A visual semiotic analysis of sperm donors’ baby photos as major marketing material at the s[u]permarket

Abstract

This article presents a semiotic visual analysis of 48 sperm donors’ baby photos from six of the largest American sperm banks, using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s method of ‘reading images’ described in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006). Donor baby photos, conceptualized as self-advertisements, serve to engage prospective sperm users because of their liminal nature. The following issues are addressed: How do sperm donors use baby photos to transmit messages to prospective recipients? What are the cultural values conveyed via the photos? Is there a correspondence between donors’ verbal narratives and meanings encoded in baby photos? Furthermore, a new category of ‘chosen/selected’ images is proposed for classifying photos that were neither made for the purpose of the study nor found by the researcher. The photo selection is strategic and serves to engage sperm recipients in imaginary relations with donors. Furthermore, subversive messages tacitly transmitted in baby photos desemiotize some of the stated values in the verbal narratives.

Keywords

baby photo hyperpersonal communication polysemics resemiotization semiotics signification sperm donor

Images can … create complex and subtle relations between the represented and the viewer. (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001: 145)

Contact is established, even if it is only on an imaginary level. (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 117)

This article deals with sperm donors’ baby photos as facilitating and emotionalizing the donor selection process, as well as contributing to a sense of familiarity with anonymous donors whose baby photos appear in their extended profile on commercial sperm bank websites. I show how imaginary relationships between sperm donors and recipients who view donors’ baby photos can be established, using a visual semiotic analysis of these photos. In the first years of donor insemination in the 1970s, the selection of a sperm donor was based on genetic and physical traits with the recipient having no option of choosing her donor, and the doctor taking full control over the matching between the recipient, who was usually a heterosexual woman married to an infertile man, and the donor (Moore, 2007). Currently, after an increase in consumer power due to a massive commodification of sperm donation (Almeling, 2007; Daniels, 2004; Daniels and Heidt-Forsythe, 2012; Pietrzak, 2012) and the evolvement of sperm e-commerce, recipients have numerous potential donors from among whom to choose. The industry of sperm banking has developed rapidly, thanks to the growing number of lesbian couples and single heterosexual women who wish to conceive without a male partner and also men who wish to preserve their sperm before chemotherapy. Sperm donor selection has become a major consumerist decision which involves an extensive decision process of comparing multiple potential donors, rather than just finding genetic matching and the suitable medical procedure (Bokek-Cohen, 2014).

Prospective recipients can view the standard files of each donor, which are available free of charge and include basic information about the donor, such as height, weight, skin tone, hair and eye colours, and also religion and ethnic origin. If someone is interested in obtaining more detailed information, she can purchase extended profiles with an extra payment of usually US$19–30; these extended profiles include extensive essays written by the donor in response to questions relating to his childhood and family background, ‘staff impression’ written by one of the secretaries who knows him personally, his hobbies and personality traits he believes he possesses. Most sperm banks also offer audiotaped interviews with him, his handwritten essay explaining why he wants to donate sperm, as well as details of his childhood and family, GPA score, and Keirsey personality questionnaire. Most men agree to donate sperm because of a combination of monetary reward and altruism (Almeling, 2007, 2011; Pennings, 2000); many donors are also motivated by a desire to spread their genes and by the possibility of having children in their lives (Van den Broeck et al., 2013). The issue of donor anonymity constitutes a controversial theme in reproductive health policy, hence it is the subject of national debate in many European countries (Bokek-Cohen, 2015a). American donors can choose whether to keep their anonymity or disclose their identity; those who opt to waive anonymity and reveal who they are agree to be contacted by their offspring after they reach maturity, and are termed ‘open donors’. American donors receive usually US$125 per donation whereas in most Scandinavian countries and Australia alike, there is a prohibition against monetary compensation, and donors are only reimbursed for expenses and time. American sperm banks abide by the guidelines of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and limit the number of families created by one donor to a maximum of 10 (American Society for Reproductive Medicine [ASRM], 2013). Most fertility investigations are covered by private health insurance; however, once a specific problem has been diagnosed, the insurance does not cover the necessary treatments. It should also be noted that about 15 per cent of Americans remain uninsured (The Commonwealth Fund, 2014).

Sperm banks operate in many ways similar to virtual supermarkets, and exhibit their merchandise on their websites; each donor ‘for sale’ is described by the bank staff and by means of a self presentation. He is requested to provide information in reply to various questions about his personality, hobbies, educational and occupational attainments and plans, likes and dislikes, etc. (Almeling, 2011; Bokek-Cohen, 2014; Kroløkke, 2009; Moore, 2007). I conceptualize these extended profiles as computer-mediated communication (CMC) between sperm donors and potential recipients; thus, this article aims to show how sperm banks use baby photos of donors as their major marketing material. Viewing the sperm e-commerce as equivalent to virtual supermarkets is reflected in the term I propose here: s[u]permarket, which is meant to underscore the point that sperm is traded as if it were any other commercial goods, a commodified product. The present article aims at exploring the ways s[u]permarkets use their donors’ photos to achieve their business goals.

Absent from the extant visual semiotics literature is positioning images of people in cyberspace as liminal rather than clearly categorized into ‘classic’ classifications of ‘real’, ‘virtual’ or ‘fictitious’; therefore, conceptualizing people’s images in cyberspace as objects of digital virtual consumption (DVC) may illustrate the usefulness of this approach as a supplementary analytic tool to some research areas of visual semiotics. I intend to describe the essence of this approach and then to demonstrate its contribution to a visual analysis of images that serve to facilitate CMC. I also propose that sperm banks provide a platform for virtual hyperpersonal communication (Walther, 1996) between sperm donors and recipients. The main media channel is the sperm donors’ extended profiles that include both verbal and visual text. My analysis is aimed at addressing the following questions: How do sperm donors use baby photos to transmit messages to prospective recipients? What are the cultural values that are transmitted via the photos? Is there a correspondence between donors’ verbal narratives and their baby photos? I turn now to elaborate on the liminal nature of donor baby photos and the resultant necessity to conceptualize them within the realm of digital virtual consumption.

