Pregnancy is a machine, not a woman» Dehumanization and misogynous sexism in pro ‘gestational work’ approach

Abstract

The ‘professional pregnancy’ and the ‘cyborg gestator’ could seem parts of a dystopian transhumanist future where the gestation of human life is not foreseen without neither the technological intervention nor its integration into the market logics. However, for a few academic discourses within the queer and trans arenas, these ideas are already a reality. In this essay I present an abolitionist and political feminist critique about gestational surrogacy and its subsequent idea of ‘gestational work’. Focusing in woman as a political subject I draw on the ideas of critical feminist thinkers regarding this practice. I am also based on the most relevant ethnographic contributions about the issue. I analyse the pro wombs-for-rent flow by paying special attention to the political challenges that this position poses in relation to women’s reproductive rights. I examine the misogynous sexism of the neologisms like ‘professional gestator’ and similar formulas. I prove that supportive proposals of gestational surrogacy contain classical androcentric characteristics as to the insistent intention of intervening technologically in the vital process that gestation is. I conclude with the idea that laboring and mechanizing maternity implies a marginalization of the human experience in order to resignify the process to both the biocapitalistic paradigm and the technopower structures. Finally, this leads directly to dehumanization and to the extreme exploitation of women.