ABSTRACT
Where Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are critical and pessimistic analyses of how donor families contribute to maintaining normative understandings of family and kinship, Chapter 5 offers a reparative interpretation of donor families, looking at how mothers of donor-conceived children from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and other European countries form an intimate online community when connecting with each other digitally. Here they share knowledge, feel recognition and experience belonging. They develop new scripts of family that illustrate alternative paths to intimacy and affective belonging, allowing women marginalised by mainstream society to feel included. The online community can be seen as a ‘counter public’ and ‘citizen engagement’, that collectively challenge large capitalist structures, such as sperm banks. The online activities carry traces of feminist activism, and the chapter shows that online social media does not necessarily challenge previous understandings of intimacy, belonging and self-disclosure; rather, online digital media enable the continuation of historical forms of intimacy, community and activism. In this light, the online donor community is interpreted as a continuation of consciousness-raising groups from the 1970s women’s movement.
