The reproductive matrix: regulating transmasculine pregnancy and parenthood

Abstract

This article develops the concept of the reproductive matrix as a material-discursive regime that regulates who can reproduce, through which bodies, and under what conditions of parental recognition. Extending Butler’s account of the heterosexual matrix, and drawing on Barad’s material-discursive framework and Connell’s relational theory of gender, it identifies reproduction as a distinct axis of institutional regulation. Based on reflexive thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with seven trans men who gestated after gender transition in Brazil, the article examines how biomedical, administrative and legal infrastructures actively produce the (un)intelligibility of transmasculine reproduction. Empirically, the analysis identifies three interconnected mechanisms: medical regulation of reproductive legitimacy, techno-bureaucratic enforcement of reproductive classification, and legal and social legitimation of parental status. These arrangements enforce a normative alignment between sex, gender and reproduction: patients must be registered as female to access obstetric care, medical records fragment when gender markers are contested, pregnant bodies are misgendered in everyday clinical encounters, and two-father families are denied recognition. At the same time, transmasculine pregnancies exceed and destabilize these expectations, exposing the limits of the regime and prompting institutional reconfigurations.