created for #cyborg at Peripheral Forms, ourfuturechildren is a series of interactive web pieces and videos around birthing, replication, iteration, and Haraway’s informatics of domination.

//

As a lesbian married to another AFAB woman, I am both forced into and eager to take on the role of a cyborg-woman. Whenever I talk about the possibility of having children, straight people immediately ask us about our conception, or if we will adopt. Our reproduction and families are immediately placed under scrutiny, despite the high number of straight couples that use IUI or IVF or adoption alongside their queer brethren. When straight couples use IVF, it is because they can’t conceive “naturally”— what a loaded, and telling, word.

There is a tension inside of me where I do not want my hypothetical future family to be seen as the ‘other’, but I also do not want to be a part of the heterosexual hegemony or social norms. I am grateful to and welcome the use these technologies to create our future children — and I wish they could go further, I want to envision the image of my future technology-conceived daughter.