Liminality Of Donor Baby Photos

Inspired by Shield’s (2000, 2003) theorization of the digital virtual as a liminal space, I propose that for sperm recipients, the donor baby photos do not belong either to their ‘real’ world or to the ‘virtual’, as the photos present donors who exist in the real world and who donate semen, which also is physical substance. Liminality of donors’ baby photos is reflected in the in-betwixt nature of the photos as objects that eternalize the soul of the donor, as the transmitter of a mythic substance that carries the donor’s spirit while vitalizing his elusive presence. Besides the liminality of the baby photos, sperm is also a type of liminal substance that ‘traffics between worlds of biology and those of sociology: sperm is both material and symbolic, both nature and culture’ (Moore, 2002: 93). Hence, sperm is personified to create imaginary relationships homologous to a romantic relationship with a male partner for life (Bokek-Cohen, 2014). Thus, personified sperm is perceived as a ‘liminal’ human substance: something between nature and culture, exactly as virtual consumption is ‘liminal’ – ‘something between the imagination and the material’ (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010: 113). The donor represents the ‘other’ for the recipient, as an anchor for defining areas of similarity and difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’ in the process of identity formation (Mead, 1934). Hence, this very liminality is what is assumed to facilitate the recipient’s perception and internalization of the donor as the ‘other’, in her extended self. This liminality is also the driving force for sperm banks to charge payment for these photos. Baby photos as major self marketing tools alongside the verbal narratives are equivalent to advertisements but at the same time embody a product in its own right, and therefore may best be conceptualized within the paradigm of digital virtual consumption, which is presented below.

Digital virtual consumption (DVC)

Contemporary consumer behaviour researchers no longer assume that consumers act rationally in all circumstances; alternatively, much of economic activity is driven by people’s imagination and daydreams. ‘Consumers’ imaginings start with what the market has to offer. They then act as if, enjoying an improvised game of make believe’ (Molesworth and Denegri-Knott, 2005: 3, emphasis in original). Hence, offering prospective sperm recipients the option to purchase extended profiles that describe the donor’s hobbies, lifestyle, likes and dislikes, as well as a detailed description of his extended family, may have facilitated the growing interest in these non-heritable traits and cultivating the phenomenon of women fantasizing about marrying their donor (Bokek-Cohen, 2014; Hanson, 2001). Fantasies about the donor are likely to be triggered, facilitated, or intensified when shown his baby photo.

Denegri-Knott and Molesworth (2010) have shown how consumer fantasies can be experienced as being fulfilled via material consumption. They contend that digital virtual spaces allow the actualization of various kinds of fantasies via simulation games and ownership of virtual objects. They label these consumerist practices ‘digital virtual consumption’ (DVC). Sperm recipients purchase both semen and extended profiles of donors they select; conceiving with the aid of a donor’s semen allows the illusion of ‘owning’ his genetic material alongside the ownership of hard copies of his baby photos in real life. Denegri-Knott and Molesworth stress that ‘DVC differs from virtual or imaginary consumption inasmuch as the object of consumption does not only reside in the consumer’s mind, but is experienced as owned and used within the parameters of specific digital virtual spaces’ (pp. 109–110). While Denegri-Knott and Molesworth note that the objects of DVC consumption lack material substance, we nevertheless must acknowledge that the sperm donation itself is ‘just’ the physical product, purchased as a means to achieving a material baby and also not of less importance, as the DVC approach would suggest, for consuming an immaterial ‘product’ of illusionary bond with the donor or the illusion that the woman’s existing real partner is fathering the baby. Drawing on arguments made by Hanson (2001) and Bokek-Cohen (2014) about recipients’ fantasies of marrying their donor, it is also suggested that the photos, as attendant physical components of DVC products, serve as backdrop to the imaginary bond with the donor and his symbolic fatherhood of the future offspring (Bokek-Cohen, 2014, 2016). Sperm banks provide a cyberspace which is a platform for sperm users to consume something that is not virtual per se, rather is not material, i.e. the imaginary relationship with the donor.

While sperm donations fulfill physical needs, the baby photos do not, in line with contemporary market forces that are acknowledged for contributing more and more to the ‘experiential economies’ (Pine and Gilmore, 1998); hence, ‘analysis based on utility maximization may be of little use’ (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010: 110). Donor baby photos are purchased in order to fulfill emotional and psychological needs, rather than any ‘objective’ or material needs (Bokek-Cohen, 2016). In a way, there is a parallel between viewers interested in donors’ baby photos and viewers visiting dating websites. The use of photos for self marketing is widely accepted in social networks (Donath, 2007, 2014; Walther et al., 2009; Warkentin et al., 2010) and in online dating services (Donn and Sherman, 2002; Gibbs et al., 2011; Toma et al., 2008). While photos in social and romantic CMC interactions are exhibited without charging the viewer any payment, sperm recipients are required to pay for the donor baby photos if they wish to view them; yet, in both cases the photos are used to signal credibility and also to create new relationships, either social and romantic in social networks or quasi-romantic in the sperm donation context. Sperm donor baby photos are offered as indicators of the credibility of the donor’s self description of his physical traits (hair and eye colours, size of nose, skin tone, etc.) (Bokek-Cohen, 2016) as being heritable attributes. In Scollon’s (1998) terminology, each baby photo is considered a ‘spectacle’, as each donor offers himself up for evaluation ‘for sale’ and consumption, and thus depends upon the viewing online by prospective sperm recipients for his existence.

O’Donohoe (2000) and Schroeder (2002) share the view that advertisements are objects of consumption, beyond their role in the marketing campaign designed for the product. Viewing donor baby photos as advertisements broadens our interpretative scope for conducting a visual semiotic analysis of these photos. Schroeder (2002) has shown that ads are objects visually consumed beyond their intended role in the campaign. Viewing an ad provides the potential customer with a kind of pleasure per se, independent from the decision whether to purchase the product or not. Drawing on Schroeder’s idea of visual consumption, Denegri-Knott and Molesworth (2010) claim that digital virtual consumption in general, and online stores in particular, capture the consumers’ imagination and hence become the product themselves rather than an online retailing arena; shoppers enjoy virtual window shopping even without making a purchase. Similarly, as donor baby photos are self advertisements, in the DVC context these photos are also an object of consumption, a product bearing potential pleasure similar to window-shopping. Sperm recipients may enjoy viewing donors’ baby photos without purchasing their semen. Since the extended profiles are conceptualized as objects of DVC, this calls for an understanding that some imaginary relationships are assumed to develop, as the sperm user may feel some sense of ownership of ‘her’ donor. This can be fulfilled by purchasing and owning a hard copy of photos that represent the donor during his infancy years. Decoding the positioning of sperm users in specific relations with the donors poses an intellectual challenge of uncovering polyphonic discourse, narrative which includes the voice of the narrator and the voice(s) of his or her audience (see Bakhtin, 1984) that may have taken place during the process of donor selection of each recipient.

