Dear Aunt Patti

 Hi Patti,

Aunt Patti.

I saw your facebook post about abortion and personal responsibility, and it really upset me.  I've been deliberating calling you out online about it, but I want to connect with you personally instead.

Your father made a choice to abandon a pregnancy.  He did not assume responsibilities for his actions.  I urge you to read Men cause 100% of unwanted pregnancies: https://humanparts.medium.com/men-cause-100-of-unwanted-pregnancies-eb0e8288a7e5 

A man choosing to walk away from the woman he impregnated is like abortion.  He had the opportunity to make a pregnancy go away, and he took it.  He received no shaming about it, then nor now.  He in fact probably has been held up as a pillar of what fatherly responsibility looks like.  From everything you've told me, he's been a respected member of your church, community, etc.  Much of that likely would not have happened had he accepted his personal responsibility in impregnating Dorothy Pifer in 1945.  Some women in her circumstance (and there were many women impregnated by GIs at the end of WWII) committed suicide.  Some sought illegal abortions which were dangerous and also sometimes deadly to the women.  They also gave up their babies to adoption and orphanages, to live with other families or in institutions rather than with their mothers and other blood relatives. Families fractured because of the chant of personal responsibility and the denial of the responsibilities of men.  

  

And

I'd like to continue to think of your father as a good person. This requires me to recognize that there were complex forces at work on him which caused him to make that choice.  I am assuming that those forces/fears are related to rejection from family and church and fear of losing economic, educational and social standing and future opportunities to afford familial responsibilities, to be seen as an adult man.  I assume it really was as grim a choice as I imagine it---that he felt like he was between a rock and a hard place (marry this non-LDS woman he hardly knows or walk away from being a father (from what I can tell, he's quite proud of being a father to you and your siblings)) and the best option he saw was to pretend the pregnancy never happened and go home to family support.

Had he followed through on his initial responsibility for that pregnancy, you and your siblings would not have been born.  I am glad that he made that difficult choice and that you and your siblings and all your kids and grandkids were able to exist.  Aren't you?

So I feel the need to point out to you that it is problematic to celebrate personal responsibility without acknowledging that really hard circumstances put people in impossible positions which lead to people choosing what appears to be cowardly or evil or whatever simplified way people think about how a person could choose to abandon a child they conceived.  It's really cruel and intentionally oversimplified. And it lets men off scot free while shaming women, who are the ones demonized about abortion and failing at personal responsibility.  

The mantra of personal responsibility that many are chanting these days (we don't need government telling us to wear masks!) is at odds with the ideas of collective responsibility.  Collective responsibility involves using tax dollars to solve big problems, whether it's confronting a pandemic or creating economic conditions where a single woman (ie who's impregnator isn't willing or able to support a family) could raise a child.  And it's much easier to chant about everyone taking personal responsibility rather than making resources available to actually solve complex problems.  It also makes it so men can TALK about personal responsibility related to reproduction without actually having to be personally responsible, or even collectively responsible, via paying taxes for services which help women and children they don't acknowledge being related to.

A feminist pro-life take is that we should work to eliminate the need for abortion, by making sure that every baby conceived (and their caregivers) gets access to healthcare, education, clean water, a liveable planet--the so-called socialist agenda.  Shaming women for their failures at personal responsibility allows people like your father to walk away from their failures at personal responsibilities without any consequence.  And for their daughter (who I assume many people admire and look up to) to publicly celebrate personal responsibility at the expense of collective responsibility, at the expense of people who are poorer, browner, less ___ than her, signaling that people like my GRANDMOTHER failed to control their biological urges when they should have just been more responsible.  

That's what I read when I saw your post.

Many may consider my wish to see my biological grandfather as a good person as too pollyanna.  That it was much more likely that a person in his situation wanted to shake off a clingy pregnant girl, that he maybe even laughed about it with his friends.  I've been pained to not write anything that might hurt or embarrass your father, or you, about the circumstances which led to my dad's conception and adoption because I really really want to think of Max Gardner as being a good person.  

I've been trying to frame this story in different ways in order to not embarrass you.  And yet, perhaps the right thing to do is for your father and you to own his story, to *talk about personal responsibility in ways that make sense*, that acknowledge reality:  people walk away from responsibilities.  Maybe it's shameful.  Maybe it caused hardship to others, hardships the person who made the choice to walk away don't see and therefore don't think exist.  That doesn't mean that denial is any way to live as an adult.  

