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- Gender, Queer Theory, Race and Racism, Affect (Cultural Theory), Biopolitics, Necropolitics, and 56 moreGender Studies, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Feminism, Sex and Gender, Cinema, Queer Studies, Homonationalism, Kinship (Anthropology), Gay marriage, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Critical Race Theory, Feminist Theory, Posthumanism, Transnational Adoption, Transgender Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, Pornography, Medical Anthropology, Judith Butler, Affect Studies, Transhumanism, LGBT Studies, Michel Foucault, Poststructuralism, Cultural Theory, Cultural Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Queer Kinship, Feminist theories of the Body, Bodies and Culture, Qualitative methodology, Pierre Bourdieu, Aesthetic medical tourism, Surrogacy, Ideologies of Motherhood, Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Bioethics Reproductive Technology, Semen Freezing, Artificial Insemination, Synchronization of Estrus, Embryo Collection, Embryo Transfer, in Vitro Fertilization, Embryo Freezing, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Postcolonial Feminism, Cryopreservation of gametes and embryos, Sociology Of Intimacy, Same Sex Marriage, Homosexuality, LGBT Issues, Same-sex families, Surrogate Mothering, Cross-border reproductive care, Assisted Reproduction, Frozen Embryos, Culture and Identity, Media Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Queer, and Gender and Raceedit
In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed two men in Copenhagen, before being killed himself by the police.Danish media immediately classified El-Hussein’s actions as ‘a terrorist attack’, and they became the object of... more
In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed two men in Copenhagen, before being killed himself by the police.Danish media immediately classified El-Hussein’s actions as ‘a terrorist attack’, and they became the object of extreme concern to the Danish public. In the following days, the two murder sites were momentarily turned into public memorial spaces. When the site of the killing of El-Hussein also became a site of mourning,
however, it prompted a negative reaction from politicians and the white majority public. While the mixed reactions to publicly mourning a murderer are understandable, they also reveal something about the racialized conditions of public mourning. Reading the different acts of publicly mourning El-Hussein, the article investigates the ways in which public sites of grief are outlined by racialized economies. This article builds upon Butler’s argument that public mourning forms as indicative of which lives are considered lives at all. However, we argue that such an analysis must consider the racialized logics of the performativity of public mourning: Thus, while non-white grief seems not to be recognized as grief at all, white grief tends to reiterate the racialized processes that outline white lives as grievable at the expense of non-white lives.
however, it prompted a negative reaction from politicians and the white majority public. While the mixed reactions to publicly mourning a murderer are understandable, they also reveal something about the racialized conditions of public mourning. Reading the different acts of publicly mourning El-Hussein, the article investigates the ways in which public sites of grief are outlined by racialized economies. This article builds upon Butler’s argument that public mourning forms as indicative of which lives are considered lives at all. However, we argue that such an analysis must consider the racialized logics of the performativity of public mourning: Thus, while non-white grief seems not to be recognized as grief at all, white grief tends to reiterate the racialized processes that outline white lives as grievable at the expense of non-white lives.
Research Interests:
Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnational commercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form family subjectivities between traditional... more
Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnational commercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form family subjectivities between traditional kinship patterns and fundamentally new forms of kinship and family. Arguing that class, mobility, and privilege should also be understood as relational and negotiated positions, I show that gay men engaged in surrogacy must be understood as more flexible and differentiated. Second, I show how kinship as synonymous with biogenetic relatedness is supplemented by notions of kinship as devotion, individual will and determination, and reproductive desire in order to strengthen the men’s affinity to their children. Last, I examine how the men negotiate and work within the given structures of heteronormativity and Whiteness and rework notions of parenthood while at the same time reaffirming old hierarchizations of racialized and sexualized forms of procreation and families.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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... more
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.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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... more
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.
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.
