[Male vulnerabilities and stereotypes in the social representations of prostate cancer]

In society, cancer is commonly associated with an incurable and disabling disease that causes damage beyond the biological scope, impacting the psychological and sociocultural dimensions of cancer patients. From a cultural point of view, men construct narratives about prostate cancer based on their experiences and social contexts, expressing moral, ethical, and sociopolitical elements attributed to the cause of this type of cancer. We sought to understand the causes of prostate cancer as represented by men living with this type of cancer and its repercussions on self-care. A descriptive, qualitative study based on the Theory of Social Representations was conducted with 31 men diagnosed with prostate cancer treated at a High Complexity Oncology Unit. Data were collected from April to June 2022 by in-depth, individual, and semi-structured interviews. The corpus was inserted into the ALCESTE software. Alcohol intake, smoking, sexual promiscuity, and not taking care of oneself were the main behaviors understood as causes of cancer, which generates self-responsibility and guilt for the illness. Social representations of these causes, translated into behaviors not aligned with what social morality dictates as right, have repercussions on the moralizing notion of cancer as punishment, in which the disease expresses the patient's character, anchored in the Judeo-Christian religious discourse, which reduces the sociopolitical burden of male vulnerabilities and reinforces stereotypes from patriarchal society.