Queering the Legitimacy of Motherhood: Cross-Border Reproductive Travel and Lesbian Family Building in Contemporary China

Date: 19 Feb 2020(Wed)
Time: 12:30 - 2:00pm
Venue: Online Seminar (Link to the seminar to be provided to registered participants)
Speaker: ZHONG Xinle, Mphil. in Gender Studies Programme (Anthropology), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Moderator: Prof. CHENG Sealing, Associate Professor in Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract: Along with the development of same-sex equality movement, the advance of New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs) as well as the rise of fertility business in a global scale, the past few decades have witnessed the circulated desire towards making the family of procreation among queer communities. Yet, most existing studies of NRTs remain heteronormative, while current literature on queer family largely focuses on Euro-American settings, leaving queer reproductive practices in non-Western societies unexplored.
Drawing on the multi-sited ethnographic research in 2019, which includes autoethnography, in-depth interviews, as well as participant observation, this study attempts to investigate the desire, struggles, and negotiating process of queer women’s cross-border reproductive practices and family building in contemporary China. On the one hand, cross-border reproductive tourism has provided new possibilities for queer women in China, who are banned from access to NRTs in China. On the other hand, same-sex parenthood remains fundamentally precarious in the current socio-political context of China, given that childbirth out of (heterosexual) wedlock remains highly stigmatized and same-sex partnership is not protected by legal institutions. Against this background, this study documents the diverse and strategic arrangements queer women develop to gain legitimacy for their co-motherhood in the face of tremendous uncertainty. It is hoped that the research could fill the existing gap on queer family building in non-Western settings, provide new insights for discussion about queer reproductive justice, and contribute to anthropological studies of queer kinship and NRTs.
 
Speaker's Biography: ZHONG Xinle is an MPhil student in Gender Studies, CUHK, affiliating with the Department of Anthropology, CUHK. Her research interests focus on gender, sexuality, and technoscience studies. Her MPhil thesis investigates queer women's family building in China along with the rise of the global fertility business.

Language: English

Registration: https://bit.ly/2R0cDvt