Months and months of health for men. Blue September v Movember face off.
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Blue September wins. At last! Some sense in cancer awareness.
Blue September ‘faces up to cancer in men’ and is a new nationwide awareness and fundraising initiative, all about the cancers that affect men. Note – the cancers that affect men. So not an inappropriately specific concentration on the ones that only men get; prostate, testicular and penile cancer.
So men take the lead to attaining a sensible goal in health! Who’d have thought it? Men showing women the way in an approach to health campaigning? Yeh! It’s related to the sponsors partners – not, for once, a tumour specific cancer charity, but the Men’s Health Forum – interested in health. Interested in men. Not interested in presenting men with one issue and peddling it as if it was the only one, or the most important one.
Blue September is new, welcome and very good luck to it, especially in these straightened times. It is in some respects similar to the highly successful, unrelated but startlingly naive Movember. The M is meant to be there. It’s November, renamed for moustaches, and men. Google it, if you want. Movember promotes itself as a men’s health initiative by supporting prostate and testicular cancer charities.
Excellent! But what about the health issues faced by the other 96% of men, who die from the effects of something else entirely? A pity for Movember then, that men will die of heart problems, bowel cancer, lung conditions, industrial diseases, neurological damage, accident and suicide amongst many other causes in a long and complex litany of failures in men’s health.
Men’s health does not begin, and end, in their genitals. A single issue cancer charity specific to cancers only men can get would shy away from that fact. ‘It would dilute the brand’ or some such other self serving nonsense.
I know whom I think better embodies the ‘men’s health charity’ ethos.
Now Blue September is here and I look forward to seeing how it gets on, tackling all cancers and all men. As long as men are encouraged to admire, envy and reproduce the dimwit paradigm of women and breast cancer as a gold standard in promoting womens' health, men’s health will continue to fare badly.
Blue September will raise funds for more work by the Men’s Health Forum to improve men's awareness of all cancers and help them reduce the risk of developing and dying from cancer through better lifestyle choices and seeking help sooner rather than later.
What's not to like?
Comments
testicular cancer
Having just read your blog dated 29.7.11 re Blue September re Movember I feel compelled to comment.
I completely agree that men's health needs to be addressed as a whole, however I do not feel that having a charity or awareness campaign that is focused on one specific cancer is a negative thing.
I speak for testicular cancer in particular as I volunteer for The Mark Gorry Foundation - a testicular cancer charity. We had a very personal reason for founding this charity; our friend Mark died of testicular cancer in November 2009. We raise funds but also awareness of this type of cancer. We know that currently testicular cancer is very low on the agenda of mens cancer (due to its rarity) but that is exactly the reason why we work so hard to raise awareness.
Other mens health issues are dealt with and 'out there' but over the past two years I have spoken to thousands of young men who WERE NOT aware that they were in the age range that testicular cancer affects the most. Even if, out of those thousands of men, only one man detects testicular cancer earlier, it potentially saves his life.
We do have other info available, but we do not want to dilute the message we deliver and we do want to continue to break the TABOO surrounding mens testicles.