Narratives Of Men Research Articles

Communication and interpretation of emotional distress within the friendships of young Irish men prior to suicide: a qualitative study.

The potential for young men in crisis to be supported by their lay networks is an important issue for suicide prevention, due to the under-utilisation of healthcare services by this population. Central to the provision of lay support is the capability of social networks to recognise and respond effectively to young men's psychological distress and suicide risk. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore young men's narratives of peer suicide, in order to identify how they interpreted and responded to behavioural changes and indications of distress from their friend before suicide. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted during 2009/10 with 15 Irish males (aged 19-30 years) who had experienced the death by suicide of a male friend in the preceding 5 years. The data were analysed using a thematic approach. Through the analysis of the participants' stories and experiences, we identified several features of young male friendships and social interactions that could be addressed to strengthen the support available to young men in crisis. These included the reluctance of young men to discuss emotional or personal issues within male friendships; the tendency to reveal worries and emotion only within the context of alcohol consumption; the tendency of friends to respond in a dismissive or disapproving way to communication of suicidal thoughts; the difficulty of knowing how to interpret a friend's inconsistent or ambiguous behaviour prior to suicide; and beliefs about the sort of person who takes their own life. Community-based suicide prevention initiatives must enhance the potential of young male social networks to support young men in crisis, through specific provisions for developing openness in communication and responsiveness, and improved education about suicide risk.

The Second Closet: A Qualitative Study of HIV Stigma Among Seropositive Gay Men in a Southern U.S. City

ABSTRACTObjectives: Stigma connected with HIV/AIDS has decreased considerably since the early epidemic yet affects those living with HIV in many ways. Little research, particularly qualitative research, concerning HIV stigma from the perspective of gay men has emerged. The present qualitative study aimed to fill this evidence gap by examining how HIV stigma is perceived and experienced by gay men who have become HIV-infected and how they respond to this stigma. Methods: Thematic analysis of 19 gay men's narratives identified six main themes. Results: Encountering HIV stigmatization was common and was linked to the physical stigmata identifying respondents as HIV-positive. Overwhelmingly, they found stigmatization to be most intensely felt within gay communities. One profound theme was internalized HIV stigma, referring to respondents’ internalized negative feelings about their HIV status. A related theme was the closeted nature of HIV. Lastly, regarding how the men dealt with the HIV diagnosis and experiences of HIV stigma, a theme of adaptation became clear. Conclusions: Although exploratory, the results can serve as a beginning framework for understanding and assisting seropositive gay men who experience HIV stigma. The findings are important because it is realistic to expect that in a climate in which HIV has become increasingly invisible and closeted and in which infections are on the rise, gay and bisexual men will be increasingly affected and infected by HIV.

Adherence to phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors in the treatment of erectile dysfunction in long-term users: how do men use the inhibitors?

IntroductionThe high effectiveness of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5-i) in the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED) has been demonstrated. However, previous research shows that PDE5-i treatments have high discontinuation rates.AimThe main goals of this study were to (i) characterize the way men use PDE5-i and (ii) analyze the adherence to treatment, identifying the factors that influence PDE5-i use.MethodsA total of 148 men with clinical diagnosis for ED who maintained the treatment with PDE5-i for over 3 years were interviewed. Interviews concerning their ongoing treatment were carried out using a standardized questionnaire with quantitative and qualitative items.Main Outcome MeasuresPhysiological measures included the intracavernous alprostadil injection test, associated with penile rigidometry and penile Doppler ultrasound. The qualitative measure included two questions: “Do you use the drug in every sexual intercourse?” and “How do you use the inhibitor?”ResultsED causes were classified as venogenic (31%), arteriogenic (23%), psychogenic (18%), iatrogenic (13%), neurogenic (8%), and diabetic (7%). Participation rate was 71.8%. Of the 148 patients studied, 75% claimed not to use PDE5-i in every intercourse. Most used tadalafil (66%), followed by sildenafil (20%), vardenafil (10%), and 4% alternated the type of medicine. Four main categories emerged concerning the factors that determine the intake of PDE5-i in some intercourse situations and not in others: (i) psychological factors; (ii) medication-related factors; (iii) circumstantial factors; and (iv) relational factors.ConclusionThe analysis of men's narratives revealed a combination of factors that influence the adherence to PDE5-i. The psychological and medication-related factors were the most prevalent. This study highlighted the importance of taking these factors into account, both at the time of prescription and during the follow-up in order to improve adherence. Carvalheira A, Forjaz V, and Pereira NM. Adherence to phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors in the treatment of erectile dysfunction in long-term users: How do men use the inhibitors? Sex Med 2014;2:96–102.

