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 Analyzing historical documents, media messages, and qualitative interviews, GUYnecology demonstrates how this non-knowledge shapes reproductive politics today.
Rene Almeling is Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University and the author of Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm.
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
