Mediated Kinship: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Donor Families

Description

Illustrating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship, this book presents a study of the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm. It explores how they connect with each other online, develop intimate digital communities and, most importantly, locate their children's hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world. The author discusses how these new families - consisting of only mothers - engage in extended families involving large numbers of 'donor siblings'. The new families challenge previous understandings of kinship, and provide illustrations of how norms of gender, sexuality and family are challenged, negotiated and maintained in contemporary times. A crucial study of contemporary formations of family, gender and race, Mediated Kinship discusses the racial aspects of the world's largest sperm bank exporting Danish sperm (termed 'Viking sperm'), and explores the narratives of whiteness and imagined racial superiority that circulate among mothers, as well as the racialisations accompanying commercial online sperm sales. By analysing contemporary families of donor-conceived children in the context of legislation, reproduction technologies and online media, the book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness, gender, sexuality, kinship and the sociology of the family. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Motherhood and the Web 2.0 Queer reproduction and the Internet Alternative families today The Facebook Donor Group Embeddedness in feminist research traditions Insider position Social media and kinship as co-constitutive Alternative families and kinship Race and racialisations in alternative families Media technologies and Facebook Structure and content of chapters Notes 2 Creating family Introduction Stories of finding donor siblings Reasons for establishing contact Siblings as happy objects Cultivating family via online media Online emotional intensity Online discussion about donor siblings Donor siblings as a threat to intimacy Nuclear lesbian families Biology, proximity and likeness We are just a normal family Concluding remarks Notes 3 The missing father Introduction Anonymous versus open donors The interest of the child Children’s rights, heteronormativity and MAR regulations Fertility journeys The triumph of a social father figure Nuclear families Heterosexuality organises lesbian families Donor as kin Donor versus father Scandinavian emphasis on fathers Mother versus father Ambivalent gender trouble – Concluding remarks Notes 4 Race and reproduction Introduction Race and sameness British women and Danish Viking sperm Vikings and whiteness Visualisations of Viking babies Viking masculinity Changes in sperm customers and donor marketing Narratives of Viking connections and genes Vikings keep men within the reproduction narrative Online sperm shopping and consumerism Online race categories Commodity whiteness Concluding remarks and white reproduction Notes 5 Community and new scripts of family Introduction – paranoid and reparative readings Online community and self-disclosure Sharing stories and knowledge in the Facebook Donor Group Belonging and new scripts of creating families Dilution and cultivation of communication and community through online media Co-constitution between the media platform and users’ practices Consciousness-raising groups Providing information Too many children Facebook Donor Group as a counter public Social class and surprises Concluding remarks Notes 6 Conclusion: Expansion within limits Chosen families Racialisation of donor sperm Time and place Expansion within limits Note References Index