Abstract
Technofeminisms are dealing with new sets of challenges directly related to the possibilities opened by transhumanism. Among the huge list of possible technological advances, we direct our interest towards reproductive technologies, in particular ectogenesis (foetus pregnancy and growth outside a human womb). Although some authors defend the benefits of this technology for the advancement of gender equality, we want to suggest a radically different scenario: the studies on ectogenesis will not liberate women—once they are not ‘limited’ by the duties of childbirth (and care)—nor blur gender differences according to evolutionary requests, but they can rather reinforce the current male gendered dominance. A study of the situated nature of existing studies and experiments on ectogenesis, as well as a study of the current clashes between the possibilities offered by technology and the more probable biased outcomes will offer us a sound background to think about the limits of technological transformation that are directly related to social pressures, rather than to a “natural or rational outcome” in relation to such technologies. Despite the fact that from a biotechnological perspective embryos have been created without fertilisation by sperm nuclei, consequently eliminating the need of males for reproductive purposes, more intense efforts are being invested into extra womb pregnancy. Biotechnologies, and especially those related to reproductive tasks, are being gendered biased, following a tendency also present into AI and robotics industries and researches (where assistant roles are always ruled by ‘female characters’). At some point, the lemma of xenofeminists of “Gender abolitionism” can become true…but could this abolition to imply the emergence of a neutral gender which true essence was a male reference (for example at bodily level)? Under such scenario, the dilution of females under an over-dominating male-society, thanks to technology, would create a specific scenario: males would not need women for reproducing new human beings. Could it mean the end of the existence of females (as humans able to be pregnant and to give birth), or even a definitive undervaluation of female’s ancient roles in favor of a new male prototype?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The authors want to clarify that the terms “feminism” or “technofeminism”, used all throughout this chapter, do not reflect the existence of a homogeneous meaning expressed by a clear community of thinkers but, instead, convey a rich, diverse and even contradictory set of social agents who are being engaged into the debates about human equality beyond (classic) sexual morphologies. Such debates are being held using different or even opposite points of view about a broad range of topics.
- 2.
Transhumanism (usually abbreviated as H+ or h+) is a philosophical concept to define the process of using new technologies to enhance human intellect and/or physiology. This implies an upgrade or modification of human body that could achieve a permanent nature into a posterior era, the posthumanist. A different concept, “singularity” is also used as a temporal moment in which machines and humans will reach similar natures, and consequentially is related to transhumanist and posthumanist debates. This later period would imply the abandon of enhancement of previous bodies because they would have been reached a completely new evolution. See Lilley (2012), Ranisch & Sorgner (2014) or Eden et al. (2015) for more a detailed analysis.
- 3.
Accessed: March, 28th 2019: https://ia800408.us.archive.org/19/items/Daedalus-OrScienceAndTheFuture/daedalus-haldane.pdf.
- 4.
Italics are ours, and capture the reluctant perception of some feminisms towards the female body in relation to reproductive processes, something placed into first position of feminist debates by Firestone.
- 5.
For example in polyandric as well as in polygamous societies.
- 6.
According to the published Law at (BOE 31/10/1986 – 122/000062 – Art 20: “B) Son infracciones muy graves (…)“s) La ectogénesis o creación de un ser humano individualizado en el laboratorio.” [Are serious faults: ectogenesis or laboratory creation of an individual human being].
- 7.
Rejecting the claim that science and technology are inherently masculine or patriarchal, Xenofeminism looks at attempts to repurpose technology to liberate women. Xenofeminism stresses that the forces of technology—like any given individual—do not operate in omnipotent isolation but within a complex web of power dynamics.
- 8.
We could define such feminisms as “techno-euphorical feminisms”. We can find good studies of this trend in (Layne et al, 2010). On the other hand a critical approach to gendered technologies can be found at feminist theory and science and technology studies. Judy Wajcman (Wajcman, 2004) explores the ways in which technologies are gendered both in their design and use. At the same time, she shows how our very subjectivity is shaped by the technoscientific culture of the world we inhabit.
- 9.
As epidemiology can be defined as the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where) and determinants of health and disease conditions in defined populations, it is possible to consider how ectogenesis can affect health or even produce diseases. For a causal approach to epidemiology we quote Vallverdú (2016).
- 10.
Check the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.html and especially https://nccd.cdc.gov/drh_art/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=DRH_ART.ClinicInfo&rdRequestForward=True&ClinicId=9999&ShowNational=1 for a detailed account of such variables and USA data. Accessed March 31st, 2019.
- 11.
See the World Health Organization website: https://www.who.int/features/qa/preterm_babies/en/, accessed March 31st, 2019.
- 12.
