Gender, Subjectivity and “Everyday Health” in the post 1945 World

Becca Iliffe, School of History

Gender, Subjectivity and “Everyday Health” in the post 1945 World
Date: 18/01/2021
Speakers: Katherine Jones & Georgia Grainger 

This research event was part of an ongoing lecture series called ‘Gender, Subjectivity and “Everyday Health” in the post 1945 World’ which aims to use intersectionality to explore the concept of everyday health and histories from the bottom-up. This particular event featured two speakers who both presented their research relating to men’s contraception in the later 20th century. Georgia Grainger explored the vasectomy in Britain, looking at how it has been presented in social memory, and the implications this has for the historiography surrounding it. Katherine Jones looked at advertising relating to men’s contraception in the 1970s-90s, suggesting how it demonstrates a shift in interpretation relating to responsibility and safe sex.  

Grainger’s lecture was extremely interesting and easy to follow, examining an aspect of male contraception that I have never considered in any depth before. Her research - titled ‘Private Parts: considering vasectomies as part of men’s ‘everyday’ health decisions 1965-90’ – was divided into three sections. The first looked at the historiography of vasectomies in Britain, explaining why there is an absence of scholarship relating to the subject. She explored how the absence of vasectomies in archives relates to how it is an NHS procedure and – unlike a lot of women’s contraception – does not need to be accessed through any kind of clinic or charity. By critically examining feminist historians of the past, she also suggested that men’s contraceptive histories have only just started to be studied because of the previous focus of ‘gender studies’ being mainly centred around women. Grainger also discussed how there were not many personal records of vasectomies because to many men it was considered an everyday procedure and not anything out of the ordinary. This links to the second part of her lecture, the analysis of why the vasectomy was considered an ‘everyday’ procedure. By sharing slides of primary sources with her audience, she suggested that the inclusion of vasectomy advertisement in lifestyle sections of newspapers, as well as featuring in advice columns in the 1980s, normalised them and allowed them to be associated with the domestic sphere. Oral histories were used to support this point; one man was highlighted as saying he had ‘never had an operation’ before despite having a vasectomy, demonstrating how it was viewed in popular opinion as separate to a surgical procedure. The third part of the lecture considered vasectomies as an alternative to women’s contraception. What I found particularly interesting was Grainger’s analysis of how many men she interviewed almost saw having a vasectomy as a kind of heroic act, one that saved their wives from taking the pill. This nuanced analysis of masculinity and contraception was extremely compelling. 

Jones’ lecture was based around contraception advertising campaigns that targeted men in the 1970s-90s and what tactics they used. Unfortunately, I did not note the thesis of this research project as the presenter spoke slightly too quickly for me to process. However, throughout her lecture, Jones used advertising campaigns created by different government health organisations in Britain to demonstrate a shift in perspectives relating to contraception and masculinity. She explored how these campaigns moved away from designating responsibility to the woman to the man in safe heterosexual sex. She suggested how adverts like the Cramer Saatchi campaign from 1970 which used the slogan ‘would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’, attempted to force young men into relating masculinity to responsibility in sex. Moving into the 1990s she explained how this shift was reversed, with the gatekeeping for safe sex moved back to the woman. This was demonstrated by the campaign ‘it’s the little things that show how much he cares’ from 1993, which implied that women should just say no if contraception was not presented to them by the man, once again placing the culpability on them. 

I attended this event on the recommendation of a tutor whose module I am taking this term called ‘Men and Masculinity in Britain c.1860-1960’. After listening to both speakers in depth explorations of masculinity in the context of specific spheres I can see why it was advertised to us. This talk was a fabulous introduction to the kinds of concepts that will be explored in my own research later in the term and has inspired me to choose an essay topic based around men’s sexual health. The discussions related to historiographies of the history of masculinity were especially insightful, particularly linked to invisibility in the archives, which will provide a foundation for my further study.