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“Married, Single, Or Gay?” Queerying and Trans-Forming the Practices of Assisted Human Reproduction Services Rachel Epstein

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“Married, Single, Or Gay?” Queerying and Trans-Forming the Practices of Assisted Human Reproduction Services Rachel Epstein CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by YorkSpace “MARRIED, SINGLE, OR GAY?” QUEERYING AND TRANS-FORMING THE PRACTICES OF ASSISTED HUMAN REPRODUCTION SERVICES RACHEL EPSTEIN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATION YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO APRIL 2014 © Rachel Epstein, 2014 Abstract Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people in North America have historically been categorized as “disfavoured reproducers” and, through various legal, social, and political means, have been denied the right to parent. The past 30 years, however, have been marked by staggering social, legal, and political change in relation to LGBTQ families and people across the LGBTQ spectrum in Canada are increasingly making use of Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) services as part of their family-building processes. However, despite significant gains in social and legal recognition for LGBTQ people in Canada, LGBTQ people are often unhappily marginalized when they seek reproductive assistance and are brought under the rubric of a highly medicalized, profit-making system within which their bodies, and families, most often do not fit. Drawing on 40 qualitative interviews from the CIHR-funded Creating Our Families project, which was designed to explore the experiences of LGBT people with AHR services in Ontario, this dissertation explores the ways that LGBTQ identities and kinship structures are often misrecognized and, in many cases, unintelligible in the fertility clinic context. The assumptions of the heterosexual matrix, in alliance with the culture of the fertility industry, can result in violations or ruptures to the personhood of queer and trans people as they make their way through the clinic. The strategies that people adopt in order to enhance their flow through the clinic can at times contribute to these violations. The dissertation explores the contours of a more ethical relation between LGBTQ people and fertility clinics, and finally, considers some pedagogical issues related to what is at stake when health care providers are asked to adopt a stance of “not-knowing” that recognizes the radical alterity of the Other. ii To Dr. Norman Epstein, my dad iii Acknowledgements I am indebted to the people who worked on the Creating Our Families research project: my long-time friend and colleague, Lori Ross, and the Re:searching for LGBTQ Health team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, especially datejie green, Lesley Tarasoff, Scott Anderson, Leah Steele and Stu Marvel. Thank you to my committee: supervisor Don Dippo, Chloe Brushwood-Rose, and Lorna Erwin. Each of your contributions made this a stronger piece of work. Thanks also to the other members of the examining committee, Jane Ward, Judith MacDonnell and Dan Yon, for your generous reading and thoughtful questions. I extend thanks also to earlier supervisors of my work (this PhD has been a long time coming): Celia Haig-Brown and Sharon Todd, and to Barbara Hanson, an early cheerleader. A special thank you to Graduate Program Assistant Elizabete Petersons who kept everything on track over the years. I am blessed to be surrounded by rich and overlapping communities of family, friends and colleagues who, in a multitude of ways, loved, nurtured and supported me throughout the course of this project. Mary J. Daniel generously read everything; her insightful, smart and challenging critique pushed me to think better. Thanks to my posse – Carol-Anne O’Brien, Elspeth Brown, Jess and Eli Abraham, Jake Pyne, Lorie Rotenberg, Margarita and Alisa Miniovich, Pat Rayman, Rachel Warden and Xochil Argueta-Warden – who supported me in untold ways; and to the other family/friends who enrich my life, including: Aaron and Dini Densmore, Alice Klein, Amy Gottlieb, Aziza Elwin, Elinor Widden, Eric Epstein, Hershel Russell, Honey Maser, Marc Cannon, Maureen FitzGerald, Marylin Kanee, Michael Epstein, Nancy Pollak, Nina and Lola Rabinovitch, Penny Goldsmith, Sally Shamai and Sheila Block. A very special thank you to Lois iv Fine and Sadie Epstein-Fine for providing steadiness and love in the face of the vicissitudes of life; and to my father, Norman Epstein, for his example. Many of those above, as well as Karleen Pendleton Jimenez, Margot Francis, Meg Gibson, Nadya Burton, Nicki Pascetta, and Shauna Lancit provided intellectual support through reading and conversation. Ann Tutt, Graham Jackson, and Julia Gotz nurtured my body and soul. My colleagues at work, Andy Inkster, Anna Travers, Chris Veldhoven, Dana Baitz and Nila Gupta picked up the slack as I absented myself to write. Paula Klein kept me writing; Jacqueline Larson tidied everything up at the end. Finally, thank you to the Creating Our Families participants for lending their stories and to the communities of LGBTQ parents and parents-to-be, in Toronto and beyond, who for so many years have been a source of connection and inspiration. I hope this work contributes something to our understanding of how things work and so to our capacity to make change. v Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Background / Theoretical Framework / Methodology .......................................... 1 Some Personal History ................................................................................................................ 1 Some LGBTQ Parenting History ................................................................................................ 4 Working for Change .................................................................................................................... 9 The Current Project ................................................................................................................... 13 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 15 About Terminology ................................................................................................................... 26 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 30 Chapter 2. Literature Review: Reproductive Technologies, Kinship, and Queer and Trans Families ........................................................................................................................................ 45 Feminist Scholarship on RTs: A Dichotomized View .............................................................. 45 Reproductive Technologies and the Broadening of Kinship Studies ........................................ 51 A Shift in Feminist Scholarship: Acknowledging Complexity ................................................. 56 Queer Studies of Kinship — Tensions in Biology and Normalization ..................................... 59 Normative Families and the Need for a Dad ............................................................................. 63 Non-Normative Identities and Family Structures ..................................................................... 66 Ethnographies of RTS: Thompson and Mamo .......................................................................... 70 Chapter 3: Space Invaders ......................................................................................................... 76 Ontological Choreography ........................................................................................................ 77 Gender Work ............................................................................................................................. 78 Objectification ........................................................................................................................... 86 Ethics: Personhood and Technology ......................................................................................... 89 Enter Space Invaders ................................................................................................................. 91 Institutional Plumbers: Identifying Blockages .......................................................................... 94 Administrative Blockages ......................................................................................................... 95 The People ................................................................................................................................. 97 Generic Bureaucratization: The Waiting Room ...................................................................... 100 Hyper-conventional Gender in the Clinic ............................................................................... 106 vi Body Parts: The Pelvic Exam/Ultrasound ............................................................................... 108 Meeting with the Doctor ......................................................................................................... 112 Sex-Segregated Space (Invaders): The Andrology Lab .......................................................... 115 Strategies to Benefit the Long-Term Self ............................................................................... 117 Chapter 4. Queer Kinship in the Fertility Clinic: Policy
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