5/20/2016 CGS : Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice

http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=9211 1/7

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Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, QueerKinship & Reproductive Justice

by Elliot HosmanFebruary 25th, 2016

On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision,some argued that “family equality” was the next LGBT movement priority,which was described in part as increased access to surrogacy for gay men.Media scrutiny of commercial surrogacy can tend to be myopically focused onthe gay couples using it, which is unfair given the high rates of heterosexualcouples who also enter into surrogacy agreements both domestically andabroad. Yet the need for a diverse discussion of LGBTQ families andcommunities’ needs in a postMarriage moment persists, as does the problemof excluding the voices of women who engage in the physically risky acts ofgestational surrogacy and egg donation—particularly when they work forwealthier couples traveling to their country because of decreased costs.

On February 19, a symposium was held at UC Berkeley* entitled “MakingFamilies: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice”. Akey goal of the symposium was linking up these three areas of practice andstudy to address the social justice implications of the growing, unregulatedtool shed of reproductive biomedicine.

At the “Making Families” workshop, an allstar panel of speakers was invitedto discuss

“how the borders and limits to reproduction are constituted, bothin reprogenetics and intercountry politics… what biopolitics ofreproduction govern different national jurisdictions andtransnational circuits, if and how queering kinship is possible,and how reproductive justice perspectives can be incorporatedinto practices such as egg donation and surrogacy.”

The workshop was an opportunity to begin bridging discussions andperspectives among the stakeholders, participants, and end users oftransnational commercial surrogacy. We joined participants in livetweetingpictures and soundbites using #MakingFamilies. Here are some of thehighlights of the panels we attended, in chronological order.

Charis Thompson (@charismt), Chancellor’s Professorand Chair of Gender &Women’s Studies (“GWS”)at UC Berkeley, welcomedparticipants and openedthe workshop byoutlining three themes: 1) Transnational surrogacyand egg donation: howbody parts and peoplemove across borders, andhow statelessness andcitizenship emerge in new

biopolitical orders;(2) Queer Kinship: alternative family andcaretaking practices, stories, and studies; and(3) Reproductive Justice: the right to have, nothave, keep and care for children free ofprecarious violence.

Thompson emphasized that the symposium was conceived as an attempt tobring into conversation these stillseparate conversations of queer kinship,reproductive justice, and transnational surrogacy. Thompson recalled she hascommitted much of her working life to showing that biology cannot be used tojustify social hierarchy, whether by race, class, gender, sexuality, or familyform, because, as she said, biology is "too contingent, too multiple, too open

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5/20/2016 CGS : Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice

http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=9211 2/7

to interspecies, and human innovation and reconfiguring". In her work shehas attempted to show that while sexuality, race, gender, and family can beunanchored from the oppressive hierarchies of modernity by biologicalreproduction – in this process differences based on class, race, gender,sexuality, citizenship and ability reemerge in new sites. Exploring these deeptensions gave rise to this symposium. Its name was taken in part fromThompson's 2005 book, Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography ofReproductive Technologies.

Joshua Gamson (@joshgamson),professor of Sociology at Universityof San Francisco and Fellow at theCenter for Advanced Study in theBehavioral Sciences at StanfordUniversity, spoke on ‘The Politicsof Family Creation Stories’ andhis work documenting LGBTQpeople making families in his recentbook, Modern Families: Stories ofExtraordinary Journeys to Kinship.Gamson described two genres atplay in books on fertility

technologies that he sought to bridge: Repro Lit (thehero’s journey of overcoming obstacles, or as MelissaHarris Perry describes in the foreword to ModernFamilies, “fantasies that focus on end product anddisregard transactional problems”) and Repro Crit(academic critiques of a marketplace of stratifiedreproduction, global politics, inequality, and thecirculation of bodies). Gamson described the difficultyof navigating storytelling, particularly when telling thestories of marginalized groups. “When you insertcounterstories, sometimes you’re just inventing a newset of myths.” Gamson teased out two points ofconnections between the queer kinship andreproductive justice conversations: (1) the basic assertion that family justice requiresselfdetermination in the making of our families and

the use of our bodies for the making of kinship, doing so free of coercion andstigma; (2) the notion of expanded understanding of kinship beyond nuclear andbiological definitions of family and current policies, and the unexaminedresources and networks of single parents.

