MASCULINITY IN AMERICA

The reinvention of a ‘real man’

In cowboy country, a father and husband troubled by suicide reimagines American masculinity, one conversation at a time

By Jose A. Del Real
May 23, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

— In BUFFALO, Wyoming

Bill Hawley believes too many men are unwilling or unable to talk about their feelings, and he approaches each day as an opportunity to show them how. ... “There’s my smile,” he says to a leathered cowboy in the rural northeast Wyoming town where he lives. ... “I could cry right now thinking about how beautiful your heart is,” he says to a middle-aged male friend at work. ... “After our conversation last week, your words came back to me several times,” he tells an elderly military veteran in a camouflage vest. “Make of that what you will, but it meant something to me.”

On paper, Bill is the “prevention specialist” for the public health department in Johnson County, a plains-to-peaks frontier tract in Wyoming that is nearly the size of Connecticut but has a population of 8,600 residents. His official mandate is to connect people who struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, tobacco addiction, and suicidal impulses to the state’s limited social service programs. Part bureaucrat, part counselor, much of Bill’s life revolves around Zoom calls and subcommittees, government acronyms and grant applications. ... But his mission extends beyond the drab county building on Klondike Drive where he works. One Wyoming man at a time, he hopes to till soil for a new kind of American masculinity.

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Here in cowboy country, the backdrop and birthplace of countless American myths, Bill knows “real men” are meant to be stoic and tough. But in a time when there are so many competing visions of masculinity — across America and even across Wyoming — Bill is questioning what a real man is anyway. ... Often, what he sees in American men is despair.

Across the United States, men accounted for 79 percent of suicide deaths in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also shows Wyoming has the highest rate of suicide deaths per capita in the country. A majority of suicide deaths involve firearms, of which there are plenty in Wyoming, and alcohol or drugs are often a factor. Among sociologists, the Mountain West is nicknamed “The Suicide Belt.” ... More and more, theories about the gender gap in suicides are focused on the potential pitfalls of masculinity itself.

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If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255). You can also text a crisis counselor by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

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By Jose Del Real
Jose A. Del Real is a reporter for The Washington Post. He travels the country to write in-depth feature stories about American life and politics. Twitter https://twitter.com/jdelreal