Help me Help Men
On May 17th, I'm riding in The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride for the 4th time. It is a global event raising funds and awareness for men's mental health. With your help, I've raised thousands of dollars over the years. I feel that the need for caring for men, especially young men, is greater than ever right now.
Many men have lost the thread. They've abandoned kindness and compassion and confuse crassness for strength, revenge for justice, and belligerent bullying for power. Some of this is on the individual, but it's more than that. It's a policy failure, a cultural failure, and a path we keep choosing by not intervening at scale.
We are living in a moment where online grifters have convinced a generation of young men that belligerence is strength, cruelty is confidence, and the highest expression of masculinity is degrading women for online views while steering teenage boys toward gambling or selling them courses about how to get rich selling courses.
Incel culture has persuaded boys that the only things within their control are how they look and how mean they can be. That is not strength; it is an expanding mental health crisis dressed up in bravado and yelling.
Men's mental health support has never been more urgent because they deserve better than what that culture is offering them. So does everyone around them.
The ride is one small, tangible thing. If you'd like to support it, the link is below. And if you know a man who's struggling (not performing struggle, but actually drowning) please reach out to him and offer an ear or a shoulder. That costs nothing and means everything.