To me, it would be a courageous act of personal responsibility, for Max Gardner to say, "I don't even rightly remember what happened 75 years ago, but it's come to my attention that I conceived a child with a woman in 1945, and for whatever reason I was not able to support her and the baby.  And through some strokes of luck, new technology, and my weird granddaughter's obsessive researching, I got to meet my son for the first time in 2018.  I'm so glad that there were social safety nets in place which covered for my inability to support my son.  In some ways I am deeply ashamed that I could not do the fundamental thing a good parent does.  And in other ways, I forgive myself for having made a difficult decision that some may say is selfish but others would point out made it possible for me to be a good parent to the children I eventually had with my wife."  

That's what personal responsibility looks like.  It's also inclusive of collective responsibility, getting past the notion that anyone is "self-made", is able to navigate this life without other people loving them and supporting them, without safety nets for when a person cannot fulfill their obligations, for when people find themselves in impossible situations.  It's deeply corrosive to advance the idea that personal responsibility is all that is needed when obviously at different times in our lives we find ourselves needing help from others.

As far as I can tell, the Church of Latter Day Saints has historically been very supportive of collective support of each other, the beehive symbolism, etc.  

When you reached out a few months ago, Patti, I gave you a terse reply because I really struggle with what kind of relationship I can have with you.  I had literally been searching for my grandfather for 25 years. I am 49, so that research spanned more than half of my lifetime.  Had I been given the weird choice of finding out the truth about my grandfather versus finishing my doctorate, I think I would have chosen the former over the later (thank goodness I am blessed to have both).  It was a decades-long obsession.  It's difficult to express how much I wanted to find out the story that haunted my childhood and became a specific project assigned to me when my grandmother before her death asked me to write a book. I'm a good student, Patti.  It's very hard to have this overdue assignment hanging over my head.

And when I found him, he wasn't dead as I had been told.  I am still trying to figure out how much my grandmother really knew in 1945 when she mailed the letter to that sailor who she thought was going to marry her (or if even that story is true).  Other possibilities get ominous--was it consensual?  Did he lead her on, telling her that he'd marry her and then got cold feet?  Was it just too difficult to communicate because he was transferred away and she didn't have a forwarding address?  And if so, he didn't have the personal responsibility to write her a letter from his new duty station?  It gets difficult for me to hold him in positive regard when I really will never know these answers.

Part of why I am not particularly interested in connecting more with your father is because he just doesn't give me any information like that.  He was happy to show me off as his musically talented granddaughter at the nursing home, but he doesn't really say anything about how it is that this new person is his granddaughter.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet him--again, for literally decades he was the answer to the question "who is the one person living or dead that you'd most like to meet" for me. Yep, we met.  And he is a sphinx.  A genial grampa, but no context for how it is that we're just now learning that we are related. 

So I am ambivalent about what kind of relationship we can have, and I put you out of my mind until I saw your post this week.  I have been trying to put other people I am related to out of my mind too because of their chanting about personal responsibility.  And yet the best way forward, in terms of reconciling family differences, political differences, coming to some shared agreements moving forward with regard to say, how to address big collective issues like climate change, requires engaging with family members with whom we don't see eye to eye. And Patti, I *do* think of us as family members; I just didn't want to do the hard work of reaching out and engaging.  

That is why I am sending this email. I am trying to do the work of engaging on the difficult topic of abortion with my aunt who sees things differently from me, rather than letting it go.  I do not expect any quick reply--perhaps you may never find words for a reply, and I accept that.  Know that I have thought of you as family even before I knew the name Max Gardner.  I knew some man had to have existed, and he was situated in some sort of family, whatever his circumstances, and that we are all kin.  For all I know I might get some email years from now from someone who KEN fathered, which had not come to light previously.  

And so again, I choose to give men the benefit of the doubt, the privacy with their decisions, the acknowledgement that there are forces which force choices which some find reprehensible but which nonetheless appeared to be the best option in that unique set of circumstances.  I also choose to give women the same benefit of the doubt, privacy about their decisions, and acknowledgement that I don't understand what forces they have to make those decisions within.  And that is why I support access to abortion.  

