“Before You Formed in the Womb I Knew You”: Sex Selection and Spaces of Ambiguity

Hypatia 25 (3):553-576 (2010)
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Abstract

The spaces provided by biotechnologies of sex selection are rich with epistemological, ontological, and ethical considerations that speak to broadly held social values and epistemic frameworks. In much of the discourse about sex selection that is not medically indicated, the figure of the “naturally” conceived child is treated as a problem for parents who want to select the sex of their child. As unknown, that child is ambiguous in terms of sex—“it” is both and neither, and might be the “wrong” sex. Drawing on Beauvoirean thinking about ambiguity and desire, I cast part of the desire to select the sex of a child as bound to an ethic and epistemology of disambiguation, and urge that the space of being-unknown is one to which each person is entitled.

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Author's Profile

Anna E. Mudde
University of Regina

Citations of this work

A Feminist Critique of Justifications for Sex Selection.Tereza Hendl - 2017 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (3):427-438.
Queering the Odds: The Case Against "Family Balancing".Tereza Hendl - 2017 - International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 10 (2):4-30.
Sex selection and global gender justice.Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra - 2021 - Journal of Social Philosophy 52 (2):217-233.
Is ‘gender disappointment’ a unique mental illness?Tereza Hendl & Tamara Kayali Browne - 2020 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23 (2):281-294.

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