The Male Pill ：A Biography of a Technology in the Making

Publication subTitle ：A Biography of a Technology in the Making

Author： Nelly Oudshoorn  

Publisher： Duke University Press‎

Publication year： 2003

E-ISBN: 9780822385226

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780822331957

P-ISBN(Hardback):  9780822331582

Subject： R979.2 family medicine

Keyword： Oral contraceptives, Male -- Social aspects.

Language： ENG

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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 st

Chapter

Contents

Acknowledgments

PART I Overcoming Resistance: Constructing Alternative Sociotechnical Networks

1. Designing Technology and Masculinity

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

3. Creating a Worldwide Laboratory for Synthesizing Hormonal Contraceptive Compounds

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

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

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

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

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

10. Articulating Acceptability

11. Technologies of Trust

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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