So instead of calling you out on your page (I don't know how many of your fb friends knows that your Dad knocked up a Lutheran lady in Wisconsin eight decades ago), I am calling you "in", because I want to create space for us to understand each other, and to me that requires being honest about the limits of the personal responsibility argument.

With love, Karen

The power of the White maidenhead compels you!

This week an image of a  naked White woman protester in Portland went viral.

White woman practicing yoga, naked, in a Portland Street, facing officers in riot gear.  Officers backed away and left the demonstration.  Credit: Donovan Farley, https://twitter.com/DonovanFarley/status/1284412288774975489

Video here: https://www.mediaite.com/online/watch-naked-athena-faces-down-federal-cops-at-portland-protest-and-they-back-down/?fbclid=IwAR3io8RUJdCzi06yjtxfxaDcpk3YG-GPfTKtg9H9NQ9IJyPY4Ksxg6ETCTw

It is significant that she appears White, able, youthful and lithe.  I cannot imagine a darker skinned woman, a fat woman, a woman using a wheelchair, getting the same treatment.

I felt a strange energy at the Women's March in Washington DC in January 2017--I had prepared myself to be potentially arrested and tear gassed.  Instead, Police Officers were high-fiving us.  It took the perspective of Black women walking with our group for me to realize, duh, it's because we are white women.

The Slave Patrols from which our police systems emerged were ostensibly to protect White womanhood from Black rapists.  I think this phenomenon occurred, of (mostly) White militants backing away from this literal display of vulnerable femininity, because of this history.  These men were moments earlier firing tear gas and rubber bullets.  When she walked up to them, pointed to them and began doing yoga stretches/positions, it shortcircuited something.  The confused men backed away.

So much of the problems we are facing today are due to toxic masculinity structures like fear of the "nanny state."  Nannies.  Mother-adjacent.  The power of a woman saying "no" to a man.  Making him feel small, like a child, chastened by a person with authority over him.

Also meme-ing this week are Karen memes.  I happen to be named Karen, and I've had 5 different friends reach out to me recently to say something like "these are funny, but I don't think you're one of these Karens! :) "

I have lots of thoughts on the Karen memes, and I think they are connected to this Portland "Naked Athena" as Farley the photographer calls her.

My take on the Karen memes (as texted in response to one of those friends)

Yes the Karen meme is about white women weaponizing their “tears” in service of creating and maintaining White-only spaces literally and figuratively. From public parks to higher education etc. some of these memes however are created by WHITE MEN which is rich, given that the karens are doing this unpaid dirty work which white men overwhelmingly benefit from

Karen

Also, the Wine Mom part of the meme touches on how cis-hetero white women who are married to (wealthy) white men have the free time during the day to do their mischief and overwhelmingly work to improve the conditions of their (white) children at the expense of everyone else’s. Private schools for us, decaying public schools for them, etc. and we know plenty of progressive “democratic” white women who may post Black Lives Matter icons etc to virtue signal but will make family/kid based decisions about which school district to enroll in etc which do the opposite of affirming those values

Karen

And me personally, I’ve got extra Karen energy because white women are overwhelmingly teachers (English teachers!) who police the margins of language, expression, what is allowable to write your term paper about etc
White nurses policed the margins of racial identity by coding which children were biracial etc on birth certificates. Karen energy is about policing who counts, who is discounted in these power structures. their proximity, access and affiliation to white men is the motive, and the desire to protect their children and create the best conditions possible for them (giving them an edge over others) is a very strong urge.

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

KarenWhite nurses policed the margins of racial identity by coding which children were biracial etc on birth certificates. Karen energy is about policing who counts, who is discounted in these power structures. their proximity, access and affiliation to white men is the motive, and the desire to protect their children and create the best conditions possible for them (giving them an edge over others) is a very strong urge.

KarenAnd creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

And creating a category to mock, “hahaha look at that Karen” can be helpful if it’s focusing on drawing attention to who benefits from these power dynamics and then using that new info to do something. Creating a “Karen cocktail” is just a cheap thrill to make an extra buck for (probably) a white man who owns the bar

Karen

Love is the only way through this. And by love I mean, we have to love other people’s children, black children, immigrant babies in cages, people we will never meet, as if they were our babies, our grandchildren etc. and gently but firmly bringing our other kin (like my Trump supporting Mom) along on the journey towards wholeness

Karen

So that is part of my thoughts on this Karen meme.  And since White women and our Very Powerful Tears have this sort of power to either prop up the structures of White supremacy or work against it, let us consider how we might use this power differently.  Not all of us look like the Yogani pictured above (nor have the ovaries to walk naked into a crowd of riot police).  But a lot of us look like we are somebody's White mom.  We can do things like this too:

https://ntvhouston.com/2020/07/moms-protest-use-of-federal-officers-in-portland-calling-it-unacceptable/

A ring of Moms, arms linked, surround protesters and chant "Feds stay clear!  The Moms are here!"

