Be Wary of the Techno-Fix
By Marcy Darnovsky,
Boston Review
| 11. 19. 2018
In Merve Emre’s essay "All Reproduction is Assisted," her commitment to the emancipatory power of reproductive technologies is untroubled by her own accounts of unsatisfactory endings. Perhaps she assumes that one day soon, when the technologies improve, they will set us free.
In her essay, Merve Emre declares that “all reproduction . . . is assisted.” Few feminists of any wave or stripe would disagree. But if the statement that none of us go it alone is solid, some of Emre’s other moves put her on shaky ground. In her opening volleys, she skips lightly across fifty years of feminist thinking about reproductive technologies, leaping from Shulamith Firestone to Adrienne Rich to xenofeminism, with a brief stop at Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1984). She arrives at a diagnosis of contemporary reproductive culture: it is infected, she says, by “the discourse of the natural.” She takes contemporary feminism to task for this state of affairs, suggesting that it has not been sufficiently enthusiastic about high-tech reproduction and asserting that it “has not done a good enough job articulating what alternate strategies of reproduction may be.”
Is that really a fair critique of feminism today? Most feminists have long been aware that simplistic appeals to nature can justify anything, including gender inequalities and oppression. And while questions about “nature” and “technology” are very...
Related Articles
GeneWatch UK has prepared a briefing on the genetic modification of nature for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress in October 2025
The upcoming Congress claims to be “where the world comes together to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.” A major concern for those on the outside is that the Congress may advance plans to develop and encourage the use of synthetic biology in nature conservation. This could at first glance sound like...
By Aaron Ginn, The Washington Post | 09.12.2025
Earlier this year, I had dinner in D.C. with Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia. At one point, he said something that struck me: “Why is everyone here so negative?”
He wasn’t referring to the economy...
By Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times | 08.25.2025
Scientists have dreamed for centuries about using animal organs to treat ailing humans. In recent years, those efforts have begun to bear fruit: Researchers have begun transplanting the hearts and kidneys of genetically modified pigs into patients, with varying degrees...
The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...