Cancer, sex and notions of manhood

THE EDITOR, Sir:

THERE IS another potential debate: manhood versus womanhood. We can start with an article carried in The Sunday Gleaner of April 8, 2018, titled ‘Sexual performance big concern for men diagnosed with cancer’.

This article is a pièce de résistance of the stark difference between how a man and a woman think and the scope of their respective roles. According to the article, upon learning of the transience of his mortality, the first thing that comes to a man’s mind is, ‘what does this mean for my manhood?’ Unfortunately, our culture has bestowed upon him a very constricted scope of manhood: sexual performance.

Women, on the other hand, when faced with a similar dilemma demonstrate a much wider scope of womanhood: ‘prospect for survival and how the disease will affect their finances, image and efforts to get pregnant’. Inferring from the article, her concern about ‘image’ is not borne out of her own vanity but that of her spouse’s.

Nationhood equals manhood plus womanhood. If we, therefore, wish to build a better nation, it is time we looked more seriously on the above equation. Our cultural curriculum, as regards how men are taught, needs urgent overhaul.

It is time the scope of manhood be expanded. It can no longer be just about sexual performance in an entertaining way, often without thought of consequences. We need to raise the scope of manhood closer to that of womanhood and we will begin to see some amazing results.