A Reframing of Masculinity, Rooted in Empathy: Gary Barker (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Gary Barker’s talk titled “A Reframing of Masculinity, Rooted in Empathy” at TED conference.

In “A Reframing of Masculinity, Rooted in Empathy,” gender equality advocate Gary Barker addresses the critical issue of traditional masculinity norms and their impact on society. He draws from personal experiences and extensive research to highlight the role of men in perpetuating violence and the urgent need for a shift towards a more empathetic understanding of manhood.

Barker emphasizes the alarming statistics of male involvement in violence and the societal pressures that shape these behaviors. He advocates for engaging men and boys in conversations about care, empathy, and vulnerability as foundational elements of a healthier version of masculinity. Barker’s talk challenges the audience to reconsider societal norms and to foster environments where men can express themselves without the constraints of traditional masculinity.

By promoting empathy and understanding, he envisions a future where men are allies in the fight for gender equality and are part of a compassionate society. Barker’s message is a call to action for redefining manhood in a way that benefits everyone, encouraging a collective effort towards change.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

This is a hard conversation. I want to start with that. Well, let’s step into it. It was 1977. Jimmy Carter was president. “Queen” was playing on the radio. I was having lunch in my high school cafeteria in Houston, Texas, when we heard a young man shouting at another young man next to him saying, “You stole my girlfriend, and I’m going to make you pay.” He pulled out a pistol, and as about 100 of us looked on, he shot and killed him.

Two years later, I was a freshman at a big state university, Friday night in the dorm room.

Music, beer, five young men take a young woman back to one of their rooms and force her to have sex. There was no investigation at the time. No one called it rape. No one said sexual violence. These two events are what drove me to do this work.

The Drive for Change

I work with survivors of violence around the world. It was somehow easier to work with survivors in other parts than it was to think about this in my own country, the US. And in that work, a throughline became clear. And that throughline is manhood. It is an inconvenient and difficult-to-look-at truth, but the majority of violence in the world is carried out by men.

Since that shooting in my high school, at least 800,000 people have died from gun suicide in the US alone. The vast majority of those: men. About 600,000 people have died of homicide in the US alone. The vast majority of those who did the killing were men. One in three women in the world experiences violence from a male partner. Violence is overwhelmingly male.

Understanding Male Violence

Often, the point will come up, this must be biology. Yes, biology accounts for a small portion of it, but the vast majority is how we raise boys. Research that we’ve carried out finds that about two thirds of men tell us that during childhood they experienced physical violence from another male. You do not get to adult manhood in most of the world without experiencing, witnessing, and learning male violence.

Now, when I bring these points up, several things often happen. One is someone will say, well, you’re attacking men. Someone will also say, well, you’re apologizing for men as you look at these origins of violence. We’ve got to talk about this. We have to understand what are these pathways to men’s use of violence if we’re to break these cycles of violence. This conversation must be about the version of manhood we literally beat into boys.

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The Role of Manhood Norms

My organization, Equimundo, does research around the world on these topics. We listen to men, we carry out research together with the UN, country governments, local partners. We’ve been measuring over the last 10 to 12 years where men are on these versions of manhood. This won’t surprise you, as we look at some of the numbers:

About 40 to 50 percent of men in the world believe in a version of manhood that goes like this: I’ve got to outperform the other at all costs. I can’t show that I’m vulnerable or ask for help. That sex is about conquest, not about intimacy and connection. That you’ve got to show that you’re tough all the time. And that violence is a reasonable way to get what you want. These are not just empty phrases. These are things that men talk about. They create realities.

The other thing we find is that the more you believe in these norms, these ideas about manhood, you are multiple times more likely to do this: to have considered suicide, to use violence against others, to harm yourself, and to harm others in multiple ways. These norms affect us; they cause harm.

Engaging Men in the Conversation

Now I realize I’m doing in that last affirmation something that I said I wasn’t going to do in this talk, which is women know this. And when a man explains to women something they already know, we have a word for that. I’m not going to do that. Pull that back. What I do want is to get men talking about this. So call this “mansplaining to men.” Thank you for that, because I don’t get a lot of men inviting me to the bar when I have these conversations, so thank you. Thank you for that love.

What I do often bring up with men, and you could see why they find me kind of inconvenient to have around, is I’ll say, men, we die, on average, six years earlier than women in the US. Around the rest of the world, pretty similar numbers. Why is that? Part of that’s biology, we know this. The female body is a better model. Let us acknowledge that. The vast majority of this, though, is how we live as men. What we drink, what we smoke, how we drive, the harm we put ourselves in the way of, the drugs that we take, how we literally live as men.

Of course, it interacts with racism, with where you live, with poverty, but we’re literally dying of manhood. Women pick up the pieces when men die early. They are the ones who do the care, who carry on households, who carry on in countries when men die. This affects us all.

