Just finished watching David Blankenhorn’s 2007 debate with Evan Wolfson on gay marriage. I saw a huge attendance of gays and gay allies in the audience, but not one child of donor conception approached the podium to vocalize their woes. But shouldn’t there be at least a few? According to the Sperm Bank of California, 2200 children have been born through their facility alone, two-thirds of which are by lesbian couples. Gay couples are having children. Single women are having children. It’s just that we, the children, haven’t been empowered to vocalize our issues yet. The needs and concerns of our mothers and their partners have trumped and stifled our own. But just wait, the monsoon is coming. All you adults get so mad and upset demanding you have the right to marriage and biological children because you want what everyone else has. Well- us kids want what everyone else has too (a mother and a father). And we’re pissed we’ve been denied them.
I’m from San Francisco- the Mecca of gay rights. You can’t help but become well informed on gay rights and the struggle gay Americans have endured in their quest for safety and self-worth. So let me just start off by saying, as the author of this post, I care and have cared deeply for tens if not hundreds of members of the gay community. I’ve been to the AIDS research fundraisers. I’ve gone to the drag shows. I’ve worn the ribbons and the bracelets. I’ve seen strong, stable relationships between gay men and lesbian women and watched how they thrive and care for each other. I don’t even consider attraction to be a gender strict phenomenon. And whoa! What about the people in the world who don’t even fit into strict categories of “male” and “female”? What about our hermaphrodite citizens and pre or post-op transsexual citizens? Where do they fit? There is a spectrum and I completely understand how blurry the line of sexual orientation can be. To me, there is no difference in worth of heterosexual and homosexual love.
In fact, I’d probably be very inclined myself to marry a woman. We’re pretty. Our labor output is more consistent. We’re more likely to re-invest our money into the family. I would never fear physical violence from a female partner. We could share clothes. We would probably have similar communication styles. Most of the women I meet are into the same music as I am (my boyfriend won’t let me play my new favorite band on the speakers when he’s home, an all female teenage folk-singing duo from Sweden- he prefers the Sex Pistols). I think life would be much easier with a woman. And yes, I’ve had crushes on women that have swallowed me whole. I used to date them, until one woman I was dating demanded to know why I didn’t want to get more serious. “I just don’t see the point in getting too serious with a woman because I want to marry someone I can have kids with,” is what I told her (anticipation of motherhood is a defining point in my personality). She got really sad for a second (lesbians hate bi women), then it occurred to her that she knew something I maybe didn’t, “You know Alana… you don’t have to have a man in your life to have children.” Oh God, I thought, there’s no way I can continue this.
As a matter of fact, you do need a man to have a child- and a woman too! In the wild wild west that is the American (in)fertility industry, I suppose you can get away with legally bringing a child into the world while also denying that child the right to his or her biological lineage, but you’re playing with fire. Kids (like me!) eventually grow brains and realize that they’ve been suckered out of a major, major requisite for happiness.
Gay rights used to be a taboo in America. But while I was living in San Francisco I could hardly get to work some days because the crowd at any number of the gay pride parades or Pride sponsored events completely encumbered road access. Gayness is not a taboo anymore. If it were, there’s no way I’d be broadcasting within this forum that I’ve dated women. But you know what I am afraid to tell people? I’m afraid to tell them that my dad was a sperm donor. To me, that is creepy. To me, that sounds disgusting. To me, there is something wrong with that. It embarrasses me. So for the most part, I don’t tell anyone. I tell them my dad is dead. And when they ask me if I knew anything about him like, how did he die? or how did he meet your mom? I say: “I don’t want to talk about it.” And they shut up. Because death is a concept people understand as tragic. But “Assisted Reproductive Technology” or what I like to call “Deliberate Spiritual Robbery” doesn’t receive the same kind of sympathy.
Fertility technologies represent a new taboo. And kids like me don’t have a parade, nor a long line of celebrities eager to advocate for us. We don’t have a Lady Gaga on our side. San Francisco lists 1,553 “gay friendly” establishments. There are at least 18 in Lawrence, Kansas. You’re much less vulnerable than you think. It’s not cool to be a donor kid- which is one of the reasons we don’t speak up and announce to the world who we are. Our fight is much lonelier and much less colorful.