Gennem en logik om degeneration og en modsætning mellem nationen og homoseksualitet blev den homoseksuelle konfigureret som ikke-vital i forhandlingerne om lov om registreret partnerskab i 1988. Tyve år senere er denne konfiguration af... more
Gennem en logik om degeneration og en modsætning mellem nationen og homoseksualitet blev den homoseksuelle konfigureret som ikke-vital i forhandlingerne om lov om registreret partnerskab i 1988. Tyve år senere er denne konfiguration af den homoseksuelle figur presset af nye logikke, der forbinder homoseksualitet med modernitet, fremskridt og danskhed. Og gennem en homonormativ logik forbindes den homoseksuelle nu med ønsket reproduktion og er dermed blevet en vital figur.
At være medborger er at blive anerkendt og genkendt af staten som et ønsket individ: at kunne stille politiske krav, at blive hørt, og at de politiske systemer og diskurser reagerer på ens politiske krav og livsbetingelser. Men hvordan... more
At være medborger er at blive anerkendt og genkendt af staten som et ønsket individ: at kunne stille politiske krav, at blive hørt, og at de politiske systemer og diskurser reagerer på ens politiske krav og livsbetingelser. Men hvordan genkendes nogle mennesker som medborgere, mens andre forbliver illegitime?
I was awarded the gender research Prize, the KRAKA-prize, in 2013 together with Tobias Raun. In the speech I sum up the arguments of my dissertation and argue for a subjectless queer critique. And how a focus on complicity must be part of... more
I was awarded the gender research Prize, the KRAKA-prize, in 2013 together with Tobias Raun. In the speech I sum up the arguments of my dissertation and argue for a subjectless queer critique. And how a focus on complicity must be part of this critique.
Research Interests:
The main argument of the dissertation is that the homosexual figure has fundamentally changed from being a cultural figure related to death (e.g. degeneration, suicide, AIDS, and sickness) to being a figure related to life (e.g.... more
The main argument of the dissertation is that the homosexual figure has fundamentally changed from being a cultural figure related to death (e.g. degeneration, suicide, AIDS, and sickness) to being a figure related to life (e.g. reproduction, national recognition, marriage, and kinship). This reconfiguration is being fueled and made possible by making the figure of the homosexual recognizable inside heteronormative and nationalist formations. Thus the reconfiguration and other forms of exclusions are interdependent.
The main argument is being discussed in three different studies: The first study is an analysis of the discourses of the homosexual figure in parliamentary proceedings and national policies in Denmark 1988-2012. The second study is an analysis of the representations of the homosexual figure in national printed medias, focusing on the LGBT parade and the international event World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. The last study contains readings of mainstream gay movies picturing new kinship arrangements involving a homosexual figure.
The theoretical framework of the dissertation is critical race, feminist, and queer theories as well as Foucauldian biopolitical framework redeveloped by rethinking the concept of bio politics with the work of post- and neocolonial thinkers. The queer theoretical framework is developed by rereading classical queer theories in connection with queer of color critiques to make a queer theoretical mode of analysis calibrated to analyze the ways in which different forms of normativity produce and hierarchize racialized, sexualized, and gendered populations and subjects.
Article one: “When the Homosexual Became Suited for Family – a Queer Theoretical Discourse Analysis of the Parliamentary Proceedings regarding Homosexuals’ Access to Adoption 1988-2010” ["Da homoen blev familieduelig - en queerteoretisk diskursanalyse om Folketingsforhandlingerne om homoeseksuelles adgang til adoption 1988-2010"] analyses and expounds on the historical development in the parliamentary proceedings on central ‘gay rights’ from the introduction of the registered partnership (1989) to the introduction of adoption of stepchildren (1999), and to the introduction of regular adoption (2010). The article draws a historical line from the degenerated and non-vital gay figure to the vital gay figure suited for family in the end of the 2000s, arguing that the logics of modernity and homonormativity are fueling the changing discourses.