Associate professor of Gender andWomen's Studies at UC Berkeley, LeslieSalzinger presented the paper of FranceWinddance Twine (@Winddance_Twine),professor of Sociology and documentaryfilmmaker at UC Santa Barbara, on ‘TheFertility Continuum: Racism,Biocapitalism and Postcolonialism inthe Surrogacy Industry’. As WinddanceTwine notes in her book Outsourcing theWomb: Race, Class and GestationalSurrogacy in a Global Market (2nd ed.,2015), reproductive justice advocates andfeminists continue to critically examinecommercial surrogacy because of theexploitation that arises from the utilitarian

treatment of biocapital. Yet Winddance Twine noted that these challengesmust be examined in the larger context of assisted reproductive technologies,including abortion and forced sterilization. Winddance Twine highlighted theimportant context of the history of slavery and eugenics, platforms to controlthe reproduction of the impoverished and elevate the reproduction of theprivileged. The fertility continuum, Winddance Twineargues, sets women into a fertility caste system thatconstrains their reproductive options according torace, class, ability. In particular, Indian transnationalsurrogacy recreates where value is extracted (poor,lower castes) and where it is invested (wealthynationals and foreigners; privileged upper castes).One of the defining goals of reproductive justice,Winddance Twine argued, is to shift from the conceptof “choice” to centering the safety, dignity, and healthof women and their children—linked to the resourcesand power dynamics of their community. WinddanceTwine quoted UPenn Law professor and CGS advisoryboard member Dorothy Roberts, who notes that theneoliberal trend toward privatized and punitivegovernments places reproductive responsibility onwomen, thereby making “private” health and reproductive inequities thatshould be seen as “public” health problems. Concluding, Winddance Twineargued that surrogates should be promised lifetime healthcare andreproductive options, and at a minimum, interpreters for the contracts theysign.

5/20/2016 CGS : Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice

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Zakiya T. Luna (@zakiyaluna), assistantprofessor of Sociology at UC SantaBarbara and coauthor of “ReproductiveJustice” (Annual Review of Law and SocialScience, 2013), spoke on ‘WhereReproductive Justice and QueeringFamily Meet (An Exploration)’. Lunadescribed queering at the intersection ofoppression and resistance to challengeand bring together those deemedmarginal and committed to liberatorypolitics. Luna noted fertility discoursescontinually exclude women of color, single parent families are still seen asaberrant and deviant, and that there is alack of community for women of color to

access fertility care. Luna argued that black women’s infertility in particular isseen in the mainstream as oxymoronic, butting up against stereotypes ofbabymaking machines. She pointed to resistance efforts including Fertility forColored Girls, and Brown Broken Eggs, and noted the need for intersectionalresearch to push back against dominant narratives, highlighting social scienceresearch such as the “weathering hypothesis” which finds that due to thesustained effects of racism on the lives of black women, health outcomesimprove with younger pregnancies—which flies in the face of widespread U.S.efforts to reduce teen pregnancies. Luna described vibrant race, gender, andreproductive justice activism centering on young parents, Forward Together’sStrong Families campaign, the Repeal Hyde amendment project, and thebeautiful posters and viral memes that have been issuing forth connectingreproductive justice with issues ranging from Trayvon Martin’s shooting,environmental justice, trans healthcare, and even adoption. Yet Luna notedthat reproductive justice advocacy has remained somewhat siloed fromsurrogacy, even though people in the movements talk to each other and arefriends. Luna also shouted out CGS and Generations Ahead (which grew out ofCGS’s Gender, Justice, and Human Genetics program in 2006, andunfortunately closed its doors in 2012), as organizations whose work drawsout the historical treatment of race and gender in genetic and reproductivetechnologies. Luna also noted that celebrities on social media, including KimKardashian and Melissa Harris Perry, are talking openly about surrogacy andbroadening the conversation to the mainstream, moving from the personal, tothe political, to the classroom in the case of Perry, all at once.

