Insuring masculinity: negotiating reproductive vulnerability and control through sperm storage

Cryopreservation of sperm dates to the 1950s. Today, private sperm banks and fertility clinics cryopreserve sperm for private customers for all kinds of reasons. Little is known, however, of why individual men cryopreserve their sperm. The invisibility of the existing practices of sperm storage is mirrored in the ethnographic literature. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 men, this article analyzes how talking about sperm storage invokes imaginaries of masculinity shaped by reproductive vulnerability and control. Drawing on critical men and masculinity studies and feminist science and technology studies, we show that well-known imaginaries of masculinity and sexuality are reproduced, yet they are also reconfigured and displaced in surprising ways. When men talk about their sperm storage, they draw on imaginaries of masculinity that exceed future reproduction and control. To these men, sperm storage becomes a techno-scientific insurance that helps them manage their reproductive vulnerabilities.