
 04:21 – Right-Wing Masculinity Myths
 05:40 – What This Podcast Is Actually About
 06:57 – What You Can Expect Going Forward
 08:19 – The 3 Questions I’ll Ask Every Guest
 09:09 – Masculinity Lesson from My Father
 12:18 – When Masculinity Hurt Me
 16:00 – When Masculinity Empowered Me
 18:30 – Final Thoughts and What Comes Next

Description:
Masculinity isn’t toxic—the polarized way we talk about it is.

In this first episode of American Masculinity, therapist, veteran, and longtime men’s advocate Tim Wienecke shares why he launched the podcast—and what’s missing from today’s conversations about being a man in America.

Drawing on years of clinical work with men, veterans, and first responders—plus award-winning advocacy in sexual violence prevention and LGBTQ+ allyship—Tim reflects on how cultural narratives about masculinity have become either rigid or performative, and how both ends of the spectrum fail real men.

This episode sets the tone for what’s to come: no yelling, no easy answers—just honest, grounded exploration of gender, identity, accountability, and the quiet work of becoming the man you want to be.

You’ll hear:
– Why “toxic masculinity” misses the point
– What Tim’s father taught him about showing up
– How chasing status with women became a trap
– Why the Air Force changed everything
– What this podcast promises to deliver

Books Mentioned:
📚 Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves
Support indie bookstores and check out the AMP reading list here: https://bookshop.org/shop/AmericanMasculinity

Note: This show offers insight and education but isn’t a substitute for therapy.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Episode Transcript

Timothy Wienecke (00:00):
The only time that you hear toxic masculinity
used is when it's chastising aman's bad behavior.
I'm tired of men coming into myoffice.
with these preconceived, notionsof what their masculinity has to
be that are completely falseThat kid didn't F...ing ask to
be here.

(00:21):
That's on you.
You gotta show up.
You are listening to AmericanMasculinity hosted by Timothy
Wienecke.
Tim, a former Air Force sergeantis a licensed psychotherapist
and award-winning men'sadvocate.
This show offers insight andeducation, not a substitute for
therapy.

(00:42):
We take a nuanced look at theroles men inherit and the
systems that shape them,grounded in real stories and
committed to the quiet work ofcarrying forward what serves you
and letting go of what doesn't.
What is the American masculinity podcast
about?
And who the hell am I to tellyou anything about masculinity
in America?
Hello and welcome.

(01:02):
My name's Tim Wieneke, and I'm alicensed mental health provider
out here in Colorado.
I've been in practice since2017, helping men, veterans, and
first responders build morefulfilled and connected lives
while helping them process thetrauma and pain that they've
experienced to become bettermen.
Prior to that, I have a numberof allyship awards in helping

(01:23):
other communities.
Numerous accolades and awards inthe military for all my work
around interpersonal violenceand sexual assault prevention.
Hopefully, by giving you thesetwo almost opposing, it can
feel, roles that I've played inmy life, it starts to give you a
better feeling for what we'regoing to try to do with this
podcast.

(01:44):
Between all that time, it'sgiven me a nuanced and broad
range of understanding aroundwhat's happening with guys in
this country.
I've been involved inconversations around gender
since I was 20 years old.
I've been thinking about thesethings for a long time and I
care deeply and passionatelyabout them.

(02:06):
And I remember when Me Too firststarted to be a thing, I was
excited.
I was excited to see some of themore egregious men get caught
and get punished finally.
I was excited to see hopefullysome men take on some of these
things, but also just to seepeople be safer in the world

(02:26):
with more accountabilityhappening.
Over the course of years though,I've found the push of the
movement to become more and moreproblematic for me.
And it really was a slow burn onit.
And it wasn't really articulatedfor me as to why it was
bothering me until a book that Iread recently, Of Men and Boys

(02:49):
by Richard Reeves, this bookhere.
The book shares a lot of reallygood information about what's
going on with men, how they'restruggling, and he even gives a
bunch of really good policyideas on things that we could be
doing to help improvesituations.
The thing that was pivotal forme, though, was early in the
book, when he discussed the ideaof toxic masculinity in popular

