Theorising masculinity, ageing, and the lived body: the case of prostate cancer

This article conceptualises how masculinity and masculine ideals are played out in relation to prostate cancer treatment and its side-effects, offering a heuristic and theoretical perspective with which to make sense of the complex interrelationship between lived gendered bodies and social structures. With the support of three case studies of older men treated for prostate cancer, the article explores how the concept of hegemonic masculinity can be used to analyse the ill and ageing body. A phenomenologically informed approach to the body, which illustrates how masculinity is lived and experienced through certain body schemas, is used. The three case studies show variation in how masculinity is enacted and embodied, illustrating actions to (1) restore and maintain masculinity through phallic experience; (2) reconstruct masculinity by connecting bodily experience to notions of the ageing and a less potent body; and (3) to counter narrowly defined notions of masculinity by dissociating or decoupling masculinity from ideals of potency and performance. With the help of the case studies, the strategies identified, and the fluidity and dynamism of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, findings reveal how inequalities between men and women are produced and maintained, in and through bodily experience, and diverse body schemas.