Although now used for a wide range of functions such as education, marketing and political commentary, blogs were originally a space for narrating personal life stories and have much in common with autobiography and diary genres. This article examines (in)fertility blogs written by women trying to conceive, arguing that blogging helps women to renegotiate their experiences of femininity when motherhood is denied or difficult. To do this, I focus on blogs as a space for knowledge production, creating a new paradigm for fertility information which challenges both the doctor/patient power dynamic and traditional discourses concerning fertility. I show how bloggers use their blogs to ‘make sense’ of their (in)fertility experiences by looking at the distinctive content, style and format of their blogs. Finally, the knowledge produced in the blogs is problematized by ‘situating’ them within a broader sociohistorical framework.
BaradK (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press.
De ZúñigaHGPuig-I-AbrilERojasH (2009) Weblogs, traditional sources online and political participation: an assessment of how the internet is changing the political environment. New Media & Society11(4): 553–574.
6.
DiepenbrockC (2000) God willed it! Gynecology at the checkout stand: reproductive technology in the women’s service magazine, 1977–1996. In: LayMMGurakLJGravonC (eds) Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology and Reproduction. Madison, WI and London, UK: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 98–121.
7.
HaasA (2009) Wired wombs: a rhetorical analysis of online infertility support communities. In: BlairKGajjalaRTulleyC (eds) Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies and Social Action. New Jersey, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 61–84.
8.
HarawayD (1988) Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies14(3): 575–599.
9.
HarawayD (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge.
10.
HarawayD (1991) The biopolitics of postmodern bodies: constitutions of self in immune system discourse. In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London, UK: Free Association Books, pp. 203–230.
HarawayD (2004a) Morphing in the order: flexible strategies, feminist science studies, and primate revisions. In: The Haraway Reader. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge, pp. 199–222.
13.
HarawayD (2004b) Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. In: The Haraway Reader. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge, pp. 223–250.
14.
HardingS (1986) The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
15.
HarrisonK (2010) Discursive Skin: Entanglements of Gender, Discourse and Technology. Linköping, Sweden: Linköping University Press.
16.
HerringSCScheidtLAWrightE (2005) Weblogs as a bridging genre. Information, Technology & People18(2): 142–171.
17.
HobbyE (1988) Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649–1688. London, UK: Virago.
18.
HoeyerKNexoeSHartlevM (2009) Embryonic entitlements: stem cell patenting and the co-production of commodities and personhood. Body & Society15(1): 1–24.
19.
HuffC (1997) Sexual silencing: anesthetizing women’s voices in childbirth 1910–1960. In: WilsonDSLaennecCM (eds) Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 135–148.
20.
InhornMC (2007) Masturbation, semen collection and men’s IVF experiences: anxieties in the Muslim world. Body & Society13(3): 37–53.
21.
KarlssonL (2007) Desperately seeking sameness. Feminist Media Studies7(2): 137–153.
22.
KendallL (2002) Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub. London, UK: University of California Press.
23.
KitzmannA (2003) That different place: documenting the self within online environments. Biography26(1): 48–65.
24.
LatourB (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
25.
LykkeN (2008) Feminist cultural studies of technoscience: portrait of an implosion. In: SmelikALykkeN (eds) Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience and Technology. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, pp. 3–15.
26.
LykkeN (2010) Feminist Studies. A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing. New York, NY: Routledge.
27.
McNeillL (2003) Teaching an old genre new tricks: the diary on the Internet. Biography26(1): 24–47.
28.
McRaeS (1996) Coming apart at the seams; sex, text and the virtual body. In: ChernyLWeiseER (eds) Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, pp. 242–263.
29.
NesbittK (2009) Angel babies: women’s webs of loss and transformation. In: BlairKGajjalaRTulleyC (eds) Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies and Social Action. New Jersey, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 43–60.
30.
PedersenSMacafeeC (2007) Gender differences in British blogging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication12(4). Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/pedersen.html(accessed 23 August 2009).
31.
PlummerK (1995) Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge.
32.
RappR (2000) Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge.
33.
RatliffC (2009) Policing miscarriage: infertility blogging, rhetorical enclaves, and the case of house bill 1677. Women’s Studies Quarterly37(1&2): 125–145.
34.
ShannerL (2000) Bodies, minds, and failures: images of women in infertility clinics. In: LayMMGurakLJGravonC (eds) Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology and Reproduction. Madison, WI and London, UK: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 142–160.
SørensonAS (2009) Social media and personal blogging: textures, routes and patterns. MedieKultur47: 66–78.
37.
StrifE (2005) ‘Infertile me:’ The public performance of fertility treatments in internet weblogs. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory15(2): 189–206.
38.
TemanE (2009) Embodying surrogate motherhood: pregnancy as a dyadic body-project. Body & Society15(3): 47–69.
39.
TreichlerPACartwrightLPenleyC (eds) (1998) The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender and Science. New York, NY and London, UK: New York University Press.
40.
Van DoornNvan ZoonenLWyattS (2007) Writing from experience: presentations of gender identity on weblogs. European Journal of Women’s Studies14(2): 143–159.
41.
ZalisE (2003) At home in cyberspace: staging autobiographical scenes. Biography26(1): 84–119.
42.
abc family blog (formerly Arwen/Elizabeth). Available at: http://ennorath.typepad.com/(accessed 20 February 2010).