(03:10):
culture.
The only time that you heartoxic masculinity used is when
it's chastising a man's badbehavior.
And so far, there hasn't been anarrative or active conversation
on what counterbalances thatconversation.
So the only time that we hearabout masculinity is generally

(03:33):
with a negative context, asthough every man is misbehaving
because he's a man.
It's garbage.
It is incredibly narrow anddestructive for that to be the
commonly held view.
It's hard though, 82 percent ofall violent crime is committed

(03:54):
by men.
So, how is it that violent crimeisn't masculine?
These conversations areimportant to highlight and have
because if we don't, we'rebasically telling the majority
of men who aren't contributingto those crime statistics that

(04:15):
they are the problem for thatviolent crime solely because
they are men.
On the other end of things Wehear the right kind of
expounding to this idyllic viewof old school masculinity, you
must be a provider.
You must be violently capable.
You must be stoic and you mustbe sexual For that to work They

(04:38):
also want to put women andothers back into the boxes of
the past because it's such anarrow view that it only works
if everybody else is subjugatedon some level or shoved into
some place that they don't needto be.
That's also destructive.
And not just for the peoplewe're trying to shove into the
boxes of old, it's destructivefor men.

(04:59):
By having this incredibly narrowview of masculinity and this
incredibly narrow path to thatpart of yourself.
All the little bits and piecesthat don't quite line up start
to rub.
And that leads to some prettydysfunctional behaviors.
It leads to some pretty nastyself talk, and it leads to an
awful lot of shame for thingsthat don't need to be shameful.

(05:23):
People are complex.
Gender is complex.
There are men and women, andthere are people that don't
identify as either.
I'm tired of these very polarconversations because I'm tired
of watching them hurt people Icare about.
I'm tired of being hurt by them.
I'm tired of men coming into myoffice.

(05:46):
with these preconceived,pregenerated notions of what
their masculinity has to be thatare completely false and muddle
the reality of the masculinitythat they bring in with them.
Those things, their fathers andmothers gave them that empower
them in their life.
It taints that I want this placeto be somewhere where you can

(06:06):
come and hear my thoughts withmy experiences as a valid expert
on the topic.
But more than that, I want tobring other experts on.
I want to have nuancedconversations with informed
people about these topics.
I want to get into the gray ofthese subjects so we can come
out with a clearerunderstanding.
And I want you to be able towalk away with some tools,

(06:28):
understanding and stories.
They're going to help younavigate life either as a man or
someone who loves men and wantsto help them.
I'm really passionate aboutthis.
I've been excited about a lot ofthe ideas I'm going to share for
years.
And I'm so glad that that bookcame out and finally gave me the

(06:50):
last little lever I needed toarticulate what was happening
and my discomfort with it.
If you found this podcast, it'sbecause you're looking for these
conversations.
I think you're looking fordeeper understanding of manhood.
I think you're looking forsomebody who's actually going to
have a conversation aroundmasculinity and masculine topics

(07:13):
instead of simply screamingabout what is or isn't right.
I know that I'm going to besharing my opinions rather
forcefully sometimes.
But I'm also hopefully going tobe able to find folks to come on
and talk about, and maybe notdebate, but trade ideas, trade
thoughts around these things,other clinicians, other experts
in various fields.

(07:35):
I think this can be helpful tostarting to move the
conversation from this verytoxic, very argumentative, very
polarized way of discussingthese things so that we can
start connecting with each otherso that men can start to
articulate themselves with theirpartners and their loved ones
better about what's happeningwith them.

(07:56):
And so that people who love menhave a better understanding of
what their guys might be goingthrough and how to make their
lives a little better, too.
So hopefully that's what youwant.
Hopefully that's what you'relooking for.
Because if you are, I'm going todo everything I can to make this
useful to you.