Donor selection is similar in certain aspects to intimate mate selection; for example, in both cases each party voluntarily joins the service and also has no previous information about or acquaintance with the other party. Obviously the two contexts differ: online dating services engage two people with the mutual shared aim of meeting a partner (both parties are ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’ at the same time), and no selection of participants is conducted by any institutionalized figure nor verification of the personal data they presented. In contrast, sperm bank websites involve a seller and a buyer with different motivations, and neither of them can remain anonymous for the bank. Hence, Jones’s (2005) visual analysis research project on gay men’s exchange of photos on online dating websites is highly relevant to the present enquiry. In both cases, Jones’s study and the present project, both verbal and visual narratives, are available for each viewee. However, the viewers in each of these contexts wish to view the other’s image for different reasons. In addition, viewing donors’ baby photos requires payment of a fee, whereas viewing other men for dating purposes is an essential condition which is offered free of charge. Jones (2005) has explored the systemic sequence within the gradual process of moving from verbal communication to visual self presentation. Like the photos exchanged by members of the website on which Jones focused, extended donor profiles embody what Kress and Van Leeuwen (2002) call ‘communicational ensembles’, thanks to the combination of written narratives and baby photos that are seen as visual evidence that may corroborate – or not – the verbal messages. Since images have the power to encode various kinds of social interactions and also position the viewers in relation to the represented images (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006), the current study aims to inquire how the establishment of social relations between the anonymous donor and his prospective sperm recipient is encoded in sperm donor baby photos; these images constitute the major marketing material of sperm banks, as these photos are semiotic texts that take part in a unique CMC interaction between sperm donors and recipients. The study seeks to explore:

(1) What do the sperm donor baby photos denote? This question is addressed by analysing and interpreting the main features of donor representations as they are explicitly reflected in these photos;

The sign is saturated with ideological meanings which constitute the connotation of it, and these meanings are coded by culturally constructed symbols (Barthes, 1977). Thus, the second objective of the project is to try to decode some of the symbols that may be found in the baby photos, or in other words, to answer the following research question:

(2) What do the sperm donor baby photos connote? This question is addressed by analysis and interpretation of tacit meanings imbued in these photos, as well as comparing the messages that are conveyed in the photos with those transmitted via the verbal narratives.

The extent to which the visual messages are supported by the narrativized linguistic text is of particular interest, because it raises the question of whether the viewer/reader is being faced with coherent self presentations. Therefore, the research project is designed to address also the following question:

(3) Do the messages transmitted throughout the verbal narratives correspond to those connoted via the baby photos?

Methods

According to Bell (2001: 34), analysing visual text is not sufficient and ‘should be seen as only part of the methodological armoury’ among additional research tools. A similar approach is presented by Jewitt and Oyama (2001: 138), who hold that: ‘In studies of the use of semiotic resources, visual social semiotics can only ever be one element of an interdisciplinary equation which must also involve relevant theories and histories.’ Hence I integrate a verbal content analysis in order to get a deeper understanding of the values and ideological perspectives tacitly transmitted via the baby photos. The data corpus is 180 extended donor profiles that are exhibited on websites of the six largest American sperm banks, as measured by the number of donors offered by the bank. Each profile includes both verbal narrative and a baby photo. All sperm banks feature a ‘browse’ function to seek profiles that meet race, ethnic and religious criteria. I visited each bank website and downloaded all the available extended sperm donor profiles, approximately 600. In order to be representative, the profiles to be analysed had to have an equal and random chance of being selected for analysis from the entire pool of the studied sperm banks. This was accomplished using a random number generator; I sampled the profiles whose numbers were randomly selected and saved each one as a separate computer file. I also conducted a visual analysis of the baby photos and looked for common features among them. The data set included 48 photos randomly selected from the 180 previously sampled donors.

Data analysis

Written verbal text

A review of content analyses regarding self presentation in dating or social networks informed the coding system (Cornwell and Lundgren, 2001; Gibbs et al., 2011; Toma et al., 2008; Warkentin et al., 2010). The unit of analysis was by single sentence or word as a reference. This article is based on a larger scale project conducted with a colleague. At the beginning of the analysis, the author and her colleague conducted an initial evaluation to identify common motifs that appeared in the verbal text. During the initial coding by the author, her colleague recoded a 20 per cent random profile sample to assess inter-rater reliability. Unclear themes during initial coding by the researchers as well as cases where there was disagreement were discussed to reach consensus. Cohen’s Kappa for inter-rater reliability was 0.82.

Microanalysis of the text (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) was conducted to identify common themes that appeared in the answers to similar questions among profiles. The data analysis process consisted of systematic line-by-line coding of the text in each field of the profiles. Data analysis was conducted in an iterative process, in which data from one profile were confirmed or contradicted by data from others in order to refine theoretical categories, propositions, and conclusions as they emerged from the data (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Verbal narratives were analysed using Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) constant comparison approach to qualitative analysis. Category identification involved analysing between and across narratives (Silverman, 1993).

Donors’ baby photos

Barthes’ (1977) essay ‘The photographic message’ focuses on press photography; he contends that ‘the text loads the image, burdening it with culture, a moral, an imagination’ (p. 26). Similar to the readers of newspapers articles, the sperm recipient is technically able to view the photo before reading the verbal narrative. Furthermore, since the verbal profile can be purchased separately and independently of the baby photo of each donor, some sperm users may purchase only one of these two texts. This option illustrates Barthes’ argument about the ‘parasitic message’: whereas in traditional modes of illustration, the prevalent text–image interrelations were that ‘the text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the message … it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image’ (p. 25). The present analysis acknowledges this option as well as individual priorities and differences regarding the importance attached to each of these sources of information, along with monetary constraints as the user hesitates over purchasing both materials for each potential donor. In the following paragraph, I will provide a brief overview of the main typical values and messages that were found in the content analysis of the verbal narratives of the 180 extended profiles. This overview may serve as a prelude to the main extensive visual semiotic analysis of the three interactive meanings which are presented extensively in Chapter 4 of Reading Images (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006): contact, distance, and point of view. These dimensions provide also a basis for a comparison between verbal and visual texts with the aim of detecting similarities and differences.

