Rene Almeling

Rene Ameling (1977, assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University) attempted to sort through the questions raised by bodily commodification. Economics (my own University background), healthcare and psychology are combined in her publication Sex Cells – The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm, based on her own research on egg donations and sperm donors, nowadays a multi-billion market in the US alone. Though explicitly a US-based research, Ameling suggests that the outcomes may differ among cultures around the earth. The practice was unimaginable until the 20th century. Hundreds of fertility clinics in the US are dependent on a constant supply of sex cells for clients who do not have or cannot use their own sperm and eggs. Research was done on this market dynamics, the very nature of it: a gift / donation or a simple economic transaction. Secondly the perception of men and women towards their ‘service’ is revealed. What drives them? Is it for the money? What are gender differences? What about separating private life and personal relationships (marriage, fiancee, sexual intercourse) from ‘a little vacation’ or periodic masturbation on demand? The third part of the book is concentrated on the eventual offspring. Do donors consider themselves parents? What if the offspring become 18 and are looking for their genetic ancestor and knock on your door? The answers to these questions are not reduced to biology or technology. Ameling brings together sociological theories of the market with gendered theories of the body to create a framework for analyzing markets for bodily goods, both in terms of how such markets are organized and in how they are experienced. Eggs and sperm are parallel bodily goods, but appear to be marketed differently from other bodily goods like blood and organs. Egg agencies, sperm banks were visited, staff and donors interviewed.
Commodification of the body is an interactive social process. One of the significant findings from this study: the way in which payment happens is surprisingly important in shaping eggs and sperm donors’ experiences of being paid for bodily goods. Gendered norms influence the market for sex cells, but racial and class-based inequalities, among others, are likely to be as powerful in shaping processes of bodily commodification. Sex does indeed sell in the medical market for eggs and sperm. The characteristics of the people and the parts, the flows of supply and demand, and the historical and cultural context all come together to produce variation in both the structure and experience of the market.… (plus d'informations)

Super interesting, short book about the body work performed by sperm and egg donors and the way that gendered expectations shape their experiences. Agencies encourage women to think about themselves as altruistic people giving a “gift,” while they don’t worry about men who are just in it for the money; egg donors are asked why they’re participating, while the agencies are generally uninterested in male motivations. Women make more money, but they’re paid for donating particular cycles to particular recipients, making the transaction seem more intimate, and the number of eggs doesn’t affect the payment. Sperm donation, by contrast, is framed as a piecework job for which men are only paid for production (a sample with sufficient motility). Sperm banks have identity-release programs, sometimes paying men more if they agree to release their identities when any resulting children turn 18, while egg agencies routinely refuse even to let donors know if recipients become pregnant, and agencies that do both have entirely different protocols for each, with gender-specific protocols and treatment of donors (jokes and T-shirts for men, “thanks for the gift”-type eggs/hearts for women). Egg donors’ profiles include pictures over three times as often as sperm donors’. There’s actually an oversupply of egg donors (perhaps because the altruistic framing makes egg donation seem more socially acceptable), but that hasn’t affected payment rates.

Almeling contrasts the experiences of egg donors and IVF recipients, both of whom inject the same drugs. Egg donors find the process relatively less awful, though, because they aren’t trying to get pregnant.

She points out that we don’t know much about what masturbation is generally like for men from a scholarly perspective, but finds that sperm donors experience it as an occasion for bodily control—they have to be abstinent for at least 36 hours and sometimes more before donating, and then they have to perform on cue. Sperm donors focus a lot on the money they’re earning, while egg donors didn’t talk about money when they talked about how donation fit into their daily lives.

Building on the work of Viviana Zelizer, Almeling suggests that egg donors don’t see money as inconsistent with a gift relationship—they’re getting paid, but they’re also giving. Men, by contrast, “talked much less about recipients, did not report receiving thank-you notes and gifts, and did not make distinctions about donating for the right reasons.” They conceived of donation as a kind of employment, calling recipients “customers,” and men were willing to call the money “income” or “wages,” while egg donors spoke of a “fee” or a “price,” and were more likely to use the term “compensation,” connoting payment for something lost, than the term “income,” connoting payment for something earned. Some men used the term “service,” connecting to images of man as provider, while almost all the women used gift rhetoric instead. Egg donors were more likely to talk poetically about the great gift they were giving, while men felt more objectified and alienated.

I was fascinated that the men generally thought of themselves as fathers, but were also often surprised by the fact that a child had resulted from one of their donations. By contrast, egg donors conceptualized themselves as non-mothers, because they contributed “just an egg.” Women thought of stages of reproduction as more distinct and contingent: “Egg donors are more likely than sperm donors to specify their donation as eggs, which are mixed with sperm, which might result in the creation of embryos, which might implant in another woman’s uterus, which might result in a successful pregnancy, which might result in the birth of a child…. Men, who hear less about recipients, draw a more direct line from sperm to baby and assign much less uncertainty to the process.” These differences, Almeling argued, were shaped by cultural norms of femininity and masculinity—a woman has to nurture to be a good mother and thus the egg donors refused the category mother, but a sperm donor is a father because the male contribution is primary (“men provide the generative seed and women provide the nurturing soil”). Gift rhetoric for egg donors helps them exit the “mother” category and focus on the potential mother they’re helping, while identity release programs in sperm banks highlight the significance of the sperm donor’s contribution. “Men cannot help but see themselves as fathers, because they are providing sperm in a culture that equates male genetics with parenthood.” As a result, egg donors feel a strong connection to recipients and not to children, while sperm donors feel the opposite.

Almeling emphasizes that little about this is biologically based. Men could provide sperm for specific recipients. Women could be paid piecemeal, per egg, and their eggs could go to multiple recipients instead of one specific recipient each time. Sperm banks could emphasize the gift relationship and solicit thank-you notes and gifts for donors. Egg agencies could treat women more formally. “But this is not how it works in the market for sex cells, where a woman’s donation is considered a precious gift and a man’s donation a job well done.”… (plus d'informations)