Queering reproductive justice: Memories, mistakes, and motivations to transform kinship

Abstract

Why does a queer feminist approach to reproductive justice matter? Why might it matter for youth who build their families while navigating the surveillance of a large urban U.S. child welfare system? Why might it matter for queer transracial families like my own and for other “disruptive families”? This autoethnographic account shadows my ethnography with Black adolescent mothers and their children living under surveillance. The works stems from an obligation to shift my gaze to myself, as I follow a long reflexive tradition in feminist anthropology around exploring my vulnerabilities and changing point of view. I argue that queering reproductive justice reveals diverse forms of kinship and care networks to motivate coalition building across families. Queer Black activists and feminists have consistently offered critical insights into how to make the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter more inclusive of Black trans and cis girls and women, as well as for gender‐expansive Black people and families. As a multi‐city and global coalition erupts and demands the liberation of Black lives, the time is ripe for a queer coalition for reproductive justice.

Parenthood: Beyond Maternity and Paternity

“…Accounts reveal the culturally varied meanings and realities of parenthood. They allow for a multitude of parenthoods beyond those typically experienced by heterosexual childbearing couples, as well as retaining understandings about caregiving mothers, provider fathers, and coupled parents (Mamo 2018; Rudrappa 2018; Silver 2020; TallBear 2018). Scholars highlight “how kinship is produced through social practices rather than [being] determined by the physical act of birth” (Thelen, Coe, and Alber 2013).…”

“…Scholars highlight “how kinship is produced through social practices rather than [being] determined by the physical act of birth” (Thelen, Coe, and Alber 2013). Anthropologist Lauren Silver (2020, 219), for instance, describes queer families’ “diverse forms of family making,” such as nonbiological and nonnuclear family kinships, that make visible and attend to kinships that are often obscured by power. Indeed, when it first appeared, this work was used to critique biological determinism in kinship studies, thus encouraging more flexible definitions of “kin.” I further pursue this aim via the concept of parenthood, utilizing past conceptual and methodological developments regarding queer parenthoods, kinship, and marriage (Mamo 2018; Silver 2020; Wekker 2006).…”

“…As Wekker rethinks the conceptual and methodological limits of marriage and sexuality, I seek to rethink parenthood. The term, I argue, specifically addresses parent–child relations—and the care, inequalities, and hierarchies they entail—yet allows for diverse relations beyond those anchored in biology, birth, and couple norms (Silver 2020; Thelen, Coe, and Alber 2013).…”

Lesbian Motherhood and Artificial Reproductive Technologies in North America: Race, Gender, Kinship, and the Reproduction of Dominant Narratives

“…Lesbian and single mothers have been identified as individuals who, because of an absence of father in their family-building, signify that radical resistance to this model is possible (Ryan and Moras 2017, 581). Indeed, the kinship practices of individuals with diverse sexualities and genders so typify unique family formation that cisgender, heterosexual families may be viewed as 'queered' through processes such as the following: collectivity, which encourages collective judgement and resource sharing in the care of a child, with communities including fathers, mothers, extended family, and non-biological care-givers (Silver 2020); mutual choice among blended families, who through remarriage or re-partnering, continue to co-parent their children, affirming one another's capacity to make decisions in the best interest of the child (Parks 2013); polyamory, defined as family and relationship structures that include more than two monogamously coupled individuals or parents (Park 2013;Flack 2009); and challenges to monomaternalism, a construct which functionally distances the biological mother from both extended mothering options, such as stepparenting, and from support networks of mothers who may arise from the strategies listed above (Parks 2013). Despite the tendency to Zoey Smith | Lesbian Motherhood and Artificial Reproductive Technologies in North America: Race, Gender, Kinship, and the Reproduction of Dominant Narratives synonymize 'queered' and 'radical' family structures, in practice lesbian mothers frequently reproduce the narratives, symbols and imageries that uphold the nuclear family model and its constituting power structures.…”

“…However, for white individuals, critical engagement with constructs embedded in colonial patriarchy demands the recognition that whiteness both exists and awards privilege (Fassin 2011). Challenging the presuppositions embedded in ART is a step toward dismantling myths surrounding family and motherhood and creating space for new kinds of decolonized kinship practices that are rooted in fluidity, relationality, and openness (Tallbear 2018, 146;Silver 2020). By evaluating NA kinship myths and the mechanisms that support them, new forms of family may emerge.…”