Eriksen, Camilla Bruun

Hvidtfeldt Madsen, Karen

Møller, Kristian

Petersen, Michael Nebeling

English

The IT University of Copenhagen's Repository

Introduction:Special Issue on Medicalization and Masculinities

Hvidtfeldt, Karen

Nebeling, Michael

Copenhagen University Research Information System

Introduction: Special Issue on Medicalization and Masculinities

Nebeling Petersen, Michael

Tidsskrift.dk (Det Kongelige Bibliotek)

02Women, Gender & Research No. 1 2020IntroductionSpecial Issue on  Medicalization and Masculinitiesby Karen Hvidtfeldt, Camilla Bruun Eriksen, Michael Nebeling Petersen & Kristian MøllerHow are the bodily interventions of medicaliza-tion taking shape in contemporary society? What are the gendered effects of medicalization, and in what ways are contemporary masculinities being transformed culturally and bodily? Are contempo-rary gay and/or trans masculinities medicalized in new ways? And what are the experiences of, and possibilities found within, (new) masculinities? These are some of the questions that have inspired this special issue of Women, Gender & Research on Medicalization and Masculinities. Dif-ferent gendered bodies have traditionally been the subject of medical interventions and beauty-en-hancing treatments of an intimate kind. Within gen-der studies, the focus has mainly been on female bodies in the reproductive age, concerning various rejuvenation and beauty regimes and following the technological developments of, for instance, fer-tility technologies and reproductive biomedicine. However, in a Western context, cosmetic surgery is no longer reserved for feminized, privileged, or subcultural groups but is increasingly understood as	an	acceptable	 tool	 to	 ‘fix’,	e.g.,	signs	of	aging	or ‘overweight’ and thus also to achieve a ‘normal’ (masculinized) body (Atkinson, 2008). The male body has even, according to Jamie Hakim (2019), become sexualized in the same ways as the fe-male body has been, as a means to achieve value within a neoliberalism in which both male and fe-male bodies are increasingly precarious. Within masculinity studies, a body of schol-arly literature is currently emerging, investigating new phenomena in the intersection between mas-culinities and medicalization, e.g., ‘andropause’ and	‘sexual	fitness’	(e.g.,	Rosenfeld	and	Faircloth	2006; Featherstone & Hepworth; 1985a, 1985b; Gullette 1997, 1998; Marshall 2007; Marshall & Katz 2002). Importantly, some masculinities have historically been the object of medicalization and medical intervention: Boys have been diagnosed and regulated through systems of pathologization (e.g., Timimi 2011; Hart, Grand & Riley 2006) while indigenous, racialized, sexually minoritized and gendered minoritized, as well as disabled men, are medicalized in different and often cruel and inhu-man ways within different systems of oppression, 03Women, Gender & ResearchIntroductionNo. 1 2020e.g., colonialism, settler-colonialism, Nazism, white supremacist and cis-heterosexist systems, etc. Within patriarchal and white supremacist so-cieties, however, the white cis-heterosexual adult man has generally avoided medical attention and interventions until ageing beyond midlife, which typically marked the point at which white male bodies could be safely folded into a medicalized regime without necessarily having their masculin-ity threatened. Cultural shifts have (at least partly) changed this and today both younger white male bodies and middle-aged white male bodies are perceived as in need of regulation/discipline and are therefore increasingly subjected to treatments and	 modifications,	 e.g.,	 rejuvenating	 products	and treatments, medicine and other substances enhancing vitality and sexual desire, and aligning bodies to aged, gendered, and sexualized norms of beauty (Bordo 2000; Rosenfeld & Faircloth 2006; Conrad 2007; Kampf, Marshall, & Petersen 2013).	 Trans	 bodies  –	 at	 least	 in	 Denmark	 and	unlike	 intersexed	bodies	(Holm	&	Bülow	2020) –	are pathologized to a lesser extent but are rather being included in health regimes and thereby into other forms of medicalization (e.g., in 2018, the clinical practice guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) removed ‘transsexuality’ from being considered a pathological condition). Such inclusions often challenge gendered norms of embodiment, e.g., within fertility treatments, and therefore research on such issues also questions traditional assumptions within masculinity and gender studies.This special issue is a collection of articles that investigates the medicalization of bodies from different vantage points, disciplines, and the-oretical and empirical settings. The articles aim to challenge and expand the binary categorizations and assessments (healthy vs. ill, necessary vs. un-necessary,	 artificial	 vs.	 natural,	 body	 vs.	 cul-ture, etc.) through