“Bionormativity”

More on Daniel Groll’s book Conceiving People

1. Problematic desires

In chapter 5 of Conceiving People Daniel Groll asks us to

Imagine that Marlena, a 15-year-old girl, has a significant interest in having a nose job because, she says, her nose is just “too big” and no one will find her attractive.

Would it be good for Marlena to get a nose job? Should her parents help her (maybe at a later date) get what she wants? Groll says: it’s complicated. Maybe it would be good for her; maybe her parents should help. But insofar as she wants a nose job because she lives in a sexist society, her parents should also lament that she wants this, and they should wish that, instead, they lived in an egalitarian society where Marlena was happy with her nose as it was.

What about people conceived through gamete donation, or people who were adopted, and want to know who their genetic or biological parents are? Are their desires in the same boat? Maybe their desires are a response to living in a “bionormative” society, where bionormativity is, like sexism, an unjust or prejudicial attitude. If that is why donor-conceived people and adoptees want genetic knowledge, then, even if the right thing is for them to get what they want, we should think that it is all kind of too bad, and we should wish that, instead, we lived in a non-bionormative society where no one cared who their genetic relatives were. Groll thinks this line of thought is wrong; let’s look into why. (I wrote an earlier post on Groll’s views here.)