Banty chickens as beings of light

My 93-year-old friend called me this weekend to let me know she was thinking of me, that she loves me, that she doesn't expect me to call back.  Of course I called back.

After catching up a bit she said she wanted to share a story with me, but it would take about 5-10 minutes--would I be willing to listen?  Of course.

She said that she has started seeing tiny bantam chickens everywhere, just like the little chickens of her girlhood on the farm in North Carolina.  She knows they aren't "real" as in something that others can see, but they are real to her.  She only sees them when the sunlight is just right.  Sometimes they are walking around outside, coming out from under bushes.  Sometimes they are walking across the pond, four steps to get across, not dipping into the water like you might expect a bird like a duck to do, but walking across the surface of the water.  They are brilliant vivid colors, and they bring her so much joy.

She made a point of telling her ophthalmologist about them, prefacing her story the same way, that it will take a few minutes for her to tell it, and don't dismiss her as crazy because she knows they aren't "real real" but they are real to her.  And thank goodness that doctor just listened to her and explained that her brain was making sense of things, and there was nothing that she needed to do, no medication to take to make these visual hallucinations go away if they aren't upsetting her.

And so here I sit, crying, because I think my friend is preparing to transition to the coming after.  On one of our last calls she asked if I would visit her, and I told her I didn't think that would be possible for a while.  And I'm comforted that she is seeing these beings of light as a joyful reminder of her childhood.

This spring has been weird for me.  A few weeks ago were the holidays of Easter and May Day, usually celebrations of the beginnings of life, bunnies and eggs, honeybees pollinating flowers so they become fruitful.  But instead, I pulled out some Halloween decorations because I feel overwhelmed by the endings of life.  It feels like a dying time of year, so I pulled out a plastic skeleton decoration and put it into a babydoll cradle.  Nurturing death.  Embracing the endings of lives, just at a different time of year.

I had installed a beehive this spring, and for the first time in my 15 years of beekeeping instead of it growing with activity, it died.  There weren't enough spring flowers in April, and a cold snap meant this tiny ball of writhing insects went into survival mode, not able to forage for calories to keep them warm, and clinging around their last hope, the queen in the center of that blob, with the intent of keeping her alive long enough to lay eggs to start the cycle anew.  They failed.  I failed to keep them alive.

So here I sit, contemplating my favorite beings of light, metaphor of angels, the intermediaries between the worlds.  There is a beekeeping custom of whispering to the bees news of deaths and births, and I have no idea what to whisper to the bees.  There are many deaths this spring.  I don't know all of the names.  I want to whisper about new possibilities, new things being birthed by these transitions.  Perhaps it's best to be still and listen deeply for now, and be grateful for dear friends who reach out to tell me they love me and banty spring chickens.

Huerfano Motives, Themes, Messages

Motives to write:

1) I'm working through my feelings like anger, guilt, sadness, betrayal, shame, paralyzing fear, numbness towards doing The Work, the emotional reproductive labor. I have an obligation as a privileged person to do this emotional labor of processing guilt rather than numbing against it, perpetuating inequities. I struggled with "being worthy" of this work, and realized that was a way to avoid and to numb, so I'm going deeper through my feelings. I'm also integrating feelings about relationships with the trauma I experienced the past decade with my work in academia and through a doctoral program (May not end up in this project, but it's all connected).

2) My grandmother requested that I write "her" story for her in 1993, when I began research for this project. She passed away in 2015 during the first weeks of my full-time doctoral studies, and in late 2018 I had a big breakthrough with a DNA test match which answered the huge question mark, perhaps life-defining question mark for her, about the identity of the father of the baby she conceived at the end of WWII, a baby which she was forced to put up for adoption, to orphan, by her religious family. That baby was my father, and his life experience and orphaning, adopting, and othering transferred to me somehow (lots more self-reflection development needed here lol).