Explicating Positionality: A Journey of Dialogical and Reflexive Storytelling

Qualitative researchers must be aware of and explicit about their social background as well as political and ideological assumptions. To facilitate this awareness, we believe that researchers need to begin with their own story as they seek to understand the stories of others. Taking into account the vulnerable act of storytelling, it is salient to consider how to share personal narratives in an authentic way within academic settings. In this article, we share our process and reflections of engaging in reflexive and dialogical storytelling. The focus of the article is the re-storying of one researcher's experience as she and her research team explore her emotions and positionality prior to conducting research on First Nations men's narratives of identity. We integrate a series of methodological lessons concerning reflexivity throughout the re-storying.

Back and forth with hopes and fears: Sri Lankan men's narratives on gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods

Although in the past Sri Lanka has had a higher number of women migrant workers, recent statistics show that the gap between the percentages of female and male migrants is decreasing. Since 2007, male migrants have outnumbered female migrants. The article explores how Sri Lankan men have responded to the increased economic needs of their families and lack of proper income-generating activities within the country by engaging in transnational livelihoods, as well as how their roles and identities are contested and negotiated through labour migration. The study is based on men's narratives on their reasons for migration and their experiences of transnational labour migration. The concepts of hope and life course are used to analyse the intertwined relationships of gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods. The author identifies that men's mobility is motivated by their hopes of fulfilling traditional gender norms as providers and protectors of their families in combination with their new identity as successful men. Further, the study provides evidence that men's mobility is not only gendered but also a repeated act during their life course. The study contributes to strengthen research on mobility and gender by adding men's perspectives on transnational labour migration.

‘I want to take risks, like my mother’: Memory, affect, and Vietnamese masculinities – the legacy of gendered variations in socio-economic mobility during Ðổi mới

Young Vietnamese men who witnessed their mother's changing economic and labour market situations through the early years of Ðổi mới (the policy of economic liberalization in Vietnam after 1986) have developed conceptions of masculinity that are ambivalent to notions of male power and authority within what is often termed the ‘traditional’ neo-Confucian family. On the basis of the life narratives of a small group of men in their early twenties, the author suggests that the value young men place on their mother's work and familial influence during Ðổi mới contrasts with the findings of much gender scholarship on women's social and economic (im) mobility in the 1990s in Vietnam and on young men's own masculinist narratives. Most gender-sensitive research in this area has suggested that Vietnamese women remained curtailed in the early 1990s by a resurgence of male-oriented kinship systems and patriarchal structures at household level. However, the author discusses the young men as being equivocal. While invoking broad Confucian tropes, these men remember their mothers as economically dynamic relative to their fathers. This led to the informants citing their mother's histories of economic risk-taking as exemplifying free-market capability. Further, the finding suggests that Vietnamese women's social and economic mobility in the 1990s strongly affected young men's contemporary ideas and practices related to masculinity.

Policing femininity, affirming masculinity: relationship violence, control and spatial limitation

In this article, a feminist poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis is applied to examine the accounts of 35 Vincentian women and men on men's enactment of a range of violent, controlling and coercive acts in heterosexual relationships. The social languages participants employ in their explanations of men's abusive practices, and how these implicate particular gendered subject positions are discussed. Nested within this discussion is an exploration of how women's personal autonomy is regulated and contested in the context of violent intimate unions. Acts of violence by men, coupled with the threat of violence and other forms of control, serve to limit women's ability to navigate between the so-called private/domestic and other social spaces. Similar limits do not exist for men in these unions. This double standard is often presented as an effect of traditional and/or transcendental arrangements of gender in men's narratives, while women range between subverting and affirming dominant scripts of womanhood and manhood in speech.

