As an actor, I get scripts and it’s my to stay on script, to say my lines and bring life a character that someone else wrote. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the honor playing some of the greatest male role models ever represented on television. You might me as “Male Escort #1.”
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“Photographer Date Rapist,” “Shirtless Date Rapist” from the award-winning “Spring Break Attack.”
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“Shirtless Medical Student,” “Shirtless Steroid-Using Con Man” and, in my well-known role, as Rafael.
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A brooding, reformed playboy who falls for, of all things, a virgin, and is only occasionally shirtless.
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Now, these roles don’t represent the kind of man I am in real life, but that’s what I love about acting. get to live inside characters very different than myself. every time I got one of these roles, I was surprised, because most of the men I ooze machismo, charisma and power, and when I look the mirror, that’s just not how I see myself. But it how Hollywood saw me, and over time, I noticed a parallel between the I would play as a man both on-screen and off.
I’ve been pretending to be a that I’m not my entire life. I’ve been pretending to be when I felt weak, confident when I felt insecure and when really I was hurting. I think for the part I’ve just been kind of putting on a show, but I’m tired performing. And I can tell you right now that is exhausting trying to be man enough for everyone the time. Now — right?
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My brother heard that.
Now, for as long I can remember, I’ve been told the kind of man that I should grow to be. As a boy, all I wanted was to be accepted and liked by other boys, but that acceptance meant I had to acquire this almost view of the feminine, and since we were told feminine is the opposite of masculine, I either had to embodying any of these qualities or face rejection myself. This the script that we’ve been given. Right? Girls are weak, and boys are strong. This is what’s being subconsciously to hundreds of millions of young boys and girls all over the world, like it was with me.
Well, I came here today to say, as man that this is wrong, this is toxic, and it has end.
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Now, I’m not here to give a history lesson. We likely all know how got here, OK? But I’m just a guy that woke up after 30 years and realized that was living in a state of conflict, conflict with who I feel I am in core and conflict with who the world tells me as a man I should be. I don’t have a desire to fit into the current broken definition masculinity, because I don’t just want to be a good man. I to be a good human. And I believe the way that can happen is if men learn to not only embrace the qualities that were told are feminine in ourselves but to be to stand up, to champion and learn from the women embody them.
Now, men —
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I am not saying everything we have learned is toxic. OK? I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with you me, and men, I’m not saying we have to stop men. But we need balance, right? We need balance, the only way things will change is if we take real honest look at the scripts that have been passed down to us from generation to and the roles that, as men, we choose to take on in our lives.
So speaking of scripts, the first script I ever got from my dad. My dad is awesome. He’s loving, he’s kind, he’s sensitive, he’s nurturing, he’s here.
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He’s crying.
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But, sorry, Dad, as a kid I resented him for it, I blamed him for making me soft, which wasn’t welcomed in small town in Oregon that we had moved to. being soft meant that I was bullied. See, my wasn’t traditionally masculine, so he didn’t teach me how to use hands. He didn’t teach me how to hunt, how to fight, you know, man stuff. Instead he taught what he knew: that being a man was about sacrifice and whatever you can to take care of and provide for your family. But there was role I learned how to play from my dad, who, I discovered, it from his dad, a state senator who later in life had to work nights as a janitor support his family, and he never told a soul. role was to suffer in secret. And now three generations later, find myself playing that role, too. So why couldn’t my grandfather just reach out to another man ask for help? Why does my dad to this day think he’s got to do it all on his own? know a man who would rather die than tell another man that they’re hurting. But it’s not we’re just all, like, strong silent types. It’s not. A of us men are really good at making friends, and talking, not about anything real.
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If it’s about work or sports or politics or women, we no problem sharing our opinions, but if it’s about our insecurities our struggles, our fear of failure, then it’s almost like become paralyzed. At least, I do.
So some of the ways that I have been practicing breaking free this behavior are by creating experiences that force me to be vulnerable. So if there’s I’m experiencing shame around in my life, I practice diving straight into it, matter how scary it is — and sometimes, even publicly. Because then in doing so I away its power, and my display of vulnerability can in some cases give other men permission to the same.
As an example, a little while ago was wrestling with an issue in my life that I I needed to talk to my guy friends about, I was so paralyzed by fear that they would me and see me as weak and I would lose my standing as a leader I knew I had to take them out of town a three-day guys trip —
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Just to open up. And guess what? It wasn’t until end of the third day that I finally found strength to talk to them about what I was going through. But when I did, amazing happened. I realized that I wasn’t alone, because guys had also been struggling. And as soon as I found the strength the courage to share my shame, it was gone. Now, I’ve over time that if I want to practice vulnerability, then need to build myself a system of accountability. So I’ve been blessed as an actor. I’ve built a really wonderful fan base, really, really sweet and engaged, and so decided to use my social platform as kind of this horse wherein I could create a daily practice of authenticity and vulnerability. The has been incredible. It’s been affirming, it’s been heartwarming. I get of love and press and positive messages daily. But it’s all from a certain demographic: women.
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This real. Why are only women following me? Where are the men?