3) Solving a mystery, explaining my origin story, making sense of pain, figuring the purpose of why I exist. Hopefully some of that resonates and inspires.

4) I'm motivated to create being-in-relationshipness (inspired by Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear), naming power structures based on difference (my thinking with feminist theory a la Jackson & Mazzei), and the consequences of subscribing (even unthinkingly) to them. Inspiring a revolution of connectedness.

5) Model fearlessness for others, for other writers to tell stories rather than keep secrets, empowering those protected by silence, and disempowering the secret keepers who create the conditions that enable predators, exploiters, and absent-minded-taking-advantage-of-others.

What themes? Orphaning (as a verb--I'm thinking of the project or part of the project as a concept analysis of Orphan, but I'm also using the Spanish word for Orphan, Huerfano, to construct/deconstruct new meanings, also being pedagogical in my writing by "teaching" my new meaning of Orphan/Huerfano, encouraging readers to discard their preconceived notions), adoption, DNA relatives, partus sequitur ventum (Latin for descendant from the womb, or social status conferred by the mother's social status), Hypodescent (from the US legal construct of chattel slavery (1619 project) which refers to "automatic assignment by the dominant culture of children of a mixed union between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group" (Kottak, Conrad P. "Chapter 11: Ethnicity and Race." Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2009, p. 238), family-like non-family relations, Whiteness as a construct, patrilinealism, abortion, The book "Somebody's Baby" (Charlotte Vale Allen, 1995) which my grandmother gifted me as a story which resonated with her experience, Human trafficking, kidnapping, inherited privilege, consent, branding, paternalism (I wrote about the last four in my dissertation as well)

What messages? Love everyone, radical inclusion, connectedness, abandonment of Whiteness as a un-reflected construct, abandonment of Whiteness as a source of power. You can't hide from the (truth). Secrets come to light and heal all involved. Reconciliation. Disrupting inherited privilege, making it right, restoring integrity. Be fearless in stretching brittle relationships to change their shape.

Unfinished business

The #metoo movement has me revisiting unfinished business.

The "let go of your anger so you don't destroy the vessel" advice that got me through tough times did enable me to survive them, but now that I'm out of danger (for now) I'm revisiting the anger.

Sexual assault. Sexual harassment.

I was telling someone the broader story of my career and he said "why aren't you furious?"

Oh god.  Being furious is paralyzing when the fury does nothing but destroy the vessel.

So furious. And also, yoga and herbal tea and writing and organizing and building the world I want.  Investing my energies where it is most productive.  Walking in beauty.  Greeting the day with joy.

And also, I no longer care to think charitably on ambiguous behavior by men.  Years ago a male faculty colleague of mine told me about one of his students having an abortion.  I thought, wow, he must have a really good classroom dynamic and rapport with his students that they feel so comfortable talking with him about their personal lives!  And now, thinking back, I'm not sure he wasn't the cause of that pregnancy.  I'm bracing myself to learn every man I know, my father, my brother, close friends, my exes, my boyfriend--all of them may have a story which will come to light.

Baseball metaphor of "getting to first base" treats women as the playing field.  I suggest men compare their RBI stats as well--assisting a partner to an orgasm.

Branding, Inherited privilege

I wrote a dissertation about inherited privilege,consent and branding.  It was supposed to be about curriculum.  It was a feminist paper, so I was deep in thinking about power structures based on difference, such as based on a daddy claiming you.

Brand as a marketing shorthand.  Brand as a patronymic last name.  Brand as a literal scar burned into flesh. Self-branding, enhancing one's brand, monetizing one's brand.

It was inspired by many things which were around me:

1) Game of Thrones structures of battles for houses based on legitimate and illegetimate male heirs.

2) The #metoo movement and recognition of how far organizations will go to protect the brand's value, including silencing victims' complaints, gaslighting, celebrating the perpetrator's successes.

How could anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind, too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TlaYxoOO8

Feelings about entangling and detangling, the beginnings and endings of relationships.

Choices about staying in relationship versus letting go

Forgiveness versus Reconciliation

Remembering what I already forgot, in the no longer and not yet.

Having the queasy sense of looking at an alternative timeline--what would have happened if...?

And deciding it would have been awful.  Yes, decidedly, it would have had to have been awful.