Taiwanese Gay Fathers' Queer Family Making: Toward a Temporal-Relational Path (original) (raw)
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Becoming fathers : family formation by gay men in Hong Kong and Taiwan
University of Hong Kong Libraries, 2020
This study investigated the phenomena of gay men becoming fathers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, focusing on their personal experiences as they sought to realize the viability of their own procreative desires. Gay male parented families challenge the heteronormative and patriarchal ideal imbedded of family prevalent in the culture of Hong Kong and Taiwan. By investigating their experiences, through an intersectional lens this study sought to identify constructed systems of oppression and privilege facilitating or hindering the ability of other gay men to achieve their procreative goals of fatherhood. The achievement of gay men becoming fathers outside of heterosexual relationships is an act of political disruption. Using critical inquiry, practically guided by grounded theory, this study sought to understand the lived experiences of gay men in Hong Kong and Taiwan as they proactively move to become fathers. Grounded theory as detailed by Corbin and Strauss (2014) used in this study is an inductive process and seeks to develop a general theory through the analysis of a unique and specific social phenomenon. The goal was not statistical generalizability, nor being able to describe a broad population, but analytic generalizability of a unique situation or phenomenon. In this case the grounded theory developed from this study centers on the interplay of paternal relationships, cultural values, and the negotiation of obligations and role fulfillment. A theory addressing the dissonance caused by their choosing to not hide their homosexuality, and then repaired by their becoming a father. The broader aim of this study is to advocate for the right of all people to equitably participate in family formation systems, while understanding structures which potentially hinder such involvement. Understanding locations of increased oppression allows for the development of an advocacy agenda, and the creation of supportive services to champion gay men and other sexual minorities who seek family formation by non-traditional means. The results illustrate a considerable interplay between the social, political and cultural systems which create formidable power systems of prejudice and oppression. Systems which have shown can be minimized or negated with personal privilege. The influence of family and culture on the development of a procreative identity can be partially explained through the cultural concepts of filial obligation and face. The study results confirm a reconciled gay-father identity is possible and acceptable. This identity is not an attempt to ‘pass’ or be excepted as a sub-category of the heterosexual male identity, but one that exists in tandem with other accepted and celebrated male identities. The family formation actions of the gay fathers included in this study change the normative view of the institution of the family; however, this action is not assimilationist in nature. The political act of family formation by gay man seeks to define a new family, one that is normal and acceptable, and not a diminished version of an existing family definition. This research study was reviewed and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the University of Hong Kong as detailed under HREC reference number EA1802088.
Sociology Compass , 2023
This article uses Taiwan as an example to argue that reproductive justice for gay men should be conceptualised within social, legal, and political contexts. Taiwan is the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, yet the law favours heterosexual couples and denies LGBTQ+ reproductive rights. Thus, Taiwanese gay men seek third-party reproduction overseas to become parents. This article exemplifies gay men's unequal conditions from a non-Western perspective. I reexamine scholarly literature on the interlocking concepts of reproductive justice, stratified reproduction, and queer reproduction to answer what reproductive justice gay men need and how their injustice position situates within and beyond the nation-state borders. Drawing on the reproductive justice framework and studies of queer reproduction, this article proposes a transnational perspective to understand queer reproductive justice through the case that elucidates the specific context of Taiwanese gay men. This article aims to make two contributions. Firstly, it reconsiders the reproductive framework from a transnational perspective to argue that gay men's reproductive justice should be conceptualised at the intersection with other dimensions of injustice. Secondly, this article suggests that the transnational
Sociology of Health & Illness, 2023
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has been used not only to avoid genetic diseases and increase conception success rates but also to perform non-medical sex selection, particularly in the surging cross-border reproductive care (CBRC). In the context of commercialised biomedicine, assisted reproductive technologies, such as lifestyle sex selection, have been tailored to meet intended parents’ preferences. However, there is a lack of analysis on how individuals’ reproductive decisions on PGD-assisted sex selection were shaped within the sociocultural norms and CBRC. This article explores Taiwanese gay fathers’ navigations on sex selection while seeking third-party reproduction overseas because of local legal constraints. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 53 gay fathers (to-be), I analysed how ‘individual preferences’ were dynamically shaped by local sociocultural norms and embedded within transnational settings of routinising PGD in chosen repro-destinations. The findings showed that gay fathers mobilised strategic discourses on non-medical sex selection from both the local and the global to negotiate their decisions in coherence with their LGBTQ+ identity and their role as sons carrying familial responsibility to procreate male heirs. This article proposed a nuanced understanding of gay fathers’ reproductive practices of ‘gendering the beginning of life’ through PGD-assisted sex selection.
Gay Men: Negotiating Procreative, Father, and Family Identities
Journal of Marriage and The Family, 2007
Our qualitative study examines the social psychology of gay men’s experiences with their procreative, father, and family identities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 childless gay men and 20 gay men in the United States who have fathered using diverse means excluding heterosexual intercourse. By focusing on men aged 19 – 55 residing primarily in Florida and New York, our novel analysis illuminates how emerging structural opportunities and shifting constraints shape gay men’s procreative consciousness. Findings reveal that gay men’s procreative consciousness evolves throughout men’s life course, and is profoundly shaped by institutions and ruling relations, such as adoption and fertility agencies, assumptions about gay men, and negotiations with birth mothers, partners, and others.
