8 Keeping it in the Family: Debating the Bio-Intimacy ... 207period only, thus, separating reproduction from the bio-intimate
relations of the family. In contrast, the promise of altruism within
debates on surrogacy functions as way to re-entangle surrogacy
within the family, and demarcates monetary exchanges from the acts
of reproduction.
Conclusion
Through the concept of bio-intimacy, we depart from the
gift/commodity framework that the discussion of bioethics often finds
itself in and propose instead that intimacy plays a vital part of the eth-
ics on uterine exchanges. On the one hand, UT and surrogacy both
dramatically change the intimate scripts and choreographies of having
children and procreation, yet these reproductive technologies simultane-
ously become ethically legitimate forms of assistance by being embed-
ded in already organised structures of intimacy.
The gift/commodity dichotomy is such a structure. When the repro-
ductive technologies of UT and surrogacy are positioned within a
commodity framework, the intimate feelings and relations between the
actors (donor/surrogate, commissioning parents, child, and staff) are
‘un-intimised’ by placing these encounters within a public of market,
self-interest, and monetary economies. Meanwhile, when the technolo-
gies are positioned within a gift-giving framework, the technologies are
‘intimised’ by being embedded within hegemonic structures of inti-
macy (the heterosexual family and kinship) as well as being embed-
ded with a female intimate public, where the female donor/surrogate
is promised a better belonging to an intimate public of woman-ness
by abiding to a hegemonic script of feminised intimacy characterised
by traditional female attributes of self-scarification, gift-giving, and
family-devotion. In the bio-intimate economy of uterine exchanges,
money is not only a mark of non-intimacy, but also of non-woman-
ness. This is in sharp contrast to the promise and ethics of altruism,
which functions as stabilisation of procreative disturbances enabled by
new technologies.