‘You’ve got to learn how to be more vulnerable’: exploring the shifting geographies of men living with chronic illness

In this paper, we contribute to geographic scholarship on masculinities through an examination of the interweaving of gender and disability in the shifting social geographies of men who live with chronic physical illness. Using an in-depth qualitative and visual arts methodology with men who live with MS and Fibromyalgia, we consider how their changing physical and cognitive capacities can make it difficult to approximate an able-bodied masculinity. Our analysis highlights two key themes. First, the diverse physical and cognitive impacts of chronic illness pose problems for masculine embodiment in different ways in different places. Problems are perhaps most acute in the context of the workplace but also impact gendered domestic geographies. Second, gendered relations of care and support are transformed by experiences of chronic illness. On the one hand, men are increasingly dependent on others for support. This places new demands on existing relationships that impact the doing of gender. On the other hand, changes wrought by chronic illness involve some men more actively in the provision of care. We examine what this means for the re-gendering of care.