ABSTRACT
Increasingly, gender is considered a fundamental determinant of health outcomes and behaviours (Denton, Prus and Walters 2004, Hankivsky 2012). The emergent field of ‘men’s health’, has thus sought to understand how maleness and masculinity inform health risks and health-seeking behaviours among men. Here, masculinity has often been framed as a singular, implicitly heterosexual attribute with negative health consequences; for example, excessive risk-taking, a ‘superman’ sense of confidence in one’s health and a reluctance to be checked or tested for various illnesses (Schofield et al. 2000, Courtenay 2003, Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). More recently, however, health research has reconceived masculinity as a set of multiple masculinities that develop over the life course and intersect with other characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, sexuality) to influence health (Evans et al. 2011, Hankivsky 2012). This more nuanced approach has been adopted widely in areas of men’s health such as nutrition, substance use, and chronic disease management (see also Wilson and Evans 2014: this volume, Keppel 2014: this volume).
