FNC - More divorce!

Welcome to Friday Night Chats! I'm so happy you're here. How has your week been? What are your weekend plans? Let's chat!

What a week! We lost two gay icons. It’s very sad. I feel like I can’t talk about anything else that’s in the news because it’s absolutely too gutting.

And Friday Night Chats is meant to be a brain break. So let’s just talk about other things eh? I hope you’re being gentle with yourself by the way.…

I have finally organised Date My Mate with my friend Melody of The Good Sex Project.

You can get tickets here. I'm looking forward to this one! There's lots of great events coming up in Poneke. I will put them at the end of this newsletter since I know lots of you are not in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. You can always message me with details of events in your neighbourhood if you want me to share them!

I know this looks as if I'm advertising myself for a date but we didn't want to use stock photos.

Daffodil Day has started! The kids and I will be collecting on Saturday. It's not too late to donate online - Thank you for helping us to reach our goal.

I've been thinking a lot about the social media ban - it's no secret that I don't support it. After all, I wrote 42 reasons why I don't support it. But I've been thinking about some of the backlash I got when I reshared this.

Almost all of the angry responses included some variation on the phrase 'well we have to do something' or 'so you think we should do nothing?'. And I think that kind of gets to the heart of the whole argument. Because people want to do the easy thing. Or at least the thing that looks easy.

The harder thing is looking at the big picture and trying to change it. Is it possible for us to engage with teenagers and pre-teens who are not our teens and pre-teens and listen to them and try to come up with solutions together? I mean, I think it is - and there have been plenty of volunteers for the Teen Activist Workshops I'm organising, so I'm not the only one.

Can we understand what risks they're really facing without fearmongering, and see how we can build them up and make them resilient enough to withstand those risks? Maybe? I mean, isn't it worth trying?

I fear that the social media ban does what a lot of bans do - it's a band-aid on an open wound that is actually harmful. Because it stops everyone from even trying to heal the wound. I don't want to give up on a world where teens and pre-teens are protected from toxic masculinity and misogyny, and bullying, and racism and homophobia and sexism. I don't want them to think their only protection from exploitation and grooming is to remove them from spaces everyone else is entitled to be in.

I know it's not easy. But that's no excuse not to try. I hate that those with vested interests are getting away with making us think the answer to all of this is a ban. If Big Tech supports it, you know it's BS.

His dad is a bigger influence than his phone

Adolescence and the bandaid solution

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