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Paper short abstract

This research examines how Chinese lesbian couples excluded from China’s maritalized ART regime pursue IVF in Cambodia. Based on 2024–25 ethnography, it theorizes “reproductive commuting” and trust as infrastructure shaping queer family-making across legal grey zones and intra-Asian inequalities.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines cross-border reproductive travel between mainland China and Cambodia as a regional formation of queer family-making. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2024 and 2025 with Chinese lesbian couples, it analyzes how women excluded from China’s maritalized access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) pursue IVF abroad and how these mobilities reshape kinship practices.

The study asks how queer family-making emerges through intra-Asian reproductive mobility under conditions of regulatory exclusion, and how such movements reorganize relations among state governance, fertility markets, and intimate life. I conceptualize these journeys as reproductive commuting: cyclical, time-compressed trips synchronized with ovulation cycles, workplace leave regimes, and shifting moral regulation of “legitimate” reproduction. While Cambodia’s proximity and Mandarin-language clinics make it accessible, fertility services operate within legal grey zones marked by institutional precarity and opaque oversight. In this terrain, “trust” functions as an alternative infrastructure, circulating through reputation (koubei) and digital networks that collectively stabilize uncertainty.

Engaging feminist STS and transnational queer sociology, the paper argues that reproductive mobility constitutes a relational infrastructure through which kinship futures are assembled. Rather than treating cross-border IVF as merely reactive, I situate it within an intra-Asian reproductive geography where legality, technology, and intimacy are co-produced. By foregrounding the China–Cambodia reproductive corridor, the study highlights how Asia’s peripheries generate alternative reproductive modernities through circulation, improvisation, and collective knowledge.

Keywords: queer family-making; cross-border IVF; reproductive mobility; feminist STS; East Asia; kinship; reproductive governance.

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Paper short abstract

This research highlights both the structural constraints and the agentive strategies of lesbian couples in China. It shows how reproductive technologies become tools for resistance, recognition, and the creative construction of diverse family models.

Paper long abstract

As China’s population policy shifts from fertility control to encouragement, reproductive support remains constrained by traditional familism and heteronormativity, restricting assisted reproductive technology to married heterosexual couples. Consequently, Chinese lesbians navigate these structural barriers by seeking services abroad, utilizing underground markets, or opting for home insemination. This study, based on semi-structured interviews with 12 lesbian couples and an analysis of relevant policy texts, explores their negotiations over “who will carry the baby or contribute the eggs”, the symbolic construction of kinship, and their lived kinship practices. Findings reveal that the factors considered by lesbian couples in deciding who carries the baby or contributes eggs extend beyond health, personal preference, or household registration. They also deeply involve the dynamics of the partnership and the construction of the child's connection to their natal family. Creative strategies, such as “ROPA (Reception of Oocytes from Partner)”, serve both personal and political purposes, legitimizing queer family forms under restrictive conditions. Lesbian families reconfigure kinship through emotional bonds, shared parenting, and counter-normative practices, partially challenging patrilineal legitimacy discourses. Their reproductive practices reflect a hybridization of technology, culture, and society, reshaping notions of motherhood, kinship, and gender identity. By integrating feminist and queer perspectives, this research highlights both the structural constraints and the agentive strategies of lesbian couples in China. It shows how reproductive technologies become tools for resistance, recognition, and the creative construction of diverse family models.

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Paper short abstract

This study explores how gay men in Taiwan reconceptualise 'blood ties' through third-party reproduction. Drawing on 53 interviews, I propose 'gametic feeling' to capture emotions around sperm, genetic arrangements, and kinship making, revealing how queer reproduction reshapes relatedness in Taiwan.

