Abstract

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In 2006 Rosenfeld and Faircloth claimed that there was a missing link between studies on medicalization and masculinity studies: with a few exceptions, “a funny thing happened on the way to theorizing medicalization: men’s bodies were ignored” (2006, 1). While the medicalization of femininity had already been widely investigated, few scholars had explored the significance of medicine for the production and control of masculinity, focusing mainly on its deviance from a taken for granted model of normality. On the other hand, in the last decade, men’s sexual health has become the target of new health policies and interventions, as well as an object of research. However, this has resulted more in a pathologization of masculinity as a health risk factor/condition (focusing on the psychological and physical costs of hegemonic masculinity) than in a critical analysis of the role of medical discourses in defining and regulating masculinity. Therefore, studies on male health have tended to overlook men’s lived and mundane experiences of their bodies. Within this scenario, the so-called “Viagra Studies” are among one of the few research fields where the link between masculinity and medicalization has been outspokenly addressed. The sexual revolution promised by the launch of Viagra in 1998 offered, as Tiefer has argued, a gold mine triggering a very innovative body of research questioning the intertwined construction of medicine, technologies, gender, sexuality and ageing. Despite their path-breaking impact, however, Viagra studies have been limited to some countries, first of all the USA and New Zealand, and much more engaged in investigating representations and expert discourses than on exploring how they are embedded and reworked in lay people’s everyday life. Viagra studies have certainly had the great merit of pointing to ongoing crucial processes of naturalization of masculinity through medicalization, calling for a critical engagement on these issues which needs to be both theoretically and empirically grounded. Other scattered research experiences (cfr. Riska 2002, 2007 on coronary disease and masculinity; Oliffe 2005, 2009 on prostate cancer and masculinity; Gough 2006 on healthy eating and masculinity; Robertson 2006 on male embodiment of health) contributed to the development of a more consistent literature on these issues.

The proposed panel aims at mapping recent studies addressing these processes. We invite papers from different research fields, within social sciences and humanities, attempting to fill the gap between these two fields of theoretical and empirical knowledge developed by medicalization and masculinity studies. We are particularly interested in unearthing research experiences covering the most underexplored dimensions, such as mundane practices and everyday experiences of medicalized masculinities. Moreover, to counterbalance the hegemony of research from anglophone countries (witnessed in the special issues in international journals on this topic: cfr. British Medical Journal, 2002, 324, 7342; Sexualities, 2006, 9, 3; Journal of Sex Research, 2012, 49, 4), our intention is to gather together papers from other geographical and cultural contexts (especially from Global Southern and Eastern European contexts), taking into account the variability of the local production of discourses and practices of the medicalization of masculinity. Lastly, we welcome papers reconstructing dominant medicalizing discourses as well as contributing to explore the broader range of meanings of masculinities exceeding and resisting the hegemonic discourses.

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Session organizer(s)

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Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto (IT) – is Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin, Italy. She has been extensively working on gender and (hetero)sexualities, with a focus on the medicalization of male sexuality. Among her recent research projects: “Beyond a naturalised masculinity? Making sense of the medicalisation of male sexuality” (2010-2016); “Ageless sex? Questioning active ageing in the Viagra era” (2016-ongoing). Among her recent publications: (2017, with C. Barrett and E. Wentzell), Challenging the ‘viagratization’ of heterosexuality and ageing, in C. Barrett, S.Hinchliff (eds), Addressing the Sexual Rights of Older People: Theory, Policy and Practice, Routledge, forthcoming; (2015, with C.Bertone, F.Salis), Medicalizing male underperformance: expert discourses on male sexual health in Italy, Salute e Società, XIV, n.1, 183-205; (2012, with Bertone C.), Italians (should) do it better? Medicalisation and the disempowering of intimacy, in Modern Italy, Vol. 17, No. 4,  433–448.