Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:354355
DOI 10.1007/s10508-007-9299-4
BOOK REVIEW
Medicalized Masculinities
Edited by Dana Rosenfeld and Christopher A. Faircloth. Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2006, 263 pp., $24.95.
Emily Wentzell
Published online: 7 February 2008
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
While the medicalization of masculinity has become increas-
ingly apparent in daily life, as in the recent flood of spam
e-mails selling male sexual enhancement, this phenomenon has
been largely ignored in academic investigations of gendered
health and medicalization. This volume is thus a timely and
much-needed collection that uses the perspective of qualitative
sociology to investigate eight key U.S. sites in which medical
ways of thinking are increasingly brought to bear on manliness:
Viagra use, Cialis and Levitra marketing, forensic analysis of
semen, andropause and balding, medical anatomy texts,
ADHD, black masculinity, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
therapy.
The introduction to the volume, written by the editors,
makes a particularly useful foray into this field by examining
why social scientific studies of medicalization, masculinity, and
the sociology of the body have generally excluded medicalized
masculinity as an object of study. In a clear and lucid style,
Faircloth and Rosenfeld provide overviews of these fields and
demonstrate how omission of medicalized masculinity is a
result of disciplinary correlation between studies of medical-
ized femininity with gendered medicalization as a whole, focus
on the medical control of underrepresented groups that exclu-
ded men as a category of analysis, an understanding of
masculinity as a health risk that precluded study of medicines
pathologization of men, and a general lack of intersection
between Foucauldian investigation of the surveillance and
discipline of bodies and embodiment in everyday life. This
introduction is also an excellent resource that brings together
E. Wentzell (&)
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-1107, USA
e-mail: wentzell@umich.edu
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the small but important body of work that does exist on med-
icalized masculinity, mostly concerning sexual dysfunction
and heart disease.
The chapters are generally as clear and accessible as the
introduction. The contributors use a variety of methods, from
ethnography to content analysis, to investigate particular
instances of medicalized masculinity in the U.S. context. The
strongest chapters in this collection both compellingly dem-
onstrate the linkages between changing notions of masculinity
and new medical possibility or mediation, and ground these
changes in social and historical context. For instance, Hart
et al. painstakingly analyze all the available statistics on child
ADHD medication use to demonstrate that, as opposed to the
conventional wisdom that poor, urban boys are most subject to
medicalization of hyperactive behavior, the disorder is most
highly treated in boys in affluent communities where children
score higher than average on national standardized tests. Hart
et al. ground this analysis in a discussion of changing gender
roles and parenting tactics, arguing that Ritalin is a drug for
gendered child socialization in social contexts where parents
seek high child achievement, in part through medical tech-
niques of child socialization.
In another particularly strong chapter, Smith uses ethno-
graphic data from research in Post-Tramautic Stress Disorder
therapy groups in a V.A. hospital to demonstrate the use of
refashioned masculinity as a therapeutic tool. Understanding
masculinity as a social process that can be brought to bear in
mental health treatment, Smith shows that therapy leaders
encourage self-conscious adoption of new ideals of masculin-
ity, based in various contexts on military, religious, and scien-
tific discourses, that facilitate particular stages of therapeutic
treatment. Smith deftly reveals the ways that masculinities
function as medical tools as well as objects of medicalization.
Other chapters, as early forays into the study of medicalized
masculinities, make important but more partial contributions to
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:354355
the field. For instance, Moore and Durkin provide a fascinating
description of the ways forensic analysis reduces masculinity to
semen, which they argue comes to stand in for both mens and
womens legal testimony. However, they ground this com-
pelling thesis in a long and somewhat digressive history of
forensic science, which leaves them without space to explore
more fully the social consequences of semen analysis sup-
planting testimony as proof of sexualized crime. Similarly,
Hickey uses the example of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
to illustrate the key point that medicalization, race, sexuality,
and masculinity intersect to shape black mens embodied
experience. While Hickeys call to account for race in studies
of gendered medicalization is an important one, it would be
strengthened by a clearer discussion of the ways racialized
medicalization of masculinity is at work today.
When read as a whole, this generally excellent volume
suffers from two main weaknesses. First, many chapters con-
tain literature reviews of medicalization scholarship; while
these discussions may be useful to those reading only one or
two chapters, readers of the entire work will find them repeti-
tive, particularly as this topic is thoroughly covered in the
introduction. Second, and more importantly, the volume fails to
ground itself in place, lacking an explicit discussion of the
American context of the phenomena discussed. While each
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chapter deals with American men, the volume is framed as a
general discussion of medicalized masculinities, problemati-
cally making an implicit, and certainly unintentional, claim to
generality. While some chapters deal with this issue, the vol-
ume as a whole misses the chance to discuss the ways the
cultural specifics of American men and medicine, as well as the
divisions within these broad categories, influence masculinity
and medicalization. Further, the volume omits references to
medicalized masculinity in non-Western contexts (e.g., the
large body of work on medical interventions into gendered sex
practices geared toward HIV/AIDS prevention), while this
would not be a concern for a book explicitly concerned with
American masculinities, it is a significant oversight for a gen-
eral work on the topic.
When understood as a volume focused on the U.S., however,
this volume is an excellent collection that will be required
reading for scholars interested in gender and health. Its clear
and lively writing, the wealth of background information in the
introduction, and its contributors compelling identification and
analysis of key sites for the medicalization of masculinity in
America today make it a pivotal addition to the fields of med-
icalization and gender research. Its accessibility and topicality
will also make it an excellent teaching resource.
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