Becoming fathers : family formation by gay men in Hong Kong and Taiwan (original) (raw)
Related papers
Taiwanese Gay Fathers' Queer Family Making: Toward a Temporal-Relational Path
LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2023
Based on 53 in-depth interviews, this article examines the tension between heteronormative timeframes and queer temporalities by exploring how time and relationships were navigated in gay fathers' reproductive journeys. The right time for reproduction is individually sensed and socially constructed. Relationships facilitate people's perception of reproductive time. Time and relationships are significant themes in reproduction; however, there is a lack of empirical research engaging with both. This article explores the intricate and dynamic process of how gay fathers responded to heteronormative temporal norms by transforming their reproductive aspirations into reproductive plans. Considering the legal constraints, the only accessible way for Taiwanese gay men to have biologically related children is through transnational reproductive technologies, donor eggs, and surrogacy. The expense intensifies the need for relational support from partners and families-of-origin. The findings show four 'temporal-relational paths': chronologicalnormative, partner-bonded, individual-oriented, and family-motivated toward parenthood. I argue for a more nuanced understanding of gay fathers' reproductive decision-making beyond the dichotomy of heteronormative repro-timeline and queer anti-family-making temporality by elucidating how gay fathers employed 'queer temporal repro-agency' to make families. Toward a temporal-relational path, this article attempts to inspire and call out for future research on practices of queer reproduction in a heteronormative timeframe.
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.
Family and Homosexuality in Chinese Culture: Rights Claims by Non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong
Sexuality and Culture , 2017
Family of origin is one of the less-studied areas to have been investigated during the rights-claiming process by non-heterosexuals. This paper discusses how family of origin plays a significant role in the claiming of rights (such as the authority to make health care or medical treatment, funeral arrangement and inheritance) by non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong. Because of the functional specificities of Chinese families and their perceptions of homosexuality, Chinese non- heterosexuals are eager to introduce their sexuality to their family of origin rather than participate in a more separated approach to coming out. This process constitutes a ‘‘coming home’’ approach to coming out as a member of a gender or sexual minority group. The negative effects of exclusion and ignorance not only affect the mental health of non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong but also shape and create social barriers to the claiming of rights. Findings from this study reveal that family of origin is a significant factor deterring non-heterosexuals from considering, planning or taking action to claim sexual citizenship rights.
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
Gay fathers’ pathways to parenthood: International perspectives
Zeitschrift für Familienforschung (Journal of Family Research), 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.
2019
Queer persons enjoy constitutional protection of their rights in South Africa, yet still encounter a great deal of persistent stigma and discrimination (Human Rights Watch 2011; Msibi 2009). Much of this negativity relates to how those from gender and sexual minority groups ostensibly disrupt the procreative imperative. For the most part, having and raising children remains highly valued, contributing to the positive social identity of capable, selfless and responsible adult, and shaping assumptions of what constitutes full social citizenship. Accordingly, queer persons—widely assumed to be ‘childless’ or incapable of parenthood—are positioned as flouting an important normative expectation of gendered personhood: that of being a (biological) parent (Morison & Macleod 2015). Nevertheless, when those other than heterosexual do take up the rights that commonly designate citizenship by becoming parents, they are often maligned and marginalised (Lynch & Morison 2016; Rothmann, 2011) or more generally constructed as a threat to traditional, hetero-patriarchal families (Bernstein & Reiman 2002). This is especially true for gay men, on whom we focus in this chapter.
Crossing borders : remaking gay fatherhood in the global market
2016
CROSSING BORDERS: Remaking Gay Fatherhood in the Global Market Over the past decade, a ‗gayby boom' (Richman, 2002) has occurred in the Israeli malegay community: hundreds of gay couples became fathers through cross-border commercial surrogacy. This rise was accompanied by political struggles over access to surrogacy for same-sex couples within Israel. This study explores first, the causes of this sudden rise in ‗gay surrogacy'; and second, the social implications, especially pertaining to the alteration of family norms in the 21 st century. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), surrogacy is analysed as an 'assemblage', consisting of the interaction between socially shaped practices and desires, the medical and legal technologies involved, and the overarching state apparatuses. To draw out the complexity of the different components of this assemblage (individual, medical and legal, and state), 31 gay surrogacy fathers were interviewed, along with Israeli surrogacy industry representatives (n=6) and policy makers (n=13). Media coverage of ‗gay surrogacy' and documentation from relevant court appeals and state committees on reproductive technologies were incorporated into the analysis to provide a contextual framework. Three themes were identified. First, surrogacy provides Israeli gay men a unique combination of novelty and sameness: surrogacy offers ‗biological' fatherhood, similar to that enjoyed by heterosexual couples, but also facilitates the creation of a new family model, the ‗two-father-family'. The contradiction between the application of technology and the idea of ‗procreation' disappeared through a discursive normalising and neutralising mechanism, in which surrogacy serves as a stand-in for ‗natural procreation'. Through this process, assisted reproduction facilitated the normalisation of the gay family. Second, despite the fact that surrogacy markets operate globally, the State emerged as a significant force in shaping the specific mechanisms of the surrogacy process, as well as the procreative desires of the Israeli surrogacy fathers-who were geared towards both genetic procreation and reproducing the nation. Gay fatherhood through surrogacy was found to be part of the new ‗gaystream' (Duggan, 2002), expressing desires towards a new (homo)normativity and participating in homonationalist (Puar, 2007) struggles. Finally, cross-border surrogacy operates in a global market, based upon the commerce of gametes and reproductive services involving third-party women, often from impoverished parts of the world (Vora, 2015). This creates a moral dilemma for commissioning fathers, regarding the commodification of women and children in the market for reproductive services, and the related harm and exploitation within surrogacy markets. Surrogacy fathers negotiated these moral conflicts by forming ideas and ideals of reciprocity, intimacy and shared commitment towards and with the surrogate. However, the realisation of these values is heavily dependent upon the regulatory regimes in the surrogacy state and the outcomes of the medical and physical procedures-that is, the birth of a live healthy child. In conclusion, surrogacy offers a site for making families and remaking ‗the family'. It is based on already existing familial norms, but at the same time partially unsettles these; it is shaped by state regulations and national desires; and it is deeply implicated in unequal global markets, while explicitly harbouring ideals of intimacy and reciprocity. As surrogacy becomes the normative familial form for gay men in Israel, the need arises for collective critical reflexion on the impacts of surrogacy practices on global ‗others', and on minorities within the Israeli queer community.
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 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.