ABSTRACT
This chapter explores constructions of race, nationality, ethnicity and whiteness in fertility narratives. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, as well as critical race and whiteness theories, it analyses racialisations of donor sperm. Many intended mothers throughout the world use Danish donor sperm, due to Denmark’s international sperm supply and liberal fertility legislation. This trend has been named ‘the new Viking invasion’ in Great Britain. The chapter delves into the racial aspects of ‘Viking sperm’, exploring its narratives of Nordic hyper-whiteness and imagined racial superiority. It illustrates how whiteness is constructed as physically, mentally and aesthetically superior in the imagination of sperm, genes, genetics and reproduction. This chapter investigates gametes as a commodity and shows how online sperm sales turn reproduction into consumption. It examines how the commodification of sperm has led to commodity racism; i.e. racialisations evoking historical understandings of racial hierarchies and race as biologically founded. It is especially interested in the affordances of online shopping, such as drop-down menus, and how they influence commercialisation of genetic material in ART/MAR. Here, the chapter draws upon biopolitics and race history to show how racial discourses (race as material biology), which are often associated with nineteenth-century racial science, can surface in modern times through online commercialisation and neo-liberal consumption.
