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emergentanimism · 6 years

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Deadwater

In my last post, I said something that should have given you pause. When describing spirits of the dead, I said, “They can even be exploited if a magus is so inclined. If they can't learn to chill even after they're dead, fuck 'em.”

No one told you that being a magus makes you a nice person, right? There are reasons why necromancy is reviled by many cultures. Most of those reasons are bullshit based on fear and control. But being a necromancer does sometimes mean blurring some lines. If you as a magus decide you may need a weapon at your disposal, even just for self-defense… well weapons come at a price. A weapon is not an innocent thing, despite what the NRA wants you to believe. A weapon always requires you to compromise your innocence. A weapon symbolizes you are willing to do harm. A spiritual weapon can be a costly thing indeed.

The most powerful weapon in my spiritual arsenal? Without a doubt – Deadwater. What is Deadwater you ask? Lucky for you folks I know the leading expert. The number one source. I turn you over to the words of my beloved brother, Frater Yaramarud, the man who provided me with this amazing substance.

“My first encounter with Deadwater came nearly a decade ago. At the time, I saw it purely as a novelty and not something with the nearly boundless potential that I know today. Traveling down the road with my good friend Frater Dreadnaught, and an ex-partner of mine, the three of us had made a late night decision to stop at the next cemetery we found in order to waste time in a way that people in their early twenties are wont to do. When we finally found one and had parked the car, a light in the center of the cemetery had drawn our attention to a pump well gently illuminated beneath it. My initial thought was one of curiosity and bewilderment. What reason could there possibly be for there to be a well here? With this question unanswered, it dawned on me that the corpses surrounding us had, beyond any doubt, decayed and seeped into the table from which this well drew.

After jokes and general fucking around, we left the cemetery without even noting its general location. Though I had lost contact with my ex-partner, Fr. Dreadnaught and I remained close friends. During this time, he had enlisted in the military and left our home state for roughly 7-8 years. Though we often discussed the possible location of the Deadwater, the only thing that either of us could remember was the highway that it was most likely located on. With him gone for years and me being the only person that could feasibly find this place, I did all I could do in order to locate it. Driving up and down the highway proved fruitless, as did looking at maps of cemeteries along the route and cross-referencing them with Google. My last effort was to post an inquiry on a local genealogy group under the guise of searching for the grave of a relative. This too led to nothing. I was forced to give up, and so it was for about six years.

Last year, however, things changed. Fr. D had moved back from California and had spent some time living with my wife and I. It was during this time that we had become determined to find this Deadwater once again. As we had both evolved in our magickal practice, it had become less of a curiosity and more of a holy grail; here was a tool that had so much latent potential, and yet it was completely out of my reach. One night in September of 2017, we had decided that, since it was once again physically possible for us to find it together, we would do exactly that.

I'll spare you the details of the ritual itself suffice to say that Fr. D and myself had performed a Goetic invocation for executing our will. In hindsight, we had made a mistake. For our statement of intent, I had simply said, “It is our will to invoke XX to lead us to the Deadwater located along Highway XX.” It was during the ritual that I was mentally given a map of the county through which the highway ran, with a marker placed by the demon. With the image still firmly visualized, we pulled up a map of cemeteries in the county that this marker could possibly represent. After making a list with their corresponding addresses, we left in search of the Deadwater.

It was the middle of nowhere; we were surrounded by corn fields in every direction. After taking the final turn, still flanked by corn on either side, the GPS indicated that we had arrived at our destination: the first cemetery on the list. There was nothing. Just corn. As Fr. D was rechecking the address, I slowed the truck to a stop. Just before we had become entirely motionless, the field opened up to reveal the stones we were looking for, but they weren't familiar at all. There was no light in the center. It was just darkness. Despite this, we decided to look around anyway. After all, we had the entire night to look, and maybe the light had burned out, or our memory of the place was faulty.

We spent roughly 30 minutes wandering between the gravestones, splitting up to cover more ground. As we both began to lose hope and had called out that we should go to the next address on the list, I noticed a dim light in the distance. I called to Fr. D to meet me and we could explore this light together. Once we had reconvened, we started walking together towards the light. Not even ten steps from when we started, our headlamps simultaneously crossed, revealing before us a pump well.

This was not the same well. We both knew that, and yet a shiver ran down both of our spines. We tested it. It worked. The demon had shown us the way, though due to our lack of precise wording, it was not the same well we had seen all those years ago. We had prepared for this moment and filled several bottles with the water, water that contained the decayed remains of hundreds of bodies, water that was the distilled essence of the dead.

Since that night, I have utilized the Deadwater in multiple ways. The first ritual that we had done with it was a joint effort between Fr. D and myself. He had volunteered to drink a small portion of the water, and a ritual was formed around this primary action. Performed twice, we discovered through Fr. D's gnosis that he was able to visualize and speak to his own ancestors. Thus, not only did this water stand as an essence of the dead that I had discovered through my own later experimentation, it was able to form a link between their realm and our own.