critical investigations. More specifically,	we	are	interested	in	the	investigation	of what is perceived as male bodies and the inti-mate issues of medicalization in relation to mas-culinities. Within critical masculinity studies, mas-culinities are often viewed as negotiated positions deriving from a variety of practices and positions established in relation to each other, rather than as solely stemming from, and pertaining to, the male-sexed body (e.g., Hearn 2004; Connell & Messerschmidt 2005; Kimmel 2005; Race 2009). Thus, the concept of masculinity is a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon emerging from cultur-al, material, and discursive frames and contexts. We are especially interested in understanding how medicalization can be theorized and analyzed as a complex phenomenon; both a biotechnological and a cultural development that does not unequiv-ocally	disturb	the	body,	but	rather	modifies	it.	This	resembles the bodily extension of prostheses in a somatechnical or feminist posthumanist perspec-tive, where bodies and technologies do not exist outside of, or separate from, one another; as Nikki Sullivan and Samantha Murray state: Bodily-being “(…)	is	always	already	technologized,	and	technol-ogies	are	always	already	enfleshed”	(2009,	7).	The issue’s contributionsIn	 the	 first	 article,	 Michael	 Nebeling	 Petersen	and Karen Hvidtfeldt bring up recent develop-ments within critical masculinity theory in order to understand how masculinities can be and have been conceptualized as a development from ‘he-gemonic masculinity’ to, for instance, ‘inclusive masculinity’ and ‘involved fatherhood.’ In the con-text of recent mainstream critiques of what are termed ‘toxic’ masculinities (e.g., the normaliza-tion of sexual assaults and sexism as shown by the #MeToo movement), the authors analyze two short	films	by	the	international	shaving	company	Gillette:	 “We	 believe,”	 published	 in	 January	 2019	and	the	so-called	‘trans	commercial,’	“First	Shave,	the	 story	 of	 Samson,”	 published	 in	May	2019,	 in	order to asses and critically discuss the theories of masculinities and consider to what extent the films	place	themselves	in	relation	to	new/old	no-tions of masculinities.Secondly, and starting from the question of how to make sense of a war veteran’s per-sonal health biography, Sebastian Mohr in his contribution proposes the ‘performative effects of diagnosis’ as an analytical tool to explore the 04Women, Gender & ResearchIntroductionNo. 1 2020transformations in people’s intimate lives that be-ing diagnosed brings with it. Extrapolating from feminist theory, trans studies, STS, and medical anthropology and sociology, he argues that the performative effects of diagnosis allow scholars to explore transformations in people’s intimate lives without a foreclosure about the normative di-mensions of these transformations. Mohr argues that, rather than only asking how biopolitical and cis and heteronormative normalcy constitutes it-self, the performative effects of diagnosis offer the opportunity to explore how these dimensions are	 (re)configured	 and	 (un)done	 in	 and	 through	medicalized intimacies.The	issue’s	third	contribution,	by	Anne	Sofie	Bach, starts off by taking us back to the 1950s, when legal gender reassignment in Denmark re-quired castration. In 2014, this requirement was abolished,	 making	 Denmark	 the	 first	 country	 in	the world to grant access to legal gender reas-signment	 based	 on	 a	 self-definition	 model	 to	people above the age of 18. Drawing on the con-cept of sociotechnical imaginaries and focusing on the concept of reproductive citizenship, Bach brings attention to both the de-medicalization and re-medicalization of transgender bodies and their fertility following this shift in legislation. Addition-ally, and through notions of coherence between bodies, gender, and parenthood, Bach extends her discussion of reproductive practices of trans men to include a critical discussion of fertility preserva-tion access and surrogacy.A fourth article, which doesn’t relate to this issue’s framework of Medicalization and Masculin-ities, is nonetheless related to ideas about mas-culine and feminine work places and gendered divisions	of	 labour:	“An	increased	male	presence	supposedly promotes gender equality [within kindergartens], as men are thought better suited to	meet	 the	 gender-specific	 needs	 of	 the	 young	boys.”	Drawing	on	 the	 results	of	 a	questionnaire	completed by more than 700 staff members in all of the 80 kindergartens in two Danish municipali-ties, this assumption is discussed and questioned by the authors Eli Smeplass and Bent Olsen. Last but certainly not least, this special is-sue features an interview with the co-editor of the Somatechnics Journal, Professor Sheila L. 	Cavanagh,	on	what	we	are	calling	“The	Psychic	life	of	Gender.”	