James Wilkerson Talks Masculinity and Mental Health at Assembly

Courtesy of Sean Ricard

By SAM ALTMAN, SHAYAAN KASHIF, CHLOÉ LIND, LILY RAMPE, and FORREST ZENG

On Tuesday, Oct., 22, Professor James Wilkerson gave an assembly about toxic masculinity and the harm it can cause to boys, men, and society at-large. 

Wilkerson is a professor and Associate Dean of Students at Indiana University Southeast. Throughout his career, Wilkerson has given three TEDx talks and wrote two books, The Title IX Guy and Consent Is, which have won him the Best Local Writer award in the LEO Magazine three times. At Indiana University Southeast, Wilkerson teaches classes on gender studies and sex crimes, including his signature course, Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses. 

Wilkerson began his assembly by mentioning a celebrity display of toxic masculinity: when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. Wilkerson said, “I know we’re talking about Will Smith, a celebrity, but the one thing I think all of us in this room have in common is that we all have trauma cups. When I say trauma cups, what’s inside of it?” 

He continued, “Well, this is where all that anxiety that we have lives. This is where all the normal everyday stress that we have lives. This is where those mental issues that we deal with live at, all of it goes into this cup. The problem with the trauma cup is that if we don’t find ways to drain the contents, we risk it overflowing. And when it overflows, well, that’s when you find yourself on stage slapping Chris Rock in the face.”

Although his message may have seemed irrelevant to women in the room, Wilkerson noted, everyone could still learn something from his talk. “If you are someone who identifies as female, you’re probably sitting here thinking like, now why’d they bring me to this?” he said. “That’s great for the guys in here, but why am I here?”

“But this is a conversation for y’all as well because you may not identify as a male, but I guarantee you, you have someone in your life that does that you care about,” he continued. “Maybe that’s a father, a brother, a cousin, a best friend, a romantic partner. You got someone in your life that you care about who isn’t in this room today and is not gonna hear this stuff.” 

Wilkerson explained that men are normally taught to suppress their feelings more than women.“If you got some sort of virus, you would go to your doctor, right? But when it comes to mental health issues, we stop short of taking a look at things like therapy or counseling or just looking at a friend and saying, ‘Hey, yo, I’m not good right now.’ Doing things like that could give us the help that we need to get through that stress or that anxiety or those problems, but we don’t do it. We’d rather just play through the pain.”

This leads to someone’s trauma cup overflowing.“We take all that anxiety and that stress and those mental issues and maybe a little bit of that depression, and we start trying to push it down and we push it down and further down. And boy, do we really think that we’re doing something, pushing this stuff down, but what is really happening while we think we’re pushing it down, it’s just kind of going back here and it’s starting to build up and up and up. And then even higher until one day that trauma cup overflows,” Wilkerson explained.

Wilkerson also emphasized the importance of normalizing the display of traditionally feminine emotions.Fear can be normalized “by being frank and admitting that the fear is normal—but then describing what can be done to overcome that fear,” as Wilkerson remarked. 

By modeling these emotions in his community, he hopes to encourage more men to be vocal about their mental health. When a man, or anyone for that matter, speaks up about their struggles with mental health, Wilkerson urges people to affirm and validate their feelings. “As human beings, we appreciate positive affirmation. You feel amazing when people approve. Think about, for example, in football—you score a touchdown or tackle someone, players love positive affirmation.” 

The negative response to men who are transparent about their mental health is the driving factor behind “men pushing their emotions down,” Wilkerson argued. 

Wilkerson also mentioned that his role as a father to his children played an integral role in his realization that in order for it to be normalized, emotion must be modeled. “I was in third grade, trying out for a theatrical production. And yes, I was scared and nervous. But then I crushed it—I remember the things I did. Now, I can be a role model for my kids, by using that experience.”

After the assembly, Wilkerson hosted a Q&A session with students in the Elting Room. Students questioned him about his beliefs on gender roles, the patriarchy, and definitions of masculinity. The discussion briefly turned political as he discussed the presidential election. He mentioned how voters are often misguided when talking about masculinity in candidates. 

Wilkerson also sees a strong connection between incarceration and toxic masculinity. He ended by discussing his work on stalking on campus, noting that the majority of sexual misconduct cases at the college where he teaches are stalking. 

In an interview after hi Elting Room discussion, Wilkerson reiterated the message he hoped students got from the assembly. “I hope students were able to take a piece of that speech to use in their own discussions,” he said. “I wanted to make this speech relevant for high school students. I wanted to be relatable and real. At the end of the day, I wanted to make it less of a lecture, and more of a conversation.”

Much of his assembly speech was anecdotes and stories that illustrated his points clearly. At the beginning of his speech, he mentioned the incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. “Using the Will Smith story was a way to show that toxic masculinity happens in real life. I wanted to do something that the Academy community could connect with,” he said. “I could show what toxic masculinity looks like in real life with personal stories as well.”

Just as Exonians do at the Harkness table, students in Wilkerson’s classes often have varying viewpoints. Wilkerson strives to make a protected and safe environment for discussion but also makes sure to set ground rules. “I let students know right up front that I love a good debate in class. I encourage students with different opinions to put their hands up and say something,” Wilkerson said.