Its apparent linkage to death and focal point of death have proven invaluable. Apart from the aforementioned use of contacting one's ancestors, I have used it as a method of simplifying my altar. Rather than having dozens of pictures of my ancestors for veneration, I find it just as effective to place a bottle of the water with an image of my family crest as a sort of condensed fetish. Another similar use I have found is mixing the water with the gravedirt of my grandmother in order to form an anointing solution that has a direct link to my lineage and those that came before. In using it as a kind of “essential oil of death”, I have found that it works with great success in “jinx” or “hex” work as a medium for freezer spells and the like. It has also worked equally well as an intensifier for other gravedirt workings and as a component for spirit work. Though these cover only my own current experiments with the Deadwater, I know that its potential has exceeded every expectation that I have had for it. As I continue to find new uses, it continually astounds and amazes me.”

What’s the first lesson to be learned from this amazing story? Have a tribe! There are other awesome magi out there. You can find them. It will take hard work and dedication to actually work together. I travel thousands of miles a year just to be with my tribe. But it’s so damn worth it when you experience that love and are gifted with magical knowledge, and receive gifts like 750 ml of Deadwater.

Lucky you, you can buy it online from Frater Yaramarud at his most excellent store, Welcome to Tarotdise, where he and his wife sell some amazing hand-crafted occult products.

Back to the original point and my experiences with Deadwater. As far as I know I am only the second person dumb enough to drink some of it. I immediately tasted the earth and rot of the grave. My vision dimmed, and I felt myself slipping between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. All from one sip. BTW, I in NO WAY endorse drinking the Deadwater. It is not sold for consumption. If you get intestinal parasites or a fungal infection, that’s your problem.

Meditating on the bottle sitting on my altar has produced some interesting visions. You can literally see the angry spirits swirling around in the bottle. No, they are not happy to be there. And I get the feeling the Deadwater captured some of the most malicious spirits of that particular cemetery. Is it wrong to use them for my own devices? Probably. But a magus gotta do what a magus gotta do. I’ll talk some more about the nuances of such necromantic work in a later post.

In my opinion, Deadwater is essentially spiritual toxic waste. No other spirit I know likes to go near the stuff. I really don’t want to meet the spirits that would enjoy it. For example, I recently had an altercation with a certain Red Goddess who has been fucking with my love life hard. Of course, she laughed at my admonitions of her cruel little games. Until I threatened to pour some Deadwater over her statue. She shut the fuck up real quick after that. Is it truly a threat to a goddess? I don’t know, but I certainly got the impression she wouldn’t enjoy the experience.

As noted, Frater Yaramarud had somewhat different experiences. Maybe it’s the batch I got. Maybe it’s his intent when using it, or how he mixes it with other substances. Maybe those spirits just don’t like me for whatever reason. You don’t have to use it as a weapon.

Yeah, I know a lot of this sounds a bit crazy. But part of being a magus is learning to frame your experiences in a mythic context. As my hero Miguel says, “Write your own story. Live your own myth.” Be hardcore. Get yourself some Deadwater. Better yet, harvest some of your own. Be prepared to do a lot of banishing before and after you do something like that.

#magick #emergent magick #emk #emergent animism #eman #deadwater

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queernuck · 7 years

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The Age of New Psychology

One of the most powerful means of articulating autistic phenomenologies is through an act of reversal, whereby the perception of interactions as structured by a vast social and cultural code, an all but unspoken series of rules and exceptions, is implicitly understood and moreover can be interpreted from gestures, tone, and most of all requires that one act with a sort of constant duplicity, never simply saying what one means or meaning what one says but acting in multiple levels of signification at once and being well aware of both the intentional and unintentional holdings these evoke. Obviously, this reversal is not limited to discussing the phenomenology of autism, but the means by which it can be employed in order to understand both Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on the “New Psychology” and its failed attempts at shedding the psychoanalytic, and to work toward a larger means of discussing the arboreal structure of neurotype as a category of performance is an incredibly useful means of discussion.

When discussing the difficulty of relaying experience, the reversal I speak of is often employed as a means of articulating the apparent arbitrariness of cultural acceptability, and how it is specifically lost in the phenomenological experience of autistic people. This is often a dramatic and aesthetic technique rather than an earnest process of questioning specifically because it relies on effectively recontextualizing the intensities of confusion faced by autistic people at the correctly-perceived frustration or bewilderment of others into a similar bewilderment at a given convention of this or that sort of interaction. The intention is to illustrate an autistic modality of encounter, one where the most immediate phenomenological acquaintance with the world is vastly at odds with the supposed structure in question. The response being beckoned is one where a reader will respond that an action is inappropriate or unconventional because of a structural prohibition that is obvious if one simply understands its presence. Of course, if that is the case, why is its presence not made clear, not spoken of in an explicit manner? This leads to a sort of cultivated series of realizations about the structural framework of the phenomenology of the social, such that one can in fact begin acknowledging the process of construction, of imposition, required for these structures to exist. The acceptance of this process, and the supposed usefulness of common structures of signification that allow for a sort of semiotics of the unsaid to be present in a hegemonic fashion across social discourses, is at the very least questioned by this process. One supposedly-revolutionary group of students once said that their derogatory labeling of certain modalities of economic study as a form of “Autistic Economics” was a conceptual response to the supposed scientific structure of Economics as a discipline, and while their use of “autistic” as a description is not without an incorrectly attributed precedent, its negativity and casual usage was ill conceived, spiteful, and ultimately just an edgy distinction to make their casual apologism for welfare-state neoliberalism seem interesting and post-political. Conversely, exploring the means by which this reversed critique of the social is presented by autistic people as a means of questioning the phenomenological distinctions that generate the structural label of “autistic” in the first place is akin to the use of “schizophrenic” in genealogical descent from Deleuze & Guattari, where a poststructural means of critique does not seek to use the structure of a phenomenology as derogatory but rather seeks to accept the phenomenological as a means of articulation and moreover use the structure given to that phenomenology as a means of elaborating upon structuralist critique from within.