Laura Mamo (@lmamoHEI), professor ofHealth Education at San Francisco StateUniversity, spoke on ‘QueeringReproduction in TransnationalBioeconomies’ based in part off Mamo’s2007 book Queering Reproduction:Achieving Pregnancy in the Age ofTechnoscience. Mamo noted that the bookemanated out of her training in medicalsociology and the lesbian baby boom, whichoccurred despite the fact that queer womenwere not the intended or desired end usersof the quickly expanding assistedreproduction industry. Mamo expressedinterest in modes of resisting structures of power, viewing technologies asflexible rather than determinative of results, and asking: what are thecommercial and technological offerings structuring “choice” and is “choice”even an adequate framework? Mamo harkened back to Gamson’s talk at thestart of the workshop, noting the tension between structural inequalities and

personal experiences. Mamo asked: In what ways isthe figure of queer bodies implicated as an agent inthe stratification of the flows and structures of thebioeconomies of human reproduction? Mamodescribed how LGBT intended parents are followingcapitalism across borders to fulfill American dreamsby accessing price points not available at home,drawn from the world’s most vulnerable—thisrequires, Mamo argues, thoughtful inquiry into howqueer kinship models can be accountable to the“collaborative reproducers” they find abroad. Mamonoted that even as gay dads and lesbian moms areused as the media hype and scrutiny focal point fordiscussions of surrogacy and threeparent IVF, theconcerns of LGBT rights and queer justice are rarelycentered in these debates. Mamo also cautioned that

as assisted reproduction becomes more routine, options to make a geneticfamily are constructed as not just the best, but the only valid approach toqueer kinship. Mamo described the new social expectations for LGBTQ people—similar to inclusion in the institution of marriage—that LGBT and queerfamilies are now increasingly expected to participate in the act of “trying tohave children.”

5/20/2016 CGS : Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice

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Kim TallBear (@KimTallBear),associate professor of NativeStudies at University of Alberta,Canada, spoke on ‘Making Loveand Relations Beyond SettlerSexuality’ and opened thisdiscussion by challengingcolonial notions of scarcity infertility rhetoric. TallBear notedthat while the Malthusiandemand for “population control”has often been used to furthereugenic ends, in an antiracist,reproductive justice context,discussions of population controlare helpful to analyze: whosedisproportionate reproductivesuccess is being accomplishedon the backs of underprivilegedpopulations’ reproduction?TallBear argued: “We can’t avoid the question of who gets to have babies, andwhose reproduction comes at the expense of others, both human andnonhuman.” TallBear said that a white nationalist middle class veneer that isoften painted over the lives of indigenous kinship and communities, but thatregardless, “I don’t see our failure at monogamy, nuclear family and marriage

as failure.” TallBear outlined two basic tenets inindigenous feminisms: (1) caretaking the wholepeople, and (2) caretaking the relationship of thepeople to the land. TallBear stated that there was nosuch thing as a “single mother” in indigenouscommunities, “I am the mother of my sisters’children, same for my brothers and his brothers'children.” TallBear also noted that she had not heardof indigenous women seeking out or using assistedreproduction technologies, despite the fact that thefertility rate of indigenous people outstrips white andblack populations by a significant margin. TallBearsuggested the concept of “reparative kinmaking,” notjust with living persons, but with nonhumans, places,and ancestors: what she described as responsibilitiesto relations that are not yet/no longer material.Following up on her book, Native American DNA:

Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (2013), TallBear’supcoming volume coauthored with multiple scholars including Donna Harawayand Alondra Nelson will describe caretaking kinship practices beyond makingbabies, rethinking kin relationships, and drawing on examples such as theAmerican Indian movement and the Black Panther Party. TallBear closed withbelated Valentine’s Day wishes: “May your loves be many, and not cagedwithin colonial norms of romantic couplecentric bliss.”

