A B S T R A C TWe employ Raymond Williams's concept of "emergence" to capture new forms of embodied masculinities in the Middle East and Mexico, two sites marked by powerful local stereotypes of manliness. Men there are enacting "emergent masculinities"-living out new ways of being men in attempts to counter forms of manhood that they see as harmfully hegemonic. They do this partly through engagements with emergent health technologies, including assisted reproductive technologies for male infertility and pharmaceutical technologies for erectile dysfunction that today are reshaping sociopolitical and intimate realities. We argue that masculinities research within anthropology must account for these ongoing, embodied changes in men's enactments of masculinities over time on both individual and societal levels. Furthermore, we heed R. W. Connell's advice that reformulations of hegemonic masculinity theory must consider new comparative geographies, forms of masculine embodiment, and social dynamics of masculinity around the globe. [men, masculinity, emergent masculinities, male infertility, erectile dysfunction, assisted reproductive technology, Viagra, Middle East, Mexico] A nthropologists and gender theorists have long argued that gender is not a natural essence but is relationally performed in response to an individual's particular cultural and structural situation (Butler 1990;de Beauvoir 1975;Mead 2001; Ortner and Whitehead 1981). These claims grew out of attempts to understand women's subordinate status worldwide, and it is because of this interest that ethnographic investigations of gender have historically focused on women (Reiter 1975; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). In comparison, relatively few studies address the social construction of maleness and masculinity. For example, a 2006 review of the 157 existing ethnographies of gender and reproduction found that only one of these works, Birthing Fathers (Reed 2005), focused on men (Inhorn 2006). This is a problematic state of affairs, because excluding men from the study of gender suggests that their bodies, attitudes, and actions are both "natural" and "essential" (Gutmann 2007).To combat this imbalance, a growing body of anthropological work has focused a social constructionist lens on manhood, generating new understandings of local masculinities. Much of the seminal work in this area has come from Latin America and the Mediterranean region (Brandes 1981;

BackgroundHPV infection causes cervical cancer, a major contributor to morbidity and mortality among low-income Mexican women. Human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing is now a primary screening strategy in Mexico’s early cervical cancer detection program (ECDP). Research on Mexican women’s perceptions of HPV and testing is necessary for establishing culturally appropriate protocols and educational materials. Here, we explore perceptions about HPV and HPV-related risk factors among low-income Mexican ECDP participants.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 ECDP participants from two primary care health clinics in Michoacán state, Mexico. Interviews addressed women’s understandings of and experiences with HPV and HPV testing. Analysis was inductive and guided by the Health Belief Model with a focus on gender.ResultsWomen’s confusion about HPV and HPV screening caused emotional distress. They understood HPV to be a serious disease that would always cause severe symptoms, often characterizing it as analogous to HIV or inevitably carcinogenic. Women also attributed it to men’s sexual behaviors, specifically infidelity and poor hygiene. Women described both sexes’ desire for sex as natural but understood men’s negative practices of masculinity, like infidelity, as the causes of women’s HPV infection. Some women believed dirty public bathrooms or heredity could also cause HPV transmission.ConclusionsThese results are consistent with prior findings that geographically and economically diverse populations lack clear understandings of the nature, causes, or symptoms of HPV, even among those receiving HPV testing. Our findings also reveal that local cultural discourse relating to masculinity, along with failure to provide sufficient education to low-income and indigenous-language speaking patients, exacerbate women’s negative emotions surrounding HPV testing. While negative emotions did not deter women from seeking testing, they could be ameliorated with better health education and communication.

As lifestyle drug production and medical interest in geriatrics increase, the medicalization of aging and sexuality have become intertwined. Drugs like Viagra naturalize lifelong performance of phallocentric sex as a marker of healthy aging. Yet despite the ubiquity of medical aids for having "youthful" sex in older age, this article argues that having no or less sex can be a conscious strategy for embodying respectable aging. Based on ethnographic research in a Cuernavaca, Mexico, hospital urology department, this article shows that despite the traditional association of penetrative sex with successful masculinity, many older, working-class Mexican men faced with erectile difficulty reject "youthful" sexuality and drugs that facilitate it in order to embody a "mature" masculinity focused on home and family. This article argues that social encouragement and structural disincentives for medicalizing erectile difficulty encouraged men to interpret decreasing erectile function as natural and appropriate.

Background Vaccine hesitancy could undermine the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination programs. Knowledge about people’s lived experiences regarding COVID-19 vaccination can enhance vaccine promotion and increase uptake. Aim To use COVID-19 vaccine trial participants’ experiences to identify key themes in the lived experience of vaccination early in the vaccine approval and distribution process. Methods We interviewed 31 participants in the Iowa City, Iowa US site of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine phase 3 clinical trial. While trial participation differs from clinical receipt of an approved vaccine in key ways, it offers the first view of people’s lived experiences of potentially receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The trial context is also useful since decision-making about vaccination and medical research participation often involve similar hopes and concerns, and because the public appears to view even approved COVID-19 vaccines as experimental given their novelty. Semi-structured interviews addressed subjects’ experiences, including decision-making and telling others about their trial participation. We analyzed verbatim transcripts of these interviews thematically and identified common themes relevant for vaccination decision-making. Results Participants across demographic groups, including age, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation, described largely similar experiences. Key motivations for participation included ending the pandemic/restoring normalcy, protecting oneself and others, doing one’s duty, promoting/modeling vaccination, and expressing aspects of identity like being a helper, career-related motivations, and support of science/vaccines. Participants often felt uniquely qualified to help via trial participation due to personal attributes like health, sex/gender or race/ethnicity. They reported hearing concerns about side effects and the speed and politicization of vaccine development. Participants responded by normalizing and contextualizing side effects, de-politicizing vaccine development, and explaining how the rapid development process was nevertheless safe. Conclusion These findings regarding participants’ reported motivations for trial participation and interactions with concerned others can be incorporated into COVID-19 vaccine promotion messaging aimed at similar populations.

Men are poorly integrated into sexual and reproductive health programmes, despite long-standing calls for their inclusion. From the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) to the Policy Recommendations for the ICPD Beyond 2014, calls for 'rights for all' conflict with implicit, homogenising framing of men as patriarchal roadblocks to women's empowerment. This framing generates ambivalence about providing men's services, leading to emphasis on 'men as partners' supporting women's autonomous reproductive health decision-making rather than attention to both sexes' health needs. We argue that this framing also belies both the global rise of self-consciously non-traditional masculinities, and the fact that people's ostensibly individual sexual and reproductive health practices are profoundly relational. Here, we reimagine the concept of 'partnering' as an analytic for understanding how lived relationships influence both men's and women's sexual and reproductive practice. 'Partnering' in this sense is the context-dependent collaboration through which a range of gendered actors, not limited to male-female dyads, interact to shape health behaviour. We apply this approach to Mexican men's participation in a medical research on human papillomavirus transmission, demonstrating how spouses jointly refashioned male-focused health surveillance into familial health care and a forum for promoting progressive gender norms to their children and the broader society.