Men, masculinities and health: a reflection of gender in the historical perspective

Abstract

Historically, the way the Occident understands men and women was characterized by differences and asymmetries in concept as well as social and politic aspects. During this trajectory, women suffered both a social oppression and a process of medicalization of their body and sexuality. As a reaction, the feminist movement protested against this submission and, with the objective to construct a critical concept of the feminine, took the gender approach as a category capable of enclosing the characteristics that the conceptions of sex did not. In the other hand, men were, most of the time, the parameter of a “natural model” and, only in the last decades, started being studied considering their specialties, under the point of view of gender and of construction of masculinities. Therefore, the place of masculine presents the paradox of being a socially privileged space and, at the same time, traditionally receives a reductionist and generalist approach.