See the Dentsu nursing assistant for breast feeding, [http://www.dentsu.com/business/showcase/sxsw2019.html] (accessed March 31st, 2019), is an opportunity for co-parenting and feeding or a thread for women if men decide that it is a valuable and fundamental aspect with social recognition? Historical “female occupations” like nailing or cooking were then headed by men when they become artistic forms with huge economic revenues.
- 13.
She refers to political-religious powers that undervalued women’s skills for the participation into the social action, summarized under the German motto “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (Kids, Cooking, and Church), (Godelier, 2012: 497).
References
Anderson, J.W., Johnstone, B.M. & Remley, D.T. (1999). Breast-feeding and cognitive development: a meta-analysis. The American journal of clinical nutrition 70(4), 525–535.
Aristarkhova, I. (2005). Ectogenesis and mother as machine. Body & Society 11(3), 43–59.
Axelrod, R. & Hamilton, W.D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. science 211(4489), 1390–1396.
Becker, G. (2000). The elusive embryo: How women and men approach new reproductive technologies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brem, G. & Kühholzer, B. (2002). The recent history of somatic cloning in mammals. Cloning & Stem Cells 4(1), 57–63.
Brittain V. (1929). Halcyon, or the Future of Monogamy. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Bulletti, C., Palagiano, A., Pace, C., Cerni, A., Borini, A. & de Ziegler, D. (2011). The artificial womb. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1221(1), 124–128.
Calhoun, C. (2003). Feminism, the family, and the politics of the closet: Lesbian and gay displacement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Callaghan, J.C. (1965). Studies in lambs of the development of an artificial placenta. Review of ninelongterm survivors of extracorporeal circulation maintained in a fluid medium. Can J Surg 8, 208–213.
Cannold, L. (1995). Women, ectogenesis and ethical theory. Journal of applied philosophy 12(1), 55–64.
Carlston, C. (2008). Artificial wombs. Harvard Science Review, 35–9.
Castells, M. (2004). The network society A cross-cultural perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Cavaliere, G. (2017). A 14-day limit for bioethics: the debate over human embryo research. BMC medical ethics 18(1), 38.
Cohen, J. (1996). Doctor James Young Simpson, Rabbi Abraham De Sola, and Genesis Chapter 3, verse 16. Obstet Gynecol. Nov 88(5), 895–8.
Coleman, S. (2017). The ethics of artificial uteruses: Implications for reproduction and abortion. London, New York: Routledge.
Cuboniks, L. (2018). The Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation. Verso Trade.
Chavatte-Palmer, P., Lévy, R. & Boileau, P. (2012). Reproduction without a uterus? State of the art of Church, J.T., Coughlin, M.A., Perkins, E.M., Hoffman, H.R., Barks, J.D., Rabah, R. & Mychaliska, G.B. (2018). The artificial placenta: Continued lung development during extracorporeal support in a preterm lamb model. Journal of pediatric surgery 53(10), 1896–1903.
Davis, G. & Loughran, T. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives. London: Springer.
D’Aversa, C.Y. (1987). The right of abortion in surrogate motherhood arrangements. N. Ill. UL Rev., 7, 1.ectogenesis. Gynecologie, obstetrique & fertilite 40(11), 695–697.
De Beauvoir, S. (2010). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books.
DeVoss, D. (2019). TechnoFeminisms: A Conversation About Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Computers and Composition 51, 68–78.
Doppman, J.L., Zapol, W., Kolobow, T. & Pierce, J. (1970). Angiocardiography of fetal lambs on artificial placenta. Investigative radiology 5(3), 181–186.
Eden, A.H., Moor, J.H., Søraker, J.H. & Steinhart, E. (2015). Singularity Hypotheses. Berlin: Springer.
Edwards, R.G., Donahue, R.P., Baramki, T.A. & Jones Jr, H.W. (1966). Preliminary attempts to fertilize human oocytes matured in vitro. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 96(2), 192–200.
Epperson, C.N., Steiner, M., Hartlage, S.A., Eriksson, E., Schmidt, P.J., Jones, I. & Yonkers, K.A. (2012). Premenstrual dysphoric disorder: evidence for a new category for DSM-5. American Journal of Psychiatry 169(5), 465–475.
Everett, D., Berlin, B., Gonalves, M., Kay, P., Levinson, S., Pawley, A., (2005). Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language. Current anthropology 46(4), 621–646.
Feldman, R., Eidelman, A.I., Sirota, L. & Weller, A. (2002). Comparison of skin-to-skin (kangaroo) and traditional care: parenting outcomes and preterm infant development. Pediatrics 110(1), 16–26.
