They are there, but sometimes it can really be hard to seperate from other things. OK here is an example; an old friends eleven year son is a real jock kid - plays football, basketball, baseball and soccer. Well apparently he had been having stomach pains for months and not mentioning them. So now that he has finally been diagnosed with stomach cancer it is extremely advanced. And we all hope he will recover; the doctors seem to think he has a good chance, but it is certainly much worse than if it had been diagnosed earlier. He explained when asked why he never said anything he said he did "not want to complain".
Now that gives me a strong impression that it was the whole male jock culture; complaining about pain is for whiners; no pain, no gain etc. etc. Given the variety of coaches he has played under, I can't imagine he was NOT exposed to that. So we might give this as an example of victimization of a male by male culture.
Except that extreme stoicism to the point of absurdity is neither exclusivly male or exclusivly jock. I've known plenty of women who were obsesive about ignoring pain, and just getting on with things. His mother was relentlessly cheerful through breast cancer - including complications from the treatment. Which is not the same thing as ignoring pain, but you never know what a kid will take from an adult example; it is not neccesarily what the adult is actually doing. In short it is a tragedy - and it might in part be tragedy brought about by a certain view of what a man is, but I'm not sure that is the case.
I'm not sure what if anything this proves - other than analyzing it as a political problem is a momentary relief from worrying about it.
Of course there is also the issue of two people in one working class family in Miami, Florida getting cancer; definitely another "benefit" of living in the U.S. empire.
peace and justice
Gar