Rehearsing or reversing harmful masculine scripts? South African men's romance narratives

abstract In this Article we discuss the results of 42 in-depth qualitative interviews with young black South African men who self-identified as heterosexual and who reported that they were at the time of the interview or had at some time in their lives, experienced being ‘in love’ with a woman. South Africa, as is commonly pointed out, is in the throes of an epidemic of gender based violence. To declare oneself ‘in love’ potentially contradicts some of the core features of what Mogomotsi Mfalapitsa (IRIN, 2009) has referred to as ‘harmful masculinity’ and which he has argued is causally related to male violence against women. These features include emotional detachment, promiscuity, interest in casual sex rather than long-term engagement with a single partner, unwillingness to be ‘tied down’, the hierarchical ordering of gendered relations constructed as men's entitlement to women's ‘respect’ and the need to publically enact masculine heterosexuality. We are interested in whether, in these narratives, the research participants position themselves in opposition to these harmful precepts or, whether they confirm and reiteratively perform assumptions that can be construed as damaging to the prospects of generating more equitable, fair and loving relations between men and women.

‘Now, We Have the SameRightsas Men to Keep Our Jobs’: Gendered Perceptions of Opportunity and Obstacles in a Mexican Workplace

Drawing on extensive qualitative data at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation, this case study investigates professional employees’ perceptions of changes to a prohibitive work policy requiring women to quit working upon marriage and having children. Employees believed the policy change meant working women were valued employees, but how this translated into opportunity highlighted distinct views of the types of positions professional women could occupy at the company, reinforcing sex‐segregated job allocation. Whereas women's narratives pointed to cultural resistance, men's narratives attributed the dearth of women in higher level positions to their lack of professionalism and commitment to work. The work policy changeonlyguaranteed therightfor women to work as the company modernized to fit the neoliberal demands of the global marketplace. Now women faced the challenge of turning that right into career advancement in a traditionally masculine‐defined company. I argue that even with the policy change, gendered discourses on women in professional occupations constructed and maintained gender inequities in the workplace. This study contributes to the scholarly discussion on gendered discourses within the context of global restructuring by showinghowmechanisms at work maintain gender inequity in the workplace.

Men's Narratives of Vasectomy

This article interrogates the modes by which cultural constructions of male contraceptive use emerge in Costa Rica by analyzing men's narratives of vasectomy. Drawing on ethnographic research data, I examine men's contraceptive decision making and perspectives on vasectomy and specify the ways they work through their vasectomy to rearticulate the relationship between masculinity and contraceptive responsibility and tensions in an emerging Costa Rican social modernity. Following Oudshoorn's (2003) analysis on male contraceptive research, this article highlights contraceptive technologies and men's narratives of these technologies as key sites for examining gender politics in contemporary societies and the materialization of new social orders. In the discussion, I argue that the men's narratives examined here potentiate creation of an "alternative technosociality" (Oudshoorn 2003) in Costa Rica, in which men taking contraceptive responsibility does not constitute performing a subordinate masculinity, but simply another way of acting as men.

Migrant Men's Fathering Narratives, Practices and Projects in National and Transnational Spaces: Recent Polish Male Migrants to London

Historically migrants have been constructed as units of labour and their social reproductive needs have received scant attention in policy and in academic literature. The growth in ‘feminist‐inflected’ migration research in recent decades, has provoked a body of work on transnational care‐giving that poses a challenge to such a construction, at least as it relates to female migrants in general and mothers in particular. Researchers, however, have demonstrated less interest in how migrant men give meaning to and perform their fathering roles. Such neglect is increasingly problematic in the context of rising social, political and academic interest in the significance of fathering in European (and other) societies. With the purpose of making a preliminary contribution to knowledge on migrant men's fathering narratives, practices and projects, this article draws on findings from interviews conducted with recent migrants from Poland to the UK. By focusing on migrant fatherhood, we add to the understanding of transnational care‐giving by illuminating the many parallels between migrant mothering and fathering. Our findings are consistent with much of the literature on transnational mothering, highlighting tensions between breadwinning and parenting and the various strategies fathers deploy to reconcile these tensions. Nevertheless, we find that migrant men's fathering narratives, practices, and projects, while challenging the construction of male migrants as independent and non‐relational, remain embedded within the dominant framework of the gendered division of labour. More uniquely, the article also demonstrates the importance of situated transnational analyses, in this case the institutional arrangements between the UK and European Union new Member States, which gave the Polish migrants privileged labour market access and social rights within the UK's highly differentiated migration regime. This access allowed mobility, settlement and or family reunion according to the migrant's specific circumstances and preferences with respect to the labour market and parenting.