Article two: “To Change in Order to Maintain – Biopolitical Reconfigurations of the Homosexual” ["At forandre for at bevare - biopolitiske rekonfigurationer af den homoseksuelle", published in Dansk Sociologi] analyses the parliamentary proceedings on gay marriage (2010) together with a TV reality show about a gay wedding. The article concludes that the biopolitical inclusion of homosexuality is made possible by recoding gay kinship inside a paradigm of heteronormativity. A recoding that rests upon a narrative about emancipation and modernity, thus establishing the homosexual figure as a central marker of both geographical and temporal modernity. Hence the homosexual figure is now a part of the biopolitical mandate governing the distinction between the lives that are being optimized and reproduced, and the lives that are not being included in the neoliberal narrative about progress and freedom.
Article three: “”…Holding a Rainbow Flag” – Stories of Homosexual Inclusions and Homonationalisms” ["...med et regnbueflag i hånden - fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalime", published in Lambda Nordica] presents two readings of newspaper articles about the Danish LGBT parade and World Outgames in 2009. The two articles illustrate the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The article concludes that homonormative representations of homosexuality are included in a national narrative, geography, and recognition, and that this inclusion is interwoven with an exclusion of national and religious Others, who are made suspicious. This creates an ‘us’, who is liberal and tolerant, and a ‘they’, who is feared and threatens the national coherence.
Article four: “To Belong to the Living – on Queer Kinship and Reproductive Futurism” ["To belong to the living - om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme", published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning] presents a reading of the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading centralizes the oxymoron ‘a queer family with children’ and is guided by the complex duality transgression/assimilation – not as a dichotomy but as a concurrence. By analyzing without the dichotomy makes an analysis possible that highlights the brutal negotiations of masculinity, which are present in the movie. The article concludes that the homosexual negotiations of livability are related to other classed and racialized hierarchies.
Articles five: “Un/Liveable Kinship – Reading Rosa Morena” ["U/levelige slægtskaber - en analyse af filmen Rosa Morena", published in Kultur og Klasse] is co-written with scholar in transnational adoption Lene Myong (Aarhus University). The article presents a reading of the Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010). A movie about a Danish homosexual man adopting a Brazilian child. The article’s analytical point of entry questions the economies of livability, in which life and death are circulated when one population’s access to livability relies upon other groups’ unlivability. The article shows how the white homosexual man is folded into life through reproduction by taking part in an economy of life, affect, and normality. The price for the white homosexual man’s livability is paid by the racial Other, who in a classical colonial way pays the bill in the shape of affective labor and sexual queering.
The main argument is being discussed in three different studies: The first study is an analysis of the discourses of the homosexual figure in parliamentary proceedings and national policies in Denmark 1988-2012. The second study is an analysis of the representations of the homosexual figure in national printed medias, focusing on the LGBT parade and the international event World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. The last study contains readings of mainstream gay movies picturing new kinship arrangements involving a homosexual figure.
The theoretical framework of the dissertation is critical race, feminist, and queer theories as well as Foucauldian biopolitical framework redeveloped by rethinking the concept of bio politics with the work of post- and neocolonial thinkers. The queer theoretical framework is developed by rereading classical queer theories in connection with queer of color critiques to make a queer theoretical mode of analysis calibrated to analyze the ways in which different forms of normativity produce and hierarchize racialized, sexualized, and gendered populations and subjects.
Article one: “When the Homosexual Became Suited for Family – a Queer Theoretical Discourse Analysis of the Parliamentary Proceedings regarding Homosexuals’ Access to Adoption 1988-2010” ["Da homoen blev familieduelig - en queerteoretisk diskursanalyse om Folketingsforhandlingerne om homoeseksuelles adgang til adoption 1988-2010"] analyses and expounds on the historical development in the parliamentary proceedings on central ‘gay rights’ from the introduction of the registered partnership (1989) to the introduction of adoption of stepchildren (1999), and to the introduction of regular adoption (2010). The article draws a historical line from the degenerated and non-vital gay figure to the vital gay figure suited for family in the end of the 2000s, arguing that the logics of modernity and homonormativity are fueling the changing discourses.