Visual Semiotic Analysis Of Sperm Donors’ Baby Photos

In contrast to Barthes’ (1977) view of a photographic image as a message without a code, thanks to the assumed perfect analogy of the photo to reality, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) believe that any visual communication is always culturally coded, as they put it: ‘people of a specific culture “know the code already”, at least implicitly’ (p. 32). Since sperm donor baby photos serve as self marketing material, or self advertisements for one’s genetic quality, decoding any available cue should take into account the context in which they are presented (Collier, 2001). In particular, Van Leeuwen and Jewitt (2001: 7) acknowledge the significance of including both the producers and the viewers in a comprehensive visual analysis. The ‘producers’ of the baby photos here relate to an orchestra of at least three parties: the caregivers who took the photos and also chose which photos to develop and keep during the donor’s infancy and throughout his life until the point when he gave some of them to the bank; the donors themselves, who may also have kept the photos and selected the ones they eventually gave; and the bank staff, who probably advised them as to which photo is preferable in order to attract as many sperm users as possible (Émon, 2012). The viewers of these photos are the prospective clients who are mostly unmarried women, either single or lesbian couples (Almeling, 2007; Pennings, 2000). Pennings (2000: 509) notes that ‘Only a minority of heterosexual couples … have to rely on donor material. The proportion of single and lesbian women in the population of recipients has increased up to a point where they constitute the majority.’ In Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) terminology, viewers are labeled as ‘interactive participants’ (p. 114, emphasis in original) because of the view that images are communication media, albeit polyphonic but still one directional.

A visual analysis of the baby photos yielded motifs mainly related to the donor’s nurturing environment during his infancy. About half of these photos are black-and-white pictures, sometimes accompanied by colour pictures, which were taken by an amateur, probably a relative, rather than by a professional photographer. Since the setting of the represented image carries specific additional meanings (Jewitt, 1997, 1999), analysing spatial aspects has shown that about half (24) of the photos were taken at home and a third (16) outside against a green landscape. The babies who were presented outdoors were not situated in the wilderness or in urban landscapes, but rather in private gardens or children’s playgrounds and parks. The viewer is symbolically invited to visit the baby at his everyday life activity. Understandably, no donor would expose any of his relatives, so all babies appear alone. The camera ‘caught’ them usually at play, some of them while eating. The homes appear to have been neatly and aesthetically furnished and decorated. The babies usually sit rather than lie down, and their facial expressions are calm and happy, with about half of the babies smiling. I did not see any crying, runny-nosed, or dirty babies. I also did not find any baby who looked weak, skinny, or pale.

Although most babies had very little hair on their heads, it was always combed. The babies wore colourful and tidy clothes that fitted them well. About one sixth of them wore handmade knitted blouses or overalls. Two babies wore costumes popular among boys such as Superman. One could see objects near the baby in some of the pictures; most of these objects are paintings on the wall with childish figures like cute bears. Some of the children hold toys such as a ball or a bicycle. David’s baby photo is a typical picture that best represents the majority of the baby photos. He looks like a one and a half-year-old boy, looking at the camera and smiling. He is dressed in a clean hand-knitted sweater that fits him exactly and first-steps baby shoes. He is standing on a wooden floor, partially covered by a carpet, next to a double door whose upper section is made of glass. Through the glass one can see that the house is surrounded by a well-kept garden. The homey environment, a recurring motif, encoding an intimate and close relationship between the baby and the viewer, is expressed more intensely in two of the following three parameters that carry interactive meanings, i.e. social distance, contact and point of view (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). The visual semiotic analysis of these parameters is presented hereafter.

Social distance

The choice of the distance between the represented image and its viewer also carries implicit assumptions about available and sometimes desirable relationships between them. Although an extreme close-up is assumed to encode the closest interpersonal relationships, as intimate-personal social distance would facilitate a quasi-familiarity and likability, all the babies are photographed from a long shot and the entire body is represented, with few of the donors (4) having added another close-up shot of their face as an infant. It is reasonable to assume that with the aim of ‘advertising’ their physical, health and genetic quality, the donors preferred showing their well-proportioned whole body over a close-up or a medium shot photo. Inspired by Hall’s (1964, 1966) work on proxemics in everyday life interactions, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) apply his categorization of various levels of social distance reflected in hierarchical degrees of the represented image’s size of frame. They proceed to a higher analytical level by proposing that ‘The relation between the human participants represented in images and the viewer is once an imaginary relation’ (p. 126). Hence, donors’ baby images allow the viewer to observe the donor’s entire body as well as his facial features; the relatively less intimate relationship encoded in this kind of distance is compensated for by appealing to the viewer via the two remaining parameters of interactive meaning.

Contact

While donors present their baby photos as ‘proof’ of some of their physical traits, along with their genetic quality as having been raised in a nurturing environment during infancy, these photos of cute babies at the same time also intensify the recipients’ desire to have a baby; according to Brase and Brase (2011), positive exposure to babies (those who coo and smile and smell nice) made people want to have children. At the same time, these photos create some sort of imaginary relationship between the recipient and the donor she may choose. Almost all babies (44) look straight at the camera, demanding the recipient’s attention and maternal empathy. According to Halliday’s (1985[1994]) interpretation (cited in Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 118), ‘they demand … that the viewer enter into some kind of imaginary relation with him or her.’ Hence an emotional appeal is made by these pictures, potentially a basis for establishing some kind of emotional bond, as Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 117) put it: ‘Contact is established, even if it is only on an imaginary level.’ The babies are aware of being watched by the photographer, although understandably not cognizant of the technology of photography and its resultant future pictures. In the context of sperm donations, the donors wish to manipulate recipients’ responses and ‘demand’ that the recipient enter into an imaginary close and intimate relationship with them. Contact with the viewer is welcomed, if not implicitly demanded, according to Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) terminology which was inspired by Halliday’s (1985[1994]) work. Halliday distinguishes between four kinds of speech acts based on two parameters: whether the speech act demands or offers something to the receiver, and whether what is on demand or offer is information or goods and services. Specifically, as Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 123) note: ‘When images “demand”, they demand, one could say, the “goods-and-services” that realize a particular social relation.’ Accordingly, baby photos ‘demand’ that the recipient who views them relates to them emotionally, as a response motivated by the norm of reciprocity, and maternal instinct as well.