“But at the same time, we’ll lay out ground rules for that debate as well. We won’t attack each other personally, or call each other names,” he divulged. “You can attack the idea without attacking the person. And at the end of the day, I reserve the right to shut down any conversations that become harmful.”

Wilkerson has given speeches before to schools and institutions, such as TEDx. “I was speaking to fraternities at local universities, and I wanted to give a TEDx talk to elevate my ideas. I ended up giving three excellent TEDx talks,” he described.

Student reactions to the assembly were quite mixed. While a good number of students agreed with his message about masculinity, many found issues with his analogies and logical flow. 

Many students found much to like about Wilkerson’s presentation. Sam Roberts, a senior who presented Wilkerson on stage, said, “Dr. Palmer and Ms. Lembo reached out to me a few weeks ago asking me to introduce the speaker as I am head of the men’s mental health club, and it made perfect sense to them for me to be a part of this assembly as I share a similar interest in tackling these kinds of problems.”

Roberts continued, “I thought the assembly was great. I think Mr. Wilkerson did a great job explaining why it is important that men become comfortable with their feelings, and I think his use of certain analogies, like his trauma cup, allows for friendlier engagement with a serious topic, which is very important when trying to talk about things like this.” 

Upper Andrew Su resonated with Wilkerson’s message. “I think it’s very important for people to be reminded every once in a while that the time they’re putting into meeting their counselor every week is something that is worth maintaining.” 

Su continued, “It reminded me that I’m not wasting my time having meetings with a counselor. In the past, I never really asked for help because it’s not considered a masculine thing to do, but this assembly reinforced for me that that’s not the case.”

“He was a passionate and charismatic speaker and he got me interested in what he was saying. His message was well-delivered and was something that needs to be heard at Exeter. I enjoyed his personal example about his car accident and how he was able to sympathize with his children and show that he was also scared,” lower Victor Angeline noted.

“He definitely tried to get onto our level and show us something that we should know as young men. I don’t know if all assembly speakers should try to be like that, but it was fairly apt for his topic,” lower Holden Sage-Murillo said.

Lower Marco Rodriguez agreed, saying, “I think that especially on sports teams, you see a lot of unhealthy behaviors perpetuated. I think it’s important for men to be comfortable talking about their feelings and their mental health and being more vulnerable because what he said is all true.” Marco also added that he appreciated Wilkerson’s call to action about being the change one wants to see.

“Especially for guys who maybe didn’t have a good father figure in their lives or were without a good parental structure, it’s hard to learn how to become men,” agreed Sage-Murillo. 

Lower Ciara O’Neill said, “I really didn’t know that much about the issues surrounding men’s mental health, so I think it was a good topic for the school to draw attention to. I thought he was very well-spoken and overall a really good assembly.” 

Upper Chiara Kimmel added, “I really enjoyed the assembly speaker this week! Even though he was speaking about men’s mental health, he tried to make sure that everyone could benefit from his talk. He seemed really nice and was a good presenter as well. I do think Exeter should have more speakers like this. When they try to make it so that the intended audience is our age, it’s more engaging and the audience isn’t half asleep during assembly. How he did this was using more fun slides, talking engagingly and more like a young person, and using lots of stories instead of lecturing.”

Some Exonians had different reactions, seeing some of the analogies as not always accurate to real life. “The trauma cup seemed a little bit disingenuous to me in comparison to how real emotions work. We don’t bottle them up like that or account for every single little thing. For me, there’s nothing in general that will make me lash out. If you’re truly good with emotions and understand yourself, you’re not going to lash out just because of a couple of incidents that annoyed you,” Sage-Murillo commented. 

Others felt that the discussion became too political. “While he had a lot of good insights, the discussion in the Elting Room got sidetracked at certain points to be more political than I had hoped. I think that when discussing mental health issues, we should focus on it without politics that often confuses and divides the audience,” an anonymous upper said.

Upper Andrew Boova mentioned, “I didn’t really connect with his message. Personally, I did not find his message to be valuable, and some of his ideas did not seem very logically consistent or thought-out. In fact, they might even be harmful to society, entirely decimating any semblance of gender roles, any semblance of masculinity, stoicism, all that out the window.”

“Exeter is a tough environment,” the anonymous upper reflected. “And it’s not just boys. Everyone feels like they sometimes have to put on this mask and preach and toughen themselves up to make it through. So I believe his core message is very important because it teaches people how to be vulnerable.”

​“I just wish that everyone knew that when we say the words ‘toxic masculinity,’ we’re not trying to attack men. We’re not trying to say that you shouldn’t be a man. We’re just trying to talk about the different healthy and toxic traits that men tend to have. If people understood that more, conversations about masculinity might make people less defensive and threatened. That’s why I take the approach of trying not to talk down to people. I’m just going to talk to you fella to fella and hopefully we learn something, or at least have fun,” Wilkerson concluded.

Overall, while student reactions were mixed as to Wilkerson’s message, the topic is clearly one many Exonians are passionate about. The assembly provoked complex discussions across campus about mental health and the traditional role of men in society. Most agree that the assembly was definitely a discussion across campus about mental health and the traditional role of men in society. Most agree that the assembly was definitely a discussion worth having.