Sex or Babies but Never Both? Kinship and Sexuality among Queer Parents and Scholars in an Age of Anti-Gender Movements

Dr. Ulrika Dahl’s lecture reflects on a decade of scholarly work in queer studies including ethnographic work among queer parents and kin-makers in Sweden and elsewhere, to consider the place of sex/uality within contemporary queer studies and communities.

Through a series of vignettes it first asks what sex/uality has to do with queer kinship in places where formal LGBTQ+ (family) rights have been achieved in the 21st century.

Secondly, it considers who benefits from the growing emphasis on same-sex procreation and parenting as opposed to queer sex as the unifying marker of (queer) identity and scholarship and how such a shift relates to a broader conservative turn in gender and sexual politics.

Lastly, it speculates on what a recentring and rethinking of intersectional and queer understandings of gender, desire and sex beyond the ‘same sex model’ might mean for queer studies of sexuality and for our understandings of (queer) procreation and family-making.