‘Gay issues have come and it is worrying us’: Interrogating vulnerability, masculinities, and reproduction through queerphobic narratives among men in Accra, Ghana
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55016/ojs/jcph.vi.79561Keywords:
Reproduction, Queer, Masculinities, VulnerabilityAbstract
Reproduction is tied to gendered social, economic, and political systems. Interrogating these connections is crucial for health policies and programmes that seek transformative change. Public health’s focus on biomedical vulnerabilities – how the body is susceptible to harm – is unable to capture the full and complex factors that contribute to reproductive inequities and injustices. Operationalising an understanding of vulnerability as a social process, this article examines how men conceptualise their own reproductive vulnerabilities and the implications this may have. This article draws on qualitative interviews with men, from a multi-method project on masculinities and sexual and reproductive health and rights in Accra, Ghana. Analysing men’s expressions of queerphobia through the lens of vulnerability, this article highlights the significant link between masculinities and reproduction. Masculinities are embedded in precarious, gendered economic systems and social and cultural institutions. Men’s experiences of the vulnerability of their masculinities in this context manifest as queerphobia and a (re)entrenchment of gendered norms around reproduction, which can perpetuate and exacerbate inequities and injustices. This article argues that using a more critical understanding of vulnerabilities makes visible the gendered systems and precarity that create key obstacles to reproductive health, rights, and justice.
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