GUYnecology by Rene Almeling - Paper - University of California Press

About the Book

What is healthy sperm or the male biological clock? This book details why we don't talk about men's reproductive health and how this lack shapes reproductive politics today.

For more than a century, the medical profession has made enormous efforts to understand and treat women’s reproductive bodies. But only recently have researchers begun to ask basic questions about how men’s health matters for reproductive outcomes, from miscarriage to childhood illness. What explains this gap in knowledge, and what are its consequences?

Rene Almeling examines the production, circulation, and reception of biomedical knowledge about men’s reproductive health. From a failed nineteenth-century effort to launch a medical specialty called andrology to the contemporary science of paternal effects, there has been a lack of attention to the importance of men’s age, health, and exposures. Analyzing historical documents, media messages, and qualitative interviews, GUYnecology demonstrates how this non-knowledge shapes reproductive politics today.

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Virtual Q&A with Rene Almeling, author of GUYnecology

Is there such a thing as a "male biological clock"? What do we really know about men's reproductive health?The answer, accordingly to author Rene Almeling, is surprisingly little. In contrast, the medical specialty of gynecology, focused on women's reproductive health, began over 100 years ago.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction

Part I Medical Specialization and the Making of Biomedical Knowledge
1. Whither GUYnecology?
2. Andrology Again

Part II Circulating Knowledge about Men’s Reproductive Health
3. Making Knowledge about Paternal Effects (with Jenna Healey)
4. Reproductive Health for Half the Public

Part III Men’s Views of Reproduction
5. Sex, Sperm, and Fatherhood
6. Healthy Sperm?

Conclusion: The Politics of Men’s Reproductive Health
Appendix A: Methods
Appendix B: Interviewees
Notes
Bibliography

Reviews

"GUYnecology is methodologically rich, including analysis of historical documents, investigating how scientific knowledge is (or is not) disseminated and engaged by the media, and presenting Almeling's qualitative interviews about subjects' impressions of men’s reproductive health. Together with her previous work (Sex Cells) on the gendered rhetoric used in the reproductive industry, GUYnecology offers the sociologist a robust understanding of the gendered cultural discourses that inform people’s approaches to reproductive health. . . . Highly recommended."
— CHOICE

"Almeling explains why no medical specialty exists that is devoted to male reproductive health—the guy equivalent of gynecology. When it comes to penis science, it seems, men have gotten shafted."
— Scientific American

"A methodical writer. . . , Almeling puts new data about male reproduction to work."

— Times Literary Supplement

"By convincingly documenting the active construction of this non-knowledge, this book makes a key contribution to our understanding of the ways that Western gender ideologies have become naturalized in biomedicine and reified in public imaginations of sexed bodies."
— Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"In its core argument that knowledge and non-knowledge about reproductive health stem from binary and 'opposite' conceptualizations of gender, GUYnecology is a critical contribution to our understanding of men, masculinities, and reproduction."
— Men and Masculinities

"GUYnecology is both accessible and imaginative from the opening tableau. . . . Almeling makes use of helpful analogies and metaphors to explain what can sometimes be complex or highly theoretical concepts, such as those of relationships between gender and sex. Aside from the specific research contained in the book, these introductory explanations will no doubt be of use to those new to the subject (or process) of gender from an academic perspective, and for those teaching these subjects."
— Social History of Medicine

"GUYnecology is a generative book and acts as a foundation from which future scholars can build the field of reproductive health. The book convincingly argues the interconnectedness of political, social, and medical constructs in the production, circulation and reception of men’s reproduction. Studies of reproduction must destabilize the notion that reproduction relates specifically to cis-gendered women, and Almeling leaves us to ponder the implications of considering all people as reproductive. It is, perhaps, this tantalizing conclusive thought that will prove most generative for future research."
— New Genetics and Society

"An engaging and informative read. . . . Almeling’s conclusion about what should be done with regard to male reproductive health and paternal effects is, happily, parallel to what many feminists have recommended with regard to women’s reproductive care: she believes that what is needed is a combination of broad research and attention to social and environmental structures of health and illness."
— Nursing Clio

"Accessibly written and highly engaging, GUYnecology should prove an effective teaching tool for undergraduate and post graduate students alike."
— Social Forces

"A forceful challenge to the supposition that reproductive health is a woman's domain. This sophisticated multilevel study of how knowledge is made—and not made—about men's reproductive health sets a new agenda for research on gender in medical knowledge."—Sarah Richardson, author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome

"Professor Almeling carefully documents historic neglect of male reproductive health issues by medical science and the media, and the consequent gaps in how the public understands the connection between a father's health and birth outcomes. A must-read for forward thinkers in the reproductive health community."—Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, President Emerita, March of Dimes

"It takes exceptional skill to account for an absence. In this fascinating investigation, Rene Almeling reveals how the science of men's reproductive health has gone missing in action—and shows just how much that vacuum of knowledge matters, for the lives of people of all genders."—Steven Epstein, author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research and Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge

GUYnecology