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9781978843592 Academic Inspection Copy

Stop Saying Snip!

The Rhetoric of Vasectomy
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In the US, the most common contraceptive methods rely on women's time, labor, and vulnerability to risk. Comparatively few people rely on vasectomies as a means of preventing pregnancies. Something is happening rhetorically-through meaning-making symbols and the material practices they manifest-that sustains a collective disinterest in vasectomies. Jenna Vinson draws from her feminist rhetorical study of thirty-seven television and film representations, health insurance policies, and interviews with seventeen people who have experienced vasectomy, surfacing barriers to vasectomy uptake, including problematic tropes and practices that keep vasectomy unappealing, out of mind, and inaccessible. Stop Saying Snip! also illustrates tactics and circumstances that lead people to get a vasectomy, sharing real vasectomy stories and showing that women often play an important (and until now unheeded or pathologized) role in this communication process. This book intervenes in the misogynistic cultural expectation that it is women's responsibility to endure the pain, labor, and risks of managing fertility by identifying the rhetorics that make men's reproductive bodies seem unnatural sites for pregnancy prevention work. Fostering a persuasive vision of vasectomy is an urgent project that contributes to the movement toward reproductive justice.
Jenna Vinson is an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is the author of Embodying the Problem: The Persuasive Power of the Teen Mother.
Preface ix 1 Vasectomy Uptake: A Rhetorical Problem 1 Albert's Story 2 Insuring (Few) Vasectomies: The Rhetorical Force of Health Insurance 35 James's and Henry's Stories 3 Vicious Visions of Vasectomy: Snips, Threats to "Manhood," and the Pedagogy of Fear 64 Bob's and Frank's Stories 4 Obstacles to Telling Personal Vasectomy Stories 88 Dillon's Story 5 Women's (Rhetorical) Work to Facilitate Vasectomies 118 Rimi's and Winifred's Stories 6 Conclusion: A Call to Reconsider Protest Rhetorics and Vasectomy 153 Appendix A: List of Insurance Handbooks Studied 159 Appendix B: Interview Questions 161 Appendix C: Interview Participants 163 Acknowledgments 165 Notes 167 Works Cited 179 Index 000
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