The infertility clinic and the birth of the lesbian: The political debate on assisted reproduction

ABSTRACT As a feminist updating of Foucauldian analysis, the article makes the point that ‘the lesbian ’ was not significantly exposed or seriously interpellated by Danish official discourse until the political debate on new reproductive technolo-gies and reprogenetics accelerated at the end of the 20th century. In the 1990s, the debate thus constructed ‘the lesbian ’ not only as an ‘unnatural mother’, but also as heiress to the monstrous figure of the ‘mad scientist ’ whose tampering with the embryo had stirred the political mind in the previous decade. Deeply worried by developments in biotechnology, many politicians felt they should protect the embryo from this sinister scientist, and, subsequently, the innocent child from the monstrous lesbian. Hence, a majority of MPs voted for excluding lesbians and single women from access to assisted reproduction in medical clinics. KEY WORDS child cultural imaginary embryo Foucault ‘mad scientist ’ monsters new reproductive technologies reprogenetics Seen in a historical perspective, lesbians are a very recent ‘invention ’ in official discourses in Denmark. The extreme marginality of ‘the homo-sexual woman ’ in medico-legal discourse has been repeatedly empha-sized by Karin Lützen, a prominent feminist researcher on the history of love between women (Bech and Lützen, 1986: 113; Lützen, 1986). With ‘male homosexuality ’ as implicit norm, the figure of ‘the homosexual’ appeared as part of medico-legal discourses in Denmark in the late 19th century (Lützen, 1987). These discourses zealously wove their webs of so-called ‘sexual perversions’, which at one and the same time stigmatized the figure of the gay man and brought him into visible social existence as a sexual subject. ‘The homosexual woman’, in contrast, led a shadowy half-life in these texts. Psychiatrists normally mentioned her only briefl