Reddit Reddit reviews Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction

We found 3 Reddit comments about Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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3 Reddit comments about Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction:

u/brother_beer · 5 pointsr/OneY

I downvoted your comments here, until I upvoted them. Because they need to be visible, as I think there is some confusion about academic feminist studies and how it serves to underpin a lot of contemporary identity studies work in academic circles that work on cultural issues. That said, there's a lot of truth to what /u/aescolanus has said and I'm surprised to see it downvoted so hard on a sub that tries to foster a greater discussion of what it means to be a man.

> It's not unreasonable to argue that some feminist activists are anti-male, including some on this board.

> You seem to show a strong bias against male activists, and for feminist activists.

One of the problems here is that almost everyone in press release reaction pieces like these is labeled an "activist" on Reddit or other popular discussions of feminism or feminist theory.

Now, an activist isn't necessarily confrontational AdviceAnimal fodder. Nor is a scholar unable to be an activist, as if activism is something base and below their PhDs. But we're talking about scholars here. Things like this proposed center are not lobbying firms, grassroots organizers, or policy shops.

And it is very true that many of the fundamental premises of academic masculine studies are based in academic feminism. They are related. Academic feminism gives us the idea that gender identity and function can be thought of as constructed by history and society. This is an extremely valuable tool for inquiry. Without using this premise, how do we even talk about men's issues? What discourse do we have to explain that the idea of the Manly Man, the Patriarchal Man somehow can hurt those of us in the arts? Those who are short? Those who are sensitive? Those of us who are victims of abuse? Should we ignore the decades of work by philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and cultural critics just because they are "feminists"?

Now of course, many of the people on the board of directors for this center aren't academics, such as Steinem, Fonda, Gov. Kunin or Ensler. Why? Visibility. Connections. Networking. Read some of Kimmel's scholarly work, or David A. J. Richards, R. W. Connell, and other masculinity scholars -- men and women alike -- and ask what it would mean for someone like Steinem to be nodding in agreement with the work going on there (despite her stated beefs with academic writing and it's "obscure" language, which I think was more of a bit of rhetorical posturing than a genuinely valid criticism). Legitimacy is a big deal. And these individuals were huge movers and shakers who fit into a larger narrative of women's rights and civil rights that changed a lot of things for the better.

Read through scholarly journals and books published by University Presses and the like. Consider that the "Steinem-level" voice for men's issues (male or female) will likely be reading these works as foundational texts.

Want to read a woman feminist author writing what I think is probably one of the best masculinity studies monographs I've read to date? Try Cynthia R. Daniels, "Exposing Men". (And hey, she's at Rutger's too, dontchaknow.)

Seriously though. Before you bash this as a sham institute, please read deeply to see what the arguments are and what evidence is being used. Read critiques, reviews, and rebuttals by peer scholars. Institutes like these can offer the funding for young thinkers to take a risk in writing something new or being away from the classroom, and opportunities for fresh scholarly voices to publish things that might not fit elsewhere.

Feminism and masculinity studies have a lot in common. Perhaps it's hard to tell by the feminists or MRA's who march or picket on street corners or haunt online discussion boards, but then again we're talking about an academic center for study. Admittedly, unless you know where to look and have the library resources to find the relevant journals, you're likely not hearing any of this conversation. And that blows. For everyone. (So maybe Steinem was onto something...)

u/boxcarboatfest · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Let's take a look at a few of the citations:

Cockburn, Cynthia. (2007). From where we stand: war, women’s activism, and feminist analysis. New York: Zed Books

Summary:

