Kindred Bonds: FGM and its relationship to DIA

There are communities that still practice FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). It can be called female circumcision or female genital surgery. No matter the name, it is controversial. No matter the controversy, it's still the excision of a decidedly female organ from the female body. It is the removal of an organ whose sole purpose is to derive pleasure. No other human organ's function is solely for pleasure. The clitoris contains 8000 (that's EIGHT THOUSAND) nerves while the head of the penis contains merely half. Stop for a moment and think about what that means. Women's bodies are designed not for the giving of pleasure to men, but to the receiving of pleasure. Women's sexuality is indeed sacred. And yet the practice of FGM continues to this day depriving young women and girls of the experience of their own sacred femininity. And as much as this seemingly barbaric act is shunned by the whole of Western Society, there are women in these very communities who defend its practice.

Now we can rationalize the practice all we want. Most of the women who defend it insist that a girl must be "clean" she must be marriageable. If a woman is not desirable to a man by undergoing this procedure she can run the risk of exile from her community and it can very well cost her her life. Mothers bring their daughters to elder women to be cut, to be mutilated because they are doing what they feel is in the best interest of their daughters - for not only their success within their social group, but for their very survival. And while this practice may ensure their membership, and hence their survival, in their social group: the bottom line is that someone else is benefiting from their loss. The men who will marry them have absolute sexual dominance over these women. And depending on how extreme the practice is, sex becomes a painful ordeal that they must suffer.

But further, many of the women who defend this practice do so because they feel that going through this rite to adulthood is a bonding experience for each of the girls involved. They endure tremendous pain and come through the shared experience with a new sisterhood around them. Each girl is now a highly ranked member of her social group. She is, well, a woman. And it is the pain itself that they endure and conquer that is the thread that binds these women together in sisterhood.

I have my own sisterhood. We are natural mothers who have endured the most wicked of pain. And we are eternally bonded in the torment. We have each have had excised from our bodies something even more symbolic, more evident, of our womanhood. We live daily with the unimaginable pain of having lost our precious children to Domestic Infant Adoption (DIA.) And some of us for the very same reason that these other women on another continent endure the pain of FGM. We have to be marriageable. We have to be proper members of our society. We have to sacrifice in order to just survive. And we can rationalize this practice - the practice of excising and infant from his mother's body - any way we want but the bottom line is still the same: someone else is benefiting from our pain. Someone else has supreme dominance over the most sacred act of womanhood.

It matters not what the justifications are. She's too young. She needs to go to college. She doesn't have any good job prospects. She isn't emotionally stable. She doesn't have enough money. All of these are messages to a woman that she is not good enough. She, who she is at a fundamental level, is not worthy of motherhood.

The real difference in this analogy is that FGM is practiced in order to rid a woman of an unwanted biological organism to be discarded as trash. DIA is practiced in order to rid a woman of the most precious biological organism to be sold to desperate couples for cash. And while I can let go of my Western bias and work to understand why women would subject other women to FGM I am unable to accept the Western bias that allows women to subject other women to DIA.

With the uproar over FGM, I cannot for the life of me understand why there isn't the very same outcry over DIA.

More on this later...

What's in a name?

The topic of "positive adoption language" (PAL) and "respectful adoption language" (RAL) has been on my mind a lot. Mostly because of on-line groups where natural mothers are referred to as "BM's" - a rather unfortunate coincidence. But doesn't society generally regard women who give away their children as pieces of shit? So, I think I've decided I no longer care.

One of the first things I encountered when we first embarked on reunion was the controversy of what to call everyone - mostly, what to call me. A few choice terms are out there for me: abandoner, birther, whore, crackhead. I actually embrace those. This is not a problem for me because I know the last two aren't true; and I know the first two really are.

The one term I having the most difficulty with is birth mother. I don't even know what that is supposed to mean in the modern lexicon. I do know it's history. It's not kind. The short version is that it was formed in order to separate me and my relationship with my son from my son. That's the bottom line. I reject this term.

Carl Linnaeus is the "Father of Taxonomy." I see Linnaeus as the modern "Adam." Basically, he's this dude that decided to label... well... everything. Naming things is like claiming things. If you have the power to name, you have ownership, a vested claim in that which you've named. Hence his title of "father."

And even into the current day, there are problems within the scientific community with the structure and names chosen by Linnaeus. No doubt he achieved a monumental undertaking... but since nature and science don't rely on humanity's sense of order, there have been some point of debate. You know, the whole species and subspecies thing. But that's not the point, I guess. I think my point is: assigning a name is a declaration of power.

That's why I reject the name "birth mother." I'm not going to carry a name that was designed for my by a person who had a vest financial stake in the popularization and success of modern adoption practices. I am simply, mother. In no other human relationship is the woman who created, carried, and birth a person called anything BUT a mother. There are god mothers, foster mothers, step mothers, like-a-mothers, but none of those eclipses the person's mother. Except this one instance.

Steps have been taken to obliterate me from my son's life. I was removed from his birth certificate. His "birth" certificate now states that an infertile woman gave birth to him. How bizarre is that? I have no problem with people calling her his adoptive mother. But I am, now and for all of eternity, his mother. No other man and woman could have ever made him, except for me and his father. His fetal cells are still in my body. My blood runs through his veins. My traits and parts of my personality are apparent in him. I recognize many of my weakness and my strengths in him. Even his thought patterns are similar to mine - you know, how he thinks about things.

If you need to call me by some made-up word in order to feel better, then by all means, feel better. But you have no effect on me or my son. I am his mother. He is my son. My mistakes can't ever change that.

BTW - If I am his "birth mother" why isn't my name on his birth certificate? Hmmm? Sounds like a lot of semantic juggling to me.

Beginning with a Single Step

Since completing university, the idea of writing has been anything but compelling or desirable in any conceivable way. Yet, here I am. Writing.

There's so much inside me that it feels, lately, if I don't find a way to let it out it will consume me and turn me into itself a la "The Blob." I feel as if I am being smothered and consumed so that the monster can use me to increase its power.

I've been trying to work on positive language. How do I have positive language when there's so much hurting and pain inside me? How am I supposed to process everything? So that's why I'm here. To process. But I don't live in a vacuum. And I don't think I can figure it all out in one, either. So, I invite the world to peer into these thoughts and this experience. Not everything I write is going to be positive. Not everything is going to be popular. Not everything is going to be polite. But, it is my full intention that everything be honest.

And so, and so, and so...it begins.