Guynecology

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 Analyzing historical documents, media messages, and qualitative interviews, GUYnecology demonstrates how this non-knowledge shapes reproductive politics today.

"The average American has yet to encounter new information about the importance of 'healthy sperm' and the 'male biological clock.' That is because basic medical knowledge about how men matter when it comes to reproductive outcomes, from miscarriages to childhood illnesses, has only recently begun to be produced. This gap in knowledge about men is only more glaring when one considers the enormous efforts to understand and treat women's reproductive bodies over the past century. GUYnecology asks: What took so long? Why are biomedical researchers only now asking questions about how men's age and bodily health affect reproductive outcomes? Weaving together historical materials and qualitative interviews, Rene Almeling examines the history of medical knowledge-making about men's reproductive health and its consequences for individuals. From a failed nineteenth-century effort to launch a medical specialty called andrology to the contemporary science of paternal effects, she argues that a lack of medical specialization around men's reproductive bodies resulted in obliviousness about men's role in reproductive outcomes. Sifting through media messages and analyzing the stories of individual men and women, GUYnecology demonstrates how this historical gap in attention shapes reproductive politics today"--
"Feature" "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"