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