Michal Nahman (@michalnahman), seniorlecturer at the University of the West of England,Bristol, gave a talk entitled, ‘MonstrousExtractions: Migration, Race and Colonialismin Global Reproductive Economies,’ discussingthe racial dynamics of the market in women’seggs, based on research laid out in her recentbook, Extractions: An Ethnography ofReproductive Tourism (2013). Nahman’s talkdescribed in detail her research in IVF clinics inIsrael which led her to ask: “Is the egg thesynecdoche [part representative of the whole] ofa nation?” Nahman noted that she witnessedmany IVF patients reject using “Arab eggs” andhow this highlighted the overlapping domains ofwar, nation, survival, and reproduction. ForNahman, the desirability of white eggs mirrorsnationalist political definitions of “citizen” andmanaging the border between Jew and Arab.Nahman also described the concept of “repromigration”, where women fleeing particularlyEastern European countries in political turmoilmay sell their “cheap white eggs” to finance their

escape. Nahman used the concept of “extraction” inline with local Israeli usage, where persons ask oneanother about their race, ethnicity, and migratorybackground by asking where they were “extracted”from: “Where were you taken out of?” She also notedits “monstrous” dimensions: “Capitalism is able to findnew sites of extraction of wealth. Transnationalreproduction practices are emblematic of capitalism;this shows us that love and desires can mix withinequality and technology, and that’s what makesthese extractions ‘monstrous’.” To paint a picture ofmonstrous extraction, Nahman described the Jewishmythical creature of the Golem—a man made of clayawoken by mystical incantation to protect the Jewishcommunity from attack, who sadly becomesuncontrollably violent in some myths. Nahman alsonoted that the etymology of “monstrous” is “to show”

and “to warn” and quoted fellow speaker Sharmila Rudrappa: “Socialhierarchies can only be confronted by a critical mass of actors working intandem together.”

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Sharmila Rudrappa (@rudrapper),associate professor in Sociology anddirector of the Center for AsianAmerican Studies at the University ofTexas at Austin, spoke on ‘Markets inLife: Of Earthworms, SugarcaneFarmers, and Surrogate Mothers inSouthern Karnataka, India’ based offof research highlight in her new book,Discounted Life: The Price of GlobalSurrogacy in India (2016). Rudrappa’snew book maps the technologies of lifeand death and asks, “How do labormarkets in surrogate mothers emerge?Is pregnancy wage labor?” Rudrappaconcludes that fertility markets are notmarkets in life, but rather“necromarkets,” markets in death. Echoing TallBear, Rudrappa connected theviolation of the people to the violation of the land, and described a parallel

necromarket in India: There are no more earthwormsin Indian farms because of overuse of fertilization.And farmer suicides are on the rise once again.Rudrappa critically analyzed the frame emerging thatwomen in India are simply “renting” the “emptyspace” in their bodies that “they’re not usinganyways.” Rudrappa stated that viewing the women’sbody as property is not new, as women in India andbeyond have “belonged” to their husband, extendedfamily, clan, and nation. But what is new, Rudrappaargues, is the women’s ability to “rent” this propertyto others. Rudrappa noted the biologically absurdefforts in the commercial surrogacy industry to“disentangle” a woman’s uterus from her body, onlyto “reentangle” a woman’s body parts with legal andfinancial obligations and relationships.

Unfortunately, we were not present for the symposium's last twopresentations, but we summarize below the speakers' earlier comments andincorporate remarks as sent to us by the speakers via email after thesymposium.

