Gwendolyn Beetham,
"Assisted Reproduction as a Queer Thing"
(page 3 of 4)
Queers Reproducing and Queering Reproduction
Personal accounts of queer reproduction, though not as voluminous as
heterosexual accounts, are still rather abundant. While there are many
"how-to" guides and web-based resources on LGBTQ family building, few of
these offer critical perspectives on larger issues of the political
economy of reproduction—after all, the sentiment seems to be, queers
would not be able to reproduce at all without some type of
assistance.[9]
Still, there are critical approaches to be found in the
queer parenting memoir subgenre. In particular, memoirs provide
first-person accounts of many of the ways in which LGBTQ people are
routinely denied the right to parent through discriminatory adoption and
foster care laws, legal and extralegal discrimination in custody
disputes over biological children, exclusion of gay men from sperm
donation, and other practices. At the more subtle end of the critique
spectrum, queer parenting memoirs can point to the assumptions and
routines that naturalize some families and forms of reproduction, while
underscoring others' distance from "normal." These assumptions and
routines are part of the scaffolding of reproductive injustice.
Two books, Harlyn Aizley's edited 2006 collection Confessions of
the Other Mother and Amie Klempnauer Miller's 2010 memoir She
Looks Just Like You include personal reflections on the ways in
which framing parenthood as a biological imperative affects lesbian
mothers. Klempnauer Miller's use of "resemblance talk" in the title
itself points to the angst also discussed by many of the essayists in
Aizley's collection. While non-biological parenthood may sit quite
easily with their own understandings of kinship relationships,
many of the lesbian mothers who contributed to the collection describe
being challenged by others' perceptions that their
(non-biological) ties to their families mean that they are not "real;"
and rightly so, given the shifting of gay parental rights on a
state-by-state and sometimes city-by-city basis. "Resemblance talk," as
well as assumptions made about feminine and masculine-presenting women
who carry children, are frequently discussed in the queer pregnancy and
parenting blogosphere, including the aptly titled, "Butch ... And
Pregnant."[10]
The power of "resemblance talk" can therefore be seen
to penetrate queer relationships as well as straight, and the literature
is full of accounts of lesbians who seek sperm donors with physical
attributes similar to the non-biological parent. However, as Amy
Agigian's 2004 study of lesbians' experience of alternative insemination
found, the quest for resemblance should be viewed differently than in
the context of heterosexual couples, as in the queer context these
decisions sometimes reflect "... a conscious attempt to reinforce the
legally vulnerable tie to a lover,"[11]
rather than an attempt to
reinforce the biological/nuclear kinship structure. (Of course, this
doesn't change the legal vulnerability of the relationship, but tapping
into the affective strength of "resemblance" between parents and
children might make it less likely that a challenge to the relationship
would be made in the first place.) While recognizing that distinction,
neither book included exploration of the larger political economy of
reproduction in any significant way: donor selections are brushed over
in rather uncritical ways, the class implications of access to
reproductive technologies are mentioned briefly (if at all).
This is not to say that complex issues related to reproductive
justice are not broached: discrimination against same sex parents by
medical staff during pregnancy and delivery is enragingly recounted, and
encounters with estranged homophobic parents of one or both partners are
heartbreakingly described. And difficult decisions do spring up
constantly in both accounts (what will each mother be called is a
commonly cited lesbian-specific decision; how/when will the
non-biological parent negotiate maternity leave is another). As
Klempnauer Miller states: "Accidental pregnancies are not a big problem
in our community. We generally have to seek out parenthood if we want
it to happen .... As with adoptive parents or infertile couples, our children
must be chosen and pursued." If the paths chosen and pursued in these
books tend to be "non-traditional," it is only, as in the case of many
of the stories of heterosexual single women who seek out parenthood,
because of an absent father. Both the contributors to the Aizley
collection and Klempnauer Miller stick fairly within the confines of the
normative, single-family structures (we're a family just like you!),
rather than push the boundaries for recognition of alternative kinship
formations.[12]
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