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

This book made me think about a comment from Professor Robert Richmond Ellis. He stated that he was going to write a book about Spanish-speaking gay autobiographies, but he learned that Latin American works always brought up issues of race in ways that Spanish counterparts did not. I didn’t read Professor Gutmann’s book about masculinity in Mexico City, but I imagine that this book may be its diametrical opposite in that Oaxaca is presented as rural and having a large indigenous population.

Professor Gutmann is very interested in the superstructure. Whereas other academics or laypeople would point to culture as the reason for most phenomena, this author points to governmental rules, global companies’ profits, economies, and international migration as the cause of many items. For example, he stated that Chinese men don’t choose to use condoms for fun; their government’s one-child policy forces them to use protection. With regard to Mexico, he notes that the Mexican government is complicit with global pill companies in not bringing the price of HIV meds down. He states that if family planning clinics only focus on women, then few men will know they have the option of getting a vasectomy. In the book, one chapter tends to speak about these superstructural matters and the following chapter would speak about the author’s everyday conversations with Oaxacans. For readers that don’t care for academic-speak, they can easily skip over the more complicated chapters.

The penultimate chapter on indigenous healing is a bit extraneous. He begins by saying curanderos often don’t employ rigid dichotomies between the sexes. The chapter only marginally speaks of men’s sexual choices. It’s kinda just a way to lengthen the book.

Dr. Gutmann becomes upset when any Mexican says, “Mexican men get HIV because they are so horny, that they’ll even sleep with men.” Logically, he points out to such speakers that when he asks of any man who has kicked it with men they say no. A huge purpose in this book is for him to detail other ways that Oaxacan men catch HIV. However, by finding the exceptions, he may be hiding the rule in a dangerous way. There is a book about gays and HIV in the Yucatan and the American professor there detailed the many ways that HIV-positive Mexican men do everything possible to not reveal same-sex action. Gutmann himself interviews many Mexican men that admit that they have had sex with gay men or prostituted themselves with men. One thing I do love is that he describes a “mix’e” who seems like a Mexican two-spirit person. I once read in a book on Aztecs in a small footnote that they probably had third-gender men like US Native American tribes had. Perhaps this book should be read in conjunction with other books on indigenous homosexuality in the Americas.

Gutman is a progressive with a wife and two daughters. He may not be knowledgeable of the huge numbers of communities and nations of color that dismiss gayness as “a white scourge” or “unknown to us before colonialism,” etc. Several African, African-American, South Asian gay activists have tried to challenge that fallacy. So, in this light, it is amazing that heterosexual Oaxacans can admit that same-sex liaisons happen. They never blame US Americans or Europeans for “forcing” Mexican men to get busy in that way. The way that these Oaxacans challenge gay invisibility in this non-white context is amazing and wonderful, yet Dr. Gutmann gives a positive review of that phenomenon. I may not have articulated this well, but I find it troubling that Dr. Gutmann did not take this into acount.

As far as I know, Professor Gutmann was not teaching at Brown when I was an undergraduate there. Still, countless students speak about how they wish more classes would bring issues of race, gender, sexuality, national identity, and justice matters together. Well, Gutmann accomplishes that in this book and something tells me his classes would be awesome to take. I imagine that books like this one could be useful to not only anthro majors, but also gender studies majors. This is especially true as gender studies departments try to discuss men’s issues, and not just women’s issues. Really, his presence and writing may be just another countless reason for students to apply to and matriculate to this awesome university.
Rating: 4 / 5