RESUMO
This autoethnography explores my experiences as a hospital entrance screener during the first wave of the pandemic in a hospital in Ontario, Canada. In April 2020, I was redeployed from my research role to a hospital entrance screener. Focused on my lived experiences, the purpose of this research is to provide a glimpse into what it was like to work in a hospital early in the pandemic, to understand these experiences in relation to sociocultural meanings, and to try to make sense of my experiences with COVID-19. Through reflections, I offer a critical account of my experiences working as a screener and analyze personal reflections about my thoughts, feelings, and experiences from a post-structural lens. My analysis reveals several themes: responsibilization, risk, emotional labor, policing and securitization, and the hero discourse. My experiences as a screener demonstrate the complexities of the COVID-19 society and experience.
RESUMO
Informed by social constructionism, biomedicalization, and a feminist framework, a discourse analysis was performed on 31 popular news articles published in North America between 2000 and 2010. The magazines construct prostate cancer in a gendered manner. Its construction is rooted in themes that are related to discussions of biology, prostate cancer as a heterosexual problem, the responsibilization of health and masculinity. Through these constructions, the popular news articles reinforce dominant ideals and performances of hegemonic masculinity and male sexuality, traditional femininity, and heteronormativity. While reinforcing such ideals, the prevention, treatment, and knowledge of prostate cancer is constructed as the responsibility of individual men. This study reveals that the articles favor discussions of heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity over racism, rendering health inequalities silent.