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About year ago, I posted this photo. Now, afterwards, I was scrolling some of the comments, and I noticed that one of my female fans had her boyfriend in the picture, and her boyfriend responded saying, “Please stop tagging me in gay shit. Thx.”
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As if being gay you less of a man, right?
So I took a deep breath, and I responded. said, very politely, that I was just curious, because I’m on an exploration masculinity, and I wanted to know why my love for wife qualified as gay shit. And then I said, honestly just wanted to learn.
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Now, he immediately wrote me back. I thought was going to go off on me, but instead he apologized. He told me how, growing up, displays of affection were looked down on. He told me that he was wrestling struggling with his ego, and how much he loved his girlfriend and how thankful he for her patience. And then a few weeks later, he me again. This time he sent me a photo of on one knee proposing.
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And all he said was, “Thank you.”
I’ve been this guy. I get it. See, publicly, he just playing his role, rejecting the feminine, right? But secretly he was waiting for permission express himself, to be seen, to be heard, and all he needed another man holding him accountable and creating a safe for him to feel, and the transformation was instant. I this experience, because it showed me that transformation is possible, even over direct messages. I wanted to figure out how I could reach more men, but of course of them were following me.
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So I tried an experiment. I started more stereotypically masculine things —
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Like my challenging workouts, my meal plans, my journey to heal body after an injury. And guess what happened? Men started to write me. And then, out of blue, for the first time in my entire career, a male fitness magazine called me, they said they wanted to honor me as one their game-changers.
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Was that really game-changing? Or is it just conforming? see, that’s the problem. It’s totally cool for men to follow me when I about guy stuff and I conform to gender norms. But if I talk about how much I my wife or my daughter or my 10-day-old son, how I believe marriage is challenging but beautiful, or how as a I struggle with body dysmorphia, or if I promote gender equality, then the women show up. Where are the men? So men, men, men, men!
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I understand. Growing up, we tend to each other. We’ve got to be the toughest, the strongest, the bravest that we can be. And for many of us, included, our identities are wrapped up in whether or not at end of the day we feel like we’re man enough. But I’ve got challenge for all the guys, because men love challenges.
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challenge you to see if you can use the same qualities you feel make you a man to go deeper into yourself. strength, your bravery, your toughness: Can we redefine what those and use them to explore our hearts? Are you brave enough to be vulnerable? To reach out another man when you need help? To dive headfirst into your shame? Are you strong enough to sensitive, to cry whether you are hurting or you’re happy, even if it makes you look weak? you confident enough to listen to the women in life? To hear their ideas and their solutions? To their anguish and actually believe them, even if what they’re saying is against you? And will you be man to stand up to other men when you hear “locker room talk,” you hear stories of sexual harassment? When you hear your talking about grabbing ass or getting her drunk, will you actually stand and do something so that one day we don’t to live in a world where a woman has to risk everything and come forward to the words “me too?”
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This is serious stuff. I’ve had take a real, honest look at the ways that I’ve been hurting the women in my life, and it’s ugly. My wife me that I had been acting in a certain way that hurt her and correcting it. Basically, sometimes when she would go to speak, at or in public, I would just cut her off mid-sentence and finish thought for her. It’s awful. The worst part was that I was completely when I was doing it. It was unconscious. So here I am my part, trying to be a feminist, amplifying the voices of women around the world, and at home, I am using my louder voice to the woman I love the most. So I had to ask a tough question: am I man enough to just the hell up and listen?
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I’ve got to be honest. I wish that didn’t get applause.
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Guys, this is real. And I’m just scratching the surface here, because the deeper go, the uglier it gets, I guarantee you. I don’t have time to get into porn and violence against or the split of domestic duties or the gender pay gap. But I believe that men, it’s time we start to see past our privilege recognize that we are not just part of the problem. Fellas, we are the problem. The glass ceiling because we put it there, and if we want to be a part of the solution, then words no longer enough.
There’s a quote that I love that I up with from the Bahá’í writings. It says that “the world of humanity possessed of two wings, the male and the female. So long as these two wings are equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly.”
So women, on behalf of all over the world who feel similar to me, please forgive us all the ways that we have not relied on your strength. And I would like to ask you to formally help us, because we do this alone. We are men. We’re going to mess up. We’re to say the wrong thing. We’re going to be tone-deaf. We’re more than likely, probably, going offend you. But don’t lose hope. We’re only here because of you, and like you, as men, need to stand up and become your allies as fight against pretty much everything. We need your help in celebrating our vulnerability and being with us as we make this very, very long journey our heads to our hearts. And finally to parents: instead teaching our children to be brave boys or pretty girls, we maybe just teach them how to be good humans?
So back to my dad. up, yeah, like every boy, I had my fair share of issues, but now I realize it was even thanks to his sensitivity and emotional intelligence that I am able to here right now talking to you in the first place. The resentment I had for my dad I realize had nothing to do with him. It had to do with me and my longing to be and to play a role that was never meant for me. while my dad may have not taught me how use my hands, he did teach me how to my heart, and to me that makes him more a than anything.
Thank you.