The point of view

None of the babies were photographed in an oblique angle; they are all presented from a frontal angle. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 136), this angle encodes a relationship between the image and the viewer in which the viewer is ‘involved’ rather than apathetic and indifferent to the image. They contend that ‘there is a kind of symmetry between the way the image-producer relates to the represented participants, and the way the viewer must, willy-nilly, also relate to them’ (p. 131). They illustrate this point by analysing a photo of a classroom: while the aboriginal children are perceived as ‘others’ by their being photographed from a very oblique angle, Anglo-white teachers are shown as ‘part of our world’ by being photographed from a frontal angle. Thanks to the baby’s direct gaze at the viewer, the potential recipient is led to unconsciously assimilate the baby as part of her inner world.

The prevailing mode of posing babies was in a position of weakness and helplessness, i.e. the viewer is assumed to feel willing to help, protect, and give care to the represented baby. This kind of contact is reflected in a high angle shot; a low angle is interpreted as assuming as well as instilling power in the image over the viewer, while a high angle encodes the opposite power balance. Donors and bank staff have strategically selected pictures where the represented baby seeks empathy, warmth and protection from the adult who is observing him. The babies look up at potential recipients who ‘stand’ exactly where their mother or another caregiver stood while taking the photograph. Thus, the direct gaze and the high angle shot of the represented babies act to mutually reinforce the encoding of the recipient/viewer as a maternal persona, or at least as a person who wishes to protect the baby and take care of him.

Do baby photos convey messages similar to those verbally narrated?

Relating to the photograph and its attendant text, Barthes (1977: 16) stresses their ambivalent coexistence: ‘These two structures are co-operative … being contiguous but not “homogenized” … the analysis must first of all bear on each separate structure.’ Iedema (2003: 39–40) stresses that adopting a multimodal perspective ‘does not a priori privilege any one semiotic over another’. My visual semiotic analysis explores the contradictions between the verbally declared liberal worldview vis-à-vis visually encoded lower middle-class bourgeois characteristics. The contradictions I show below illustrate a double polysemy which stems from that of the sperm donor with that of the recipient. As recipients are embedded in a given socio-cultural context, they are familiar with status symbols as well as with other cultural emblems prevalent in their social environment. They can decode the tacit nuances of both verbal and visual narratives, even without being aware of this interpretative performance.

Before presenting the contradictions detected, it would be useful to present here the main themes that were explored in previous content analyses of verbal narratives in donors’ extended profiles conducted by the author. Sperm banks de-commodify sperm for the purpose of the ultimate commodification, personify donations, facilitate the romanticization of the donor–recipient bond, and add an emotional context to the economic transaction. Personification constitutes a powerful reenchantment mechanism counterbalancing the anonymity and disenchantment characterizing donor insemination technology (Bokek-Cohen, 2014; Bokek-Cohen and Gonen, 2015); However, rather than benefiting free choice and procreative liberty, this manipulates customers of sperm donations to shop for masculinized sperm (Author, 2015a). Anonymous sperm donors use various tactics and strategies to signal credibility through their revealing self presentations (Author, 2015b). The issue of credibility of the self presentations can properly be addressed by comparing the verbal text analysed elsewhere to the visual text of each donor.

Most sampled donors boasted of belonging to families of high socioeconomic status. Extended profiles included narratives written as answers to direct questions regarding the educational level and occupation of each one of the donor’s relatives. A typical description of one’s family is illustrated in Steve’s presentation: his father is an aircraft pilot with a PhD in chemistry and his father’s father is a retired CEO of a large bank. His mother works as a lab technician in a research institute and has a Masters degree; her mother is a retired educational counsellor and her father is a pharmacist. In contrast to the elitist background described, the visual presentation of the babies is not typical of higher class families, as is demonstrated in the lower-middle-class style clothing (e.g. no prestigious and expensive brand name clothes or shoes), interior design of home with no indication of the touch of a professional interior designer, or the furnishings commonly found in wealthier households).

Another example of such a contradiction lies in the gap between John’s essay on ‘What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you?’ and his baby photo. John replied as follows:

When I was sixteen years old, filmmaker Kevin Smith came to a nearby town to perform stand-up comedy and take questions from the audience … I had been a huge fan of his for four years. The drive from my home to the show was doable (about two hours), except for the fact that I did not yet have a driver’s license. My parents offered to drive my girl friend at the time and I to the show and, due to the late hour the show began, get a hotel room for the four of us to stay in for the night. The show was everything I could have hoped for, and I spent the hours afterwards walking around the town, hoping against hope that I might bump into my idol and chat with him, if only for a moment … The following morning, my girlfriend, my father, and I (my mother was still asleep) went down to the hotel lobby to grab our complimentary breakfast. Afterwards, I told them to head back up to the room without me while I went to the lobby restroom. Minutes later, I joined them up in our room, and found myself surrounded by looks of nervous fear. It was my girlfriend who finally spoke up, saying, ‘I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but we rode the elevator up with Kevin Smith.’ Apparently, while I was using the restroom, my girlfriend and my dad had gotten in the elevator and, just before the door closed, held it open for a man running to catch it. The man was none other than my idol at the time, Kevin Smith. They chatted with him for the short duration of the ride up, telling him how much they enjoyed the show and lamenting the fact that neither of them had a camera handy to take a picture with him. As much as I wish I had just waited until I got up to our room to use the bathroom, I must admit that it is pretty darn funny that I just missed meeting Kevin Smith while my father, who only came along as a driver and chaperone and couldn’t care less about Mr. Smith’s films, and my girlfriend, who I dragged to the show so I would have someone to go with, got to meet him.

