Queer matters: family-building processes of lesbian couples using donor insemination

Abstract

This paper focuses on lesbian couples using donor insemination to become parents. A number of international researchers have already investigated how their ways of family building change perceptions and practices of family, parenting, and kinship, and how that affects gender relations. Three strands of empirical scholarship can be distinguished. First, there are papers that identify a trend towards the reproduction of existing gender relations and the associated images of desire and parenthood. Second, there are studies that focus on new arrangements of sexuality, gender, and parenthood in lesbian families. And third, there is a strand of literature which tries to avoid problems and shortcomings of a polarized debate and which questions a nature/culture dichotomy and heteronormative concepts of reproduction. Following the insights of empirical works of the third strand, I will first argue that a dichotomous perspective only provides simplistic and one-sided answers. Research rather has to deal with complex simultaneities of renegotiation and normalization. Secondly, the paper demonstrates that Queer Studies and Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) provide a convincing interpretation of the empirical findings in this field. I will illustrate their analytical productivity by the use of interview material from a research project on family-building processes of lesbian couples using donor insemination in Germany. The conclusion shows that a more complex concept of (biological) reproduction is needed that draws attention to the role of techniques, materiality, and artefacts and takes queer, non-medically assisted ways of reproduction into account.

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