Sujeitos com câncer de próstata: gênero, sexualidade e cuidados com a saúde

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to problematize how men build subjectively with prostate cancer being crossed by different real discourses about masculinity. There for, a qualitative empirical research was carried out, with eleven subjects diagnosed with this type of cancer and using the urology services of two hospitals: a private one and a public one settled down in the city of Recife. Some ethnographic resources were used, from the following instruments: the Narrative Interview and the Field Diary. The results were analyzed through Foucault's Enunciative or his Discursive Analysis, which aims to understand a set of conditions of existence that make possible the construction of a datum phenomenon. This author problematized his objects of study, starting from the historical conditions in which they emerged and understood the subject as an inhabitant crossed by the relations of knowledge, power and the ethics of a historical moment. In this thesis, the concept of hegemonic masculinity was considered, holding it as a discourse, according to Foucault, who reckons it a set of knowledges that function as truths. The results of this study point to a thin line between subjection and resistance to the discourses that circulate in our society, in the way these men are constituted and in the positions of subject that they assume. When it comes to health care, our interviewees assume positions of subject dependent on their own women, crossed by speeches that it is from the "nature" of the woman to take care of husbands and children. On the other hand, the strong man's discourse is used to ground the position of male domination about the female. Speeches about what they are allowed to do to be considered "males" lead these men not wanting to perform the rectal examination. They narrate the fear that, in making such an examination, they become "familiarized", which is associated with homosexuality. However, the discourses that circulate in a certain society, and ours is no exception, are multiple and almost always contradictory. The presence of programs that encourage human health care, PNAISH and the Campaign Blue November Campaign, call men to self-monitoring, and configure control and power over their lives (biopower and biopolitics). These discourses emerge as imperatives in building a culture of health care and, thus, other seemingly contradictory subject positions are assumed, it is 'obligatory' to take care of health and to be healthy. In addition, when medical guidance is not engaging in sex, it leads them to a reductionist understanding of human sexuality; sex is understood only as intercourse. It indicates a vigilant, normalized and controlled sexuality, with "truths" imposed by diverse knowledge, without problematizing these discourses. Finally, it was found that, despite cancer, being culturally a stigmatized disease associated with death, it was possible for some of these men to resist, not only believing in the possibility of cure, but constructing other ways of existing, an aesthetics of existence.