Being a Sperm Donor: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Biosociality in Denmark

199 Pages·2018·1.78 MB·English

by  Sebastian Mohr

BEING A SPERM DONOR
Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality
GENERAL EDITORS:
Soraya Tremayne, Founding Director, Fertility and Reproduction
Studies Group and Research Associate, Institute of Social and Cultural
Anthropology, University of Oxford.
Marcia C. Inhorn, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and
International Affairs, Yale University.
Philip Kreager, Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, and
Research Associate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and
Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford.
For a full volume listing please see back matter.
BEING A SPERM DONOR
M , S , B
ASCULINITY EXUALITY AND IOSOCIALITY
D
IN ENMARK
Sebastian Mohr
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2018 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2018 Sebastian Mohr
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mohr, Sebastian, author.
Title: Being a Sperm Donor: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Biosociality in
Denmark / Sebastian Mohr.
Description: New Y ork: Berghahn Books, 2018. | Series: Fertility,
Reproduction and Sexuality; Volume 40 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2018016346 (print) | LCCN 2018017006 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781785339479 (eBook) | ISBN 9781785339462 (hardback:
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sperm donors—Denmark. | Artifi cial insemination,
Human—Social aspects—Denmark. | Masculinity—Denmark. |
Sex—Denmark.
Classifi cation: LCC HQ761 (ebook) | LCC HQ761 .M64 2018 (print) |
DDC 362.17/8309489—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016346
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78533-946-2 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78533-947-9 ebook
To those men who make a difference with every donation.

C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Being a Sperm Donor 1
Chapter 1. Becoming a Sperm Donor: Conceptual Pathways 19
Chapter 2. Regimes of Living: Donating Semen and
the Pleasure of Morality 46
Chapter 3. Affective Investments: Masturbation and
the Pleasure of Control 69
Chapter 4. Biosocial Relatedness: Being Connected and
the Pleasure of Responsibility 96
Chapter 5. The Limits of Biosocial Subjectivation:
Male Shame and the Displeasure of Gender Normativity 127
Conclusion: Biosocial Subjectivation Reconsidered 153
Bibliography 167
Index 181
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
While ethnographic fi eldwork and writing can feel lonesome at
times, ethnographic research and analysis are never solitary
events. That is why I want to thank the following people:
I am indebted to the men who shared their stories with me. With-
out their commitment to the research endeavor, these insights into
being sperm donors would have never been possible. Given that
many of the donors I talked to considered insights into the lives of
sperm donors valuable, I hope that this book lives up to their idea
of a nuanced account of what it means to donate semen. Equally
important was the cooperation of sperm banks and clinical research
centers and the willingness of lab technicians, donor coordinators,
physicians, and receptionists to let me be part of their working lives.
I am thankful for their help.
As this book is the product of many years of work, there are a
number of colleagues who have made a difference in how it took
shape. During my years as a PhD student at the University of Copen-
hagen, colleagues at the Center for Medical Science and Technology
Studies and the Section for Health Services Research infl uenced my
thinking. Thank you for all your help and support. I especially want
to thank Klaus Hoeyer and Ayo Wahlberg for guiding me through
my fi eldwork, analysis, and writing. I also want to thank Elizabeth
Roberts and Eric Plemons for sparring with me during my time at the
Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. A thank
you to Bob Simpson, Lynn Morgan, Linda Layne, Stine Adrian, and
Charlotte Kroløkke for their encouragement during my research. A
special thank you to my committee members, Marcia Inhorn, Tine
Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, and Mette Nordahl Svendsen, for their valuable
feedback.
After fi nishing my PhD, I had the privilege of joining the Depart-
ment of Educational Sociology at the Danish School of Education,
Acknowledgments ix
Aarhus University. While I certainly have learned a lot from all my
colleagues at the department, I want to thank especially Marianne
Hoeyen, Ning de Coninck-Smith, Christian Sandbjerg Hansen, Jo-
nas Lieberkind, Charlotte Mathiassen, and Matti Weisdorf for inspir-
ing conversations, new ideas, and feedback. During the same years,
I had the honor to join a network of scholars working on the global
histories of IVF headed by Sarah Franklin and Marcia Inhorn. I want
to thank everyone in that network for inviting me in and helping me
to develop my work. Part of this book was written during a visit at
the Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in
Berlin. I want to thank the department for its hospitality and Beate
Binder and Maren Heibges as well as the members of the research
laboratory GenderQueer for their support, feedback, and inspiration.
Much of the analysis offered in this book developed due to feed-
back from colleagues and scholars at conferences and workshops.
Without being able to account for every single presentation that I
have given since the beginning of my research, I nevertheless want
to thank those colleagues and scholars who took their time to offer
comments, questions, and feedback. Especially I want to thank col-
leagues in the Sexuality Research Network of the European Socio-
logical Association and colleagues from the European Association of
Social Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Associa-
tion who have been so kind to offer comments and help following
presentations at (bi)annual meetings.
The research for this book was funded by the Danish Council
for Independent Research. Some publications coming out of this re-
search prior to this book were important for the development of my
thinking. They were central in helping me fi gure out how best to un-
derstand Danish sperm donors’ lives analytically. Because the help
of anonymous reviewers and, in some cases, the teamwork with co-
authors was important for those publications, and thus for this book,
I want to account for them here: Sebastian Mohr and Klaus Høyer,
“Den gode sædcelle . . . En antropologisk analyse af arbejdet med
sædkvalitet,” Kultur og klasse 40, no. 113 (2012): 45–61; Sebastian
Mohr, “Beyond Motivation: On What It Means to Be a Sperm Donor
in Denmark,” Anthropology & Medicine 21, no. 2 (2014): 162–173;
Sebastian Mohr, “Living Kinship Trouble: Danish Sperm Donors’
Narratives of Relatedness,” Medical Anthropology 34, no. 5 (2015):
470–484; Sebastian Mohr, “Containing Sperm—Managing Legiti-
macy: Lust, Disgust, and Hybridity at Danish Sperm Banks,” Journal
of Contemporary Ethnography 45, no. 3 (2016): 319–342; Sebastian
Mohr, “Donating Semen in Denmark,” in The Routledge Handbook of