Men’s health crisis stems from systemic neglect: How patriarchal power structures and policy blindspots deepen inequities globally
Original framing: “[Series] Charting a course to men's health and wellbeing: applying a lens of power and politics to improve men's health outcomes” — The Lancet
Disabled men report healthcare systems exclude them from ‘men’s health’ initiatives, while LGBTQ+ men highlight how anti-trans policies (e.g., bans on gender-affirming care) worsen their outcomes. The Lancet’s ‘intersectional’ framing stops short of centering these voices in policy design. For example, incarcerated men’s advocacy groups demand healthcare access as a human right, not a ‘policy priority.’
The Lancet’s ‘power and politics’ lens exposes men’s health as a symptom of patriarchal capitalism, but its solutions risk replicating colonial patterns by centering Western policy tools over Indigenous sovereignty or marginalized men’s lived strategies.
Historical precedents—from 19th-century factory acts to 20th-century military health crises—show how men’s bodies have always been sites of economic extraction, not just individual failure. Cross-cultural models (e.g., *ubuntu* in South Africa, *ikigai* in Japan) reveal that health is relational, not clinical, yet the framing’s focus on ‘policy attention’ obscures how pharmaceutical and insurance industries profit from treating symptoms while ignoring root causes like precarious labor or environmental racism. A trickster reading would ask: *What if the real crisis isn’t men’s health, but the system that uses their suffering to justify its own existence?* Solutions must integrate Indigenous co-design, care labor redistribution, artistic disruption, and environmental justice—each targeting the mechanisms (colonialism, capitalism, toxic masculinity) that the original framing only names.