Never after? Queer temporalities and the politics of non-reproduction
Gender, Place & Culture, 2019
What kind of family is evoked by the label 'family geogra-phies' and who might be excluded from this conceptual frame? Drawing upon literature from feminist and queer geographies, this paper examines the lives of those who exist outside of normative notions of 'the family'. Data comes from biographical narrative interviews, conducted in Britain, with those who are both single and childfree. The paper outlines the potential queerness of a 'non-reproductive' life, exploring the alternative temporal-ities and spatialities this produces. In what ways does the non-reproductive challenge normative ideals of the way a life should unfold? How do 'procreational norms' shape the landscape? By answering such questions, the paper contributes an empirically grounded reflection on the queer potentialities of non-reproduction, challenging certain queer theorizations that equate non-reproduction with anti-futurity. Ultimately, the paper argues that an exploration of the non-reproductive may help reform our understandings of the geographies of intimacy, care and relatedness.
Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online
Two orienting precepts have framed the workshop and 53 symposium issue. First, we approached the project from the 54 ethical perspective that self-identifying as LGBTQ+ or otherwise 55 reproductively non-normative should not place unnecessary and 56 exceptional demands or restrictions upon one's access to ART 57 and other reproductive care and services. The second orienting 58 precept was a commitment to working at a geographic and 59 historical scale where the domestic and transnational hierar-60 chies that fuel and are in turn fuelled by the fertility industry 61 would be visible. Clinic-based and national ART policies and 62 statistics tend not to make cross-border and cross-privilege 63 patterns easily visible. Any policy recommendations from this 64 project should seek to highlight and then reduce the ways in 65 which the fertility industry is animated by and reproduces 66 injustice for some individuals and families, and seek to augment 67 ways in which reproductive rights and justice are served.
Gay fathers’ pathways to parenthood
Partnerschaft und Elternschaft bei gleichgeschlechtlichen Paaren, 2011
How have gay men achieved parenthood? We studied pathways to parenthood among 102 gay fathers in predominantly English speaking countries outside the United States (i.e., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) who responded to an internet survey. Fully 95% of men over 50, but only 53% of those under 50 years of age reported that they had fathered children in the context of heterosexual marriages. In contrast, only 5% of those over 50, but 47% of those under 50 years of age reported that they had become fathers via foster care, adoption, or other pathways outside of heterosexual marriage. The findings are consistent with earlier findings that suggest a generational shift in pathways to parenthood among gay men in the United States, and raise the possibility that the same shift may be underway among gay men in other predominantly English speaking countries.
Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online, 2018
Two orienting precepts have framed the workshop and 53 symposium issue. First, we approached the project from the 54 ethical perspective that self-identifying as LGBTQ+ or otherwise 55 reproductively non-normative should not place unnecessary and 56 exceptional demands or restrictions upon one's access to ART 57 and other reproductive care and services. The second orienting 58 precept was a commitment to working at a geographic and 59 historical scale where the domestic and transnational hierar-60 chies that fuel and are in turn fuelled by the fertility industry 61 would be visible. Clinic-based and national ART policies and 62 statistics tend not to make cross-border and cross-privilege 63 patterns easily visible. Any policy recommendations from this 64 project should seek to highlight and then reduce the ways in 65 which the fertility industry is animated by and reproduces 66 injustice for some individuals and families, and seek to augment 67 ways in which reproductive rights and justice are served.
Becoming Gay Fathers Through Transnational Commercial Surrogacy
Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnational commercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form family subjectivities between traditional kinship patterns and fundamentally new forms of kinship and family. Arguing that class, mobility, and privilege should also be understood as relational and negotiated positions, I show that gay men engaged in surrogacy must be understood as more flexible and differentiated. Second, I show how kinship as synonymous with biogenetic relatedness is supplemented by notions of kinship as devotion, individual will and determination, and reproductive desire in order to strengthen the men’s affinity to their children. Last, I examine how the men negotiate and work within the given structures of heteronormativity and Whiteness and rework notions of parenthood while at the same time reaffirming old hierarchizations of racialized and sexualized forms of procreation and families.
Materializing "Family Pressure" among Taiwanese Queer Women
Feminist Formations, 2017
This article integrates feminist analyses of patrilineal kinship with the literature on lesbian, gay, and queer family of origin relationships. I argue that discourses surrounding sexuality and families of origin underrepresent women's issues through lack of attention to the embodied and material dimensions of family pressure and support. My fieldwork and interviews with lesbians in Taiwan point to women's unpaid family work, family resource distribution, and housing insecurity as areas where patrilineal family pressures persist into the twenty-first century. These findings emerge from the life stories of queer women in a variety of social and family arrangements, including those married to straight men, those married to gay men, and women who are divorced or unmarried.