Is Masculinity Killing Men

[Applause]

so

i’m sitting alone in my car it’s

a warm summer night

and

i’ve probably been staring at my phone

for like a little bit too long

the number that i’ve tapped into the

screen is for the suicide hotline

there’s just one problem

i can’t bring myself

to call

because i’m a man not some princess i

shouldn’t

need to be rescued

so

instead an ex-girlfriend who owes me

nothing

is frantically calling up my friends

crying while she tries to save my life

she really shouldn’t have to be a part

of this story but because she loves me

she is

so i want you to keep her in mind we’re

going to come back to her

maybe ironically at this stage in my

life i’m a success

i work with fortune 500 brands i deliver

on project work with staggering massive

price tags with too many zeros

and

every single day for two and a half

years

i wake up feeling numb

and empty

and alone like i just can’t stop

drowning

and i’m here today to tell you that the

rate of male suicide is

skyrocketing

it’s higher than it’s ever been

i

survived

i suppose um and what i learned might

save the life of someone that you know

and in order to do that

we’re going to take an unlikely journey

where the first stop is

baby aspirin so by show of hands who

here has heard of the fact that if you

have a baby aspirin it can reduce your

risk of having a stroke

a lot of hands and i want you to keep

those hands up if you know exactly what

percent difference that baby aspirin

actually makes

okay uncomfortable laughter looks of

confusion that’s that’s pretty much

where i was at with it as well

so i started doing the research

and for this particular study what they

found was

if you give people an aspirin within 48

hours of them having symptoms of

ischemic stroke one of the most common

types of stroke

for every 100 people that participate

one of them will be able to raise their

hands and say

hey that aspirin

it saved my life

and they won’t have to go to the

hospital they won’t have complications

they won’t even have a follow-up stroke

and so even though that aspirin is

arguably like one percent effective

i’m also going to argue that the reason

why so many of you knew about that

connection between aspirin and stroke is

because that aspirin is a minor miracle

it’s a simple solution many of us have

access to it and the end result when it

works is

lives get saved and changed

so

what if there was an aspirin

but for suicide

so in 2019 the cdc estimated that there

were 1.38 million suicide attempts in

the united states alone for just that

year

so that one percent would go a long way

but if we can accomplish what i think we

can accomplish tonight and you all seem

like a pretty smart bunch that seems

pretty likely to me then the difference

won’t be one percent

it’ll be 60 times that

but since suicide starts in the mind

it’s not really a pill that we need to

swallow it’s more of a thought an idea

and one that directly counteracts

another one

and one place to begin to look is what

thoughts then

are causing men to kill themselves

and if the research is to be believed it

all points to one very specific kind of

stubborn thought and that as a man

i need to blank

as a man i need to be strong i need to

keep my word i need to have a

magnificent mustache

and i’m a little bit upset that i can’t

grow one

and uh

as a man i need to protect the people

that i love and

that last one especially is a piece of

masculinity that

i love that that exists i’m proud of

that

but masculinity is more than just four

ideas kind of mushed together it’s like

this big messy world of ideas that we

hold together with like twine and glue

and spit right it’s really complicated

but to begin to understand what we’re

working with we need to also unpack that

so

what comes to mind for you when you hear

the word

masculine

and i want you to shout out your answers

proud strong good yes

stoke is a good one

brave leader awesome i’m looking for one

more

protector

good

so basically

what you’ve given me is

batman right like

and maybe maybe he has a beard too

and and this is perfect right this is an

example of our cultural givens um this

is what we were raised to believe that a

proper man should be and i don’t know

about you but i was raised to believe

that as a man

crying was kind of the ultimate act of

shame

i also grew up believing as a corollary

to that that like emotions were just as

bad i understood that emotions were

appropriate for like two demographics

the first of which was like schoolgirls

and then

and the second one was womenfolk which i

was neither of those things so i

shouldn’t have feelings and begin to

push those away

but the thing is

the thing that they never really tell

you about that is how after a lifetime

of practice

maybe one day eventually you succeed

and then you get to wish that you really

hadn’t

because you’ll have also succeeded at

pushing away the thing that makes you

human

what they don’t tell you about that is

while you’re pushing away

crying you also kind of begin to

suppress the other emotions in your life

the happiness the joy and then one day

you wake up and you realize

your entire life has been about going

through the motions

it doesn’t matter what you’re doing

whether you’re riding a roller coaster

or at a theme park or at a wedding you

can’t feel anything

no matter how much you try

and while you’re distracted with that

thought

then one day maybe something really bad

happens something that you can’t

push away

and your emotions are screaming

it breaks you

those emotions they want to come out but

they can’t because you’ve gotten too

good at this that just pushing them down

and so instead reality just starts to

hurt

it hurts and it feels empty at the same

time and

you don’t know how to make that stop

so as a man

you endure

you grit your teeth you push through it

because that’s what you’re supposed to

do

so i think

what i’d like to do is kind of

create a little bit of levity here and

just collective breath out if you’ve

been holding it

i’m so grateful and lucky to have that

chapter in my life

over and done with

um

i think looking back one of the scariest

parts for me was seeing how

at some point i got to a place where

suicide just kind of made logical sense

instead of all the pain that i was

experiencing

i could just have no pain

there was there was no drama to it

um and that for me was the most

frightening part

what i’m aiming to accomplish here today

is to help people who are in

