Gender before sex | population before Subjects. Gender Selection and SDL (Sexualizing division of labor) vs TechnoQueer Futures

Abstract

Gender before Sex | Population before Subjects. Gender Selection and SDL (Sexualizing Division of Labor) vs TechnoQueer Futures The aim of this paper is twofold: to show how neoliberal reproductive technologies articulate life following a patriarchal economy of gendered otherness through the production of docile individuals and populations (Cooper, Waldby, Bathia, Clarke, Thomson), and to encourage a shift towards a collective implementation of liberating technologies through both queer theory (Parisi, McCormack) and Feminist Science Fiction (Peircy, Silberberg). By adopting the figuration of the body as more than a purely biological fact but as an interface for socio-cultural and intimate techno-mediated inscriptive codes, I will discuss both the techno-production of sexes as gender-based artifacts suitable to perpetuate the status quo and the possibility to hack bio-determinism, as well as neoliberal socio-constructivism, by collective and queer thoughts and practices. Firstly, I will analyze non-medical sex-selective artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs) in transnational bio-economy; secondly, I will frame them into the horizons of sexual division of labor at the core of neoliberal era; thirdly, I will conclude by reading diffractively queer de-gendering theorizations and Feminist Science Fiction’s incentives as a critical escape path.

Keywords

• gender
• sex
• queer