Book Review: MICHAEL THOMSON, Endowed: Regulating the Male Sexed Body. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008, 194 pp., ISBN 9780415431330, £18.99 (pbk)
| Author | J. Steven Svoboda |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639090180021004 |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
normative arguments? And, if so, might it not be that the radical criminologist’s focus
on those who wield power – not so much the law, as those who make and enforce it
– is in fact more productive than is a conceptual analysis as a basis for critique of
modern law’s particular irresponsibility? While Veitch’s analysis of the impact of not
only individualism but also the social division of labour has much to tell us about the
distinctive method of modern law’s operations, and their normative consequences,
my feeling is that it is pushed a little too far, at the expense of an appreciation of what
are in fact larger implications of the argument.
Another, related, caveat has to do with the upshot of the analysis. Veitch is at pains
to emphasize that his argument is not about particular laws and their impact, but
rather about law in general. In his conclusion, he declares the object of the enterprise
to have been to sensitize us to the nature of law’s organization of irresponsibility, in
order that we should take a more stringent view of the forms of resistance or protest
which would be needed to remove, or at least reduce, our own complicity in avoid-
able human suffering. This is persuasive. But there is nonetheless a risk here of losing
the baby along with the bathwater, in that Veitch seems to imply that critique of
particular laws or legal decisions is beside the point. This is to go too far, as his own
discussion of the ICJ’s decision on the legality of nuclear weapons suggests. Do we
really want to preclude ourselves from arguing that Judge Weeramantry’s dissenting
position would have been a preferable decision, not least in its open recognition of
the limits of legal reason and its underlining of the dangers of nuclear holocaust? The
hope of less legal, political and personal irresponsibility, surely, rests in both global
critique such as that offered by Veitch, and in more local and partial practices of criti-
cism and resistance.
NICOLA LACEY
London School of Economics, UK
MICHAEL THOMSON, Endowed: Regulating the Male Sexed Body. New York: Taylor
& Francis, 2008, 194 pp., ISBN 9780415431330, £18.99 (pbk).
Michael Thomson has published his second book (his first book was in 1998), and it’s
a flawed yet truly thought-provoking examination of various aspects of the male
body’s treatment in law and culture. (Full disclosure: I met Michael Thomson at a
conference in 2006 and spent some brief yet treasured time with him.)
Thomson addresses a variety of seemingly disparate topics, including the law and
ethics of male circumcision, legal developments relating to protecting women of
reproductive age (or all women) from workplace hazards, the path of Viagra and its
competitors through our society including advertising and promoting of it, sperm
donor identification policies, and the interrelationship of sports, sexual violence, and
normative masculinity. The author convincingly demonstrates that the shifting sands
of donor identification policies constitute responses to changing perceptions of the
interests of a perceived normative, ‘most deserving’ heterosexual married couple as
the putative recipients. Often policies seem to reflect the impulse to protect the sensi-
tivities of an imagined husband whose wife becomes pregnant via sperm donation.
Highlights are the chapters on circumcision and on Viagra, in which Thomson’s
integrative and analytical skills particularly shine. Thomson notes that ‘while female
circumcision is constructed as morally and legally unacceptable within a civilized
society, male circumcision is characterized as a standard and benign medical practice’
(p. 18). He later adds, ‘gender is crucially implicated in this failure to publicly recog-
nize the pain and risks experienced by male neonates’ (p. 35). He (and his co-author
272 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 18(2)
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