The Seed: Infertility Is a Feminist Issue

by Alexandra Kimball

Notes on desire, reproduction, and grief, and how feminism doesn't support women struggling to have children In pop culture as much as in policy advocacy, the feminist movement has historically left infertile women out in the cold. This book traverses the chilly landscape of miscarriage, and the particular grief that accompanies the longing to make a family. Framed by her own desire for a child, journalist Alexandra Kimball brilliantly reveals the pain and loneliness of infertility, especially as a lifelong feminist. Her experience of online infertility support groups -- where women gather in forums to discuss IVF, surrogacy, and isolation -- leaves her longing for a real life community of women working to break down the stigma of infertility.
In the tradition of Eula Biss’s On Immunity and Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided , Kimball marries perceptive analysis with deep reportage -- her findings show the lie behind the prevailing, and at times paradoxical, cultural attitudes regarding women’s right to actively choose to have children. Braiding together feminist history, memoir, and reporting from the front lines of the battle for reproductive rights and technology, The Seed plants in readers the desire for a world where no woman is made to feel that her biology is her destiny.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Memoir, Canada, Parenting, Essays, Academic

150 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2019

Reviews

[Lauren Cross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bristle when someone refers to an unmedicated vaginal delivery as 'natural'. The inference is that a medicated or caesarean birth is 'unnatural' (which is why I love the term 'belly birth') and therefore inferior to a birth where the baby was pushed—not pulled—out and without medical intervention. At best, 'natural' is a euphemism for 'vaginal'—but it is a persistent term stuck in slightly outdated feminism. As a feminist, I have long maintained that if you're too embarrassed to say the word 'vagina' then you should probably change the topic of conversation altogether...

So I was delighted to receive an advance copy of The Seed, which expertly crafts Kimball's personal experience of miscarriage and infertility with sharp journalism. It is a reckoning for anyone who thinks of themselves as an intersectional feminist. This is the book I didn't know I needed to read; if you're reading this, it's likely the book you didn't know you needed to read, too.

Because which of us infertiles have really examined our feminism through the prism of our collective infertility experience? Kimball states how as infertile people, our determination to have a baby is misunderstood more than not. The 'barren woman' is a mythological figure to be feared. Contemporaneously, we are often portrayed as desperate and foolish, reduced to mere "dupes of the patriarchy."

The reality is, of course, far more complicated. Kimball argues that the fight for women's reproductive freedom has so far excluded the right to reproduce when medical intervention is required. It's a deft argument, and the cornerstone of the book. Reproductive rights must also mean access to fertility treatment, not just to birth control—all the more important if you're not a middle class white person.

This eye-opening book left me nodding along with its probing questions. Shouldn't we transcend traditional definitions of 'womanliness' and what it means to be maternal? Shouldn't we support the desire to become a parent, as well as the choice not to reproduce? Why is acceptable to talk about birth work, but not the work of pregnancy loss and infertility? Shouldn't all forms of family constellations be celebrated? These are some of the questions feminism's fourth wave must answer. I am hopeful that The Seed will help steer the conversation in that direction.

[Salena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As a feminist dealing with infertility and recurrent miscarriage, I do feel confused and alienated by the way feminism deals with reproductive health issues and narratives about motherhood, loss, and infertility. This book was such a relief to me, to see another woman dealing with the same questions that I was and struggling with infertility in a way that opens her up to questions about her broader feminist identity. I was particularly struck when she argued that the Handmaid's Tale frames infertile women as evil. The section where she described the shape of the grief of an infertile woman as not a woman with a baby-shaped hole in her heart but as a stack of paper dolls that have been cut out but not separated made me feel so very very seen, and that the loss is a loss of a single selfhood and mental timeline in addition to the loss of a baby was the only time I have seen my experience in that way depicted. It truly helped me to understand why it makes me feel uncomfortable when people try to make me feel better about my losses by telling me that I will get a baby one day. It's because a part of me wonders if my identity is permanently multiple (I could be five months pregnant and two months pregnant today if I had gotten to keep my pregnancies), and if I'm like humpty dumpty and even getting the baby I so desperately want won't put me back together again.

[Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite book I’ve read about infertility. Specifically enjoyed the conversations around sociocultural archetypes of infertile women.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part memoir and part an indepth analysis on the "paradoxical, cultural attitudes regarding women's right to actively choose to have children". Alexandra Kimball writes about how many aspects of modern feminism has either ignored the topic of infertility or is outright hostile towards infertile women seeking treatment. How the right to choose seems to be reserved for couples without any problems, and judgement is heaped on couples who need help. Kimball also explores how the public discourse about advanced reproductive technology such as IVF is centered more on the "technological sorcery of the researchers and physicians" than the toll it takes on the couple.

With her grief reduced to a vague ‘desire’ for a baby, and the efforts of making this baby rendered as so extraordinary, so risky and costly and scientifically improbable, it’s difficult to see her as anything other than a curiosity of capitalism, akin to people who undergo cosmetic surgery (who, it must be said, are also underserved by this rhetoric). Her grief is mundane and relatable, but we don’t really hear about it. We hear about the technology, which is so astounding it may as well be from outer space.

Kimball explores and writes about these topics in a way that is academically well researched, with historical examples and cited sources, but also humanity and emotions. I appreciated how she covered and explored the topic from various angles, writing about access, about race, about the LGBTQIA+ community, about intersectionality, about the healthcare system (Canadian in this case), and the various ever branching roads that people must go down.

not only are women of colour, queer women, and poor women affected by infertility just as much as, if not more than, wealthier white women in straight partnerships, but they also face barriers to infertility care that are inextricable from historical oppression.

This is a book that is more geared towards people who have an understanding of what infertility entails be it through research or experience. There is little hand holding, there are not long lengthy chapters going into detail about each little thing that she discusses. Unlike Hilariously Infertile: One Woman's Inappropriate Quest to Help Women Laugh Through Infertility. or The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood, both of which the reader gets to follow the author's from the beginning of their journeys to the end, slowly learning about the process with the story - this book starts in the middle and gets quite academic at times. But of the books listed, this book gives the reader more to think about and more to process.

This book really showed me how, as another reviewer put it "explains this history of how feminism came to take an anti-ART position and where the cultural notions of infertile women as immoral, lazy, and greedy come from". In 2019, Gloria Steinem wrote to NYS lawmakerstrying to uphold the surrogacy ban in NYS, which as of 2021 has been overturned. The fight for surrogacy in NYS was constantly being written about as "progressives" vs "feminists", with the idea that you couldn't be a feminist and also believe in reproductive rights. Some used this as a jumping ground to also decry the use of donor eggs, and less so donor sperm. I didn't quite understand the logical leaps in some of what I was reading from people I truly respected. But this book helped give some background in where and how they got to where they were in their thinking. It also helped make me think more deeply on my own thoughts and beliefs and how things are ever evolving.

Yet the work of infertility, the labour of grief and longing, is still largely invisible within feminism, which, at best, hews to the mainstream narrative of infertile women as the privileged consumers of reproductive medicine and, at worst, construes our maternal desire as a sign of patriarchal collusion. After years of searching for feminist discussions that seemed even passingly familiar with women’s actual experiences of infertility, the best one I’ve found, and the one I still come back to, is buried in the infertility subgroup of Reddit, among anonymous posters whose identities I can’t even guess at.

I have to say, there is a much better review on Goodreads found here. It does a better job reviewing/exploring this book than I could.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received an ARC of this and it’s even better than I expected: nuanced, reasoned, empathetic, and rightly angry for how we all are cheated of thoughtful public discourse and representation.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am hesitant as I write this about writing this at all. I could remain objective and merely say that I think this is an important contribution that addresses a significant lacuna in feminist political thought in failing to address the experience of medically infertile women and socially infertile persons (single people, LBGTQ people). Or, I could share my truth (which, I guess, is what I'm choosing to do), which is that this book spoke to me and made me feel seen in a way that I have not ever felt before.