In	conversation	with	Michael	Nebeling	Petersen and Camilla Bruun Eriksen, Cavanagh, among other things, elaborates on being a ‘poly-amorous thinker’ and shares her academic hope that	the	field	of	somatechnics	and	contemporary	queer theorists will engage more seriously and consistently with critical psychoanalysis in the future. Psychoanalysis, she argues, has potential when it comes to understanding gender as a com-plex and affectively loaded force: From an academic perspective, psychoanal-ysis can help us understand gender as a symptom. If masculinity and femininity are symptoms, what can they teach us? It is not enough to catalogue what counts, culturally and historically, as masculine and as fem-inine, but to better understand our passion-ate attachments to gender – whatever those genders might be. Gender needs to be taken seriously, like a symptom it needs to be re-spected and interpreted with a critical psy-choanalytic attunement  to what it inscribes about the history of the subject.Thus, Cavanagh articulates one of the major am-bitions with this special issue, namely, to inspire new theoretically-informed ways of questioning what counts as ‘normal,’ and to attend to those el-ements	of	subjectivity	relating	to	gender,	race, and	sexuality that are not conscious or self-evident and that complicate the analytical crossroads between medicalization, masculinity, and gender studies. 05Women, Gender & ResearchIntroductionNo. 1 2020ReferencesAtkinson, M. (2008). Exploring Male Femininity in the ‘Crisis’: Men and Cosmetic Surgery. Body & Society, 14(1), pp. 67-87. DOI: 10.1177/1357034X07087531 Bordo, S. (2000). The male body: a new look at men in public and in private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Gi-roux. Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender and society, 19(6), pp. 829-859. DOI: 10.1177/0891243205278639 Conrad, P. (2007). The medicalization of society: on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Featherstone,	M.,	&	Hepworth,	M.	(1985a).	The	history	of	the	male	menopause	1848–1936.	Maturitas, 7(3), pp. 249-257. DOI: 10.1016/0378-5122(85)90047-7Featherstone, M., & Hepworth, M. (1985b). The male menopause: lifestyle and sexuality. Maturitas, 7(3), pp. 235-246. DOI: 10.1016/0378-5122(85)90045-3Gullette, M. M. (1997). Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Gullette, M. M. (1998). Midlife Discourses in the Twentieth-Century United States: An Essay on the Sexual-ity, Ideology, and Politics of ‘Middle Ageism’. In R. A. Shweder (Ed.), Welcome to Middle Age! (And Other Cultural Fictions), pp. 3-44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hakim, J. (2019). Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture. Racial cultural studies. Lanham: Rowman &	Littlefield	International.Hart,	N.,	Grand,	N.,	&	Riley,	K.	(2006).	“Making	the	Grade:	The	Gender	Gap,	ADHD,	and	the	Medicalization	of	Boyhood”.	In	Rosenfeld	D.	&	Faircloth	C.	(Eds.),	Medicalized Masculinities, pp. 132-164. Temple Univer-sity Press. Hearn, J. (2004). From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men. Feminist Theory, 5(1), pp. 49-72. DOI: 10.1177/1464700104040813 Holm,	M-L	&	Bülow,	M.H.	(2020).	“Samtykke	for	hvem?	Medicinske	tilgange	til	interkønnede	personer”.	In:	Di Nucci, E., Knox, J.L. & Jensen, R.T. (red.). 8 cases i medicinsk etik. København: Munksgaard, 75-99.Kampf, A., Marshall, B. L., & Petersen, A. R. (2013). Aging men, masculinities and modern medicine. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.Kimmel, M. S. (2005). The history of men: essays in the history of American and British masculinities. Alba-ny: State University of New York Press. Marshall, B. L. (2007). Climacteric Redux? (Re)medicalizing the Male Menopause. Men and Masculinities, 9(4), pp. 509-529. DOI: 10.1177/1097184X05284224Marshall, B. L., & Katz, S. (2002). Forever Functional: Sexual Fitness and the Ageing Male Body. Body & So-ciety, 8(4), pp. 43-70. DOI: 10.1177/1357034X02008004003Race, K. (2009). Pleasure consuming medicine: the queer politics of drugs. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Rosenfeld, D., & Faircloth, C. A. (2006). Medicalized masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Sullivan, N., & Murray, S. (2009). Somatechnics: queering the technologisation of bodies. Farnham, Surrey/Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Timimi,	S.	(2011).	“Medicalizing	masculinity”.	In	Rapley M., Moncrieff J., Dillon J. (Eds.) De-Medicalizing Misery, pp. 86-98. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 

https://pure.itu.dk/ws/files/85652167/document1.pdf

Introduction:Special Issue on Medicalization and Masculinities

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

The IT University of Copenhagen's Repository

Copenhagen University Research Information System

Tidsskrift.dk (Det Kongelige Bibliotek)