To all of my gay, bisexual, and transgendered friends. I really do love you. The world loves you. We all want you to thrive and be successful and find love and feel respected and tell your story. As a fellow human, its in my interest too that you enjoy a long, healthy life full of love and meaningful positive connections. That said, I can not endorse gay marriage.
The circumstances of biology inhibit same-sex couples from reproducing. Civil Union is the term we use to describe an institution interested in protecting partners. Marriage is the term we use to describe the institution interested in protecting children; and by endorsing gay marriage, we would be endorsing artificial and commercial means of child procurement- which would not be protecting the child, the entire point of the institution.
Categories: Childbearing, Childhood, Dating, Mating, Hooking Up, General, Marriage, My Daddy's Name is Donor, Reproductive Technologies
Alana, this is very powerful. I’m still working out what I think of the use of fetrility technologies and whether or how their use should be regulated. Perspectives like your are helpful and should be considered with other perspectives in the debate. In the meantime, do your own concerns apply with equal vigor to opposite-sex couples who use ART?
By the way, please, please take Lady Gaga off our hands.
Yes! Straight couples. Single women. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into when you use ART! Most especially anonymously.
If we made it illegal to profit from gamete donation (the same way its illegal to profit from organ donation) you would watch the supply drop dramatically.
People don’t just give away their unborn children out of the goodness of their heart; unless of course they have an emotional connection or relationship with the person(s) they are donating to.
and if they have an emotional connection or relationship with the person(s) they are donating to, then by all means, love, live, and let be.
Speaking for myself, I’m completely opposed to anyone deliberately creating a child that they know can’t be raised by both its parents as a couple. This applies to infertile heterosexuals, homosexuals and single women alike.
I’d be satisfied with a world like the one Tom just described too.
1). ART children do not get *beaten to death.*
2) San Francisco is the ‘mecca for gay people?’ No. It’s the *sanctuary* for gay people who have left other places where they were in great danger. It’s one of the very few places in this country where someone can be gay and feel any sense of normality.
3) You have a very romantic notion of what most ‘real’ dads are like. Having one is not a guarantee of happiness.
4) Lesbians, like anyone else, hate falling in love with someone who tells them that they are not worth loving because of some nebulous future plan.
5) You are young and immature and self-involved. All of these things are rectifiable.
1. I appreciate you pointing out Matthew Shepard. His death was tragic and nothing like that should ever happen again. That has little to do with the marriage debate and while you’re right, ART children do not get “beaten to death”, the deliberate deprivation of a biological parent is a very similar emotion to having that parent die- so there’s your death comparison.
Also I’d like to note, fortunately for the well-being of the planet, a very very small number of gays are murdered by the hands of their antagonists. However, EVERY SINGLE child deliberately conceived with the use of ART does experience the loss of their parent- comparable to death of a loved one.
2. I travel a lot. San Francisco is nowhere near the only place for gay people to feel safe. I spent my summer in Iceland, a country of 300,000 people. The city of Reykjavik has only 120,000 people. Do you know how many people showed up to their Gay Pride Festival? Seventy Thousand. 70,000! Nearly a full quarter of the ENTIRE COUNTRY OF ICELAND schlepped their hlutur og fjölskyldu all the way to Reykjavik to show up in support of gay rights. I don’t doubt that in some places gays are threatened with a lot of violence. Check out this stat! One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Violence happens in a lot of places for a lot of reasons. That argument has little to do with what is best for securing strong foundations for children to thrive.
3. As it turns out, I’ve gotten to know a lot of ‘real’ dads and how they interact with their children. I’ve also read countless essays and social science reports on step-dads and their relationships with their children, donor-kid confessions, biographies and essays from children born to single-parent households. No, having a biological dad around doesn’t ensure happiness. But a biological parent is significantly more likely to invest time and resources into that child. And much LESS likely to do things like: beat them, verbally abuse them, molest them (one of my favorites), sexually harass them (another great thing to come home to), neglect them, deny them assets like financing for college (man, I love my student loan debt!) or clothing, FOOD even.
