Choreographies of sperm donations: Dilemmas of intimacy in lesbian couple donor conception

Abstract

Assisted conception involving donor insemination challenges cultural idioms of parenthood and family; there is now a growing body of work exploring how women and couples negotiate becoming a family in this way. But sperm donation also raises questions on the more intimate levels of sex, sexuality and sexual bodies, and these have received little sustained attention in the literature. Lesbian couples in the U.K. increasingly negotiate access to medicalised donor insemination, but many also conceive in informal arrangements with donors where they themselves negotiate proximity and contact with donors when retrieving donor sperm. I explore in this paper how lesbian couples manage and perceive sperm donations, how they seek to negotiate their intimate, sexual and bodily overtones, and how the medical and non-medical settings enable them to do this in different ways. I draw on empirical data from an interview study conducted from 2006 to 2009 in England and Wales comprising 25 lesbian couples. I suggest that sperm donation raises dilemmas of intimacy for lesbian couples, and that couples try to resolve such dilemmas by carefully and intentionally choreographing donation events through managing patterns of movement and action. The different institutional, medical and regulatory frameworks governing clinical and non-clinical sperm donation shape that management in significant and different ways. I argue that sperm donation choreographies enable couples to negotiate the private, sexual and intimate tensions surrounding sperm donations, and also the subjectivity of the sperm donor.

Lesbian Women Choosing Motherhood: The Journey to Conception

“…These factors were also voiced by the participants in our study as reasons for choosing SI. One of the challenges of SI that was identified both in our study and by Nordqvist (2011) is the need to access and use sperm in a timely fashion, that is, while it is still mobile. Participants in our study were acutely aware of the urgency required to increase the likelihood of successful conception, and as such shared that they hurried to inseminate as soon as possible after the sperm was obtained.…”

‘It's a bit too much fathering this seed’: the meaning-making of the sperm donor in Italian lesbian mother families

“…Here, the donor is seen as a body part and objectified by means of the medical procedures applied. As noted by Nordqvist (2011b), couples have to reach a compromise between the need for the donor's semen and the reluctance to access it. Moreover, even though the psychological reduction of the donor to a 'vial of sperm' (Alessandra, non-biological mother, anonymous donation) or 'plasticine' (Sabrina, biological mother, anonymous donation) initially works to eliminate the 'threat of the interloper' (Ehrensaft, 2008) from the intimacy of baby-making, the donor's relevance in the family construction remains.…”

“…(Nordqvist, 2011b). On the one hand, their push-pull feelings towards the donor and their transfer of positive characteristics of the reproductive process between the clinic and the doctor medicalise and obscure any relationship they have with the donor.…”

Knowledge and Perception about Oocyte Donation in a Semirural Region of Turkey

“…In our study, we observed attitudes characteristic to the Turkish society in general; the presence of a medical condition for oocyte donation, female gender, being included in the 40 year age group, and high levels of income and high education were significant determinants. Yet, in many countries in the world, without medical necessity (among homosexuals as well as heterosexuals), having children through gamete donation optionally is legal, supported, and acceptable by a certain segment of society in England and Wales (17). The most important reason is considered that it can stem from social, cultural, religious, socio-economic, and educational differences between countries in the laws and opinions (7).…”