Constructing queer mother-knowledge and negotiating medical authority in online lesbian pregnancy journals

Bibliographic Data

ID2249441
AuthorsSierra Holland (0000-0001-7484-6103, Department of Sociology University of Florida Florida USA, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume41
Issue1
Pages52-66
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9566.12782
PMID30051479
OpenAlexW2883675622
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited44

Medical interactions around reproduction are increasingly extending beyond the physician's office and onto the Internet, where negotiation with medical authority occurs in complex and dynamic ways. Recently, scholars have noted the Internet's potential for creating spaces where women can dialogue with and reconstruct medical authority, yet this growing body of work is overwhelming heteronormative. This paper thus interrogates how lesbian women use the Internet to challenge, deploy, and rework medical authority around reproduction while navigating the transition to parenthood. I draw from 17 online journals authored by lesbian couples during the conception, pregnancy, and birth of their first child, each spanning between 18 months and 2 years, in order to understand how the transition process unfolds over time. I argue that lesbian couples engage with medical authority when seeking affirmation and normalisation yet discard and publicly reject the heteronormative assumptions that accompany reproductive medicine. Further, they chart a new process that I term 'constructing queer mother-knowledge', in which they critique and balance knowledges from institutionalised medicine, their own bodies, and their queer communities. With this new concept, I complicate understandings of lesbian mothers-to-be and their interactions with medical authority as they build subversive families

Lesbian · Negotiation · Political science · Public relations · Queer · Social science · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Reproductive Health and Contraception · Reproductive Health and Technologies

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