Tensions and Complexities:  LGBT Reproductive Practices

What are the relations of LGBT/queer people and communities to ARTs and conversation around “Just” reproductive practices and policies? In what ways are these voices centered and displaced by biotech’s march forward? How might we shift the discourse from full inclusion or demonization to one that accounts for a variety of tensions and complexities? In drawing on empirical research with lesbians about their use of ARTs and acceptance of its concomitant biomedicalization and placing this in dialogue with more recent accounts of gay men’s similar demand and acceptance, this talk will consider the tensions that get into the ART world from LGBT people seeking access and demanding “genetic-ties?”  How can we account for the demand for egg donors that is increasingly emerging from gay men’s call for access while simultaneously accounting for the ethical and health needs of women who sell their eggs in U.S. and transnational contexts, for example? As certain technologies are marketed as progressive and inclusive, allowing a so-called democratization of participation, in what ways are these technologies enacting longstanding forms of stratification for both users and suppliers?  As those groups traditionally supported to reproduce and with economic and social-cultural capital embrace and use technologies for both their own intended purposes and the intended purposes of the industries themselves, how can we account for and debate the alignment this holds with neoliberal policies that maintain race and class inequities? This discussion seeks to raise dialogue about the complexities of consideration of voice, inclusion, and global implications of genetic and reproductive technologies more generally and to do so in a way that illustrates how inclusions are enclosures with new and old exclusions in place.