According to Merleau-Ponty, the means by which a sort of neuroscientific impetus in “New Psychology” leads to the creation of a supposedly innate structure for regarding emotional response that is then culturally determined such that emotion becomes the full social structure it is recognized as requires one first claim that infants do not understand emotion as they have not yet begun to articulate it in an appropriate fashion. However, he claims the opposite, that infants understand emotion, thus requiring a structural analysis be undertaken. The infant may not be able to understand its role within a structural, Oedipal series of traumas but phenomenologically, the infant will indeed be determined by a series of structural traumatizations which instill in its very body an understanding of acceptable sociability such that eventually the articulatory processes of emotion emerge. Emotional means of articulation are learned through recognition, and moreover performed through complicated structures of semiotic posturing, the engagement of both the literal body and a sort of broader social body with a discourse of emotive action, a series of appropriate articulatory possibilities based in structures of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and on and on into so many schizophrenic nodes of identity. Furthermore, the phenomenological structure requires the perception of another as sharing the same structural phenomenology, such that the structure of white supremacy in fact becomes part of arbitrating the process of encounter and structural perception of emotion. One may perceive anger as coming from an innate psychological structure, from a characteristic of the body as physical as any other, but so often this is structured by arbitrations such as structures of white sociopathy, or white fragility, such that the defense of antiblack violence is in fact a structural inevitability. While police are one of the preeminent examples, the means by which phenomenologies of white women are structured such that the violence of womanhood, the violence of gender is so often specifically imposed in reference to antiblackness, as a means of structuring antiblackness, and that for black women even before their recognition as women comes the structural imposition of antiblack concepts of emotion and emotional possibility is part of creating this hegemonic psychological structure. Emotion is not the phenomenological unmodified, but in fact is only a possibility of the phenomenological, is a phenomenology structured through the naming and realization of emotion. The naming of the same phenomenological experience as different when relayed from the position of a black body is specifically due to the phenomena by which articulations of emotion are structured by the frame of reference that the body gives.

When describing color in Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty uses a means of description that talks about how one cannot merely paint a color and have it be understood as such, that no ability to know the character of a color will lead to a phenomenological experience of it, that rather it is through juxtaposition of color that one understands the means of lighting, the referential character with which objects take on color. Merleau-Ponty’s work is heavily characterized by use of metaphor and comparison; another metaphorical concept he uses is that of being on a train that is moving out of the station while alongside another train. If one is writing in a notebook as one sits in the dining car, and the train begins to pull out, one will in fact percieve a static train being passed by the train alongside it. One’s own train will not move, but the other will. Conversely, if gazing out the window to look for a passenger on the other train, one’s own train will indeed move while the other is static. The relativity mentioned here is specifically due to the means by which phenomena are not in isolation, but rather rely upon a proces of phenomenological understanding to attain legibility. Trains stand as points of reference because of their relativity, just as light colors the object and is not accounted for in itself but rather is in fact coloring that which is experienced, is part of the phenomenal

The characterization of autism as a specific quality of maleness, the notion that autistic women possess a “male brain” is part of first creating an external status by which the autistic is made legible, but moreover creating a means by which one can arbitrate the acceptable phenomenologies of autistic experience. This reduplication of structures of emotion, such that even phenomenological difference is collapsed into a redoubling conceptualization, is part of a structural repetition that uses psychoanalytic structures of prohibition and proscribed transgression in order to create an arboreal hierarchy of experience. Merleau-Ponty’s work specifically relies upon this as an imposition, as a process, as a process he is openly and continually skeptical of. The means by which psychology attempts to take on an aesthetic of naturalism, an abandonment of open metaphysical discourse and an adopting of a structural scientific character to replace the phantom limb of its metaphysical critique is merely a renaming of the psychoanalytic, a retention of its claims and structure without a retention of it as a semiotic system that specifically precludes psychoanalytic critique in order to prevent the deconstructive reversal of these structures or development of schizoanalytic critiques of them.

One can imagine that the process of reversal is not limited to autistic critiques of the socius: the concept of a schizophrenic structure of identity as a relatively well-accepted paradigm for critique is evidence of such, but the possibility of dysthymic histories, ADHD-structured textual readings, of OCD as a means of describing the structure of how social convention crosses over into a structural ritual: there are as many possibilities of critique as supposed disorders. This is not intended to deny the genuineness of phenomenological experience, but rather to allow for the development of conceptual frameworks such as schizophrenic identities, a critical articulation of white sociopathy, the dysthymia and cyclic depressive quality of dysphoric trans experience, the entire structure by which the emotional gains its own unique quality.