Article two: “To Change in Order to Maintain – Biopolitical Reconfigurations of the Homosexual” ["At forandre for at bevare - biopolitiske rekonfigurationer af den homoseksuelle", published in Dansk Sociologi] analyses the parliamentary proceedings on gay marriage (2010) together with a TV reality show about a gay wedding. The article concludes that the biopolitical inclusion of homosexuality is made possible by recoding gay kinship inside a paradigm of heteronormativity. A recoding that rests upon a narrative about emancipation and modernity, thus establishing the homosexual figure as a central marker of both geographical and temporal modernity. Hence the homosexual figure is now a part of the biopolitical mandate governing the distinction between the lives that are being optimized and reproduced, and the lives that are not being included in the neoliberal narrative about progress and freedom.
Article three: “”…Holding a Rainbow Flag” – Stories of Homosexual Inclusions and Homonationalisms” ["...med et regnbueflag i hånden - fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalime", published in Lambda Nordica] presents two readings of newspaper articles about the Danish LGBT parade and World Outgames in 2009. The two articles illustrate the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The article concludes that homonormative representations of homosexuality are included in a national narrative, geography, and recognition, and that this inclusion is interwoven with an exclusion of national and religious Others, who are made suspicious. This creates an ‘us’, who is liberal and tolerant, and a ‘they’, who is feared and threatens the national coherence.
Article four: “To Belong to the Living – on Queer Kinship and Reproductive Futurism” ["To belong to the living - om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme", published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning] presents a reading of the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading centralizes the oxymoron ‘a queer family with children’ and is guided by the complex duality transgression/assimilation – not as a dichotomy but as a concurrence. By analyzing without the dichotomy makes an analysis possible that highlights the brutal negotiations of masculinity, which are present in the movie. The article concludes that the homosexual negotiations of livability are related to other classed and racialized hierarchies.
Articles five: “Un/Liveable Kinship – Reading Rosa Morena” ["U/levelige slægtskaber - en analyse af filmen Rosa Morena", published in Kultur og Klasse] is co-written with scholar in transnational adoption Lene Myong (Aarhus University). The article presents a reading of the Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010). A movie about a Danish homosexual man adopting a Brazilian child. The article’s analytical point of entry questions the economies of livability, in which life and death are circulated when one population’s access to livability relies upon other groups’ unlivability. The article shows how the white homosexual man is folded into life through reproduction by taking part in an economy of life, affect, and normality. The price for the white homosexual man’s livability is paid by the racial Other, who in a classical colonial way pays the bill in the shape of affective labor and sexual queering.
Research Interests:
Following Lee Edelman’s polemic argument against reproductive futurism and Sara Ahmed’s thinking on queer attachments, this article discuss queer kinship, as it is represented in the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The... more
Following Lee Edelman’s polemic argument against reproductive futurism and Sara Ahmed’s thinking on queer attachments, this article discuss 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 the 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 of biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant role in the reconfiguration of kinship in The Kids.
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 of biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant role in the reconfiguration of kinship in The Kids.
Research Interests:
Co-written with Lene Myong, Aarhus University. The Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010) tells an unusual story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a poor black Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical... more
Co-written with Lene Myong, Aarhus University. The Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010) tells an unusual story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a poor black Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical framework of biopolitics and affective labour the article highlights how the male homosexual figure is being cast as heteronormative and white in order to become intelligible as a parent and the bearer of liveable kinship.
The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. In the same instance as the adoption, a white male homosexual population unfolds into life, and it targets a racialized and poor population as if already dead.
The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. In the same instance as the adoption, a white male homosexual population unfolds into life, and it targets a racialized and poor population as if already dead.