Marcin Smietana, postdoctoral fellow at UCBerkeley’s GWS department and coorganizer of the event, spoke on‘Interpreting the narratives ofsurrogates and intended parents in theUS’. Smietana’s project SurrogARTS carriedout in collaboration with the ReproSocresearch group at the University ofCambridge (UK), focuses on theexperiences and biopolitics of surrogacy inthe US and the UK, including transnationalcases related to the unavailability ofcommercial surrogacy in Europe. In thisproject, since 2014 Marcin has been doingresearch with surrogates, egg donors, andfertility professionals in the US, as well asintended parents of different nationalities and sexual identities. The findingshe presented show that the surrogates and parents normalize their nonnormative family formation practices through two narratives: the affective andthe economic ones. The affective narrative (which is inexistent in this forme.g. in Indian or Russian surrogacy) focuses on altruistic friendship tiesbetween surrogates and parents, which decommodify their relationships. Atthe same time, these relationships are dekinned by normative family values,with both surrogates and parents emphasizing how surrogacy helps them eachbuild their own nuclear families. In this sense, the interviewed gay fatherfamilies appear as not very ‘queer’ but rather as ‘the families like we’d always

known, but with two men’. Toprotect these nuclear familystructures, when the affectivenarrative of friendship fails, theeconomic narratives ofcompensation and legalcontracts have dekinned therelationships between surrogatesand parents well enough so as tosave the deal. These processesare also framed in this way bythe US fertility industry. Theyopen the doors to genetic

reproduction to some previously excluded collectives such as gay men, orwomen who can’t carry babies, sometimes from countries where surrogacy islegally restricted, yet only the most economically privileged among them getaccess to surrogacy. The sociodemographic data presented by Marcin alsoshowed that half of the interviewed surrogates (as compared to almost allparents) hold university degrees. Marcin will continue this research in the UKin 201617, so as to compare the US ‘free market of ARTs’ with a moreregulated British framework.

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Judith Stacey, professor of social andcultural analysis and sociology at NewYork University [faculty profile], gaveclosing comments on 'Surrogacy,feminism & queer family politics'offering an "overview of dramatic shiftsin the past 40 years of feminist andqueer thinking and politics concerningnature, culture and technology inrelation to procreation, marriage,gendered bodies and family discourseand practices." Stacey stated earlier inthe day that the rising expectation ofgenetic family creation in queer andLGBT kinship practices is in some part atestament to the success of the rightwing in pushing “family values.” Stacey

noted that during the Gay Liberation movement, olderconcepts of “the families we choose” were not defined by (oreven meant to necessarily include) the creation of childrenas kin. Stacey also noted the enormous demographicdisparities around the ability of people to “couple,”highlighting the impact of oppressive criminal justice anddetention systems on communities of color. In line with theearly gay and feminist studies, as well as with Kim Tallbear’scritique of settler colonial family models, Stacey also calledfor a broadening of the view of reproduction, quoting herresearch with the Moso people of Western China (discussed

in her latest book in 2011, Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values fromWest Hollywood to Western China), whose reproductive decisions were notrelated to economic or sexual ones

Video and audio of the workshop will be posted soon atwww.makingfamilies.eu.

*Making Families was sponsored by the Marie Curie program of the EuropeanUnion, the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, and the Center forScience, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley, in collaboration withReproSoc research group at the University of Cambridge (UK). It was cosponsored by the UC Berkeley’s Center for Race & Gender, Center for theStudy of Sexual Culture, Department of African American Studies, and theDepartment of Ethnic Studies.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

Family Equality and SurrogacySurrogacy as an Iceberg: 90 Percent Below WaterIsraeli Parents, Indian Surrogates, a Nepali Earthquake, and "CheapWhite Eggs"Genetic Issues at the London Sperm BankCrossBorder Reproduction: An "Ethic of Care" and an UnregulatedMarket

Images via professional websites, book publishers, Elliot Hosman/Center forGenetics and Society.

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5/20/2016 CGS : Bridging Borders: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship & Reproductive Justice

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