Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
End Date
12-6-2011 12:00 PM
Subject Areas
bodies, gender, marriage, reproduction
Abstract
To “naturalize” is to make something that is the effect of a social process appear as natural, as a priori, as a cause; to be “naturalized” also refers to the legal process of conferring citizenship after birth. Often we talk about naturalization in relation to sex/gender but this paper looks at the naturalization of fatherhood through the institution of marriage, the naturalization of citizens through biopolitical apparatuses putatively organized through biological frames, and the “de-naturalization” of transgender men as parents. I trace how “naturalization” in both senses figures in several legal and cultural texts centered on fatherhood, citizenship, and gender: a U.S Supreme Court's decision reinforcing the presumption of paternity when a child is born within a marriage (Michael H. et al. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989)); a state case that terminates the presumptive fatherhood of married transgender men (In re Marriage of Sterling Simmons, 355 Ill. App. 3d 942 (2005)); a US Supreme Court decision that makes it more difficult for unmarried men than unmarried women to confer US citizenship on their children who are “foreign” born (Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53 (2001) ); the specter of the “pregnant man”; and, finally, policies that require sterilization as a condition for legal recognition of one’s new gender.
Keywords
sterilization, transgender, fatherhood, biopolitics, parenting, reproduction, naturalization
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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Sterile Futures: Naturalized Reproduction and the Pregnant Man
To “naturalize” is to make something that is the effect of a social process appear as natural, as a priori, as a cause; to be “naturalized” also refers to the legal process of conferring citizenship after birth. Often we talk about naturalization in relation to sex/gender but this paper looks at the naturalization of fatherhood through the institution of marriage, the naturalization of citizens through biopolitical apparatuses putatively organized through biological frames, and the “de-naturalization” of transgender men as parents. I trace how “naturalization” in both senses figures in several legal and cultural texts centered on fatherhood, citizenship, and gender: a U.S Supreme Court's decision reinforcing the presumption of paternity when a child is born within a marriage (Michael H. et al. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989)); a state case that terminates the presumptive fatherhood of married transgender men (In re Marriage of Sterling Simmons, 355 Ill. App. 3d 942 (2005)); a US Supreme Court decision that makes it more difficult for unmarried men than unmarried women to confer US citizenship on their children who are “foreign” born (Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53 (2001) ); the specter of the “pregnant man”; and, finally, policies that require sterilization as a condition for legal recognition of one’s new gender.