Research Interests:
By analysing the Danish reality show Hva’ Bruden Ikke Ved and the parliamentary proceedings regarding same sex marriages I examine the rekonfiguration of the homosexual from a figuration associated with death to a figuration enrolled in... more
By analysing the Danish reality show Hva’ Bruden Ikke Ved and the parliamentary proceedings regarding same sex marriages I examine the rekonfiguration of the homosexual from a figuration associated with death to a figuration enrolled in biopolitics through family, kinship and reproduction.
Following the line of thought in David Eng’s reading of John D’Emilio I show, how this biopolitical inclusion is made possible by letting the homosexual couple enter a recognizable heteronormative kinship. This heteronormative rekonfiguration of the homosexual figuration makes a narrative of emancipation and modernity possible. A narrative that establishes the homosexual figuration as a central marker of both temporal and geographical modernity. Thus the heteronormative inclusion of the homosexual figuration becomes a proof of the liberal story of progress and Denmark as especially modern.
I conclude that the homosexual today is a part of the normative biopolitical mandate governing life and death, no longer heteronormativity’s Other but it’s partner in crime.
Following the line of thought in David Eng’s reading of John D’Emilio I show, how this biopolitical inclusion is made possible by letting the homosexual couple enter a recognizable heteronormative kinship. This heteronormative rekonfiguration of the homosexual figuration makes a narrative of emancipation and modernity possible. A narrative that establishes the homosexual figuration as a central marker of both temporal and geographical modernity. Thus the heteronormative inclusion of the homosexual figuration becomes a proof of the liberal story of progress and Denmark as especially modern.
I conclude that the homosexual today is a part of the normative biopolitical mandate governing life and death, no longer heteronormativity’s Other but it’s partner in crime.
Research Interests:
An essay about the Danish debate on gay marriages. Inspired by Judith Butler’s article “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual” I discuss how this debate leaves one stranded between heteronomative discourses and the disappearance of other... more
An essay about the Danish debate on gay marriages. Inspired by Judith Butler’s article “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual” I discuss how this debate leaves one stranded between heteronomative discourses and the disappearance of other ways of life, kinship, and love than the heterosexual.
Research Interests:
Essay on the Danish notion of Frisind (‘permissiveness’). How this notion rather than being a description of a Danish exceptionalism is better understood performatively – dividing the debate into two moral positions.
Research Interests:
This article is a conversation between me and Lene Myong, scholar in transnational adoption at Aarhus University about the Danish movie Rosa Morena. We discuss transnational adoption, homonationalism, livability, and racism.
Research Interests:
I edited a special volume of the Danish academic journal Kvinder, Køn & Forskning on Trans* together with Mons Bissenbakker Frederiksen and Tobias Raun. In the introduction we introduce Trans* studies as well as a trans* vocabulary.
Research Interests:
When a conservative Muslim preacher visited Copenhagen a national debate began. In this article I argue that feminist and queer movements should think twice before joining islamofobic and racist demonstrations. And I question if an... more
When a conservative Muslim preacher visited Copenhagen a national debate began. In this article I argue that feminist and queer movements should think twice before joining islamofobic and racist demonstrations. And I question if an opposition to the preacher is possible without being rhetorical complicit with islamophobic discourses, and suggest that we build alliances with those Otherned by racism instead.
Research Interests:
Drawing on recent transnational queer theory, 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... more
Drawing on recent transnational queer theory, 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 (Puar 2007) and Gregory’s rethinking of Said’s concept of imaginary geographies (Gregory 2004, 2007) the readings highlight how the homonormative inclusion 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.
Research Interests:
Queerkraft, the queer part of the left winged site Modkraft.dk, published this article based on my MA-thesis. In this I highlight the exclusions in the debates about lesbian and single women’s access to medically assisted artificial... more
Queerkraft, the queer part of the left winged site Modkraft.dk, published this article based on my MA-thesis. In this I highlight the exclusions in the debates about lesbian and single women’s access to medically assisted artificial insemination,
Research Interests:
"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... more
"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 assumptions."
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 assumptions."