Why There's No Guy-necology (with Rene Almeling)

We talk a lot about women’s reproductive health. We rarely talk about men’s.

But that gap isn’t just cultural—it’s built into science itself.

In this episode, Yale sociologist Rene Almeling explains how modern medicine ended up with an entire field devoted to women’s reproductive systems—and no real equivalent for men. From a failed 19th-century push for “andrology” to today’s emerging research on sperm and health, we trace how this imbalance took shape.

Along the way, we look at what new science is starting to reveal: how age, smoking, and environmental exposures can affect sperm—and why most people have never heard about it. We also explore how cultural assumptions about gender have shaped everything from medical research to the way we describe fertilization itself.

If reproduction involves two bodies, why has only one been under the microscope? Find the answers in Rene Almeling's book, Guynecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.

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