Theories of masculinity

doi:10.1136/bmj.317.7165.1072

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ education articles:

From

Limit by

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

Clare Moynihan (clare@icr.ac.uk), senior research fellow

Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Trust, Sutton SM2 5PT

This is the second in a series of six articles on the importance of theories and values in health research

Series editor: Priscilla Alderson

How do theories help us to grasp various truths about men's and women's responses to illness? How do theories of masculinity illuminate the reactions of young men who have lost a sexual organ and face a life threatening disease? Why are men sometimes treated differently from women in life threatening situations?1 This paper shows how theories that underlie research influence the ways in which we perceive phenomena and how we deal with them. It questions assumptions about the concept of masculinity in medicine and how these assumptions affect men. Alternative ways of seeing may widen our perceptions, but at the same time they present us with more difficulties.

Summary points

In the positivist view, membership of the male sex is signified by the male anatomy
In the social constructivist view, male gender is practised in social interactions and is signified by beliefs and behaviour, like being hard and strong. Each society assumes that “given” attributes are fixed,although they vary across cultures and between individuals
Postmodernism will not work with rules —the fixed categories of sex and gender disintegrate altogether and are replaced by “floating signifier
Floating signifiers give no credence to “a sexual identity”: “masculine” or “feminine” characteristics stereotypically assigned to sex or gender are no longer defined
The ways in which practitioners and researchers perceive masculinities can affect health care and research

The biological concept of sexa positivist approach

In the biological approach, sexual anatomy equates with sexual destiny. Anatomy is proof of being a man. Being a man takes on a universal status, generalisable and immutable. Aggression, reason, a need for control, competitiveness, and emotional reticence are thought to be “natural” attributes for a man2 contradiction or ambiguity is anathema to …