"This original study by the, the product of 80,000 miles of travel by the author over a two-year period, examines women's activism against wars as far apart as Sierra Leone, Colombia and India. It shows women on different sides of conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Israel refusing enmity and co-operating for peace. It describes international networks of women opposing US and Western European militarism and the so-called 'war on terror'. Women are often motivated by adverse experiences in male-led anti-war movements, preferring to choose different methods of protest and remain in control of their own actions. But like the mainstream movements, women's groups differ - some are pacifist while others put justice before non-violence; some condemn nationalism as a cause of war while others see it as a legitimate source of identity. The very existence of feminist antimilitarism proposes a radical shift in our understanding of war, linking the violence of patriarchal power to that of class oppression and ethnic 'othering'"


Cowen, D. (2008). Military Workfare: The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Summary:

Despite the centrality of war in social and political thought, the military remains marginal in academic and public conceptions of citizenship, and the soldier seems to be thought of as a peripheral or even exceptional player. Military Workfare draws on five decades of restricted archival material and critical theories on war and politics to examine how a military model of work, discipline, domestic space, and the social self has redefined citizenship in the wake of the Second World War. It is also a study of the complex, often concealed ways in which organized violence continues to shape national belonging.

What does the military have to do with welfare? Could war-work be at the centre of social rights in both historic and contemporary contexts? Deborah Cowen undertakes such important questions with the citizenship of the soldier front and centre in the debate. Connecting global geopolitics to intimate struggles over entitlement and identity at home, she challenges our assumptions about the national geographies of citizenship, proposing that the soldier has, in fact, long been the model citizen of the social state. Paying particular attention to the rise of neoliberalism and the emergence of civilian workfare, Military Workfare looks to the institution of the military to unsettle established ideas about the past and raise new questions about our collective future.

Cowen, D. and A. Siciliano. (2011). Surplus Masculinities and Security. Antipode. 43(5): 1516-1541.

Abstract:

In this paper we investigate geographies of military recruitment and urban policing as key domains for both the management of surplus populations and the extraction of surplus value. Drawing on research in North America and the UK, we explore the emerging institutions, social technologies, and political economies that constitute a racialized and gendered geography of what we term “securitized social reproduction”. We suggest that so-called “redundant” populations of underemployed racialized men are at the centre of contemporary politics of security. We explore the increasingly productive role of surplus populations in security industries, and the resurgence of public masculinities that seek to both valourize and discipline subjects and populations. This resurgence of masculinity is taking shape through both the expansion of security industries and the entanglement of police and military force. This paper suggests that a focus on ‘surplus’ highlights the geographies and profits at stake in securing social reproduction.


Daniels, Cynthia. (2006). Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Summary:

Exposing Men examines how ideals of masculinity have long skewed our societal--and scientific--understanding of one of the pillars of male identity: reproductive health. Only with the recent public exposure of men's reproductive troubles has the health of the male body been thrown into question, and along with it deeper masculine ideals. Whereas once men's sexual and reproductive abilities were the most taboo of topics, today erectile dysfunction is a multi-billion dollar business, and magazine articles trumpet male reproductive decline with headlines such as "You're Half the Man Your Father Was." Cynthia R. Daniels casts a gimlet eye on our world of plummeting sperm counts, spiking reproductive cancers, sperm banks, and pharmacological cures for impotence in order to assess the true state of male health. What she finds is male reproductive systems damaged by toxins and war, and proof piling up that men through sperm, pass on harm to the children they father. Yet, despite the evidence that men's health, as much as women's, significantly affects the vitality of their offspring, Daniels also sees a society holding on to outdated assumptions, one in which men ignore blatant health risks as they struggle to live up to antiquated ideas of manliness.




Those don't sound like biased citations at all (they do).

u/PantalonesPantalones · -1 pointsr/AskMen

You are limited biologically by age in producing offspring. You are less likely to cause pregnancy the older you are, and your children are at higher risk of birth defects the older you are. I read a book about this in grad school but I can't remember what it's called. I'll try to find it and follow up. I think it's ridiculous and harmful that men aren't properly educated on this. Fertility isn't just about women.

Edit:Found it. It's a sociological study about how male contribution to procreation has conventionally been considered secondary and less important and meaningful than women's.