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Heather Draper & Jonathan Ives, Paternity testing: a poor test of fatherhood, 31 J Social Welfare & Family Law 407 (2009)

Abstract

In this paper we argue that there are few morally acceptable justifications for a man to seek a paternity test. The relationship between material responsibility and the burdens generated by the creation of a needy child, means it is not unreasonable for a man to establish that he is responsible for the creation of a child before accepting this financial responsibility. Some men embrace fatherhood irrespective of their involvement in the children's creation and in the absence of a genetic relationship. Others feel differently. Given that parenting is a life-long commitment it is reasonable for those for whom genetics matters to request a paternity test prior to making this commitment.

Once a man has become a (moral) father there is no justification for initiating paternity testing, save in the interests of the child. Where the child's interest in knowing his/her genetic origins is unclear we argue this is a decision that can be left for the child to make for him/herself when he/she is sufficiently mature. There is no justification for performing infidelity testing on a child. Because fatherhood is not contingent on genetic relatedness, suspicion of misattributed paternity is no justification for paternity testing.

The justifications for, and problems with, paternity testing suggest that it is something men should seek antenatally, at birth or not at all.

Introduction

Men are becoming increasingly concerned about misattributed paternity. On the one hand, this concern is related to the financial implications of paternity in state systems that pursue so-called ‘absent fathers’ for child support. Few men – particularly those not in a stable relationship with the mother of the child – are willing to pay without some evidence that they are indeed the absent father. On the other hand, some previously willing and active fathers have discovered misattributed paternity with devastating effect on their general well-being, as well as on their relationship with their children and partners. Some men have sought financial redress for misattributed paternity arguing that it amounts to ‘paternity fraud’ (Draper 2007).

At the same time, in the UK, those who are conceived as a result of gamete donation after April 2005 (once they become adults) will be able to access the identity of ‘their’ gamete donor (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, modified June 2004). This change, from previously assured donor anonymity, sought to give donor-conceived people the same right to information about their genetic origins as those who had been adopted (Johnson 2004). This move was not without its critics. There were those who thought that the change didn't go far enough, because the removal of donor anonymity was not accompanied by legislation requiring the disclosure of information about the circumstances of their birth to donor-conceived children (British Association for Adoption and Fostering 1995). Such critics have argued that the birth certificates of donor-conceived individuals should either state that they were donor-conceived or include the identity of the donor(s). Anything less and donor-conceived individuals might never realise that they were not genetically related to their parents.

Not knowing one's genetic parents, and consequently not knowing one's genetic history, is often regarded as a significant harm, which can impact negatively upon an individual's sense of identity and self-worth and can leave them feeling disconnected and alone (Sants 1964, McWhinnie 1996, Turner and Coyle 2000, Ryburn 2005) – although whether or not this ‘genealogical bewilderment’ (Sants 1964) leads to tangible mental health problems, as some suggest, is open to challenge (Humphrey and Humphrey 1986). This significant harm has been cited as a foundation on which to ground a ‘right to know’ one's genetic parents (McWhinnie 2001), although, as Frith (2001) notes, the evidence for harm is mostly drawn from research with adopted children, and may not be applicable to donor conception.

This supposed right to information about genetic origins for donor-conceived individuals also calls attention to the fact that many of us might never learn the truth about our genetic origins. Estimates for misattributed paternity vary quite widely from 0.8% to 30% (Bellis et al. 2005). If, however, the harm caused by not knowing one's genetic history is sufficient to ground a right to know, then this right should be available to all of us – however we were conceived (Draper 2005).

In this paper we explore some of the ethical and conceptual problems associated with paternity testing. We explore two triggers for testing – the interests 1the man has as a father/potential father and the interests of the child. We argue that both of these triggers highlight difficulties with the ways in which paternity testing is sometimes justified, which are especially apparent when a man seeks a paternity test after a paternal relationship has already been formed. We conclude that specifically paternity testing should be performed at birth, antenatally, or not at all. 2

We will begin by discussing, in the context of some recent empirical research, what we mean by ‘father’.

What is a father?

This is an important question because a test for fatherhood may be quite a different kind of test to a paternity test. A fatherhood test cannot even be devised until we know what it is that we are testing for; or, put another way, until we know what a father is. If ‘father’ merely refers to a particular kind of genetic relationship, then a paternity test may be sufficient. However, at best, this produces an exceedingly thin view of what it means to be a father, which can be met by a man giving a drop of sperm to help in the creation of a child who he has nothing more to do with. If this is all that being a father means a paternity test would be an appropriate test for fatherhood. But being a father denotes much more than this, which is clear both from our examination of the term as a philosophical concept and from our empirical work (Ives 2007, Ives et al. 2008). We are not alone in questioning the primacy of biological relatedness in familial relationships – either on sociological or moral grounds (see, for example, Smart and Neale 1999, Weston 1991, Dowd 2005, Kaebnick 2004, Fuscaldo 2006, Bayne and Kolers 2003). We are also not alone in noting a fragmentation in the concept of fatherhood (for example see Sheldon 2005, Collier and Sheldon 2009). Collier and Sheldon, however, discuss the fragmentation of fatherhood from the perspective of observers of socio-legal discourse, whereas we are discussing fragmentation in normative terms – where fragmentation is seen as morally necessary in order to unpick and accommodate the wide-ranging rights and duties accompanying the various aspect of modern fatherhood.