Gelfand, S. & Shook, J.R. (Eds.). (2006). Ectogenesis: artificial womb technology and the future of human reproduction (Vol. 184). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Godelier, M. (2012). The metamorphoses of kinship. New York: Verso Books.
Haire, N. (1927). Hymen, or the Future of Marriage. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Haldane, J.B:S: (1924). Daedalus or Science and the Future. England.
Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London, New York: Routledge.
Heape, W. (1891). III. Preliminary note on the transplantation and growth of mammalian ova within a uterine foster-mother. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 48(292–295), 457–458.
Hester, H. (2018). Xenofeminism. John Wiley & Sons.
Kass, L.R. (1979). Making babies revisited. The Public Interest 54, 32.
Kay, M.A. (1982). Anthropology of human birth. FA Davis Co.
Kuwabara, Y., Okai, T., Imanishi, Y., Muronosono, E., Kozuma, S., Takeda, S. & Mizuno, M. (1987). Development of extrauterine fetal incubation system using extracorporeal membrane oxygenator. Artificial organs 11(3), 224–227.
Kuwabara, Y., Okai, T., Kozuma, S., Unno, N., Akiba, K., Shinozuka, N. & Mizuno, M. (1989). Artificial placenta: long‐term extrauterine incubation of isolated goat fetuses. Artificial organs 13(6), 527–531.
Holland, M. (2012). Social bonding and nurture kinship: compatibility between cultural and biological approaches. Maximilian Holland.
Jeremiah, E. (2006). Motherhood to mothering and beyond: Maternity in recent feminist thought. Journal of the motherhood initiative for research and community involvement 8(1).
Layne, L.L., Vostral, S.L. & Boyer, K. (Eds.). (2010). Feminist technology (Vol. 4). Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Lilley, S. (2012). Transhumanism and Society: the social debate over human enhancement. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Ludovici, A. (1924). Lysistrata, or Women’s Future and Future Women.London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Mangham, A. & Depledge, G. (Eds.). (2011). The female body in medicine and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Matrix, S.E. (2001). Cyberfeminism and Technoculture Studies: An Annotated Bibliography. Women’s Studies Quarterly 29(3/4), 231–249.
Merck, M. & Sandford, S. (2010). Further adventures of the dialectic of sex: Critical essays on Shulamith Firestone. London: Springer.
Menkin, M.F. & Rock, J. (1948). In vitro fertilization and cleavage of human ovarian eggs. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology 55(3), 440–452.
Miura, Y., Matsuda, T., Funakubo, A., Watanabe, S., Kitanishi, R., Saito, M. & Hanita, T. (2012). Novel modification of an artificial placenta: pumpless arteriovenous extracorporeal life support in a premature lamb model. Pediatric research 72(5), 490.
Miura, Y., Saito, M., Usuda, H., Woodward, E., Rittenschober-Böhm, J., Kannan, P.S. & Kemp, M.W. (2015). Ex-vivo uterine environment (EVE) therapy induced limited fetal inflammation in a premature lamb model. PloS one 10(10), e0140701.
Moore, E.R., Bergman, N., Anderson, G.C. & Medley, N. (2016). Early skin‐to‐skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants. Cochrane database of systematic Reviews 11.
Murphy, J.S. (1989). Is pregnancy necessary? Feminist concerns about ectogenesis. Hypatia 4(3), 66–84.
Oitzl, M.S., Workel, J.O., Fluttert, M., Frösch, F. & De Kloet, E.R. (2000). Maternal deprivation affects behaviour from youth to senescence: amplification of individual differences in spatial learning and memory in senescent Brown Norway rats. European Journal of Neuroscience 12(10), 3771–3780.
Olza Fernandez, Ibone, et al. “Newborn feeding behaviour depressed by intrapartum oxytocin: a pilot study.” Acta Paediatrica 101.7 (2012), 749–754.
Olza-Fernández, I., Gabriel, M.A.M., Gil-Sanchez, A., Garcia-Segura, L.M. & Arevalo, M.A. (2014). Neuroendocrinology of childbirth and mother–child attachment: The basis of an etiopathogenic model of perinatal neurobiological disorders. Frontiers in neuroendocrinology 35(4), 459–472.
Ombelet, W. & Van Robays, J. (2015). Artificial insemination history: hurdles and milestones. Facts, views & vision in ObGyn 7(2), 137.
O’reilly, A. (Ed.). (2010). Encyclopedia of motherhood. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Partridge, E.A., Davey, M.G., Hornick, M.A., McGovern, P.E., Mejaddam, A.Y., Vrecenak, J.D., … & Han, J. (2017). An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb. Nature communications 8, 15112.
