This fact about men appeared in the Excellus Blue Cross Medicare Member e-Insider newsletter, June 2025:
“June is National Men’s Health Month, the perfect time to remember that when it comes to health, men and women often see things differently.
A recent survey of more than 1,000 U.S. males found that 72% of them would prefer doing chores like mowing the grass or cleaning the bathroom to seeing a health care provider. Many admit to feeling uneasy talking about sensitive issues or don’t want to feel ashamed or judged. Other men say they don’t want to be told they need to change their lifestyles.
No matter what your gender, it’s important to not think of health care as a chore; it’s an act of self-care and self-respect.”
Why is this so? Our explanation in The Sixth Level is that men as a group, men in patriarchies, are performatively masculine, acting stoic and brave, concealing the pain behind a mask of masculinity. This traps men by the constant fear of being unmasked as insufficiently masculine, and that admitting weakness will lead to humiliation. As a result, men do not seek help, and we see startling rates for men of medical issues, alcoholism, drug use, and suicide. In other words, adopting American masculine attitudes toward self-care can be dangerous to men’s health!
In The Sixth Level we argue that a central feature of a more content life is the “ethic of care,” and how as humans thrive and are generative when we have caring relationships with others, at home and at work. Socio-psychologically, self-care as part of the ethic of care – that our own well-being is important for ourselves and the one’s we love and who love us.
How can we get men to see their doctors, to seek a psychotherapist, to break their silence and denial? There are two paths, one which encourages men to self-care by playing on their responsibilities as husbands and fathers – a kind of DARE or Scared Straight program for men. But this has not proved to work because it does not counter the more pernicious control of masculine expression that involves guilt and shame.
The other path uses a social norms approach that shows that there is another way that is a more expansive masculinity – seen in the work of groups like Equimundo that emphasize the fathering through care and empathy. Men need to hear from other men, man-to-man, who demonstrate a “different voice,” an ethic of care that includes self-care and express this as a masculine norm. Such conversations are men’s clear responsibility. The Sixth Level provides a path to a fuller expression of men’s humanity and can vivify men’s relationships with their spouses and partners, their children, and work and play places.