Research
IMAGENEING: THE RHETORIC OF THE HUMAN GAMETE INDUSTRY
By Paul A. Muhlhauser, Ph.D.,
Washington State University
Chairs: Lynn Gordon and Patricia Ericsson
Abstract
Imageneing examines how Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) presented through new media instruct audiences in reproductive desires “to assist nature ‘to do what she cannot do for herself,’ [and] instead to instruct us in desires that are impossible in nature” (Ferrell 33). In more words, this study demonstrates how the visual and verbal rhetoric on ART company websites offering sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogacy services conflate biology and culture to instruct audiences about appropriate performances of gender, race, and kin. Though there are a few websites presenting transformative instructions, the verbal and visual rhetoric ART company websites display result in often-stereotypical narratives. These re-enforce traditional conceptions of gender, race, and kin. For instance, women are pictured in intimate pictures with children while men with children teach and play; non-whites are under-represented and often mediated by whites in pictures; and these websites use primarily same race families in their pictures. ART and new media are transformative technologies— ART allows for numerous sorts of family relationships (e.g. gestational surrogates), and new media does not have the same verbal and textual constraints of printed text. However, ART companies’ use of new media suggests they are content to conceal ART’s transformative possibilities.
