The ‘prison’ of toxic masculinity can prevent men from seeking medical care. Canada wants to fix it

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in early April 2020, Colter Bouchard was just a few weeks into becoming a father when he noticed a lump on his neck.

The then-29-year-old Toronto radio host feared it was cancer, but waited to get it checked. Maybe it was just stress, she thought.

“Part of it was that I like to take a ‘wait and hope it goes away’ approach,” Bouchard said. the currentMatt Galloway.

Bouchard didn’t go to his doctor until a second lump was discovered a month later. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“I started to panic when I thought it might be cancer,” Bouchard said. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to look like that. I don’t want to be a withered part of my current self.'”

His experience is not unusual.

Researchers and health advocates say many men delay seeking care even when symptoms appear — a trend the federal government says it hopes to reverse. develop a strategy The focus was on improving the health of men and boys.

recent data Statistics Canada shows that men face different health challenges, including higher rates of suicide, substance abuse and premature or preventable death.

“Too often, men and boys hear the same message: tough it out, shut up and go it alone,” Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez said at a press conference in February.

Health Canada says the strategy, to be released later this year, aims to “promote supportive and safe environments, challenge harmful stereotypes, reduce stigma and encourage men of all ages to seek help when they need it.”

Why do men wait?

A common thread in some of the figures mirrors Bouchard’s story; Awaiting care. Nearly 65 percent of men waited at least six days before seeking help for symptoms, according to a September 2025 report released by Movember, a men’s health advocacy organization. And according to the results, nearly one in 10 delayed care by more than two years.

These figures don’t surprise Dr. David Kuhl, a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia, who studies how trauma, masculinity and fatherhood shape men’s health.

Kuhl, who works closely with firefighters, says he often sees Canadian men avoid seeking health care because they feel it challenges their identities as men — a belief partly shaped by broader cultural messaging.

“At the core of it are the messages they’ve been given about what it means to be a man,” Kuhl said. “It ends up there being ‘I don’t ask for help, I’m independent, I suppress some of my feelings and I’m isolated in that.’

The ‘vicious circle’ of the manosphere

Timothy Caulfield, a professor in the Faculty of Law and School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, says many of the health challenges men face are linked to messaging from the so-called “manosphere” – a broad term used to describe online communities and its content. Critics say misogynistic and harmful ideas are promoted .

Caulfield said, “Many of these harms…are deeply tied to the embrace of traditional masculine norms.” “There is a men’s health crisis that has been going on for a long time, and the manosphere that is exploiting the existence of this crisis is only making it worse.”

Messages targeting men on social media, podcasts, gamer communities, and other digital spaces often promote an aggressive definition of masculinity in which dominance and physical appearance are markers of male worth.

And it creates a “vicious cycle,” Caulfield said.

“You have this real problem with men’s health… overall well-being, feeling isolated,” he said. “The manosphere presents itself as a solution (but) that solution is hypermasculinity, which is exactly the wrong thing we need.”

redefining masculinity

Caulfield says any national strategy must acknowledge the broader cultural forces shaping men’s health, including the growing influence of online influencers and even political movements.

“I mean, everything that happened in the United States around MAGA, there were elements of the manosphere,” Caulfield said. “It’s not something that’s happening on the sidelines, it’s becoming the core of pop culture.”

For Bouchard, part of the solution is to encourage men to share their experiences.

“I think the biggest thing that can be done is to normalize the conversation about this,” he said. “It comes from encouraging men to talk to other men.”

Kuhl agrees.

“We…need to understand that men want to talk about (their health issues), but they want to talk about it with people who can use their language…and have an understanding of what’s going on in their bodies and minds,” Kuhl said.

He says those conversations must also include how masculinity – a term often associated with “toxic” – is viewed and understood.

“We can talk about how ‘providing for my family’ means (that) I stay healthy,” Kuhl said. “It means that then instead of being afraid I take the courage and say, ‘I’m going to talk to someone about this,’ and hopefully I find a doctor who understands what it means to talk to a man.”

Emphasizing the positive aspects of masculinity, such as the willingness to provide and care for the family, he adds, is crucial to that reframing. Kuhl encourages family doctors to get boys and men into the health care system earlier — and not just when they’re already in crisis.

For example, Kuhl says, physicians can invite fathers to be part of prenatal visits and signal that their health matters, too.

“If it’s primarily women and children who are coming… inform them that you are interested in the health of the family and that you would really like to have a conversation with the father,” Kuhl said. “So that becomes familiar with how men understand health (care) and how it is delivered and integrates that into the whole picture of what we do in family practice.”

Health advocates say focusing on men’s health could also have broader public health benefits.

Caulfield points to research showing that “individuals who adopt traditional masculine norms are less likely to adopt public health behaviors” such as getting vaccinated.

“(They’re) also less likely to do things like wear sunscreen or eat healthy because those things are not considered masculine,” Caulfield said. “So there’s really a broader public health component to this that needs to be addressed.”

He hopes the federal strategy will reinforce the message that being a man includes taking the necessary steps to stay healthy, so men can support their families and be there for them.

For Bouchard, who is now a relationship and lifestyle builder and also works with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada, she says the greatest irony is that she has never felt stronger after confronting the thoughts that once held her back.

He says the struggle – and ultimately defeating cancer twice – forced him to break free from the “prison” of toxic masculinity he once lived in.

“I no longer recognize the person I used to be,” Bouchard said. “I think it’s great irony that I’m so much stronger now, having passed (cancer) and accepting myself that I was in prison.”