James Wilkerson engaged the crowd, speaking on male mental health.
James Wilkerson, Associate Dean of Students at Indiana University Southeast, delivered the talk “When We Cry: Navigating Male Mental Health” to Juniors, Upper, and Seniors for this Winter Term’s EBI meeting. Wilkerson explored masculinity norms, the impacts of societal expectations, and the importance of emotional well-being.
Throughout his talk, Wilkerson frequently brought up personal anecdotes to make it easier for the audience to relate. Wilkerson explained the inspiration behind this choice and the origins of his presentation.
“When I did my first consent presentation, I was in a fraternity house basement. I tried to do this presentation like a law class. I’m looking at the crowd, and they just looked so bored, and I was bored doing it,” said Wilkerson. “So, I’m like, let me go back to the drawing board and try something different.”
He continued, “Instead of talking about weird, made-up examples, [I decided to] talk about the stories that I’ve dealt with in my life, because I’m no one special. If I dealt with this 20 years ago, you probably deal with it today. I can tell you a story from my life that you might relate to because you’re going through the same thing. That’s why I started adding my own stories in.”
Wilkerson’s visit was arranged by the Empathy Balance and Inclusion Program (EBI). He began his talk by discussing the moment Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Brigitte Leschhorn, director of EBI, reflected on what she believed on Wilkerson bringing up that occasion.
“[Wilkerson] tried to get us to think about how in that moment, someone [who’s] supposed to have this really clean image of a masculine and nice guy goes over and responds violently with assault. He’s trying to unpack what it means for all of us to witness that, where that comes from, and why we are all surprised,” said Leschhorn. “It’s really important for us to talk about the different ways in which masculinity shows up, not in pop culture, but also in our lives.”
Connor Chung ’29 found the talk to be fitting during a time of the year he thought people find tough, considering the wintery conditions and workload. Believing that it’s important “to learn about mental health,” Chung reflected on Wilkerson’s ability to keep the audience interested.
“My favorite part was just how engaging he was,” said Chung. “I can see that he wrote multiple books, and so that voice that is a narrative in those books really carries over to his presentational voice, which I really liked about him. I’d say that was one of the most engaging [EBI speakers] I’ve had so far.”
During his speech, Wilkerson used an analogy of a teacup. Chung found it particularly memorable.
“The main takeaway of his analogy was how our stress is almost like a cup in which we can slowly let it out or we can dump it all out at once, which can lead to like disastrous events such as sexual abuse, which is what he talked about, or like other things that might happen just because of all that built-up stress inside of you,” said Chung.
Yui Takeuchi ’26 related the contents of Wilkerson’s talk to her experience as a camp counselor. She reflected on the importance of gender identity and on ways she could create an inclusive environment for others.
“My main takeaway was the importance of modeling behavior that can pull society away even just a little bit from the idea of toxic masculinity. The speech made me think about ways that I could improve on in terms of helping all of my campers identify and feel comfortable talking about emotions, regardless of gender,” said Takeuchi.
Wilkerson also highlighted that, though his focus is on male mental wellness, other fields of mental health hold equal value. He discussed how male and female mental health hold parallel patterns.
“A lot of the things that you see when we talk about toxic masculinity do cross over to women as well. A woman can be a practitioner of domestic violence, just like a man can be, a hundred percent. Maybe some of the reasoning behind it could be a little bit different. Maybe you’re coming from a different place as to why you did what you did, but I think toxic masculinity and toxic femininity are in the same chapter of the same book,” said Wilkerson.
Wilkerson added “There are female experts that can definitely do it better than I can. We have women speakers that you can hire to come to the school and speak directly to women in a very powerful and a very meaningful way. For me, I believe in staying in my lane.”