Disability, sport and men's narratives of health: A qualitative study.

Very little research has been conducted that examines men, sport, masculinities, and disability in the context of health. Readdressing this absence, this article examines the health narratives told by spinal injured men and the work narratives do on, in, and for them. In-depth life history interviews and fieldwork observations with men (n = 17) who sustained a spinal injury through playing sport and are now disabled were conducted. Qualitative data were analyzed using a dialogical narrative analysis. Stories told about health characterized a style of embodied actions choices that anticipated a certain type of narrative, that is, an emergent narrative. The men's narrative habitus, fashioned through the process rehabilitation, predisposed them to be interpellated to care about health. To uphold hegemonic masculinities the men also did not care too much about health. The analysis also reveals the work narratives do on, in, and for health behavior, masculine identities, resilience, leisure time physical activity, and body-self relationships. Implications for health promotion work are highlighted. The article advances knowledge by revealing the emergent narrative of health. It reveals too for the first time the way certain contexts and masculine identities create a new subject of health that cares about doing health work, but not too much. Building on the theoretical knowledge advanced here, this article contributes to practical understandings of men's health and disability by highlighting the potential of narrative for changing human lives and behavior.

Moving beyond the “male perpetrator, female victim” discourse in addressing sex and relationships for HIV prevention: peer research in Eastern Zambia

Despite the resources put into HIV education programmes with young people in sub-Saharan Africa in the past two decades, there is little clear evidence of impact. Many programmes continue to be oriented towards individual behaviour change (and in reality, often sexual abstinence) with insufficient focus on understanding how societies constrain or enable individual agency in sexual decision-making and how this is affected by social norms. If education programmes do address gender they often reinforce a “male perpetrator, female victim” discourse, where girls and women are held responsible for boys' and men's sexuality as well as their own. This paper discusses the discourses around gender, sexuality and HIV constructed by young women and men (aged 16–29) in a rural Eastern Zambia village. Data on young women's and men's narratives were gathered using a participatory peer approach. Research uncovered numerous and sometimes conflicting discourses (cultural, moral, economic, and sexual) influencing young women's and men's thinking about sexuality and sexual behaviour, in particular the limited possibilities for safe consensual sex, and thus their vulnerability to HIV. The research suggests that the realities young people face are much more complex than HIV prevention strategies address. We recommend a more nuanced approach, tailored to the community contexts involved.

Why Me? Male Infertility and Responsibility in the Middle East

Men in the contemporary Middle East suffer from high rates of male infertility, and are generally willing to acknowledge their reproductive impairments. “Taking responsibility” for infertility means seeking a diagnosis, trying assisted reproductive technologies, and engaging in a retrospective process of etiological assessment. Infertile Middle Eastern men's etiological narratives reveal five perceived answers to the “why me?” question: heredity, illicit sex, war, stress, and pollution. Although only one of these factors --heredity --is routinely invoked in the biomedical literature on male infertility, at least three of the other factors may, in fact, be linked to men's infertility in the Middle East. To ameliorate these various factors would require many fundamental improvements in Middle Eastern social conditions, including the elimination of all forms of political violence and oppression. Furthermore, the Reproductive Health Initiative initiated in Cairo in 1994 has done little for the infertile men of the Middle East, as no direct health education programs or treatment services have been made widely available to them. Thus, Middle Eastern men must “take responsibility” for their infertility on their own, seeking out diagnoses, paying for private treatment, and acting as lay epidemiologists in their search for the root causes of their infertility. In the end, Middle Eastern men prove to be astute observers of the social conditions that have produced their reproductive life histories and embodied subjectivities.

