Queering Reproduction

Mamo Laura Mamo

Description

Originally developed to help heterosexual couples, fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization and sperm donation have provided lesbians with new methods for achieving pregnancy during the past two decades. Queering Reproduction is an important sociological analysis of lesbians' use of these medical fertility treatments. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians who have been or are seeking to become pregnant, Laura Mamo describes how reproduction has become an intensely medicalized process for lesbians, who are transformed into fertility patients not (or not only) because of their physical conditions but because of their sexual identities. Mamo argues that this medicalization of reproduction has begun to shape queer subjectivities in both productive and troubling ways, destabilizing the assumed link between heterosexuality and parenthood while also reinforcing traditional, heteronormative ideals about motherhood and the imperative to reproduce.Mamo provides an overview of a shift within some lesbian communities from low-tech methods of self-insemination to a reliance on outside medical intervention and fertility treatments. Reflecting on the issues facing lesbians who become parents through assisted reproductive technologies, Mamo explores questions about the legal rights of co-parents, concerns about the genetic risks of choosing an anonymous sperm donor, and the ways decisions to become parents affect sexual and political identities. In doing so, she investigates how lesbians navigate the medical system with its requisite range of fertility treatments, diagnostic categories, and treatment trajectories. Combining moving narratives and insightful analysis, Queering Reproduction reveals how medical technology reconfigures social formations, individual subjectivity, and notions of kinship.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• USA
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 03 septembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780822390220
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Queering Reproduction

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∫2007 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Carter and Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

In memory and honor of Dr. Adria E. Schwartz (1946–2003) For teaching me intellectual curiosity and . . .

And to Helen Fitzsimmons For providing laughter, love, and family

a c k n o wl e d g m e n t s

i n t r o d u c t i o n

1

ix

Contents

c h a p t e r o n e23 From Whence We Came: Sex without Reproduction Meets Reproduction without Sex

c h a p t e r t w o58 ‘‘Real Lesbians Don’t Have Kids’’ or Do They? Getting Ready for Lesbian Motherhood

c h a p t e r t h r e e86 Choosing a Donor: Gaining, Securing, and Seeking Legitimacy

c h a p t e r f o u r128 Negotiating Conception: Lesbians’ Hybrid-Technology Practices

c h a p t e r f i v e157 Going High-Tech: Infertility Expertise and Lesbian Reproductive Practices

c h a p t e r s i x190 A≈nity Ties as Kinship Device

c h a p t e r s e v e n224 Imagining Futures of Belonging

n o t e s

251

w o r k s c i t e d

i n d e x

295

273

Acknowledgments

this project has benefited fromthe assistance and support of many people. Most important has been my partner, Helen Fitzsimmons. I am deeply grateful for her willingness to move with me from our ‘‘promised land’’ of San Francisco to the District of Columbia: both places have come to represent for us the extent of queering and the oppressive force of confor- mity and false tolerance of di√erence. It has been quite a ride. I was drawn to the topic of queer reproductive practices as a second-year doctoral student in the department of sociology at the University of Califor- nia, San Francisco (ucsf). I worked at the time as a research assistant in the Center for Reproductive Health, where heterosexual assumptions were built into almost every research project. Therefore, as part of my qualitative- methods training, I decided to conduct an exploratory qualitative study on queer reproductive practices. Although I knew of many studies of lesbian mothers, I was not aware of any studies along the lines I proposed. The project eventually became my doctoral dissertation. I was fortunate to have had an outstanding committee: Adele Clarke, Virginia Olesen, Gay Becker, and Val Hartouni. I thank each of them for their unique contributions. Since that time, I have benefited from the support of numerous individuals and organizations. Most recently, the department of sociology at the Univer- sity of Maryland, where I am currently an assistant professor, generously provided time, resources, and assistance. In 2002 I received funding from the University of Maryland Graduate Research Board. The department of soci- ology granted me two additional summers of support and a third-year, semester-long teaching release to write this book. The research assistance of Vrushali Patil, Michelle Corbin, Leigh Bryant, and Amber Nelson was inval- uable. I thank Bill Falk, George Ritzer, and the late Richard Harvey Brown for reading earlier drafts of this book. Several other faculty members at the University of Maryland became my local, intellectual community: Elizabeth Marshall, Katie King, Bonnie Dill, Meredith Honig, Melissa Milkie, Meyer Kestnbaum, Marilee Lindemann, and William Cohen.