Physical Health Effects: Why they continue
Even if one man wants to fight back against gender roles and express a more progressive form of masculinity, he is still often influenced by what he thinks everyone else is thinking (source).
For example, the popular expectation of men that they are able to drink a lot could lead to the following events.
- A man drinks a lot at a social event.
- The man might know that he is too drunk to drive home.
- However, he thinks other people expect men to be able to hold their alcohol.
- Therefore, he still drives home to not look emasculated in front of his friends.
- He endangers his own life and the lives of others all to appear tough and invincible, which are two popular male stereotypes.
Physical health effects continue because men don't talk about them. The fact that men often refuse to seek help and admit that they are hurt makes their own injuries worse and reduces the research that goes into men's issues since they are vastly underreported.