Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico

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University of California Press, Nov 6, 2007 - Social Science - 280 pages
Most studies on reproductive rights make women their focus, but in Fixing Men, Matthew Gutmann illuminates what men in the Mexican state of Oaxaca say and do about contraception, sex, and AIDS. Based on extensive fieldwork, this breakthrough study by a preeminent anthropologist of men and masculinities reveals how these men and the women in their lives make decisions about birth control, how they cope with the plague of AIDS, and the contradictory healing techniques biomedical and indigenous medical practitioners employ for infertility, impotence, and infidelity. Gutmann talks with men during and after their vasectomies and discovers why some opt for sterilization while so many others feel "planned out of family planning."
 

Contents

1 Taming Mens Natural Desires in Oaxaca
1
Eight Common Mistakes about Mens Sexuality
28
Lonesome Men and AIDS
47
AIDS Care in Oaxaca
71
5 Planning Men Out of Family Planning
100
Vasectomies and the Totemic Illusion of Male Sexuality
130
7 Traditional Sexual Healing of Men
165
8 From Boardrooms to Bedrooms
196
Notes
213
Bibliography
231
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About the author (2007)

Matthew Gutmann is Professor of Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, and Latin American Studies at Brown University and is the author of The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Tenth Anniversary edition, 2006) and The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico (2002), both from UC Press.

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