| This dissertation explores the ways in which assisted reproduction is deemed a legitimate means to pregnancy for some and not others and how users of these technologies negotiate biomedicine for their own purposes. From a feminist science, technology and medicine studies perspective, this project examines the material practices of achieving pregnancy among lesbians and the biomedical institutions and other services comprising the newly established fertility marketplace. Through qualitative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, I found that (1) Assisted reproductive technologies are cultural and historically constructed and offer one manifestation of stratified (bio)medicalization; (2) Contemporary practices of assisted reproduction among lesbians are shaped by stratified biomedicalization processes; (3) As gendered technologies, assisted reproductive technologies enact regulatory ideals of sex, gender, and sexuality while leaving open possibilities for negotiations (i.e., resistance, refusal, non-engagement, etc.); (4) The trajectory of achieving pregnancy is an active, conscious process that is negotiated, fluid, and revisional; (5) The common trajectories of achieving pregnancy among lesbians enact a biomedicalization of kinship and the construction of affinity ties; and, (6) The trajectory of achieving pregnancy among lesbians includes technical negotiations and the construction of hybrid/meso-technological processes. These findings provide an empirical framework for re-theorizing gender, sexuality and the construction of “appropriate” reproducers and legitimate kinship. |