In this specific example, the recipient can draw conclusions about the donor’s social conformity to the middle-class norm of idolizing celebs, as he tells of his being a fan of Kevin Smith; and she can also learn about his attractiveness and heterosexual identity from the fact that he revealed that he had a girlfriend at the age. However, John’s photo at the age of about 2 reveals quite a different economic reality about his family: John is shown climbing a ladder in a children’s playground – the ladder and the slide linked to it are poorly maintained and the paint is peeling. One can also see that the playground is not well kept by the many stones and overflowing garbage cans and the lack of grass or clean sandboxes.

This text exemplifies the point that, while verbal narratives convey adventurousness and a global vision or signal a wealthy background, the images present babies raised in a homey and conservative atmosphere, as well as in a lower economic class, since they were photographed indoors or on poorly maintained playgrounds rather than on journeys or travels abroad. For example, in reply to the question ‘What is your favourite cuisine?’, most of the donors report they like exotic ethnic food. Paul says ‘Anything spicy, especially Thai’, Bill likes Italian and Asian dishes, and Gary prefers Mexican, Mediterranean, and Levantine food. The men tell of the countries they have visited and are planning to visit in reply to specific questions that appear on the standard questionnaire. The adventurous types want to visit Mexico, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Israel and Jordan. It seems that curiosity and openness to new experiences are a major motif in their narratives (Bokek-Cohen, 2014).

Self presentations repeatedly highlight the significance attached by donors to fitness and a healthy lifestyle; donors tell of the many competitive sport activities they tend to participate in on a regular basis. In most sperm banks, donors are requested to state which mechanical skills they have from a list. Out of the 180 sampled profiles, 156 donors note at least 3 out of the following: auto repair, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, model building, building computers; about one quarter of the donors chose the option ‘I can fix everything’, and none chose the answer ‘I can barely replace a light bulb.’ The omnipotent donor does not call to mind the cute, though helpless, baby he appears to be in the photo. Babies wear clothes in the blue, black, and grey traditional ‘boyish’ colours, reiterating traditional hegemonic masculinity as well as heteronormativity, which are downplayed in the verbal texts.

The confrontation between the verbal and visual texts has yielded some insights regarding the mutual relations between the two kinds of texts. Specifically, those cases where themes that appeared at the visual text were ‘absent’ in the verbal one illustrate the ‘independence’ of the visual text and the excess liberty that text producers may take in expressing nontraditional gender roles, ideologies, and lifestyles: while the visual narrative demonstrated heteronormative ‘classical’ bourgeois family life and traditional gender dichotomies where wearing certain clothing colors or male costumes (Spiderman or Superman) is culturally ‘dictated’ for boys, the verbal narratives present a more affected presentation of vocational dimensions as well as a neo-liberal healthy life style and fitness regime. In summary, two major themes emerge from the data analysis: (1) as a result of the angle, the contact, and the social distance, prospective sperm users are manipulated to relate to the babies in an intimate and involved manner; and (2) visual texts subvert, if not distinctly contrast, the central messages conveyed via verbal narration.

Discussion

What do sperm donor baby photos denote?

In exploring the denotations of the photos, the agency of the viewer and her conscious as well as unconscious beliefs, stigmata and cultural inscriptions should be taken into consideration. Acknowledging the double polysemics which stems from that of the ‘producer’, which I proposed above to define as a ‘chooser’, (the sperm donor in this case) orchestrated with that of the viewer (the sperm recipient), allows us to view sperm donors’ baby photos as the main arena of a Bakhtinian polyphonic discourse. My semiotic analysis shows how culturally valued wishes of the typical sperm recipient, as explored by Pennings (2000), Moore and Schmidt (1999) and Daniels and Heidt-Forsythe (2012), are echoed and become fulfilled in the donor’s baby photos. In a way, this polyphonic nature of the baby photos turns the sperm consumer into a sperm prosumer. The term prosumer is used to describe consumers as agents of their own destinies, compatible with the culmination of postmodern life in the individual’s quest for liberation; accordingly, this term presumes that consumers and companies can dialogue and therefore specify a priori certain details of the goods or services on offer (Cova and Cova, 2012). The sperm banks respond to recipients’ needs by adjusting the content of the extended profiles to meet them; donors themselves try to integrate elements into their narratives which they believe are highly valued by prospective users. Similarly, donors strategically choose the photos they believe would make them highly evaluated. This is the subtle mechanism by which sperm users constitute active prosumers of extended profiles in general, and baby photos in particular.

In contrast to social and dating websites where presenting a photo is regarded as an emblem of ‘seriousness’ or ‘sincerity’ (cf. Jones, 2005), donor baby photos are exhibited first and foremost for proving that the donor correctly described his eye and hair colour as well as his skin tone, although on average, babies are lighter than adults and their skin tone becomes a bit darker as they grow older (Etkoff, 2000). Yet another benefit is gained through the display of these photos, as they are assumed to ‘warm up’ the recipient and intensify her desire for a cute baby, like the donor was in infancy (Bokek-Cohen, 2014). Owing to the abstractness of the information included in the verbal narratives, the photos help the donor to humanize and personify his gametes, a process called ‘embodiment’. Embodiment theory holds that the processing of any mental content, including social and emotional content, involves internal mental representations which constitute embodiment of the knowledge abstract concepts (Barsalou et al., 2003, Niedenthal et al., 2005). To understand the meaning of any traits or stereotypes is to have the ability to simulate the experiences of them competently. Accordingly, embodiment is enacted through the presenting of baby photos, to help recipients visualize and materialize each donor’s identity. ‘The meanings presented in printed written text are generally harder to challenge’, says Iedema (2003: 42). Halliday (1994[1985]) attributes abstractness to written text; therefore, baby photos help overcome the mental impalpability characterizing sperm consumption.

What do sperm donor baby photos connote?

