After winning a fight, a breathless English UFC fighter says that at dawn he received a call from his best friend’s family because he had taken his own life. He appealed: “If you have a big problem weighing on your shoulders and you think that quitting is the only solution, please talk to someone, to anyone! I’d rather have my friend crying on my shoulders than have to go to his funeral next week.”

The fighter, visibly emotional but still restraining himself, dedicates the victory to the memory of his late friend fighting the unjust but powerful stigma that keeps men silent: that “men cannot speak of feelings,” and that “men do not cry.”

Among men and their cultures of masculinity, usually expressing feelings, talking about problems, about insecurities or vulnerabilities is synonymous with weakness. Therefore, in addition to the sadness caused by the problems, there can also be the double weight of guilt and shame of feeling completely inadequate and isolated.

No wonder suicide rates among men are more than three times higher than among women. In this sense, tragically, men become victims of their own machismo because they do not seek help, because they believe that they have to solve their problems completely alone.

That is why it is so important that some men brave enough to be truthful and vulnerable break this dangerous silence. Campaigns such as Yellow September, for suicide prevention, raise awareness and enable these changes to happen. Deep cultural changes like these, capable of opening cracks in centuries-old structural systems such as those of machismo, take time, but they do happen.

Men, more and more, will be able to talk about what they feel to solve their problems, and with this, they will be more free and libertarian: they will suffer less from machismo and will also cause less suffering by failing to replicate it. We will live in a time when yellowing will no longer be synonymous with fear and cowardice, but with hope and joy. Men, yellow!