We suggest that the meaning of ‘father’ has three components that may be found in the person of one father, or spread amongst different men. These are ‘causal father’, ‘material father’ and ‘moral father’. ‘Causal father’ refers to the man responsible for bringing a child into existence, with one such causal route being the provision of the sperm in natural reproduction. ‘Material father’ refers to a man who provides materially for a child (in terms of providing physical care, or the means of providing physical care, such as food, shelther, clothing, etc.). On the other hand, ‘moral father’ refers to a man who forms a loving parental relationship with a child. Moral fatherhood seems to be that which is valued most highly, both philosophically and by the men who contributed to our, and others', data (Ives et al. 2008, Henwood and Procter 2003, Smeaton 2003, Cohen 1993, Lloyd 2003). The distinction between moral and material fatherhood can be best understood by considering an absent father who pays child support but has no social parental relationship with the child. Such a man fulfils the criteria for material fatherhood because he is providing the means of physical support (through providing financial support to the mother) but is not a moral father because he does not engage in any kind of parental relationship (there is no love, no day-to-day care, no sense that the protection of the interests of this particular child are vital to the protection of his own interests and happiness, and no sense that the interest of the child are put before his own).

Being a ‘progenitor’ – the one who provides the sperm – may be significant in terms of providing a moral reason for becoming either a material or moral father but it lacks any normative value. Rather, what is important to ‘fatherhood’ is the formation and continuation of a particular kind of relationship, which is distinct from biological kinship. (Ives et al. 2008, p. 82) Causing a child to exist carries, under most circumstances 3, an obligation to ensure that the material costs of raising the child are met, and this is premised on the notion that a person is morally responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their voluntary actions. 4Whilst we acknowledge that causal fatherhood incurs moral responsibilities, our claim that it nonetheless lacks normative value is based on our empirical work that found progenation itself is not valued as a moral ideal, and where it is valued it is valued instrumentally – for what it is thought to achieve socially (Ives et al. 2008). Genetic relationships, in this sense, can generate moral responsibilities without being intrinsically valuable in themselves. Our argument is that even if a man has no desire to be a moral father, and even if the conception was unintended, there is a duty of justice to ensure that the other party to the procreation is not left to carry the financial burden of caring for the resulting child alone. Child support is, we argue, therefore owed not to the child but to whoever has to bear this burden, and most often this will be the mother. This material relationship is, therefore, primarily one with the mother (or whoever has the financial burden of caring for the child).

In many paternal relationships, however, fatherhood is not fragmented along these lines and the ‘moral father’ not only cares for the child practically and emotionally, but is also the causal father, and shares financial/material responsibility for her upbringing with the mother. Through being a moral father, we argue, a man acquires ‘paternal rights’, including the right to make decisions that affect the child's life. Only a man who demonstrates he is able to act responsibly as a father and look after the interests of a child should have parental rights (including, for example, the right to determine residency, to take decisions about schooling and healthcare, etc.). This claim is premised on the notion that parental rights are, in essence, significant powers over a child, and that such power is only legitimately held, and wielded, by a person who has demonstrated a loving commitment to a child. A sufficient commitment, we believe, is demonstrated by a man taking on the role of ‘moral father’, and actively taking on and discharging parental responsibility.

But not all moral fathers are also progenitors. Social changes (like relationships between adults that are less enduring than traditional life-long marriage, adoption and assisted conception techniques using donated gametes) have meant that many men now live with, and are fathers to, children to whom they are not genetically related.

We disagree on what this ‘fragmentation’ means for the definition of fatherhood. One of us (Ives) thinks that the term ‘father’ now has different meanings and that we simply need to be clear – using appropriate prefixes (i.e. causal/progenitor, material, moral) to specify which meaning we are referring to. The other (Draper) thinks that there should be only one use of the word ‘father’ – that encompassed by moral fatherhood – and anything less than this should not be referred to as ‘fatherhood’. This disagreement, however, is not over whether these different kinds of relationship exist, or the value we should attach to them, but over what terms should be used to describe them. We are in agreement, for example, that the ‘fragments’ (or components) we have described accurately account for the different kinds of relationship between man and child – we simply disagree over whether or not all of these relationships can be denoted properly by the term ‘father’.

We also agree that there can be more than one (moral) father for a given child, although obviously only one progenitor. (Moral) fatherhood is not exclusive and many fathers in combined families, for instance, share paternal burdens, duties and pleasures with at least one other man. These kinds of arrangements, however, may well be informal, with only one of the men possessing legally recognised parental responsibility.

Tests for fatherhood

Once we are clear about what it is we mean by ‘father’ we can see what kind of tests might be able to tell us which men are fathers, and in what sense, and how markedly these tests differ from a standard paternity test.

If Draper is correct, and the only kind of father is a ‘moral father’, then the test for fatherhood would depend upon the answers to a series of questions about the nature of a man's relationship with a child. These questions would elicit objectively verifiable answers about the provision of care, feelings of responsibility for a child, nurture, moral guidance and love. The answers would suggest a voluntary relationship, motivated by paternal love to protect the interests of the child concerned. The nature of the love might be what distinguishes being a father from other kinds of relationship, e.g. nephew, professional carer or friend (in the case of older children).