A widely accepted distinction among visual analysts is made between ‘found’ images, those which were not prepared for the purpose of the study, and ‘made’ images, objects that research subjects make with (and for) the researcher (Kohler Riessman, 2008: 141). Becker (1986: 241) notes that there are some interpretive decisions in every photograph: ‘The choice of the film, development of the paper … of moment and relation with subjects – all of these … shape the end product.’ Obviously donors’ baby photos were not made for the research nor for the sperm bank. But they also were not just ‘found’, because donors did not pick them randomly. The photos seem to have been carefully and thoughtfully selected by them as a strategy of impression management. According to Barthes (1977: 20), the choice of one specific photograph out of a collection of others, as one among other levels of its production, realizes the connotation of the photo. Referring to choices people make when using cameras, Collier (2001: 35) notes: ‘People are rarely simply the passive subjects … they, too, participate directly, not infrequently manipulating it for their own ends.’ Pictures were chosen to convey impressions that were perceived by donors as appropriate to accompany their verbal text. Therefore, a third sort of image is proposed in this article: ‘chosen/selected’ photos that existed already at the onset of the inquiry and were selected from a collection of images by the personal and subjective considerations of the person who presents them. Contextual factors may have a crucial role in opening and closing, as well as increasing and decreasing, and diversifying and unifying the quantity and quality of possible interpretations for each image (Collier, 2001). Hence the decision to distinguish and acknowledge the ‘chosen/selected’ category of images must acknowledge the contextual circumstances that led each person to be asked and to actively choose a specific photo; it may also consider the motivational factors affecting each person requested to provide his or others’ photo, if at all.

A dynamic perspective on multimodality is reflected in Iedema’s (2001, 2003) concept of resemiotization, the process through which meanings are transferred from one mode (or semiotic) to another; in the s[u]permarket context, resemiotization is said to occur if similar ideas, values, and informative cues of a specific donor can be found in both his verbal and visual text. Although sperm donors provide lengthy verbal narratives for self presentations, ‘some things can … be “said” either visually or verbally, others only visually, again others only verbally’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 2). Hence, baby photos constitute meaningful signs for semiotic exploration of their connotations. A major question in this exploration relates to the extent to which the meanings conveyed through the photos correspond to those that emerge from the verbal narratives of the donors. Since the analysis and interpretation of the verbal narratives are presented in detail elsewhere (Bokek-Cohen, 2015a, 2015b; Bokek-Cohen and Gonen, 2015), I focus here only on specific issues where the messages conveyed in the baby photos contradicted those that donors tried to express verbally. I found Barthes’ (1977) distinction between two kinds of image–text relations: relay and anchorage [elaboration] useful for the purpose of this comparison. Relay refers to cases in which the verbal text adds and elaborates the meanings that were conveyed by the image; anchorage is the case when the verbal text reiterates the very same motifs that appear in the visual medium, yet in a somewhat different way. Barthes (1977) further notes that the ordering of the presentation of the verbal and the visual may have implications for the role played by the image: the image acts as an illustration of the verbal message whenever it follows it; conversely, the image anchors the verbal text whenever it is presented before it. Iedema (2001, 2003) also relates to the ordering of the presentation of the verbal and the visual information, and argues that the ‘selves’ of the participants in a social interaction are resemiotized from textual descriptions into physical forms. This attitude has been aptly illustrated in Jones’s (2005) study of the exchange of photos in gay men’s chatrooms; according to his conclusion, ‘the eventual movement from text-based to visual communication is regarded as necessary not just to move the interaction forward, but also to enable users to verify previously given information‘ (p. 80). This perspective grants the visual text a superior ‘role’ of verifying the verbal narratives produced beforehand. While highly relevant for online dating dynamics as explored by Jones, this attitude presupposes some assumptions that are not necessarily valid in the context of donor baby photos. Since the order in which the viewer reads the verbal and the visual texts is unknown and also assumed to vary across recipients, subversive messages tacitly transmitted in baby photos may contradict some of the stated messages in the verbal narratives.

Overcoming dualistic worldviews

Semiotic meanings tend to draw upon dualistic notions of differences, as in the dichotomies self/other, male/female, natural/artificial, nature/culture, etc., as Borgerson and Schroeder (2004: 576–577) put it: ‘As a result of dichotomous thinking … being has traditionally been divided into two parts … the most basic dualism, self- not self, paves the way for an understanding of the self that is set against the non-self (Kant, 1973[1790]).’ In the context of s[u]permarket, several inherent dichotomies exist in the opposition between nature–nurture, concrete–imagined, and also donated gametes–own gametes. The tension between the last pair may be resolved by presenting the baby photos as the phenotypic portrayal of the future offspring; duplicates of their biogenetic father’s genotype, as if the mother’s genotype is nonexistent. The denial of the mother’s share in the child’s genetic composite is made possible in part due to a biased or incorrect understanding of genetic rules (Bokek-Cohen, 2014, 2015a; Godkin, 1995; Scheib, 1994). Sometimes the sperm banks themselves manipulate these perceptions. For example, Bokek-Cohen (2014) has shown that recipients are led by the banks to expect their baby to be a duplicate of the donor, while denying the mother’s contribution to the genotype of the child. A similar, yet different, marketing strategy has been identified by Kroløkke (2009) in her study of the marketing strategies employed by a Danish sperm bank that operates in the US. This bank highlights the Vikings’ superiority over ‘regular’ sperm of American men. Its website exhibits images of blond blue-eyed babies in order to instill in the recipient the illusion of the feasibility to duplicate for herself a Danish baby by purchasing Danish semen. Kroløkke concludes that clients are led to expect their baby to be a duplicate of the donor, denying their own part in the genetic composite of the offspring. In contrast to Kroløkke’s conclusion, which was not based on visual analysis of baby photos but rather of some babies who appeared on the bank’s homepage, I propose that baby photos that are included in each extended profile facilitate the establishment of a hyperpersonal communication (Walther et al., 1996) although one-sided, between the donor and recipient. This, by allowing the recipient a quasi-intimate and personal familiarization with him and with his extended family members, as well as a simulated genetic merger with the donor: since the future baby is assumed to be both an extended self of the donor and also of the recipient, the baby photos help ‘break the ice’ between the donor and the recipient by demanding the recipient’s emotional investment which may eventually lead to establishing a quasi-familial relationship with him.