As a social practice, speaking of a person's own struggle with infertility is profoundly taboo, unless perhaps it is sanitized and filtered, the Instagram shot of a "miracle baby" that effaces the gory details of medical procedures and injections, the financial and relationship tolls, the multiple failures and pregnancy losses along the way. The labor of baby-making made invisible, only the beautiful product, the "miracle" child, is displayed. And as a political practice, admitting that you are pursuing pregnancy through ART signals that you are complicit in the patriarchy's reduction of women to no more than baby-making machines, that you have drunk the cool-aid and are so "baby crazy" that you're willing to do something considered dangerous and unethical to turn yourself into a brainless vessel for a fetus. I used to feel that way. I recall (with regret) privately heaping aspersions on childless couples who pursued IVF, believing that their infertility was the product of their own laziness (why didn't they start trying sooner?), or their lifestyle choices (if only they ate differently or exercised more, then they'd get pregnant), or their greed (this is a rich white privilege, can't they just accept that they'll be childless? And anyway, the planet is overpopulated and dying!).

Women's hard-fought "right to choose" as it is presently formulated means merely a right to terminate a pregnancy, not a right to also choose pregnancy when a medical or social condition or mere happenstance forecloses that option without medical support or third-party intervention. Second-wave feminists view women and queer people who engage in ART as duped by the patriarchal, heteronormative, and capitalist medical technology industry. Worse yet, feminists contend that ART enslaves women, particularly women of lower social class, into becoming womb slaves. Ironically, their assumption is that no woman could ever consent to donating gametes or serving as a surrogate even while they champion the notion that women can (and have the right to) consent to abortion. The whole notion that women ought to control their reproductive functions ends at the point where a woman chooses to use technology to enhance her fertility instead of curtailing it, a fact that is particularly troubling when you consider that infertility strikes impoverished women and women of color at even higher rates than rich white women.

But as Kimball points out, the making of infertiles invisible in the feminist movement is yet another example of the systemic problem that feminism faces in its failure to recognize the variety of lived experience of all women. Is it really any wonder, then, that so many women refuse to call themselves "feminists" even though they support equal political and economic rights for women? Feminism has made for itself a project of denying the experiences of certain marginalized women, such as trans women and infertile women, in order to cling to a backwards, unscientific, and misogynistic idea of an ideal, essentialist, "woman" who is defined by a working uterus and ovaries. Gloria Steinem, the ur-feminist herself, supported a ban on surrogacy in New York, citing the likelihood of the arrival of a Handmaids Tale future while denying the pain and suffering of women and men wishing to be parents as well as the agency of those wishing to be surrogates.

Kimball's book was so important to me because it explains this history of how feminism came to take an anti-ART position and where the cultural notions of infertile women as immoral, lazy, and greedy come from. Kimball reviews cultural artifacts from films to paintings and provides an exhaustive review of the literature on all sides, which is a feat given this book clocks in at only 134 pages. The book also offers Kimball's personal experience with infertility and the isolation and grief that it brings. It elevates the physical and emotional work of infertility to the level of the maternal work of pregnancy and parenting, which is a radical act considering the current political climate. It empowered me to view my own experiences as of a piece with motherhood instead of as the failure to achieve it. And it forced me to ask myself whether concealing my personal struggle is protecting me or further isolating me while reinforcing the notion that such work is actually taboo and unspeakable. Would we as infertiles be better served by speaking our truth, going back to one essential tenet of feminism which is that the personal is political? Would we be better served by seeking collective solutions and political change (policies that treat ART as healthcare and not as commerce) instead of confining ourselves to online chatrooms where we only talk to each other and then only about individual outcomes? Surely, to advocate for ourselves means we must share our stories and challenge society's view that such stories are shameful, which also means opening ourselves up to public scrutiny and the cruelty that is so often heaped upon us, comments intended to minimize our suffering (well, at least you get to sleep in!) or deny our realities (if you just stop trying, it will happen!). It's a lot to ask of someone going through a process that at least one study has shown is as stressful as living with cancer. Kimball doesn't prescribe solutions, something that I don't think I would support in this context anyway, but she does offer hope for a feminist political philosophy that sees and accepts infertility and its treatment as a larger part of an overall reproductive justice agenda.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

While feminists have long defended the rights of women to access safe and affordable birth control and abortion, there's been a curious blind spot -- a noticeable lack of interest and effort -- when it comes to matters of infertility and pregnancy loss. Some of the early feminists (not without reason) viewed motherhood as a tool of the patriarchy to suppress women's advancement. There's also a strand of feminism that celebrates "earth mothers" and "natural" parenting -- unmedicated home births, etc. Assisted reproductive technologies, on the other hand, are often viewed as "unnatural" and exploitive of women -- egg donors & surrogates, if not infertility patients themselves.