If Ives is correct, we may require two further kinds of tests. A test to determine causal fatherhood would focus on establishing which man (if any) stands in a morally relevant causal relationship to the child. In cases of natural reproduction, excluding occurrences of ‘sperm banditry’ (Sheldon 2006) or rape, a paternity test, because it would reveal the progenitor, is an appropriate test of causal fatherhood. Material fatherhood, on the other hand, would be demonstrated by means of having offered and usually also having delivered financial and physical support. 5

Triggers for paternity testing

Given this understanding of fatherhood and means of determining it, when might paternity testing be appropriate? The answer to this question depends in part on what motivates or triggers the test.

Triggers related to the interests of the man

i. A preference for a genetically related child

A man may want to ensure that he is the progenitor before taking on financial and other responsibilities for a child. This preference could be the result of any number of factors: for instance, a general unwillingness to be a parent, a reluctance to increase financial out-goings unnecessarily, the feeling that he is unable to make an emotional investment in a child to whom he is not genetically related or a strong desire not to be cuckolded. Assuming, as we do, that (moral) fatherhood is a voluntary activity, all of these reasons are morally defensible, although not equally laudable. There is no general personal obligation to take responsibility for a newborn whose existence does not originate from some action or negligence of our own. If genetic relatedness matters to whether a man is willing to be a father to a child (material, moral or both), then he is justified in instigating a paternity test before he enters into any kind of paternal relationship. Given that antenatal testing of foetuses using the mother's blood is not yet completely reliable (and given that the test would also require the mother's consent), the first practical opportunity for testing would be at birth.

If, on the other hand, the presence or absence of genetic relatedness is not important to his decision to become a father, he has no reason to request a paternity test. Further, nor he is necessarily obliged to participate in testing before taking on parental responsibilities since (moral) fatherhood is not dependant on being the progenitor.

ii. The possibility of misattributed paternity

Given the current legal association in the UK between genetic relatedness and financial obligation (in the case of natural reproduction), a man might believe that he is justified in avoiding further financial (and perhaps other) responsibilities for a child whom he is already fathering if he can demonstrate that he and the child are not genetically related. Even if, however, the result demonstrated the absence of genetic relatedness this fact alone would not negate future responsibilities to the child because the paternity test is not a test of (moral) fatherhood – but merely a test of causal fatherhood by progenation. Whilst the paternity test may demonstrate that the man did not have the initial personal obligation to take responsibility for the child as a causal father, by virtue of taking on the mantle of (moral) fatherhood he has acquired obligations to the child that cannot now be lightly put aside. Although the financial obligations that are generated by causing a child to exist are owed in the first instance to others (usually the mother) who would otherwise have to shoulder them alone, once (moral) fatherhood has been acquired this obligation passes to the child as part and parcel of protecting his/her interests. Thus, just as the presence of a genetic connection does not make a man a (moral) father, so its absence does not put a stop to (moral) fatherhood.

But what of the man who genuinely believed himself to be the progenitor and, only because of this belief (reinforced by a sense of financial obligation borne from being partially responsible for causing the child to exist), became a (moral) father? Indeed, let us suppose that this man was actually an unwilling father in the sense that his only motivation for becoming one was his sense of obligation to his genetic offspring. Arguably, it would be unfair to impose a continuing obligation because had he known that he was not the progenitor he would not have taken on the responsibility in the first place. We are sympathetic to the view that, because (moral) fatherhood should be acquired voluntarily and because misinformation (deliberate or otherwise) affects voluntariness, there is some degree of unfairness in operation here. This is, however, unfairness that operates independently of the relationship with the child. The unfairness arises from his relationship with the child's mother, as Draper (2007) has argued elsewhere. The lesson to be learned from a case such as this one is not that we should alter our views about fatherhood to accommodate uncomfortable truths about the way adults conduct their relationships. Rather, the lesson is that if it matters to a man that he is genetically related to his child, he should seek a paternity test before becoming a (moral) father. This speaks to the wisdom of seeking the test at the earliest possible opportunity, which in most cases will be at or around the time of the child's birth.

Finally, a distinction must be drawn between paternity testing and infidelity testing. Where a relationship is based on an assumption of monogamy, misattributed paternity is evidence (mistakes in infertility clinics and accidentally switched babies in maternity units aside) of infidelity. Paternity testing could, therefore, be carried out not to establish absence of paternity but to establish infidelity. As we have discussed elsewhere (Ives and Draper 2005), there is a danger that a negative paternity test could result in the loss of legal rights and responsibilities for a child. It could, therefore, be imprudent for a (moral) father to use paternity testing to prove infidelity. Indeed, it could be argued that it would be a failure of paternal virtue for a (moral) father to put in jeopardy his relationship with his child for this reason. This is another reason to keep a clear distinction between relationships between parents and between parents and their child, and between tests for infidelity and paternity testing.

iii. To exclude the claims to fatherhood of another man

As we have just discussed, infidelity (suspected or proven) should not impact on a (moral) father's relationship with his children. Some cases of infidelity, however, may involve a second man who wishes to assert his own claim to be the father of any resulting child. We can distinguish two sets of circumstances here. The first is where the disputed paternity occurs before or near to the birth of the child. The second is when a dispute arises sometime after the birth of the child and when there is already an established (moral) father.