YOU have a very blind notion of what a NON-BIOLOGICAL parent is like.
4. Yes, thank you- I realize lesbians don’t like dating women who aren’t willing to invest long-term in them, that’s why I date men now. I’m not trying to hurt ANYONE anymore. But I appreciate you using my experimentation as an attempt at character assassination
5. Yes I am young maybe. But I’m old enough to vote and start a family. Should my youth be the reason to discard my opinion? Thank you for taking an ageist position by asserting that young people’s well-being does not matter as much as an adult’s. You’re exacerbating our stance that the children affected in these situations really are voiceless.
As far as my being immature and self-involved… That’s not an argument and you’re BAITING me. I hear that you’re angry because I am essentially one of your opponents in our mutual struggle for what we both perceive as human rights, but there is not enough personal information in my blog post to bludgeon me with name-calling.
We all want safety and respect for our gay brothers and sisters.
What we’re advocating for here is safety and respect for a group of people that CAN NOT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. Don’t you get that?
“You are young and immature and self-involved.” you’re wrong. She is bravely telling her story. Critique her ideas and not her person.
“Well- us kids [of donor conception] want what everyone else has too (a mother and a father). And we’re pissed we’ve been denied them.”
Considering the alternative, which is non-existence, what’s your beef?
Are you going to spend your entire life being pissed at/about someone without whom you don’t exist?
Makes about as much sense as blogging about being “voiceless.”
Ray: illogical. By extension you imply that no one born of biological parents (ie, every one of us on the planet) can raise a peep about what those parents did or didn’t do for us, because after all without them we wouldn’t exist. (Ray, ever had a beef with one of your parents? Whoops, can’t do that! Without them you wouldn’t be here!)
What if I were born because my mother was raped?
Would I then endorse rape because it gave me life? Think of all the implications a conception like that can incur on a family…
Think about how that child would then relate to her mother, or any other man in her life…
Life isn’t necessarily a gift. Many people prefer to describe it as a “predicament”.
And no, I won’t spend the rest of my life being angry at my mom and biological father nor social father.
But yes, I absolutely will spend it being an advocate and linchpin for people LIKE me.
Congratulations Ray, you’ve discovered the oldest trick in the book for attacking donor-conceived people!
This one’s always used to try to shut us up and stop us talking about the suffering that we go through due to decisions that were taken before our birth.
I’ll second Tom and Alana: I think all intentional conceptions are wrong, conception should be a gift, welcomed if it happens through marital relations, and not demanded or intended. Even natural married sex shouldn’t be for the purpose of procreating. It should be open to procreation, but the purpose of sex should be to unite the couple.
I think IVF is wrong in all instances, but due to medical and marital privacy, probably cannot be prohibited. But it should only be allowed for homologous conceptions, joining the egg and sperm of a married couple. Heterologous IVF, using gametes from outside third parties, should be prohibited. It is a form of adultery, and harms people and society as surely as rape and adultery do. There is no right to it, I think even Dale would agree that even Eisenstadt doesn’t declare a right for single people to actually go ahead and beget children without marrying first.
Ummm…how do you feel about a straight couple that go to ART when the man is found to be infertile? I mean, wouldn’t that child be scarred, because his/her “real” father was a sperm donor? (Oooh, ick!) Does that fall into Tom and Alana’s world where such a couple should not raise a child? Or was that snark?
By the way, I think you’re (also) wrong about gamete donation. At great personal inconvenience, people give kidneys, they give bone marrow, but they wouldn’t give sperm if they weren’t paid for it? What a cynical view of humanity…
PDQ: I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, but if you read back you’ll find out that both Alana and I were conceived to heterosexual couples the male of which was infertile. Yes, both of us are scarred by this, and both of us think this was unacceptable.
“Ick”? Much more than “ick”. This is a despicable practice.
“It is a form of adultery, and harms people and society as surely as rape and adultery do.”
Ummm…riiight. ‘Cause two people committed to each other that want to raise a child despite the fact one got mumps as a boy and is infertile…well, that’s just like rape.
(rolls eyes)
Come on PDQ, please be charitable in your interpretation when someone is relating to you a hugely traumatic experience from their life.