Finally, someone has dared to ask some hard questions and point out the gaps and discrepancies in existing feminist thought on these subjects. "The Seed: How the Feminist Movement Fails Infertile Women" by Alexandra Kimball is an important addition to these discussions. It is a short book, under 150 pages (including notes & bibliography) -- but it packs a lot into them. I blazed through it in under 24 hours time.

(The only other book I can think of that deals with infertility & (more specifically) pregnancy loss through a feminist lens (& which also points out the shortcomings of the feminist movement in this respect) is "Motherhood Lost" by Linda L. Layne (2003), which Kimball references several times.)

"The Seed" is partly a memoir: Kimball endured multiple miscarriages and failed rounds of ARTs -- and an increasing sense of isolation from other, more fertile women -- before having a son last year, with the help of an egg donor and a surrogate. It's partly a historical & cultural study of how infertile women have been portrayed and viewed over the centuries, from ancient mythological figures to characters in modern movies and books/TV shows like "Baby Mama" and "The Handmaid's Tale." It's a review of feminist literature on the subjects of motherhood, infertility and assisted reproductive technologies. And it's a strong argument that feminism has failed infertile women in some pretty important ways. Shouldn't we support women who desperately want to be mothers, as well as those who are equally adamant that they do NOT want children? Shouldn't "reproductive rights" include access to fertility treatments, as well as birth control and abortion?

Kimball argues that infertility & pregnancy loss are every bit as much valid forms of "work" as pregnancy/birth and motherhood are (which is, of course, itself often derided and devalued) -- not only the very real work it takes to get & stay pregnant through fertility treatments, but the emotional work of living as an infertile person in a fertile world, where parenthood is viewed as the "norm," taken for granted and comes so easily to so many. Grief is an important part of this work that is all too often ignored or minimized by those who have not experienced it.

I gave this book four (4) stars. The language can be a bit academic at times, and there's so much food for thought here to chew on that it can sometimes be a bit dizzying. :) On balance, it's a really important book, and I am glad Kimball has written it. May there be many more like it to come!

[rabble.ca]

Review by Christina Turner:

At the beginning of The Seed: Infertility Is A Feminist Issue, Alexandra Kimball recalls being asked by a well-meaning party guest if she has any children. When Kimball replies that she can't, because she's had three miscarriages, the stranger gapes at her and disappears.

For Kimball, this moment exemplifies the social isolation she has experienced as an infertile woman. But it also leads to a strange insight: "infertility has a lot of power." It is this power -- infertility's capacity to incite cultural panic, drive women apart, and, occasionally and hopefully, bring them together -- that Kimball sets out to explain in this timely and compelling book-length essay.

Keep reading: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2019/0...

[Domenica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an absolutely necessary and compelling read. It hits every mark—sharp, well-researched, specific yet wide reaching, and never clinical. For someone who’s never read any feminist writing on infertility, I also appreciated the scope, from policy to pop culture to personal grief, full of heart and meat. Kimball doesn’t shy away from self-implication in ethical debates, and the book really opened my mind up to the struggles, successes, and possibilities of alternative forms of family-making. It is a topic I want to keep reading and thinking about. I am a better person (and a better feminist) for having read The Seed and look forward to what Kimball writes next.

[Doug Levandowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the first and last two chapters (of five) were the strongest. For anyone who knows someone struggling with infertility (you do, even if you don't know you do) and who wants to support them, this book is a quick must-read.

[Fiona Maddever · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most relatable book on infertility I've read. So many feelings I've never been able to express put into beautiful words.