Gay men's narratives of gay social norm negotiation in New York City

Gay men's narratives of gay social norm negotiation in New York City

Western men and Eastern arts: The significance of Eastern martial arts disciplines in British men's narratives of masculinity

Previous Western sociological research on Eastern martial arts has identified a tension between ‘traditional’ Eastern forms of practice and ‘modernized’ Western methods of training and competition. In particular, the ‘sportization’ of Eastern styles, where combat-centred arts based upon moral philosophies have transformed more or less into competitive activities following Western models of rationalized sport, has been an important theme. However, it is also suggested that Eastern martial arts hold special significance in the West for their seemingly esoteric nature. In this regard, such martial arts are considered significant because they are not ‘sports’, but rather disciplines, with fairly different connotations for practitioners. Drawing on interview data, this paper explores how Western practitioners of Eastern martial arts articulate this difference, principally by examining the place of martial artistry in British men's narratives of masculinity. Comparing themselves favourably to assumed, typical visions of Western sporting masculinity, such men draw upon the imagined uniqueness of their martial arts to construct a sense of moral superiority over other men. In so doing, they contribute to a rejection of what they believe to be ‘mainstream’ sporting Western masculinity, thus indicating the role that ‘alternative’ visions of physical culture can play in men's active constructions of gender.

Doing masculinity in narratives about reporting violent crime: young male victims talk about contacting and encountering the police

Reporting criminal victimization to the police is no obvious act. The decision to file a complaint varies depending on the specific situation. This article discusses 10 young Swedish men's narratives about contacting the police when mugged or assaulted. Although all of them have contacted the police it has not been self-obvious. Rather, they present reasons for not filing a complaint. However, after persuasion and careful consideration they decided that contacting the police is ‘the right thing to do’. This article discusses how the young men by use of their narratives about reporting crime present identities where victim worthiness is balanced against hegemonic masculinity norms.

Gender differences in autobiographical narratives: He shoots and scores; she evaluates and interprets

Research on autobiographical narratives consistently demonstrates that whereas women's narratives emphasize evaluative information, men's narratives are factually oriented. These narrative differences might reflect gender differences in either the autobiographical knowledge base or the way information from the knowledge base is selected when a narrative is constructed. The present experiment evaluated these two (potentially complementary) hypotheses by assessing memory soon after an event and after a period of 6weeks, using both open-ended (narrative) and factually oriented (questionnaire) measures. Consistent with past literature, women told longer, richer, more evaluative narratives than did men. However, men recalled more factual information both initially and after 6weeks and also constructed narratives that were more factually oriented. These data suggest that men and women value factual information differently and that these differences influence both the contents of the autobiographical knowledge base and the way that information in the knowledge base is used to construct personal narratives.

Transnational masculinities in situ: Singaporean husbands and their international marriage experiences

While most work is still largely concerned with women's experiences and places their narratives under the spotlight of the intellectual domain, there is undoubtedly an increasing realisation that missing out on men's narratives is akin to missing out a piece of the puzzle. The demographic approach tends to portray men who enter international marriages as ‘failed men’ and ‘losers’ in local ‘marriage markets’, and very little is revealed about the multiple positions and strategies taking place in these men's marital lives. This paper adopts an expansive view of transnationalism that argues for an understanding of subjectivities and identities as situated/rooted and mobile simultaneously. Drawing on the argument that ‘mobile’ identities are not necessarily achieved only by bodies on the move, and unsettling the binary between movement/non‐movement and mobility/immobility, I demonstrate how non‐migrant men in international marriages construct their masculine selves across transnational topographies in relation to a range of spaces and times. This attunement to how space is temporalised reveals a series of different times and spaces folded into and unfolded from each other in how narratives are articulated by the Singaporean men in this study. By attending to how temporal modalities of the past, present and future are actively mobilised in the construction of masculine selves in the Singaporean husbands' narratives, I argue that despite their in situ position within transnational topographies, their masculine identities and subjectivities are not bounded by space and time, but rather draws on them to become realised. To demonstrate this argument, this study draws on the narratives collected through in‐depth interviews with 15 Singaporean husbands who have married Vietnamese women.

“It's About Time You Came Out”: Sexualities, Mobility and Home

Abstract: Helping redress the dominance of metropolitan narratives upon which much literature on sexuality is framed, this article interprets the narrative told by a “white” 16-year-old man living in regional Australia. Our aim is to investigate the intersections of migration and homemaking in sexual subject formation. Finding a place to call “home” can be a complex process for young men born in regional Australia and not conforming to the social formations of a “normal guy”. This young man's narrative expressively reveals the fluidity and spatiality inherent in processes of negotiating sexual subjectivities. His story provides telling insights into how migration and mobility change his understandings of home and of self by making possible a third-space configured by neither the gender norms of his hometown nor the “gay scene” in Sydney.