that space

find their way home because i know how

dark it can get

and in order to do that we need to turn

to the research so what is

what does the research have to say about

what’s happening here

if we take a look it all seems to boil

down to actually something really simple

something easy to address at least one

paper and it looks like this

it’s a cycle with only two steps to it

and the first is a hard life event and

for a lot of guys it might be divorce or

losing a home losing a job going through

a breakup or losing a family member or

the physical health just something that

hits us hard enough that we’re forced to

feel something even if we’re busy trying

to push that away

and that very naturally leads us to a

place of suppression

as a man

i shouldn’t have feelings

so

stuff them down

but if if you’re anything like me then

that also comes with this constellation

of other behaviors

so it might look like you also stop

sleeping

you start eating poorly you stop working

out you self-isolate you get into more

fights maybe you start drinking some

more

and uh

the research is beginning to show that

when you take on that kind of behavior

especially not asking for help right and

that’s a really commonplace one

like

i don’t know about you but my personal

game plan when i’m hurting is to notice

the pain first

and then ignore it really really really

really hard and hope that eventually at

some point it goes away

but when you do that

research shows that you also become more

likely to fall ill or get injured or die

as a complication and if it doesn’t

happen to us

then it’s liable to happen to someone

that we know that we care about another

male family member a male friend

and so you can see just how insidious

this cycle is we’ve just immediately

gone back to the first stage which draws

us back into stage two

and research out of fordham university

is showing that for men who reject

things like crying or being moody or

having emotions at all

we’re up to two and a half times roughly

two and a half times more likely to die

by suicide

which is a pretty grim statistic

but

for me it kind of also represents the

way forward that’s the ground that we

have to gain

this is a clear bridge between emotional

suppression and men killing themselves

and we’re going to come back to that

the thing that

i think that hurts the most though for

me to know as as a human is that it’s

not just affecting grown men

males between the ages of 10 and 24

this is the second leading cause of

death for them

i’m going to say that again because it

bears repeating and with statistics it

can be easy to kind of get lost in the

numbers there’s no impact in that

so instead i want you to imagine that

there’s a 10 year old boy

and he’s on the playground and he’s got

his friends running around screaming

around him but he’s not participating

because

today

is the day that he’s chosen to die

and if that hits you

if what you feel right now is sadness

and grief and loss or shock anger

then know that that’s the appropriate

response because

that should have never been allowed to

happen

and it can be so easy to take a look at

this situation and ask ourselves

who am

i who am i in the face of this 1.38

million suicide attempts every single

year

what difference could i possibly make

but that

in my opinion leaves room for the

world’s

greatest answer

what difference can i make

the difference i can make

and we only need to interrupt one part

of this cycle to make that difference

before it all falls apart and the

easiest the most straightforward thing

that we can do as a society is address

that bit around suppression

and what that can look like

some of you are not going to like

but

when we’re having a hard day

instead of popping on netflix and binge

watching shows until we pass out on the

couch

and start drooling

maybe it looks like

reluctantly picking up the phone

calling someone that we trust and saying

hey

today’s today was really hard

it really hurt

i feel kind of alone right now and i

could really use someone to talk to

about this

and then we commit the cardinal thing of

masculinity

and we talk about our feelings we talk

about the things that we normally would

never talk about

instead of pretending like we’re fine

and it begins here with

each and every one of you

with me with us

it begins here so that

the people in our lives can begin to

unsuppress they can begin to treat this

like it’s normal

it begins here so that that 10 year old

boy

he can do what he does best

and he can do as we do

not as we tell him to

it begins here so that we can look at

every every single dark statistic that

i’ve given you here today

and say

this

is the difference

i can make

and in the beginning we spoke of a

girl it’s time to bring her back into

the story because

there’s something about emotions that’s

so important

that we just haven’t talked about yet

so she used to tell me that she loved me

more than i would ever know

and i’m sad to say that she was right

i was so busy pushing away my emotions

that i didn’t have any room for hers

especially not her love

so i didn’t get it

i didn’t get it when she begged me not

to leave

i didn’t get it when she cried with her

hands shaking

because she didn’t want to be alone

and despite all of that

she still fought with everything that

she had to make sure that i survived

i’m going to take a step back from this

too because i know how that sounds and

so for reassurances she’s doing great

right now

and she’s living a very different life

as part of that she and i don’t really

talk anymore

so this next part goes out to her as

much as it goes out to each and every

one of you

i’m so

sorry

for who i was

for the damage that that caused

and i’m so grateful for everything that

you did

because

now i finally get it

i get how sometimes emotions can feel

weak and brittle they can make us feel

vulnerable and sometimes they’re the

last thing that i want to do

but i also get that sometimes

from a thousand miles away

they give us a second shot at life

one that we could have never earned

and so today i’m going to leave you with

an invitation

i’m inviting you to give that same gift

to the people in your life that you love

that minor miracle

that baby aspirin

i’m inviting you

today

for just a few moments

to stop thinking so much

and just to allow yourself to feel

i’m inviting you

to allow yourselves to be human again

thank you

[Music]

[Applause]

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