‘WTF Uterus?’ Metaphors of the Body as Positioning in Infertility Blogs by Muslim Women

Abstract

This paper uses a small-stories positioning framework to analyse metaphors of the body and related claims of identity in Muslim women’s infertility blogs. I first conduct a directed qualitative content analysis to identify metaphorically used words and group them into a small set of metaphor families; I then apply Metaphor-Led Positioning Analysis to interpret how those metaphors position narrators, audiences, and institutions across small stories. I examine how narrators construct gendered selves in context – alternately contesting or adopting positions of victimhood – vis-à-vis hegemonic medical, social, and religious Discourses and key interlocutors (partners, families, clinicians, peers). Focusing on figurative language (e.g., the body as defective machine, battleground, empty container, rebellious agent, or season/journey), The article shows how metaphors mediate alignment with audiences, index affect, and enable stance shifts that both reproduce and resist pronatalist and medicalising ideologies. It argues that these cultural–rhetorical manifestations expose the workings of hegemony around femininity and the body in relation to reproductive ‘failure’, while also furnishing resources for re-authoring womanhood beyond gestation. Implications include faith-literate, lineage-sensitive communication in fertility care, and narrative-focused support for coping.

Keywords

qualitative content analysis metaphor analysis health communication narrative infertility identity positioning discourse body motherhood

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