"A Normal Amount of Masculine Hardness": Representations of Male Nurses in 1960s West Germany.

The nursing studies narrative of the role of masculinity can be summarized as follows: hegemonic masculinity prevents men from doing care work. An analysis of public relations efforts to recruit male nurses in West Germany during the 1960s does not provide evidence for such a link. Representing nursing as compatible with hegemonic masculinity was also able to legitimize the existence of male nurses, while the idea of promoting gender equality in nursing was advocated by exactly those institutions that enabled the eventual gender inequality within the profession. Finally, the thesis of hegemonic masculinity as some kind of anti-caregiving agent comes into question because of the success of the civilian service in West Germany, despite the gender shaming used to deter men from enlisting in it.

["Should the staff's attitude towards the patients remain unchanged, I will not guarantee anything." Protest masculinity and coping of "rebellious patients" at the Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital on the eve of deinstitutionalization]. / "Sollte sich die Einstellung des Personals gegenüber den Patienten nicht ändern, garantiere ich für nichts mehr!" Protestmännlichkeit und KrankheitsbewäItigung von "aufsässigen Patienten" der Psychiatrischen Universitätskinik Heidelberg am Vorabend der Psychiatriereform.

This article analyses the illness experiences of male patients from the Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital during the protests against Psychiatry in the year 1973. Protest is one of the most important expressions of masculinity in socially disadvantaged men, such as men with mental disorders. The analysis of 100 medical records shows that some patients tried to construct themselves as men in a way that was explicitly motivated by antipsychiatric ideas: They questioned psychiatric authority, behaved "sexually inappropriate", or used drugs. On the eve of psychiatric reform in West Germany those patients were well aware that the alternative--complying with the treatment--would put them at considerable risk. In addition to the usual inference of hegemonic or normative masculinities as risk-factors, the behavior of those ,,rebellious patients" has to be interpreted as individual coping strategies.