“The Dick Is Probably a Bit Overrated”

Abstract

This study aims to examine how healthcare professionals (HCPs) understand the impact prostate cancer treatment can have on patients’ sense of masculinity, sexuality, and intimate life, and how they describe such issues are communicated with patients. Theoretically, HCP narratives are interpreted as part of a reflective process in which notions of hegemonic masculinity are communicated, and sometimes rethought and redefined, within the rehabilitation process. The study showed that HCPs sometimes felt unqualified to deal with issues concerning masculinity and sexuality as such topics were understood to be partially outside the medical domain of their professions. Nonetheless, HCPs engaged in such conversations with patients and described how they tried to support them in reorientating their sense of masculinity. The article concludes that, whereas HCPs tended to describe their patients’ responses to rehabilitation from an embodied and psychological perspective, their own professional and personal views on masculinity usually departed from a sociocultural level (focusing on what it means to be a man in contemporary Swedish society, suggesting that penetrative sex is overrated), where ongoing configurations of hegemonic masculinity were more evident.