Fra barnets tarv til ligestilling - en queerteoretisk undersøgelse af Folketingets forhandlinger om kunstig befrugtning

From the best interest of the child to equality - a queer-theoretical analysis of Danish parliamentary debates on artificial insemination.This article presents an examination of the proceedings in the Danish Parliament regarding lesbian and single women's right to medically assisted artificial insemination. In 1996-1997 the Danish Parliament passed legislation banning doctors in Denmark to inseminate women who were not married or in relationship resembling a marriage. This limitation was abrogated by the Parliament in 2005-2006. Through discourse analyses inspired by queer theory I shall examine how such a limitation could be imposed in 1996 and then be abrogated a decade later. In 2006 the pro-discourse used a discursive strategy that equated lesbian parenting with heterosexual parenting, hereby dissolving the destabilizing and queer potential of the lesbian family. The pro-discourse succeeded in uniting several different discourses in the nodal point Equal Rights. However, as my queer analyses will show, the equal rights do not come for free. First of all, the queer identities that cannot exist within heterosexual institutions such as marriage and parenthood are excluded. Secondly, the discursive representation of lesbian parenting is transformed into a symbolic heterosexual formation that supports heteronormative

“The best men can be”: New configurations of masculinity in the Gillette ad “We believe”

In January 2019, the company Gillette released a short movie “We believe” as advertisement for the brand. In the ad, Gillette reframes their slogan from “the best a man can get” to “the best a man can be.” Connecting the video to the #MeToo movement and critiquing ‘toxic masculinity’, Gillette portrays a new, more responsible, gentle, empathetic masculinity for “the men of tomorrow.” In this article, we present and discuss theories and strands of masculinity studies, and we analyze how the short movie portrays contemporary masculinity vis-à-vis these theories. Our argument is that while Gillette’s short movie and similar branding movies appeal to social responsibility and might open for new and more inclusive masculinities, it does, however, at the same time reproduce the patriarchal organization of masculinity in which power and privilege run from man to man and leave women and children as objects. Furthermore, the recoding of masculinity from toxicity to empathy is framed as an individual choice within neoliberal logics

Moren er Død, Moren, Leve...

Gay men are carrying a history as being suspected as potential pedophiles and non-suited parents, and while the reproductive technology of transnational gestational surrogacy makes it possible for gay men to become parents within heteronormative logics, the constructions of families without a mother are looked upon as problematic at best. Through field observations and interviews with gay men, who have been or who are involved in transnational surrogacy I explore how gay men fragmentize the notion of the mother in to several positions. The article argues that the gay men are reproductive vulnerable and are negotiating and fighting for the possibility to become legible as parents inside a heteronormative and homophobic framework. This relies on their ability to diminish the mother. By activating and using misogynic and colonial discourses and strategies, the gay men eradicate the kinship positions of the surrogate and the donor, thus giving discursive and affective life to gay men’s possibility to embody motherhood and parenthood

To Belong to the Living – om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme

Following Lee Edelman’s polemic argument against reproductive futurism and Sara Ahmed’s thinking on queer attachments, this article discusses queer kinship, as it is represented in the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading argues that a heteronormative temporal development of the children makes queer kinship recognizable inside a heteronormative kinship paradigm, while simultaneously one mother and the sperm donor fight about the brutal reconceptualizations of masculinity, kinship, and queerness. The closing discussion of the concept of reproductive futurism departs from José Estaban Muñoz’ critique of Edelman and from the foucauldian concept of racism as the death function in the economy biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant part in the configuration of kinship in The Kids Are All Right

La célébration de l’homosexualité comme une spécificité danoise

Cette étude analyse deux articles 2009, qui illustrent le discours dominant sur la citoyenneté gay et lesbienne. Leur lecture montre que la conformisation actuelle de l’identité gay et lesbienne est étroitement liée au récit national selon lequel le Danemark serait un pays particulièrement permissif. En utilisant le concept de Puar sur l’homonationalisme et le concept de Said sur les géographies imaginaires repensé par Gregory, cette analyse met en lumière la façon dont l’inclusion homonormative des identités gay et lesbiennes dans la citoyenneté et la reconnaissance – en tant qu’éléments du « nous » national danois – servent à construire et exclure une population d’immigrés considérée comme pathologique et suspecte – les « eux ». Dans la description que l’on fait d’elle, cette population s’oppose à ce que l’on pense être danois ; elle est ainsi présentée comme une menace pour la citoyenneté gay et lesbienne et le récit national sur ce qui serait danois.The article presents a reading of two newspaper-articles about the Danish LGBT parade in 2009. The articles represent the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The readings show that the contemporary mainstreaming of gay and lesbian identity is intertwined with the national narrative about “the special Danish permissiveness”. Using the concept of homonationalism and Gregory’s rethinking of Saids concept of imaginary geographies the readings highlight how homonormative inclusions of gay and lesbian identities into citizenship and recognition – into the national Danish “we” – is being operationalized to construct and exclude a pathologized and suspicious immigrant population – the “them”. This imagined population is casted to oppose the national narrative and thereby is represented as a danger to gay and lesbian citizenship and the national narrative about Danishness