The first type of case is covered by i. above. How matters finally resolve will depend in part on how the relationships between the adults concerned resolve themselves. If the mother and the non-progenitor form a family in which the child will be raised, then it is likely that the non-progenitor will become a (moral) father. However, the progenitor still has a prima facie material obligation, which he might be unwilling to abdicate, and exercising this obligation would, on our model, pave the way to his becoming a (moral) father. He should at least not be prevented from doing so unless this is demonstrably contrary to the interests of the child. In this case, the child will have two (moral) fathers and the onus will be on all the parents to exercise sufficient parental virtue to ensure that their behaviour towards each other does not damage the child's interests. If the mother and the progenitor form a relationship, then there is little scope for the non-progenitor to acquire (moral) fatherhood without the active blessing of the other adults.

With regard to the second kind of circumstance, given the nature of (moral) fatherhood as we have described it, no third party, progenitor or not, can undermine a (moral) father's claim to fatherhood. A paternity test is not a test for (moral) fatherhood, and even if a negative test result was forthcoming this would not affect a (moral) father's status as a (moral) father. It is, therefore, unnecessary – ineffective, even – for a (moral) father to seek a paternity test as a means of excluding another man as a potential father to his child in order to protect his own interests in being a father. Moreover, as we pointed out above, nor is a (moral) father obliged to participate in a test. On the other hand, as we will shortly be discussing, it may be argued that it is in the interests of the child for the matter of her genetic origins to be settled. If this is the case, then the (moral) father may be obliged to capitulate for the sake of his child. If the results show that he is not the progenitor, this does not affect whether or not he is the (moral) father. But, given that the progenitor (as a causal father) may have a material obligation, given that he might not chose to abdicate this obligation to the existing (moral) father, and given that in exercising this obligation he sows the seeds for acquiring (moral) fatherhood, more needs to be said about what follows from the result.

The first point to make is that excluding a third party is not necessary in order to maintain and protect the paternal interests of the existing (moral) father. Next we need to recall that (moral) fatherhood is not necessarily exclusive. This means that an existing (moral) father has no a-priori reason to exclude another potential father. What matters, then, is the a-posteriori fact of whether or not maintaining an exclusive fathering relationship with the child is in the child's interest. The child's interest, here, will of course be closely related to those of the existing parents, and it is likely that if the existing (moral) father was unwilling to admit a second moral father, then doing so would impact negatively on the child to the extent that it would be preferable to maintain the original, exclusive, family unit. On the other hand, given that the justification for our hypothetical test was that it was in the interests of the child to know his/her genetic origins, the (moral) father may have to do his best (parental virtue comes into play again here) to accommodate some kind of relationship with the progenitor.

This brings us to a discussion of whether paternity testing can be justified in the interests of the child.

Triggers related to the interests of the child

Modern paternity testing is a very minor procedure requiring only that cells are taken by a swab on the inside of the cheek. This is hardly a serious intervention and is probably less distressing to even the most reluctant minor than having her teeth cleaned against her will. It is not, therefore, the intervention itself which generates questions about the child's interests but the potential impact of the test results, or the significance of information that will remain unknown if the test is not conducted.

It is often simply asserted that a child has an interest in knowing her genetic origins, although whether this interest should have the status of a right is open to question (Draper 2005). Moreover, it may be unclear what precisely this interest amounts to, especially when the results are unlikely to alter the immediate relationships she has with the adults concerned, or can only alter them in a way that is likely to be detrimental (as, e.g., in the case of misattributed paternity when an existing father severs his relationship with the child concerned). An interest in knowing one's genetic origins is sometimes regarded as the inverse of the harm caused by not knowing where, or from whom, one originates. Whether one's identity is actually dependent on knowing one's genetic history, and whether or not knowing leads to any kind of tangible harm, can probably not be demonstrated a-priori; but many people do feel this way (Whipp 1998, Adie 2005, Turner and Coyle 2000). This implies that there is not a necessary connection between knowledge of genetic history and a satisfactory sense of identity but, rather, that this connection is contingent upon the perspective of the particular individual. It is, therefore, too simplistic to say that all children need to know their genetic history – and more accurate to say that some people come to feel it is vitally important to them to have this information, whilst others may not.

As Draper (2005) notes, however, the interest described in the previous paragraph in knowing genetic origins is often shorthand for something more substantial. In the case of people conceived as a result of gamete donation, or of those who were adopted as infants, knowing one's genetic origins is about being able to meet and form relationships with the adults concerned, and can lead to a sense of being entitled to know about and have the opportunity to meet and form relationships with hitherto unknown genetic siblings. Simply identifying genetic parents or siblings may not be sufficient to satiate ‘genealogical bewilderment’. Rather, there may be an expectation that the identified individuals should also be willing to form a relationship, and this requires at least some degree of cooperation. No-one can be forced to have a meaningful relationship with either an adult or a child, and thus simply identifying a genetic connection is not sufficient to establish the substantial relationship that donor-conceived or adopted people often seek with their genetic relatives. It is somewhat ironic that what people may want, and expect, to flow from this kind of genetic information is some form of social relationship. Underlying this may be the assumption that genetic relationships act as natural facilitator of social relationships and, as we (Ives et al. 2008) have observed in fathers, this suggests that in some cases genetic relationships are not valued for themselves but for what they are thought to represent socially. Genetics are, in this sense, instrumentally, rather than intrinsically, valuable.