My daughter, when she was 12, 13, in middle school, she said, “Dad, girls are talking a lot about empowered womanhood and how we can be in the world. But the boys seem kind of lost. Could you come and give a talk at school about this?” So, for better or worse, I started with this example. The boys’ eyes were going up, “Wait, I never thought about the fact that I could die on average earlier than women because of all these reasons.”

The next day I get a letter, a note from one of the boys who gave it to my daughter to give to me, and I opened it up and it said, “Dear Dr. Barker, thank you for that information. I never thought about how we as men are affected by these things. Only now, I’m worried about dying.”

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I am a developmental psychologist, and I should know a little bit more than having a 12-year-old think about his own mortality.

The Importance of Engaging Men

Trying to get some help for that myself. The point was, he got it. And that is what we need men to think about. This pathway is how to step into how we as men are part of this conversation and how we benefit from it. OK, risk of mansplaining here.

You know where men are having these conversations if we don’t talk to them. Young men right now are having these conversations online. There is an explosion of conversations about manhood online. Some of them are good. How much water to drink, the exercise you should carry out, how can I get close to somebody I’m interested in. That’s guys trying to be their best selves.

But there’s a huge amount of it that’s fed by an industry of misogynist and angry influencers who are getting the attention of young men. Our research finds that 40 to 50 percent of young men in the US say they trust one or more of those negative voices online. Why are they going there?

The Struggle of Young Men

They are lost, they are struggling, they’re confused. Other data that we have, almost 50 percent of men in the US say they think about suicide frequently. About two thirds of young men tell us that “no one really knows me.” What a call and a cry about loneliness in their lives. If we don’t reach out, they will continue to find solace online with the voices that we well know about.

For young men of color, these issues are even more acute. Job uncertainties, education, systemic racism. One young man that we worked with in Washington, DC, when he was part of a training activity to carry out work in schools, as we’re going through the training of trainers, he said, “Gary, these ideas of manhood that you talk about, for a white guy like you, it’s like the flu. For me as a Black guy, this is pneumonia.” I think that’s an excellent point to think about, the compassion that we have to step into as we have this conversation. And this is where I want to take the last point here.

The Need for Care in Manhood

We have to talk about care. Care of boys, care about boys, care for men, and talk to boys and men about how they care. Let me talk a little bit more about that. One of the casualties that we face as men growing up in that version of manhood that I presented to you, is that we make this thick shell around ourselves. We close off our emotions, we close ourselves off to the human connection we need.

Think about what young men frequently say. I would guess, I don’t know that we’ve asked it in a survey, but one of the most frequent things that young men say, “I don’t care.” “I don’t care.” “I don’t care.” It is our perfect shell, right? We close ourselves behind it, and it also says, you can’t shame me, you can’t question me, you can’t hurt me, you can’t embarrass me because I don’t care. I said it thousands of times as a teenage boy. I’m sure my mother would have a bigger number. And I know I’ve said it thousands of times as an adult man as well. This is the shield that we put on to close ourselves off.

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Engaging Boys in Care

The conversation that we need to step into with boys is not about their mortality, but it is about how we care. Where I start that conversation is to think about our superpower as humans. We are the most wired-to-care species on the planet. Our neurological systems, our hormonal systems, are wired to care, to nurture, to love, to form attachments with others. But it’s not automatic. If you don’t use it, if you close it off, if you hide, you don’t get good at it.

But if you try and if you practice and if you learn it, you do get good at it. Even the man who seems most cut off from the world can learn it. I take you back to my high school in 1977. The boy who killed the other. I didn’t tell you this part, but I knew him. Took me years to say I didn’t know him well because I didn’t want to know him well. He got detention, he bullied, he got detention again, he didn’t do well in school, he got sent away.

Rethinking Responses to Male Behavior

No one, apparently, reached out to him. Think about what we often do when boys or men cause harm. If you’re young, we give you a time out. Get a little bit older, we give you a detention. You step into the workplace, you do harm, we fire you. You do something else, we incarcerate you. These acts are often necessary to reduce harm, but they cut men off from the connection and humanity that we need, even when men have caused harm.

I am not, in saying this, affirming or believing that we should give any man a free walk for harm that is caused. We must hold men accountable for harm caused. No question about that. We must call out with deep compassion when men do cause harm. We’ve also got to call in to being connected, caring humans. This is not instead of, and I think this is very important to end on, this is not instead of the unfinished journey for full equality, respect, and rights that every woman and girl on the planet deserves.

This is an “and” conversation. We must continue that journey and we must talk about manhood. And I also believe that it is this conversation about pulling men into care that we get them to be allies for gender equality.

My final point would be this: look at the face of any three-year-old boy on the planet. He was not born into the world to be angry, aggressive, to follow dark threads down the internet. He comes into the world ready to be loved and to learn how to love. Take him, talk to him, teach him every day: I care. Thank you.