(08:19):
We're just getting started.
This is episode one.
I have taught for about adecade, but I haven't taught to
a camera.
So while I'm sure there'll bemistakes along the way, I'm
going to be doing everything Ican every time I turn on this
microphone and this camera tomake better content and better
information for you.
In addition to giving you thatinformation, I also want to have

(08:40):
some personal skin in the gameso that you know me a little bit
better In order to get to knowme, I feel like it's important
to start the conversation withsome questions that I'm going to
ask every guest that comes on.
Hopefully it gives you a littlebit more insight to me
personally and you know, just tomake things fair for the guest.
So the first question I'm goingto ask everybody is what's a

(09:03):
truth about masculinity that youlearned before you were 12 that
remains true today?
For me, it always goes back tomy father, as you would expect.
my father was a, stoner, biker,partier guy, very rebel without
a cause.
That was his movie.
That's what he really focused onbuilding his life around.

(09:25):
And in many ways, because ofthat, he was often checked out
by the time I was a teenager.
But when I was young, he wasaround a good bit.
And I was lucky enough in theeighties to have my father
around, which was not fairlycommon back then.
And the reason I talk about thatis because what my father taught
me about masculinity was abouthow men engage as fathers.

(09:50):
So for the last few decades, weoften treat fathers as though
they're only a provider, thatthey're just a pocket book that
a father's role is not to be ina child's life.
And the more we learn about it,the more we realize that that's
destructive and that kids needboth parents if they can have
them.
There's benefit to having amasculine and a feminine
parenting approach and backthen, my father's friends were

(10:14):
like him.
They were, partying bikers andthat led to a lot of really
dysfunctional family sets and alot of guys that weren't
necessarily involved with theirkids.
And my father was always reallyinteresting about it.
He was really patient and kindand would like commiserate with
the guys who were trying to bein their kids lives and unable

(10:35):
to.
But whenever he heard one of hisbuddies talk about being checked
out or giving up or not wantingto be around that kid.
He'd get angry.
And that was strange.
My father wasn't an angry man.
He was pretty laid back most ofthe time.
But he would come at him.
And his line would always be thesame.
That kid didn't F...ing ask tobe here.

(10:58):
That's on you.
You gotta show up.
And it was this duality of theguys that couldn't be there for
the kids, the guys that thesystem were denying access to
the kids, the guys who justcouldn't get their lives
together to have the money to bethe support that they wanted to
be for their kids.
My father was pretty supportivewith them.
He commiserated with them.
There was sadness on his facewhen he'd hear him talk.

(11:20):
There was anger at the system.
There was anger at the womeninvolved.
He understood and supportedtheir desire and their push to
be with their children.
But if that man wasn't pushing,he had no patience for it.
And that always resonated withme on a lot of levels, but
specifically about how a manshould be in a kid's life, that

(11:43):
if we bring children into thisworld, or we're going to choose
to be mentors, uncles in touchwith children, we need to make
sure that we're pushingourselves to be the best
versions of ourselves we can befor them and to push the system
to allow space for us to existthere.
It's one of the things that I'mproudest of that my father gave
me.
And it's one of the things thatI always felt luckiest for

(12:06):
because my father was there.
Things got hard, my life was amess, our family was a mess, but
he was often there for me.
And I'm so glad for that.
So that's the first question andthe first answer.
What is a time that pursuingyour gender identity hurt you?
So there's always going to bethis time in adolescence where

(12:27):
everyone is exploring theirgender.
There's this light that comes onand all of a sudden everything
gets mixed up, hair popping outin places.
Hormones start popping off.
And all of a sudden things get alittle complicated, right?
And while teenagers sort thatout, there's usually these kind
of misinformed ideas, differentthings they try on that don't
work.
And some of those tend to stick.

(12:49):
What stuck for me was aunhealthy relationship with the
pursuit of women.
So, I wasn't a particularlyphysically capable guy as a kid.
Like, I played sports, but I wasnever the guy.
I wasn't particularly violentlycapable, and particularly when I
was young, I wouldn't fight.
And so that kind of masculinestatus wasn't going to be there

(13:11):
for me.
I wasn't the brightest guy.
I got through school okay.
I took some talented and giftedclasses back then, but I was
never the smartest guy in theroom.
And so I couldn't trade on that.
But what I could do was talk towomen.
From a very early age, I wascomfortable talking with women.
And the minute that adolescencehit, all of a sudden, I realized

