Getting the story right: Lesbian love and troublesome sperm donors

Recording of presentation given at Vital Signs 2 Conference, 7-9 September 2010, University of Manchester
This paper investigates narrative analysis as a way of researching definitions of reality and real life in the context of lesbian love, self-arranged donor conception and sperm donors. Lesbian self-arranged conception requires lesbian couples and sperm donors to engage in sexual and intimate practices (such as masturbation and insemination), but without there being a sexual and intimate relationship between couples and donors. The practices stand in sharp relief to conventional understandings of conception, and as a consequence issues to do with intimacy, sexuality, lesbianism and heterosexuality have to be carefully managed if the sexual and intimate boundaries and definitions implicit to these arrangements, according to lesbian couples, are to be upheld. Drawing on a qualitative interview study of 25 lesbian couples’ experiences of donor conception in England and Wales, I explore narrative analysis as a way of tracing battles over reality and intimate and sexual boundaries in accounts, and also how narrative analysis offers a way of researching multilayered levels of reality in which these couples engage as they conceive together. I argue that lesbian couples’ techniques of story telling play an important part in normalising lesbian donor conception and calling into question ‘troublesome’ sperm donors, and that the struggle over defining reality may not only take place between couples and donors, but also between the couple and the interviewer in the qualitative interview situation.