Queering Relatedness: Gay Men’s Reproductive Paths and Family Making in Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage in 2019, but like many other countries, failed to give full recognition of the reproductive rights for LGBTQ+ people. Five years later, same-sex couples still cannot legally access assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) or donor gametes, and surrogacy is illegal in Taiwan. Consequently, one of the only means for gay men to have children is to travel abroad for third-party reproduction via the use of ARTs, donor ova, and surrogacy. This thesis explores how gay men in Taiwan who seek transnational third-party reproduction describe, understand, and reflect on their experiences of attempting to become fathers with a view both to understanding the place of these narratives within the changing context of LGBTQ+ family-making in Taiwan, and globally. By engaging with the sociology of reproduction and queer theory, I show how their reproductive trajectories can be interpreted to reveal the importance of crafting ‘queer relatedness’ in biomedicalised reproduction. At the same time, these narratives also reveal an ongoing sensitivity to, and deference toward, the dominant logics of cis-hetero and patriarchal family structures of contemporary Taiwan society. Data from 53 interviews with gay fathers and fathers-to-be are combined with findings and insights based on eight-month of fieldwork with the Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy in order to characterise gay men’s perceptions and experiences of becoming fathers in the face of these tensions, and to investigate how the logics of heteronormativity continues to shape their reproductive practices. Based on this fine-grained analysis, I delineate how gay men’s reproductive imaginaries, navigations, and decisions shed light on the entangled process of being both queer and not queer, and queerly related to the families they come from and choose. I develop the concept of the ‘repropath’ to make sense of gay men’s reproduction and family-building, which is intended to help capture the making of relatedness both in alignment with and resistance against normativities. In Chapter 4, I show how they establish solidarities within the LGBTQ+ family community and forge a ‘shared path’ to seek viable reproductive options. Chapter 5 documents gay men’s stratified accessibilities and their negotiations of affordability and preferences, giving rise to ‘hierarchical paths’. Chapter 6 explores how they co-produce ‘envisioned paths’ with ARTs, professionals, and families. Lastly, Chapter 7 shows gay men’s quest for family legitimacy is an integral part of ‘queer relatedness’, for which they seek recognition through coming-out strategies. My findings confirm that gay men in Taiwan establish diverse repropaths to destabilise hetero-norms by redefining kin ties and rescripting family-building. Their repropaths are not homogenous but intersect with varied imaginaries of family formation, which in turn are reflected in practical choices regarding selecting sperm providers, donor ova and embryos. On the one hand, these carefully chosen repropaths confirm the persistent significance of aligning ‘queer relatedness’ with existing norms, including the conventional understanding of biogenetic connections, racial hierarchies, and gender roles. On the other hand, they also challenge and undermine these norms by deploying malleable strategies and devising alternative discourses to justify their choices. In conclusion, I argue that gay fathers partly transgress heteropatriarchal constraints by ‘queering’ reproductive practices while they also partly seek recognition by employing flexible ‘resistant accommodation’ to negotiate with hetero-/homo-normativity. Gay men proactively build repropaths to contest normality, and their dynamic ‘dual strategies’ of normalisation and differentiation show that they consciously and constantly mediate between fitting into society and inventing alternative ways of crafting ‘queer relatedness’. At empirical and theoretical levels, this thesis suggests that normative and queer strategies can be used in tandem to achieve specific ends, including crafting ‘queer relatedness’ through re-articulating genetic ties, racial contours, and expected gender. This thesis contributes to a range of disciplines, including social studies of reproduction, LGBTQ+ family studies and the sociology of family and medicine, by offering a nuanced account of the implications of third-party reproduction and the meaning of ‘relatedness’. I propose the concept of ‘repropath’ as an empirical and theoretical innovation that can benefit future research examining both individual and collective patterns of cross-border reproduction. This thesis is also a timely response to the sociolegal transition that is occurring globally in the context of gay parenting by giving voice to gay men with reproductive aspirations who have been overlooked in Taiwan society for so long.