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Abstract
Being men and being healthy seem to be contradictory sociospatial states. Although research on the interrelationships between gender and health is strongly represented in geography, and masculinity has been examined, geographical perspectives examining the contradictory spatialities of men's health are lacking. This article addresses this absence by working through a feminist and relational framework to examine how sociospatial forces linking gender, health, and emotion intertwine in the process of being (un)healthy men. We argue that any representation of men's health as situated within a singular narrative of hegemonic masculinity is refuted by tracing the multiple processes of how gender, health, and emotion intersect to define (un)healthy men's bodies and spaces. To flesh out the conceptual argument, we employ two illustrative case studies: (1) a set of narratives of living with HIV from gay and bisexual men in the United States and (2) a set of veterans' responses to a posttraumatic stress disorder program in Canada. These examples demonstrate men's fraught practices of their masculinities in relation to health and illustrate how variegated sociospatial practices of hegemonic masculinity affect men's health, men's affective relationships with support systems for health, and the contexts within which men's health takes place. This article offers a modest beginning to the inclusion of men in health geography and to an extended conceptual terrain for geographies of health encouraging the rethinking of linkages between health and gender and gender and emotion.
Ser hombres, y ser hombres saludables, parecieran ser estados socio-espaciales contradictorios. Aunque la investigación sobre las interrelaciones entre género y salud se encuentra muy bien representada en geografía, y también algo los estudios sobre masculinidad, todavía son pobres las perspectivas geográficas para examinar las espacialidades contradictorias de la salud de los varones. Este artículo aboca esa limitación trabajando por medio de un marco feminista y relacional con el fin de explorar cómo interactúan las fuerzas socio-espaciales que ligan género, salud y emoción en el proceso por el cual los hombres llegan a estar saludables o no. Lo que argüimos es que cualquier representación que sitúe la salud de los hombres dentro de una narrativa singular de masculinidad hegemónica queda refutada al trazar los múltiples procesos de cómo el género, la salud y emoción se intersectan para definir lo que son cuerpos y espacios saludables o no. Para darle cuerpo al argumento conceptual, empleamos dos estudios de caso ilustrativos: (1) un conjunto de narrativas de hombres gay y bisexuales sobre vivir afectados con VIH en los Estados Unidos y (2) un conjunto de las respuestas de veteranos a un programa sobre trastorno por estrés postraumático en Canadá. Estos ejemplos demuestran las tensas prácticas de sus masculinidades en los hombres en relación con la salud e ilustran cómo las variadas prácticas socio-espaciales de masculinidad hegemónica afectan su salud, sus relaciones afectivas con los sistemas de apoyo para la salud y los contextos dentro de los cuales se fragua la salud masculina. Este artículo es un modesto aporte al comienzo de la incorporación de los varones en la geografía de la salud y a un terreno conceptual ampliado para las geografías de la salud, promoviendo una nueva forma de pensar sobre los vínculos que se dan entre salud y género, y entre género y emoción.
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Acknowledgments
We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers and Mei-Po Kwan for their close and insightful readings of our original manuscript. These thoughtful critiques allowed us to considerably improve our resulting article. We thank the Canadian Institutes for Health Research for supporting the PTSD research via Open Doors/Closed Ranks: Locating Mental Health after the Asylum (Grant #MOP-84510); the men who participated in Soldiers’ Stories; and Dr. Marv Westwood, Officer Joanne Henderson, and Sharel Fraser for their insights into PTSD and the Royal Canadian Legion. And, we send our appreciation out to those who are working in the HIV prevention community, particularly Lee Kochems, whose work and experience helped shape some of the ideas about HIV prevention and identity formation found in this article. We also thank our colleagues in the Department of Geography at California State University, Long Beach, where much of this work was first discussed.
Notes
1. We use this parenthetical to draw attention to the mutual constitution of healthy and unhealthy masculinities. It is impossible to simply disentangle and equate one form of masculinity, for example, with one form of healthy or unhealthy practice, behavior, identity, or subjectivity. As we discuss, men's “healthiness” is paradoxically and problematically often founded in the active dismissal of health concerns for men. Thus, men's health is simultaneously its lack, as there can be no health without some level of unhealth.
2. It is important to note that since this analysis was developed, the Web site has been updated and changed. Although some of the “spokesmodels” who spoke in 2010 are still there, the design and the aesthetic of the site have been significantly adapted. These adaptations include the use of a distinct color for each participant as well as a more significant library of videos. The narrative style of many of the stories remains consistent with the analysis found in this article.
3. One example of the campaign for Long Beach from 2006 can be found at the following YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9fp7cR_5I&feature=relmfu (last accessed 1 April 2012). In this narrative, the spokesmodels discuss how they can protect others. This leads one model to suggest that not disclosing one's status helps you “take care of the next person.”
4. The religiosity of this metaphor is not lost on the authors, as the confessional, which is also used in other prevention programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, is a common trope underwriting such prevention programs and efforts. See a further discussion of what Poling and Kirkley (Citation2000) called “phallic spirituality” in their eponymous analysis of Promise Keepers, the Million Man March, and Sex Panic.
5. Compare Callard (Citation2006) and Davidson (2003), whose different work on agoraphobia nonetheless dovetails around the assertion of a devastating loss of a spatial sense of self.
6. The presentation was funded by the Royal Canadian Legion, Canada's long-established organization for veterans (see Thien 2009).
7. There are traces of that alterity, at least surficially, in the image of Billy, who wears a headband.
