Since the 1950s, human sperm has been cryopreserved and stored for personal use. However, men’s reasons and reflections regarding sperm storage have yet to be explored in feminist science and technology studies. Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with men who have cryopreserved their sperm in Denmark, this study asks, How does the phenomenon of kinship emerge and (re)configure as men cryopreserve their sperm? Using the term ‘phenomenon’ from agential realism, I explore how kinship emerges. The notion of this phenomenon enables an analysis of whether and how cryotechnology, and sperm as a substance, takes part in the emerging reconfigurations of kinship, love, and legacy. This article reveals that not only does the cryopreservation of sperm enable prolonged fertility, but also the technology co-constitutes, reconfigures, and sometimes displaces kinship in relation to past, present, and future love relationships across time and space.
AdrianStine (2006) Nye skabelsesberetninger om æg, sæd og embryoner – et etnografisk studie af anvendelsen af assisteret befrugtning på sædbanker og fertilitetsklinikker [New creation stories of eggs, sperm and embryos. An ethnographic study of assisted reproduction at sperm banks and fertility clinics]. Linköping: LIU Press.
2.
AdrianStine Willum (2010) Sperm stories: policies and practices of sperm donation in Denmark and Sweden. European Journal of Women’s Studies17(4): 393–411.
3.
AdrianStine Willum (2015) Psychological-IVF: conceptualizing emotional choreography in a fertility clinic. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory16(3): 302–317.
4.
AdrianStine Willum (2016) Subversive practices of sperm donation: globalizing Danish sperm. In: KroløkkeCharlotteMyongLeneAdrianStine Willum, et al (eds) Critical Kinship Studies. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 185–202.
5.
AdrianStine WillumHerrmannJanne RothmarKroløkkeCharlotte (2021) Monstrous motherhood – Women on the edge of reproductive time. Science as Culture30(4): 491–512.
6.
AlmelingRene (2011) Sex Cells – The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
7.
AlmelingRene (2020) GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
8.
BaradKaren (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
9.
BergmannSvend (2012) Resemblance that matters: on transnational anonymized egg donation in two European IVF clinics. In: KnectMichiKlotzMarenBeckStefan (eds) Reproductive Technologies as Global Form: Ethnographies of Knowledge, Practices and Transnational Encounters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 331–356.
CarrollKathrineKroløkkeCharlotte (2018) Freezing for love: enacting ‘responsible’ reproductive citizenship through egg freezing. Culture, Health & Sexuality20: 992–1005.
12.
CarstenJanet (2000) Introduction: cultures of relatedness. In: CarstenJanet (ed.) Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–36.
13.
ClarkeAdele (2005) Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
14.
ClarkeAdele (2018) Introducing making kin not population. In: ClarkeAdeleHarawayDonna (eds) Making Kin Not Population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, pp. 1–39.
15.
CollierJane FYanagisakoSylvia J. (eds) (1987) Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
DanielsCynthia (2006) Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
18.
DavidGeorgePriceWendel S. (eds) (1980) Human Artificial Insemination and Semen Preservation. New York: Plenum Press.
19.
FranklinSarah (1997) Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. London: Routledge.
20.
GürtinZeynepShahTrinaWangJinjun, et al (2019) Reconceiving egg freezing: insights from an analysis of 5 years data from a UK clinic. Reproductive Biomedicine Online38(2): 272–282.
21.
InhornMarciaBirkenbaum-CarmeliDaphnaYuRuoxi, et al (2022) Egg freezing at the end of romance: a technology of hope, despair and repair. Science, Technology, & Human Values47: 53–84.
22.
InhornMarcia C.Tjørnhøj-ThomsenTineGoldbergHelene, et al (2009) Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
23.
JohnsonEricaSjögrenEbbaÅsbergCecilia (2016) Glocal Pharma International Brands and the Imagination of Local Masculinity. London: Routledge.
24.
KroløkkeCharlotte (2014) West is best: affective assemblages and Spanish oocytes. European Journal of Women’s Studies21(1): 57–71.
25.
KroløkkeCharlotteAdrianStine W. (2013) Sperm on ice: fatherhood and life after death. Australian Feminist Studies28(77): 263–278.
26.
KroløkkeCharlotteSøbrikThomasHerrmannJanne R., et al (2019) The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice. London: Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society.
27.
MamoLaura (2007) Queering Reproduction: Archiving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
28.
MohrSebastian (2018) Being a Sperm Donor. New York: Berghan Books.
29.
PayneJenny (2016) Mattering kinship: inheritance, biology and egg donation, between genetics and epigenetics. In: KroløkkeCharlotteMyongLeneAdrianStine W., et al. (eds) Critical Kinship Studies. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 33–48.
30.
RadinJoannaKowalEmma (eds) (2017) Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
31.
StrathernMarilyn (1992) Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies. London: Routledge.
32.
TallBearKim (2018) Making love and relations beyond settler sex and family. In: ClarkeAdeleHarawayDonna (eds) Making Kin Not Population. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, pp. 145–168.
33.
ThompsonCharis (2005) Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
34.
Tjørnhøj-ThomsenTine (2009) It’s a bit unmanly in a way: men and infertility in Denmark. In: InhornMarcia C.Tjørnhøj-ThomsenTineGoldbergHelene, et al (eds) Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity and Reproduction. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 226–252.
35.
WahlbergAyo (2018) Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
36.
WaldbyCathrine (2019) The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
37.
WheatleyAlyson (2015) Good soldiers, good guys and good parents: the meanings of donation and donated tissue in the context of the Danish donor sperm industry. PhD dissertation, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
38.
WuChia-Ling (2011) Managing multiple masculinities in donor insemination: doctors configuring infertile men and sperm donors in Taiwan. Sociology of Health and Illness33(1): 96–113.
