Reimagining Masculinity: A Night with the Men’s Rugby Team

Today we have two guest authors for the Master in Love blog, Carolina Hidalgo-McCabe & Marcos Posadas, from Tufts University, who co-wrote this piece about their experience at an event for the Tufts men’s rugby team. Enjoy!

It’s a Friday night on a college campus. Twenty-seven men. Dozens of boxes of pizza. Red solo cups. What could have been a frat party was a panel on mental health and masculinity. 

On this snowy February evening, the Tufts men's rugby team spent two hours of their Friday, voluntarily, at an event on mental health and masculinity. The men around us are devouring their pizzas, panelists are drinking out of red solo cups, and we’re all here to embark on an extremely vulnerable and courageous conversation. 

The event is moderated by two students from the rugby team and women’s center. Over two hours, they take turns asking a panel composed of two leaders of the rugby team, a sociologist, and a therapist, questions about men and mental health. At the end of the panel, players have the chance to engage with the panelists in a Q&A.

“Men’s mental health impacts their relationships with their girlfriends.” Ears perk up around the room - the rugby players give nearly their undivided attention to these male panelists. It’s a conversation I don’t think any of us in the room have ever had in a setting like this.

Six months prior, the rugby team was in Connecticut playing one of their in-season games; Nothing, yet everything was at stake. The seniors on the team have a legacy to leave behind, and the pressure to perform on the field builds throughout the week, until gameday, when men seem to forget their conscious connection to their bodies. With the opportunity of improving skills before the game now bygone, there is just grit. Toughness. Manliness.

Almost a hundred people watch as the captain’s shoulder seems to have popped 10cm out of place. No tears. Not a single sound. It takes just a small gesture from him for his teammate to understand “stay still”, as he grabs his leg with his misplaced arm and pulls to try and pop it back in its socket. The average freshman watching from the sidelines gets a subtle yet stark message: that's what it takes. The trainer runs towards the captain, vainly shouting for him to stop.

At the panel, some players admit to not seeking help because of this narrative that men have to be self-sufficient - that asking for help means, to a certain extent, an admission of weakness. The sociology professor connects this to the lack of men who show up during office hours. How do we create a culture where men can seek help, let alone know how to ask?

This phenomenon may be behind many sociological and psychological trends within masculine-identifying people. Men commit suicide at a rate four times higher than women (source). In 2021, suicide rates amongst young males, ages 15-24, have seen the largest increase of any demographic at 8 percent, making suicide the second leading cause of death in this age group (source). 

Even when tools are offered to men for understanding their struggles and learning about themselves, very few make use of them. Do we not know how to reach out to men? Can we find new avenues to create spaces for men to find this vulnerability? We saw a potential path to answering these questions that Friday night. A moment to explore what healthy masculinity looks like.

At the beginning of the panel, one of the players stated that the best question to ask him if you wanted to know how he was is “Do you want to go grab a beer?” By the end of the panel, he spoke, microphone in hand, to an audience of nearly 30 teammates, about the excitement he has when seeing his therapist of nearly seven years. “I haven’t missed a week, I even did therapy from a ski lift one time,” he states during one of the final questions. One teammate expressed he’d had no clue that either of the players on the panel had gone to therapy. 

Before the panel, some of the players had been making jokes about the event. But during the event, not a single joke was made. The men, traditionally masculine in their athleticism and sport, were all eyes and ears. “It’s hard to stand in between the narrative I get on TikTok. I either am hearing about how to be an ultra man or that men are the worst thing ever,” one player states. Men are confused. How can they be comfortable with their masculinity when masculinity is always changing? When the narrative is contradictory? When they feel alone?

“I think I can be strong and cry,” one player states. “I cry, people cry,” another player chimes in. I see two of the young men in front of me put their arms around the shoulders of the young player between them. This embrace continues for the next few minutes as the panelists speak to the common misconceptions, strategies, and opportunities for mental health support and therapy. They break down the basics of how therapy works and what it means to seek help, even if you feel as though nothing is deeply wrong. 

The sociologist on the panel asks the room of men if they have ever taken a course on gender. Not a single hand of the twenty-seven men is raised. “There are a lot of women on this campus who are talking about this… who are studying men and masculinity,” the panelist states, “and I think you should talk with them.” He emphasizes the care work that women are doing in the classroom, in their relationships with men, in their families, and in research. He calls on the men in the room to take on their learning. To take a gender class and learn about themselves alongside people of other genders. 

To see men learning about gender, understanding themselves, and thinking in ways they’ve felt they’ve never been allowed to think is truly special. Many young women would love to learn about gender alongside men, to reach out a hand, not to point a finger. 

As the panel wraps up, a player from the audience asks, earnestly and thoughtfully, “How do you explain men being called privileged and also having so much hardship?” The panelist responds that expectations for men to mask their emotions, especially emotions other than lust or anger, hurt men. The patriarchy spares no one. 

The last question of the night prompts each panelist to share what they love about being a man. The panelists turn to one another, stumped, not knowing who has to go first. 

“My team,” 

“The ability to be there for other men,” 

“My personal freedom,” 

“Being a father,” 

“Being someone that people can look to for safety and help.” 

There are so many things to love about being a man. To have the courage to open up on a Friday night in front of your teammates about your journey with therapy and mental health and to have the bravery to show up and listen is what healthy masculinity looks like.  Vulnerability can be drawn from masculine notions of strength.

The space that was created was unique, empowering, vulnerable, and potentially life-saving. This heart-heavy, bold work isn’t just possible. It’s necessary.

A note on the authors: 

I (Marcos) am the former captain of the Men’s Rugby team. I have been part of the club since freshman year in college, and have played the sport virtually all of my life. Throughout my experience in the sport, I have lived the culture surrounding this sport and witnessed it’s transformation, both with the evolution of the sport and the age group in which I played.

I (Carolina) am in one of the back rows, one of two female students who attended the talk. In the past few years, I've seen my male friends, partners, and classmates grappling with their identities and emotions as men, sparking my curiosity about gender justice from a lens of masculinity.