MADRID — What role should men have in women’s health? That’s the question journalist Golda Arthur asks in the latest episode of Overlooked, an award-winning podcast about women’s health that shines a light on what usually gets left out of the conversation.
Arthur starts the episode interviewing men on the street. “I was taken aback by how weirdly eager men were to talk about women’s health to a random stranger with a mic,” she later wrote in her newsletter.
And it got me thinking: Why do we men get uncomfortable when women talk about ovaries, periods, or surgical menopause? Do we even know what endometriosis is? Why should we care about these issues?
A key moment in the podcast comes when Arthur interviews Sanj Singh, from Temple Therapeutics, a company focused on precision medicine for women’s health. Sanj, who grew up with an obstetrician-gynecologist mother, wanted to break men’s silence around the topic.
For Singh, “curiosity is the first step” toward getting men interested in women’s health. But as I listened, something didn’t sit right with me: should women really have to put in the effort to spark that curiosity? Or should we men take the initiative to learn, to get involved?
At the end of the episode, Arthur admits her discomfort: “I don’t have the time or the inclination to inspire curiosity in men about my health or the health of women in general. I think I have to change my approach, because the stakes are too high really for men to not be curious, to not be champions.”
Listening to Golda Arthur’s podcast reminded me of something I wrote two years ago about how we men deal with our own health.
Casciari’s machismo
A few years ago, I used to read the stories and essays by Argentine writer Hernán Casciari on his blog (in Spanish). Then, suddenly, something about his tone struck me: the casual machismo. Among other things, he used words like “fag” and “queer” as if they were punchlines — and I stopped finding them funny.
I didn’t feel like reading him anymore (and judging by the Facebook comments, I wasn’t the only one). Until I came across another of his texts (from 2016) that put things into perspective. It echoed my discomfort — and invited me not to judge too quickly. Casciari admitted to his own machismo, and somehow, that felt inspiring.
I made a note of that moment to share someday. Time passed, and then this week I saw a video of Casciari reading that very text on the radio (to be precise, a 2021 version of the 2016 original). He says: “I was born male, in Latin America, in the 1970s. And because of that, every time I cry, it’s hard not to think, ‘I’m acting like a girl’ or ‘I’m being a little sissy.’ That’s a lot of years being an idiot who thought he was funny.”
Raising a daughter
The writer recalls how, as a teenager, some female friends called out his sexist attitudes — ones he couldn’t see or refused to admit. “I thought machismo and feminism were two extremes, and I made fun of both,” says Casciari, who later became a father for the first time.
“When I was raising my daughter, I practiced a kind of pseudo-progressive irony: saying words like ‘fag,’ ‘slut,’ ‘black’ in front of her, thinking they were harmless — or even funny. I also argued without substance at dinner tables, spouting hypocritical phrases like, ‘Don’t exaggerate… Not all men are like that.’”
We also recognize that feeling of being idiots, and wondering what to do about it?
Casciari has written over 500 stories online — and in at least 20 of them, there’s some macho phrase or outdated idea that he now says would make him “ashamed” to read. So he asks himself what to do with those stories: “Delete them? That would be cowardly. Edit out the ugly bits? That would make me a phony. So I decided to keep them, but with a disclaimer — to own up to who I was, so I can be less of an idiot from here on.”
Symbols and blind spots
Many of us men recognize ourselves in that search — to stay alert to symbols, to clichés, and to our own blind spots. We also recognize that feeling of being idiots, and wondering what to do about it. “I don’t make fake-progressive jokes anymore,” Casciari says. “I train myself to push back, even in arguments — especially there, where it’s hardest for me. But I try.”
I don’t know what he does in his private life, but I like that, at least in his writing, Casciari focuses on making the effort himself — to change, to question stereotypes, to stop downplaying or dodging these issues.
That makes Golda Arthur’s frustration even clearer when she says she doesn’t have the time or energy to spark men’s curiosity about women’s health. She’s asking — without quite saying it — that we men make an effort too. That we stop outsourcing change and get involved ourselves, at least through listening, learning, and taking responsibility.