It's Movember: the wonderful time of year when people are encouraged to grow out their flavour savers and soup strainers to raise awareness and money in aid of men's health.
The Movember Foundation has a clear goal: stop men dying too young. The foundation aims, in particular, to reduce preventable deaths resulting from prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide.
While the goal is noble, Movember is also a sad reminder of a truth not universally acknowledged: men are often our own worst enemies. We know that women tend to live about half a decade longer than men and while there are some biological factors that influence life expectancy, they do not entirely explain the gap. Rather, many risk factors for preventable death in cisgender men come from pressure to perform the role of a 'real man' in our society.
There is a template for masculinity in our culture that goes like this: Men are strong and self-sufficient (both physically and emotionally). They power through pain and injury, and they take risks without care for whether they are putting their health in danger. Emotions are to be repressed and unexpressed, with the exceptions of anger, lust and jealousy. In this framework, the process of growing from a boy into a man is one where the soft edges are cut away and hardened scar tissue is left.
These messages aren't explicitly taught in a state-mandated masculinity class, but boys are often told to 'toughen up' or 'man up' when they display vulnerability. This is policed by peers and adults (usually male), through name-calling or social exclusion. After all, you wouldn't want to be called a 'girl' or, perhaps even worse, 'gay'!
In a masculinity where conceding the discomfort and pain of sickness is framed as a moral weakness, is it any wonder that men are significantly more likely to avoid or delay a doctor's visit? Testicular and prostate cancer — two of the three Movember Foundation focus issues — have extremely good prognoses if caught early on. Unfortunately, visiting a medical professional is generally a prerequisite for early diagnosis. Our pride is getting in the way.
The same goes for mental health. The fact that men are discouraged from talking about and processing their feelings in healthy ways means that they are vastly over-represented in suicide statistics. Men are also more prone to resort to physical violence than women, which leads to injury and death. Like with physical