Unreproductive citizenship: Social sterilisation of queer and trans people in Poland

Abstract

This paper offers the term unreproductive citizenship to characterise the social positionality of LGBTQ people in Poland. Unreproductive citizenship is brought about by means of social sterilisation: while queer and trans people are ‘tolerated,’ they are not treated as reproductive subjects with a potential to participate in social reproduction. Drawing on Polish and international literature on queer families, reproductive politics, and forced sterilisation, as well as research including interviews, political speeches and auto-ethnography, I argue that the discursive and political framing of LGBTQ people as unreproductive subjects is eugenic. Leading political figures representing Poland's robust political right-wing, as well as the majority of Poles, have expressed fears that LGBTQ reproduction could somehow ‘contaminate’ future generations and therefore poses a threat to the nation's moral order. The social sterilisation of queer Polish people as ‘unreproductive citizens’ illustrates how the logics of reproductive righteousness operate in contemporary Poland.