Pincus, G. & Enzmann, E. V. (1935). The comparative behavior of mammalian eggs in vivo and in vitro: I. The activation of ovarian eggs. Journal of Experimental Medicine 62(5), 665–675.
Puente, S.N. (2008, November). From cyberfeminism to technofeminism: From an essentialist perspective to social cyberfeminism in certain feminist practices in Spain. Women’s Studies International Forum 31(6). Oxford: Pergamon, 434–440.
Purzycki, B.G., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q.D., Cohen, E., McNamara, R.A., Willard, A.K., … & Henrich, J. (2016). Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality. Nature 530(7590), 327.
Ranisch, R. & Sorgner, S.L. (2014). Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang GmbH.
Rowland, R. (1992). Living laboratories: Women and reproductive technologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ruddick, S. (1995). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Boston: Beacon Press.
Schiebinger, L. (1986). Skeletons in the closet: The first illustrations of the female skeleton in eighteenth-century anatomy. Representations 14, 42–82.
Selin, H. & Stone, P.K. (Eds.). (2009). Childbirth across cultures: Ideas and practices of pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum. Dordrecht: Springer.
Shaffer, T.H., Wolfson, M.R., Greenspan, J.S., Hoffman, R.E., Davis, S.L. & Clark, L.C. (1996). Liquid ventilation in premature lambs: uptake, biodistribution and elimination of perfluorodecalin liquid. Reproduction, Fertility and Development 8(3), 409–416.
Shefer, T. (1990). Feminist theories of the role of the body within women’s oppression. Critical arts: a journal for media studies v5 n2, 37–54.
Sims, J.M. (1884). The story of my life. Boston: D. Appleton.
Singer, P. & Wells, D. (1984). The reproduction revolution: new ways of making babies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smajdor, A. (2007). The moral imperative for ectogenesis. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 16(3), 336–345.
Squier, S.M. (1994). Babies in bottles: Twentieth-century visions of reproductive technology. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Steptoe, P.C. & Edwards, R.G. (1978). Birth after the reimplantation of a human embryo. The Lancet 312(8085), 366.
Sundström Poromaa, I. & Gingnell, M. (2014). Menstrual cycle influence on cognitive function and emotion processing—from a reproductive perspective. Frontiers in neuroscience 8, 380.
Takeda, S., Kuwabara, Y. & Mizuno, M. (1986). Concentrations and origin of oxytocin in breast milk. Endocrinologia japónica 33(6), 821–826.
Troisi, A. & D’Amato, F.R. (1984). Ambivalence in monkey mothering: Infant abuse combined with maternal possessiveness. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
Usuda, H., Watanabe, S., Miura, Y., Saito, M., Musk, G.C., Rittenschober-Böhm, J., … & Jobe, A.H. (2017). Successful maintenance of key physiological parameters in preterm lambs treated with ex vivo uterine environment therapy for a period of 1 week. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology 217(4), 1.e1–1.e13.
Vallverdú, J. & Delgado, M. (2009). Values in controversies: stem cell research. Bio-Phronesis: Revista de Bioética y Socioantropología en Medicina 4(2), 1–27.
Vallverdú, J. (2016). The Birth of Multicausality as the Death of Causality and Their Statistical Corollaries. Bayesians Versus Frequentists. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 77–91.
Vallverdú, J. (2017). The Emotional Nature of Post-Cognitive Singularities. The Technological Singularity. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 193–208.
Wajcman, J. (2004). TechnoFeminism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Westin, B., Nyberg, R. & Enhörning, G. (1958). A technique for perfusion of the previable human fetus. Acta paediatrica 47(4), 339–349.
Whitehouse, H., François, P., Savage, P.E., Currie, T.E., Feeney, K.C., Cioni, E. & ter Haar, B. (2019). Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history. Nature 1.
Yuko, E.I. (2012). Is the development of artificial wombs ethically desirable? (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin City University).
Acknowledgements
Prof. Vallverdú research has been funded by a) the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities within the State Subprogram of Knowledge Generation through the research project FFI2017-85711-P Epistemic innovation: the case of cognitive sciences; and, b) the consolidated research network “Grup d’Estudis Humanístics de Ciència i Tecnologia” (GEHUCT) (“Humanistic Studies of Science and Technology Research Group”), recognised and funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, reference 2017 SGR 568. Researcher S. Boix has support from eraas-GRAFO.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vallverdú, J., Boix, S. (2019). Ectogenesis as the Dilution of Sex or the End of Females?. In: Loh, J., Coeckelbergh, M. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Technology. Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie, vol 2. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart
Print ISBN: 978-3-476-04966-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-476-04967-4
eBook Packages: J.B. Metzler Humanities (German Language)