Male Pill

Oudshoorn Nelly Oudshoorn

Description

The Male Pill is the first book to reveal the history of hormonal contraceptives for men. Nelly Oudshoorn explains why it is that, although the technical feasibility of male contraceptives was demonstrated as early as the 1970s, there is, to date, no male pill. Ever since the idea of hormonal contraceptives for men was introduced, scientists, feminists, journalists, and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs have questioned whether men and women would accept a new male contraceptive if one were available. Providing a richly detailed examination of the cultural, scientific, and policy work around the male pill from the 1960s through the 1990s, Oudshoorn advances work at the intersection of gender studies and the sociology of technology.Oudshoorn emphasizes that the introduction of contraceptives for men depends to a great extent on changing ideas about reproductive responsibility. Initial interest in the male pill, she shows, came from outside the scientific community: from the governments of China and India, which were interested in population control, and from Western feminists, who wanted the responsibilities and health risks associated with contraception shared more equally between the sexes. She documents how in the 1970s, the World Health Organization took the lead in investigating male contraceptives by coordinating an unprecedented, worldwide research network. She chronicles how the search for a male pill required significant reorganization of drug-testing standards and protocols and of the family-planning infrastructure-including founding special clinics for men, creating separate spaces for men within existing clinics, enrolling new professionals, and defining new categories of patients. The Male Pill is ultimately a story as much about the design of masculinities in the last decades of the twentieth century as it is about the development of safe and effective technologies.

Sujets

• Birth control

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385226
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Male Pill

Science and Cultural Theory

THE MALE PILL ≤≤≤≤≤≤

A Biography of a Technology in the Making

NELLY OUDSHOORN

Duke University Press Durham and London 2003

∫All rights reserved2003 by Duke University Press Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Rob

Contents ≤ ≤ ≤ ≤

Acknowledgments

ix

PART I Overcoming Resistance: Constructing Alternative Sociotechnical Networks

1. Designing Technology and Masculinity

3

2. How Man Came to Be Included in the Contraceptive Research Agenda 19

3. Creating a Worldwide Laboratory for Synthesizing Hormonal Contraceptive Compounds 52

4. The Inaccessible Man: The Quest for Male Trial Participants and Test Locations 69

5. The Co-construction of Technologies and Risks

PART II Configuring the User: Articulating and Performing Masculinities

6. The Politics of Language: Changing Family Planning Discourse to Include Men 113

8

6

7. Making Room for Men: Configuring Men as Clients of Family Planning Clinics 140

8. ‘‘The First Man on the Pill’’: Disciplining Men as Reliable Test Subjects 171

9. On Masculinities, Technologies, and Pain: The Testing of Male Contraceptives in the Clinic and the Media 191

10. Articulating Acceptability

11. Technologies of Trust

Notes

243

Bibliography

Index

269

293

209

225

Acknowledgments ≤ ≤ ≤ ≤

The exciting thing about doing research is that there are always many sur- prises and challenges. When I became interested in the question of why there is no male equivalent of the contraceptive pill for women, I assumed that one paper would be su≈cient to answer the question. I soon discovered that there was much more to tell about male contraceptive discourse. The world I dis- covered in the documents and practices of those involved in this technological innovation turned out to be so rich that I realized I needed an entire book to tell the story. Apart from the expansion of my research, there was another challenge as well. Whereas most scholars who investigate technological developments write about subjects whose development has been completed, I was faced with a technology that did and does not (yet?) exist. To write this story of a technol- ogy in the making, I relied on the invaluable experiences and reflections of the people who work in the field of male contraceptive technology and family planning. Without their willingness to cooperate with me and their permis- sion to use their documents and archives, this book could not have been written. I express my gratitude to Bruce Armstrong, Willem Bergink, Ann Biddlecom, David T. Baird, William Bremner, Judith Bruce, Herjan Coelingh Bennink, Jane Cottingham, Diana Diazgranados, Elof Johansson, T. M. M. Farley, David Gri≈n, Anton Grootegoed, Wendy Kersemaekers, Herman Kloosterboer, David Kinniburgh, Stephen Matlin, Alvin Matsumoto, Kelly McKracken, Axel Mundigo, Eberhard Nieschlag, Alvin Paulsen, Diana Rubino, J. Mayone Stycos, Ronald Swerdlo√, Rosemary Thau, Geo√rey Waites, Chris- tina Wang, J. Weber, Mary Nell Wegner, and Fred Wu.