[Celia rm · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

Mixed opinions, the beginning is really good and then… the surrogacy part… the desire part… idk. I didn’t like that at all.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. I have very mixed feelings on this book. I never thought of fertility as a feminist issue, but after reading this book, I totally could see that it is. However, the surrogacy part...I have major issues w surrogacy and the idea of "rent a woman/rent a woman's body" so that part I struggled to connect. One woman's very intimate and brave memoir.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For Freud, mourning is about a lost object; the grieving person has a type of hole in them, in the shape of the lost thing - their work is healing is to fill that hole with something else...If you drew me at the point of my most brutal need, I'd look less like a woman with a hole in me than I would multiple identical women, a chain of paper dolls that had been cut but not yet pulled apart. Each of these dolls, these women, is living a separate life: some in which I went on as I was, childless, and others in which this or that procedure had worked and I had a baby. The women overlap; they are all me. But the edges where they diverge are paper-cut sharp. In all of my reading about grief, I never found an account that described this sensation better than the ones about dissociation - a near-psychotic awareness of myself as being multiple places, multiple women at the same time..."

This quote and so many others made me think about infertility in new and unexpected ways, which I didn't imagine could be possible at this point in my life. This book will stick with me for a long time.

[Julya Savina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rare is a 5 star review, and I didn't even expect it.
This book is not just a memoir or telling of a single experience on the journey to motherhood, as if motherhood is only the destination. Infertility is put into a historical and feminist context, imbued also with the author's experiences and something like "existential musings" of the inherent difficulty and loneliness of infertility-as-identity. It's this historical and feminist context that I found most valuable, including having my eyes opened to the struggle of single, queer, lesbian, trans women in this milieu where even feminism didn't have their back. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with infertility, curious about it, or interested in historical feminist perspectives on this taboo topic.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so important to me. I heard about it and had to read it. It addressed so much of the complex feelings I have about pregnancy loss and infertility. Infertility was my idenity, and my whole life revolved around my clinic. Until I got pregnant spontaneously and that baby was incredibly sick. This book was a blanket around my shoulders and a cup of tea with a knowing look when I felt so alone, so isolated, and so depressed about something that has been so hard for me, but so easy for so many. Also queer inclusive (to a point) so TYSM,

[Jawanza Barial-Lumumba · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important read to understand the perspective of someone who is infertility in the difficulty of connecting in the feminist dialogue around fertility and womanhood and also connecting to perspectives outside of her own to talk about intersectionality. It's an important read for everyone to read through, especially touching on the historical and modern representation of infertile women in research, feminist texts, media, and more. A very quick read too.

[Sonya Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a small book it packs in a lot of food for thought, I found I could only read a bit at a time, then have to put it down to digest what I had just read. Very strong, and vulnerable and definitely worth reading.

[Moli Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal and political analysis braided with skill and emotion. I hope this book helps change how feminism views infertility! While this book draws a parallel with how trans women are also excluded from the feminist movement, I do wish there had been more analysis of trans (in)fertilities.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

So so so good. Will recommend to every women going through fertility issues and everyone else too.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars.

[alee · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I disagree on some things this was an amazing read, every woman should read this

[Justice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that was touching, it wasn’t exactly what I expected but raised amazing and relatable points. The conclusion really won me over with feeling better about this book, this book isn’t just simply about infertility and feminism but also has a personal element to it that I feel both bettered and hindered the book in different ways. Overall glad I got it, as a completely sterile woman I found kinship and some separation with this book. Kimball does a really great job at showing it all and I admire that dearly.

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seed: Infertility is a Feminist Issue by Alexandra Kimball is a superb, necessary text that writes the nonfiction defense for infertile women. She argues well that this is an intersectional issue—many of the language leveled against trans women hurts infertile women as well, as well as any other people who may be infertile or unable to have children in a way that comes easily, or naturally. It also fights strongly for the need for feminism to reclaim this as a call to action, showing how feminism's focus on the right to not be a mother led to them neglecting to defend, or even to criticize, women who are infertile, imbuing them with stereotypical storylines portraying them as cold, evil, 'baby crazy,' or playing into the patriarchy's hands.

The entire book is short, easily read, and important for any intersectional feminist right now to dig into. It challenged many ideas I didn't know I had, and is an excellent and convincing work with many superb analyses.