Speaker Byron Hurt stood in front of his audience, which was composed of hundreds of members of the Greek community and made two lists. He began one of them with “strong”, “masculine” and “tough” and the other with the words “sissy,” “weak” and “faggot.”
Hurt is a motivational speaker who specializes on a variety of topics including race, gender, class and pop culture. He was asked by the Greek programming board to speak on the topic of gender-based violence on Tuesday evening in his lecture entitled “Locker Room Talk or Toxic Masculinity?”
The Greek programming board chooses a speaker each year during Greek Week, and this year decided to tackle more challenging topics, according to Kathleen Prout, assistant director of fraternity and sorority life.
“In previous semesters, the fraternity and sorority life speaker have had topics about authenticity, high-achieving, how to build something from the ground up and more,” Prout said. “They identified Byron and his topic of hyper-masculinity as a great starting point.”
In his lecture, Hurt asked the men in the room to shout out society’s characteristics of a “man,” and what things makes someone “less of a man” in order to pick apart the assumptions.
“I remember the first time I was called a ‘sissy,’” Hurt said. “I was only five years old, but I started to think about myself differently and compare my behavior to my little sister’s.”
Though the talk focused on toxic masculinity, Hurt also made it a point to make his speech relevant for the women listening, specifically how it is consequential.
Freshman biomedical science major Caitlin Morris attended the lecture and said she struggles with the consequences of toxic masculinity in her daily life.
“Every time a boy cat-calls me or honks as he speeds down the street or tells me to sit on his lap, I want to say something, anything so that he’ll know what he did was wrong but the words get stuck in my throat,” Morris said.
Senior learning behavior specialist major and greek programming board member Julia Niklewicz said she appreciated Hurt including women in the discussion.
“Although his target audience was to reach men, I think that it also spoke with all of the women in the room,” Niklewicz, said. “It is important to address world issues with college students because we are the generation who is going to be making change.”
Hurt described toxic masculinity as a chain reaction through telling his grandmother’s story of confined gender roles and domestic violence.
“My grandmother died, and because of these strict gender roles, my father lost his primary caretaker, and because men weren’t supposed to show affection, my dad was raised without one,” Hurt said.
At the end of his lecture, Hurt sent students away with a mission.
“Be more aware of your actions,” Hurt said. “Think about the way you’re treating people, and the consequences for not just yourself but everyone.”
