Reproductive Injustice and the Politics of Trans Future in France

Abstract

AbstractThis article tackles the issue of trans futures through a critical discussion of trans reproductive injustice in France. Most notably, it focuses on one of its many facets: the cisnormative administration of publicly funded gamete cryo-preservation. For a long time trans people in France have been excluded from the possibility of banking their gametes. Only recently the situation is starting to change, but the right of all trans people to cryo-preserve their gametes is far from being fully recognized. The first part of the article traces the genealogy of the exclusion of trans people from gamete cryo-preservation by offering some historical background of the necropolitical governance of trans reproduction in France. The second part explores in detail a public controversy over trans gamete cryo-preservation that emerged in 2013. Through a close reading of this controversy, the article tackles the discursive and material underpinnings of this cisnormative regulation of gamete cryo-preservation.