(13:35):
looking around that I was morewilling to engage with women
than the men around me.
And I also very quickly realizedthat If I engaged with the right
women and got that attentionpublicly, that was a masculine
status I could trade on.
That if I was some kind ofladies man, which I'd be very
surprised if many people saw meas in high school, but these are

(13:55):
the stories we tell ourselves,right?
What that did to me was it mademy personality very thin.
my view of myself and socialgroups was very narrow and
because it was the pursuit ofwomen and women's attention, it
denied a lot of relationshipswith women.
It was always about thatphysicality of getting that girl

(14:18):
to be physically interested inyou.
And then once people had seenyou with her or she started to
like drift in interest or thingsstarted to get emotionally
complicated, I would just leaveand find the next girl.
And that really.
It got bad for me in college.
I didn't have girlfriends.
I had girls I partied with, Ihad friends that I would spend

(14:40):
time with, women that I wouldhook up with.
And I was lucky enough to havethe women in my life.
Most of them were incrediblylovely, incredibly intelligent.
And I am incredibly gifted tohave them in my life in any
capacity, but especially thatcapacity.
However, I never dated, I neverfigured out how to have an
emotional relationship or anemotional connection with a
woman.

(15:01):
And that really didn't start tohit me and realize anything
until I was about 25 years old.
Then, finished up college,kicked around for a little
while, and joined the Air Force.
And when I was in the Air Force,I was traveling constantly.
I moved between college and theAir Force over a dozen times in
ten years.
So by the time I realized that Iwas deficient in knowing how to

(15:23):
date or how to hold arelationship, I was moving
around so much that I couldn'treally do anything about it.
And so, That ideal of chasingmasculine status through the
attention of women put me behindand gave me this very awkward
sense of self that wasn't goingto work.

(15:44):
So that's the bit that didn'twork.
The other side of that questionis the next one I'm going to
ask.
What's a time when your genderand your pursuit of it empowered
you?
For me, it was joining the AirForce is kind of the most
pivotal one.
I finished up college during aneconomic crash.
I got a mediocre degree with amediocre GPA and I moved back to

(16:07):
a city that had more collegedegrees per capita at that time
than any other city in thecountry.
I was struggling.
I was in my mid to late 20s andI had all these friends that
were very successful.
I'd been president of thestudent government, I'd been
engaged in all these things, soI was around doers.
But when I got out of college, Ifell flat.

(16:28):
And I found myself, couchsurfing, finally found a room to
rent out and a house workingtemporary jobs that had no
meaning.
And I was just listless, had nodirection, no purpose.
And And the first question thatmost men in this country get is,

(16:49):
what do you do for a living?
I didn't do anything.
I worked temp jobs.
I wasn't making any money.
And that just led to somedepression, right?
Some sadness of notunderstanding what I was
supposed to do or where I wassupposed to go.
And joining the Air Force latein life saved my life.

(17:13):
There's a lot of people thattheir military service hurts
them.
There's a lot of people that ithelps.
And most of us have a fairlycomplex relationship with a bit
of both.
For me, the Air Force saved me.
When I joined up, I was 28 yearsold and I was so broke that the
only pairs of shoes I had had ahole in them.

(17:34):
Couldn't afford new clothes.
And it was really at the end ofmy rope on a lot of things.
By going into the military, itgave me some masculine status
that no one's ever going to beable to take away from me.
No one can take away my service.
I can be proud of it.
I did good things.
I made my Air Force family.

(17:55):
I served my country.
And that really ended up beingthe basis.
For what I do now, thecredibility of having served the
intrinsic understanding ofservice so I can serve the
heroes of our country in abetter way has been endlessly
impactful for me.

(18:16):
And so that pursuit of masculinestatus by putting on that
uniform for me worked incrediblywell.
So now you know a little bitmore about me, my history, and
why you might care about myopinions on the topic of
American Masculinity.
I really hope that you find thisuseful.
Let me know if you do take amoment to comment, take a moment

(18:37):
to let me know what kind oftopics you want to see, what
information you're interestedin, what tools you're looking
for.
So I can make the best content Ican to be of most use to you.
So that's the end of our firstepisode.
I'm really excited to haveshared this with you.
I'm so excited that you're hereand happy that you're taking
part in these conversations.
Take care.