Rewriting Masculine Gender Scripts…

Gast J, & Peak T (2010). “It Used to Be That if It Weren’t Broken and Bleeding Profusely, I Would Never Go to the Doctor”: Men, Masculinity, and Health. American journal of men’s health PMID: 20798142

Any article (2010, n.pag.) that starts by protesting that we have focussed too much on women’s health and that now it is the turn of us men, again, has got to be good value. It is true, right, that for years and years everyone has been banging on about such mundane topics as domestic violence, sexual assault, and reproductive rights. It must be time to swing the spotlight back and once more look at why so many men are so doggedly good at dying yonks before their stipulated use-by dates. Search me; seriously: what does improving our understanding of men’s poor health have to do with promoting positive health for women, anyway?

Like Gast and Peak (2010), I too lament the fact that there is not nearly enough positive health promotion directed toward men. We roll out the grim morbidity and mortality statistics, tell the horrible stories of death and destruction and abject pig-headedness but then concoct men’s health policy that ‘blames’ women, service providers, governments, and so forth. Ne’er an elephant should stroll into that room and utter the common sense, that is, that men need to ‘learn how to save their own lives’ (2010). What I would alternatively describe as, the opportunity for men to start to live well, such that ill health and hastened death are nipped in the bud.

So is it much ado about ‘masculine gender scripts’, then, as Gast and Peak (2010) suggest?

Many years ago, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Newcastle. Regular readers might recall that scummy place was buried twice: once under a mountain of mulch for soil erosion mitigation and once under a State government corruption inquiry, when it was discovered that degrees for international students were being sold off for the price of an average-sized backyard swimming pool. I distinctly remember how the word ‘Althusser’ floated through the swampy air one balmy summer evening, and I was immediately entranced by the prospect that our every move, thought, wish, and emotion had been pre-determined for us. In a snap, we were insignificant actors stuck reading some craggy life script.

Hence, whenever I see that word ‘script’, as here in this current article (2010), I gleefully flashback to those halcyon days of the campus constructed inside a swamp. I was still so young then, so green, so gullible to naff ideas. I am that dolt no longer. When I spotted how Gast and Peak (2010) tried to cleverly push to centre stage that Sociology 101 stalwart, ‘masculine gender script’, as an explanatory tool for why men take too many health risks, and avoid getting help for health problems (in advance or in the moment), I chortled: ‘this is too bloomin’ easy!’ Subtle variations notwithstanding, ‘script’ does infer a mainly unilateral exchange of a set type.

By conducting focus group interviews with men from four different religious denominations in North Utah, the authors (2010) claim the major themes that emerged- health fears, health promotion behaviours, spousal influence, health issues connected to ageing and church-based health influence -were each permeated by the masculine gender script. For example, some men in their study preferred to adopt a ‘wait and see’ (2010) attitude to potential health problems, or to desist from ever seeking help for existing health problems. Such avoidant behaviours, I would counter, defy being so deftly boxed, and buried, within a narrowly defined script.

I believe that the concept of the masculine gender script is wildly misconceived. It privileges sex role essentialism ahead of any individual agency that any man might exercise and in so doing, promotes the false reality that certain male characteristics are fundamentally ‘fixed’. When reading this article (2010), I could sense the strong, gravitational pull toward the view that men ‘just are’ and what needs to happen is a reconfiguration of health promotion and service responses to become ‘consistent with a masculine gender script’. I should wonder but perhaps should not, what Gast and Peak (2010) actually meant to convey here….