Paper long abstract

This article investigates how gay men and their families reconceptualised ‘blood ties/relatedness’ [xiě yuán], which often refers to the genetic connection in kinship making in Taiwan. In particular, I delve into how people feel about biogenetic relatedness that comes with the visible and tangible substance of sperm while accessing third-party reproduction to become fathers. Drawing on interviews with 53 gay fathers and prospective fathers, and participant observation, I delineate gay men’s complex, intertwined, and relational feelings about either the presence or absence of sperm in reproduction. By doing so, I provide a nuanced understanding of how they initiate ‘sperm negotiations’ with families, accommodate various genetic arrangements, and strategically come out as biological fathers to obtain recognition, which reshapes the meaning of ‘blood ties’ in patrilineal society. I propose the notion of ‘gametic feeling’ to capture the emotions and affections surrounding relationship thinking and making as a social reality, since such feelings are both relational, circulating among and orienting towards others, and generative, in the sense that belongingness and relatedness are rooted in feelings about others. This study addresses a broader inquiry: how family has been transformed in third-party reproduction, and what normativity has been challenged or reinforced in queer reproduction?

Keywords: gametic feeling, sperm negotiation, family, queer relatedness, third party reproduction

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Paper short abstract

Based on interviews with 31 Chinese lesbian mothers, this article examines how reproductive and domestic responsibilities are negotiated under restrictive ART policies, showing how divisions of labour both reproduce and contest heteronormative, genetic, and legal norms in contemporary China.

Paper long abstract

Since 2016, children born out of monogamous marriage in China can apply for permanent residence registration. Further, since 2024, all provincial governments in mainland China have included assisted reproductive technology (ART) services in health insurance to promote fertility. However, couples still need a Chinese marriage certificate that only available to heterosexual couples and proof of infertility to use this service. Therefore, only heterosexual couples who are diagnosed as infertile have legal access to ART services. And yet, these policy changes do offer Chinese non-heterosexual people a greater degree of flexibility to pursue parenthood through ARTs.

Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 31 Chinese lesbians who are, or plan to become, mothers, this article explores how their responsibilities are negotiated, divided and viewed during different stages of forming families. I analyse their division of roles from two perspectives: 1) Binary gendered patterns that echo heteronormativity. 2) Patterns based on making meaning of genetic relatedness. Across these dimensions, I theorise Chinese lesbian mothers’ divisions of reproductive and domestic responsibilities as demonstrating their effort to impose ‘checks and balances’ to manage what they and other family members, including contract marriage gay husbands and same-sex partners, give and receive in return. Their divisions of responsibilities manifest efforts to align with ideas of the ‘normal’ family and to protect their interests in the face of uncertain futures. Their reflections on internal divisions of labour, therefore, both reinforce and challenge Chinese dominant discursive and legal system surrounding reproduction and family.

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Paper short abstract

This study explores how 20 Chinese lesbian families navigate household labor, childcare, and transnational IVF. It highlights relational strategies, negotiation, and creative practices that sustain queer kinship and care under legal, social, and cultural constraints in contemporary China.

Paper long abstract

In contexts where LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive technologies are restricted, Chinese lesbian families face unique challenges in building and sustaining households. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 lesbian-headed families across urban China, this study examines the negotiation of domestic labor and childcare alongside cross-border reproductive strategies. Findings reveal that care and household responsibilities are organized flexibly rather than according to fixed gender roles, following a pragmatic logic of “whoever notices, does it.” Some families rely on parental support or paid caregivers, while others navigate parenthood independently, highlighting the interplay between relational resources and household autonomy. Cross-border assisted reproduction further shapes family practices, requiring complex planning, negotiation, and adaptation to regulatory and social constraints. These micro-level practices illuminate how marginalized families construct kinship, distribute labor, and sustain reproductive ambitions without formal institutional recognition. By focusing on relational and temporal strategies of care, the study contributes to understanding the creative, future-oriented dimensions of queer family life in East Asia. This research situates Chinese lesbian families’ domestic and reproductive strategies within broader discussions of technoscience, kinship, and social inequality, demonstrating the interplay between individual agency, family negotiation, and systemic constraints.

Keywords (5):

Chinese Lesbian Families; Kinship Negotiation; Domestic Labor; Cross-Border Reproduction; Queer Family Futures