Conclusion

The themes that emerged from the visual analysis have been both reiterated and contrasted by the verbal content analysis. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) method of visual analysis has been useful in this research project for obtaining a twofold goal: the description and interpretation of hidden messages in the donor-selected baby photos, as well as the detection of differences between the messages conveyed in the verbal and the visual texts included in each donor’s extended profile. Divergence and similarity between these two kinds of texts cast new light on the concept of multimodality. Furthermore, Iedema (2003: 41) defines resemiotization as the inquiry of ‘how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next’. In the shift from the verbal text to the visual and vice versa, rather than being resemiotized, several values and ideologies were found to have been altered. Specifically, the egalitarian gender ideology, traditional heteronormative family conceptions and bourgeois middle-class standard of living depicted in the photos were transformed into neo-liberal attitudes as narrativized in the verbal presentations of most sampled donors. Thus, differences between verbal and visual texts of the same donors demonstrate desemiotization rather than resemiotization. I propose the use of the term desemiotization for the case when meanings conveyed via visual text are altered and even reversed when the viewer decodes the verbal text accompanying the image, and vice versa. We should, however, always bear in mind the institutional context in which the images are exhibited (Lister and Wells, 2001). As sperm banks are labelled by some scholars as ‘gatekeepers’ (Johnson, 2013), referring to their implicit efforts at thought control of prospective and actual recipients (Bokek-Cohen, 2015a), we nevertheless underscore their role in providing public platforms for agonistic discourse of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity. Hence, traditional masculinity and heteronormativity are desemiotized in the shift from the visual to the verbal texts included in the extended profiles, and vice versa.

My work calls for the integration of the concept of DVC as one potential contextual factor that is expected to supplement and contribute to a comprehensive visual analysis. The major motives underlying the DVC are the benefits gained by the consumer in viewing, purchasing and consuming products that fulfill emotional or psychological needs, in spite of their lack of physical existence; this is aptly illustrated by the demand for sperm donors’ baby photos which are not expected to fulfill any physical or material need in the real world. DVC is informed by the recognition of the role of imagination in shaping the spirit of the postmodern era. The imagination as a growing motif of consumerist practices and lifestyle finds new ways of actualization in digital virtual spaces. Shields (2000) contends that the greatest power of the virtual spaces has been in providing new modes of being and practices of becoming that people can experiment with. Appadurai’s (1996) view of the modern age is that the human imagination has become a major characteristic of it. My work illustrates and strengthens Appadurai’s arguments regarding the pivotal role of the human imagination as something that

has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labor and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility … The imagination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key component of the new global order. (p. 31)

Donors’ baby photos serve as raw material for sperm recipients imagining their future babies, and also their donors’ current outward appearance; most importantly, these photos facilitate the imagined relationship with him. Donors’ selected photos enable us to speculate about their intentions, as well as about the experiential product they wish to ‘sell’. The systematic and recurring mode of posing the babies to face the camera implies that the baby photo selection is strategic and manipulative, with the aim of triggering the emotional involvement of the recipient with the represented baby. Hence my analysis of sperm donors’ baby photos corroborates with Jones’s (2005) claim that CMC is not necessarily ‘disembodied’ text-based computer-mediated communication, and illustrates how the sperm donor’s physical body as captured in infancy and depicted in selected baby photos, both connotes and denotes systematically and in an orchestrated spectacle to achieve the hyperpersonal communication with prospective recipients.

Alongside the study’s contribution to the field of visual analysis, some limitations bear mentioning. A major concern may arise regarding the question of how, if at all, the photos represent sperm donors. Self selection may have been at work in the analysis of donors’ baby photographs, the less attractive donors presumably less willing to give their photos. Of those who chose to give their photo, it is likely that some of them did not have suitable pictures from their childhood, particularly those who were raised 30–40 years ago in families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with restricted resources available for photography. Therefore, there may be an under-representation of pictures of lower-class donors. Although colours provide a meaningful added value to the visual analysis (Van Leeuwen and Kress, 2002), the relatively small number of colour photos available to all donors 30 or 40 years ago did not allow for a more elaborate analysis of reading the ‘grammar of colours’. Relating to the desemiotization that has emerged as a result of the differences between the visual and the verbal texts, we should bear in mind that a shift in cultural perceptions has occurred over the 30 years that passed from the time most pictures were taken to the time the donor narrated his self presentation. Lastly, we should also consider the possibility that these photos were not selected by the donors only; their parents also selected which photos to take, print, keep and perhaps give to their sons when they grew older; there may have also been mediation by the banks, e.g. if a donor brought a number of photos and asked which ones they should use.

Future visual semiotics analyses of CMC between sperm donors and recipients are needed to investigate the encoded meanings in childhood and adult photos that are available in some sperm banks. The role of the bank staff in directing and advising the donors as to which baby photos to present is of particular significance, thanks to their unique mediating position as neither producers nor viewers of these photos. A reflexive study of the way sperm recipients and their donor-conceived children experience the baby photos as a spectacle and how they perceive and interpret the meanings hidden in the photos is expected to contribute to the extant literature of visual semiotics. Studying the relative importance of the baby photos in the recipient’s decision process, in comparison to other features of the donor, such as his narrative, may also contribute to our understanding of ‘reading images’ in the realm of CMC and fertility. My hope is that the present article may contribute to raising awareness of desemiotization between the verbal and the visual text of each donor. This awareness is expected to assist sperm users to better evaluate donors’ background and the degree to which he meets her preferences, as well as the degree to which donors describe themselves accurately and honestly. People’s images in general, and baby photos in particular, disclose much of their identity and background. Hence, sperm donors may find the present project useful for enhancing their ability to convey their messages by paying attention to the abundance and richness of data that can be transmitted via their selected baby photos. Since resemiotization is related to a person’s consistency in his self presentation, whereas desemiotization casts doubt on his or her credibility, examining the correspondence between the two types of texts may be useful for facilitating CMC between parties on online social networks and dating services as well.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Biographical Note

YA’ARIT BOKEK-COHEN is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Bar-Ilan University, and Achva Academic College, Israel. She received her PhD in Sociology at Tel-Aviv University in 2002. D. Bokek-Cohen specializes in the areas of Sociology of the family and also organizational sociology; her research focuses on families and reproductive technologies, mate preferences, family dynamics, spousal influence strategies, marital power balance, and matchmaking. Her current research project focuses on marital partners who are proscribed from marrying each other. She recently published several articles about the American sperm banking industry in New Genetics & Society, Women’s Studies International Forum, Journal of Family Studies, Health Sociology Review, Journal of Gender Studies, Social Theory & Health, and Consumption, Markets & Culture.

Address: Bar-Ilan University, Max VeAnna Web Avenue, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel. [email: ybokek@gmail.com]

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