MEN WITH BREAST CANCER: MARGINALIZING OR THREATENING TO BEING A MAN?

• Published in: Innovation in aging Vol. 1; no. suppl_1; p. 288
• Main Author: Thompson, E.H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: US Oxford University Press 01-07-2017
• Subjects: Abstracts
• ISSN: 2399-5300; 2399-5300
• DOI: 10.1093/geroni/igx004.1068

This research explores how men experience being a breast cancer patient in the US, and how their experiences are sanctioned by the nation’s rendering of breast cancer as a woman’s disease. Based on the sociological tradition of investigating the ‘marginal man’ who is destined to live in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures, men’s encounters with breast cancer’s pink ribbon culture and hegemonic masculinity are ideal for better understanding how gender does affect men’s chronic illness experience. Interviews with 17 men with breast cancer revealed that they are seen first by themselves as much as others in terms of their gender rather than their illness. Being diagnosed with and needing to be treated for breast cancer was unmistakably challenging. Distinct themes were deeply rooted throughout the men’s narratives and conspicuous within nearly every interview: (1)
surviving personal marginalization
, (2)
embodiment of (their breast) cancer
, and (3)
gendered agency
.