Donor conception is not like rape in the sense that it’s a violent crime.
It *is* like rape in the sense that the resulting child is placed in a highly compromised position vis-a-vis his/her biological parents.
Please think of this from the point of view of the human being that’s being created.
“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, but if you read back you’ll find out that both Alana and I were conceived to heterosexual couples the male of which was infertile. Yes, both of us are scarred by this, and both of us think this was unacceptable.”
Wait- seriously? You had a mother, and a father that raised you, and you find this “scarring”?
How do you feel about adoption? Wouldn’t being raised by parents that you didn’t happen to share genes with be “scarring”? Shouldn’t we prohibit that?
It was (and is) scarring to be intentionally separated from my biological father due to a decision taken before my birth.
You’ll find a lot of adopted people describe similar feelings, but there’s a difference: in the case of adoption nobody *deliberately* created a human with the full intention of separating him/her from the biological father.
“…please be charitable in your interpretation when someone is relating to you a hugely traumatic experience from their life.”
Yes.
I’m sorry if you find me “uncharitable”. I suspect the next time you express to a rape victim that your situation is equivalent to hers she might also find your views “uncharitable”.
I do feel sorry that you find your origins scarring. However, I cannot help but express that in the universe of parent-child situations outside of the loving-fertile-Mom-and-Dad-concieve-and-raise-a-child, your situation seems (to this observer) to be one of the least pitiable ones.
PDQ, you’ve completely misunderstood the argument. I’d be happy to debate this with you if you weren’t so unsympathetic.
The fact that being donor-conceived is so emotionally traumatising means that very few donor-conceived people can bear discussing this with others, and the less patient you are the less likely they’ll be willing to engage.
I’m certainly no longer willing to engage with you.
Alana, a friend of mine pointed out that there is at least one support group for children of donor insemination.
http://www.dcsg.org.au/
That said, a boyfriend who won’t “let” you do anything isn’t promising. It’s not clear why the speakers are his, and you listen to his music but he can’t be in the house while you listen to yours.
P.S. The same friend recommends this U.S. organization: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCVAI/
Jonquil, I’ll just say after 14 years of marriage there are a lot of things my husband and I don’t “let” each other do.
pdq, where does not having children rate on the scale of pitiablity? Billions of people do not have children, are you saying they are all pitiable failures? Why should it suddenly be so traumatic for them that we condone adultery so that they can have children? I don’t have children and probably never will, should I feel ashamed of myself?
And it’s not as if adoption is universally hailed as pure goodness by everybody. I oppose adoption, I think kids that have lost their parents would be better served by guardianship or foster homes, and adoption is legal lying and deeply offensive. The idea that people desire a rugrat or two to feed and watch grow up and mow their lawn and entertain and take care of them is not only equivalent to rape, it is equivalent to slavery. And considering that most adoptive parents don’t want to give up their children, it’s kidnapping, too. Kidnapping, lying, rape, adultery, and slavery are not things that should be condoned by law.
Thanks for being concerned about my boyfriend and I.
We are completely in love and things are working out great even though he hasn’t yet embraced the genius of First Aid Kit.
(http://www.myspace.com/thisisfirstaidkit)
And thanks, I’m in the support groups. They’re a nice afterthought, but in the whole, not exactly what I’ve been needing for the last 23 years.
I should also add, before my parents used commercial insemination, they adopted my older sister. Then when I was still very young, my mom remarried to a man who was fertile and they conceived my little brother naturally.
So I was witness to the emotional stress of what its like being an adopted child with no biological ties, a commercially conceived child with half-biological ties, AND a traditionally conceived child with FULL biological ties. And lemme tell you… the difference is huge.
Adoption is not an easy predicament. Especially when its reluctant and what the parents really wanted was a biological kid.
In my sister’s case her knowledge of her being a second choice was alarmingly hurtful to her well-being.
[...] my previous blog post, Taboos and the New Voiceless Americans, one commenter added in condemnation to my thoughts: 1). ART children do not get *beaten to [...]
Very powerful post Anna….and what did you learn from your parents or rephrased: What did you learn “not” to do from your parents? In some cases, there is more value in the latter. I am sure you and the father of your children are good parents!