Description

The book is a scan from the original 2001 Academic Publishing Services edition. Scanned and re produced (exact without addition) by Happy Fool Publishing Group.

This book explores gender issues from an unusual and atypical ethnographic approach. It looks at the myths of male nurse gender representations in mental health nursing culture. It is not interested per se in whether men are suited for nursing, or if they have the necessary abilities, attractiveness or caring to provide patient centred care. It is not distracted by these typical issues and emphasises a recognition in the seduction of gender ‘difference’ politics. Instead it provides a structural and post structural critique of more mundane and unappealing issues as experienced in the everyday lives of male mental health nurses. It uses excerpts from ethnographic research conducted by the author and will be of use to anyone interested in gender identity and contextually distinct post structural cultural research.

This book was originally published by Academic Publishing Services (APS) in 2001. Between then and now the world of gender politics, the fragmentation of identity and the collapse of the self (at least outside of the narrative) have continued to gather pace into the post-structural theoretical space. There may have been a time when a critique of gender, particularly in nursing, was witness to advancements into what we think we know about typical and everyday experiences of men in female saturated professions. Yet in the passing 12 years since the first publication of this little book there appears to have been only apathetic yet, enduring attempts by nursing discourse to do little or nothing in relation to gender concerns of the profession as a whole. To the point where gender is little more than a trigger for punch lines about ‘multi-tasking’ and ‘jobs for the boys’. The stories shared in this book demonstrate that gender is a site of conflict at both a personal and professional level. One which is inconvenient and yet so persistent.