The fact that the wish to know one's genetic history is so often coupled with the wish to form substantial relationships means that knowledge comes with the risk of the harm of rejection if genetic parents or siblings do not wish to form a relationship. This is especially problematic if the decision to perform a test is based upon the oblique assumption that having the knowledge about identity will lead to having a relationship with those identified. It is impossible to determine, in advance, if the harm from not knowing is greater than the harm of knowing and being rejected. These potential harms seem insufficient to warrant banning paternity testing, but neither are the potential benefits sufficient to warrant making it compulsory. Both are, however, sufficiently serious not lightly to assume that it is always in a child's interest to know.

Given that the harms of not knowing one's genetic history and the benefits of knowing are equally contingent and none are guaranteed, it may be appropriate to apply the same criteria to paternity testing as are applied to genetic testing for late-onset genetic conditions (Clarke 1994). The offer of testing, and the decision to test, should (immediate and urgent need for medical treatment aside) be deferred until adulthood, or until the child reaches a level of maturity when she could make her own informed choice based upon the significance she attaches to her genetic origins.

Arguably, things are different when the child is very young and the outcome of the test may have the effect of turning a reluctant father into a willing one: minors do have a clear interest in having willing and good parents. Accordingly, it may be in the interest of an infant for a paternity test to be performed to persuade a man to take a financial and emotional interest in her upbringing. It is less clear that it is in the interests of a minor for the test to be performed to justify taking punitive action against an unwilling man that will force him to provide financial support that would otherwise have been provided by the state. It makes no difference to the infant what the source of the financial support is if the amounts are roughly equal and if the results do not cause the man to reconsider his reluctance to fulfil other roles associated with being a (moral) father. Unless the amount of financial support being sought will make a difference to the life of the child, the issue of child support alone would not seem to pass the best interest (of the child) test, given that we, in the UK, live in welfare state. It may be in the interest of the state to instigate paternity testing if doing so would reduce the welfare burden, but the interests of the state do not always coincide with the interests of an individual child, and the two sets of interests should not be conflated.

Courts in the UK are obliged to make the interests of the child their paramount concern. Whilst it is often assumed that parents will act in the best interests of their children, they cannot be similarly obliged to regard the interests of their child as paramount in all circumstances. Parents may have obligations to more than one child and may have to prioritise the interests of one child over those of another. Similarly, especially in the case of more trivial decisions, it is usually morally sufficient for parents to act in a manner that does not seriously compromise the interests of their child. At other times, the interests of parent and child may be in tension; for example, when the parent has to choose between a much longed for promotion or personal relationship that, to be successful, requires moving many miles away from the child's current school and friends, perhaps disturbing his study for significant adolescent exams. Parents generally make these kinds of choices without interference from the courts. Paternity testing can present similar kinds of tensions between the interests of parents and children.

Obtaining certainty in the case of misattributed paternity is one such example. Misattributed paternity often emerges in the context of the breakdown of relationships. It may provide concrete evidence of infidelity and spousal deception. A man who believes in honesty and fidelity in relationships may have a strong interest in the certainty that a paternity test may provide. But is this sufficient reason to consent on behalf of a minor to a paternity test? Another example is where a man values biological information for its own sake – perhaps along the lines described by Waldby (2002). In cases such as these, the value of this information to the man must be weighed against the potential for harm the information might bring to the child.

These kinds of scenario test the significance of both the interests of the minor in such decisions, and also the significance of genetic origins per se. If a minor has a longstanding relationship with her (moral) father, she clearly has no interest in this relationship being unsettled. Given our definition of (moral) fatherhood, there is no ‘truth’ to learn about who her father is. A paternity test may only demonstrate who her progenitor is not. Even if a potential material provider and aspiring (moral) father is waiting in the wings it is no easy matter to exchange one (moral) father for another (Kaebnick 2004), though the child could benefit from having two (moral) fathers.

We close with two observations about paternity testing instigated by (moral) fathers. In the case of minors, parental consent or a decision of the court is required before testing can take place. 6Any decision made should reflect the interests of the child concerned. We have argued that the harm of not knowing one's genetic origins is a contingent harm and it should not, therefore, be assumed that all children will benefit from knowing their genetic history in all circumstances. For this reason we have argued that acquiring knowledge about genetic origins should, all things being equal, be treated like knowledge of late onset genetic disorders – something best left for the child to decide for him/herself once he/she is sufficiently mature to do so. Our first observation is that for this reason there will be few circumstances where a (moral) father ought legitimately to consent to paternity testing. Our second is that if the purpose of the test is to establish the absence of genetic relatedness with a view to presenting this as justification for ceasing to behave as a (moral) father, not only is this an erroneous justification (as we argued above) but his motivation undermines his moral authority to make the decision. Given that the authority for consenting on the child's behalf is derived from his status as the child's (moral) father, and given that his intention in instigating the test is not to serve the child's interests but rather to demonstrate that he is not after all her father, it is difficult to see how this man has the moral authority to consent for the test on behalf of the child, regardless of whether the law regards him as a person with parental responsibility.

Conclusions

We have argued that there are few morally acceptable justifications for a man to seek a paternity test. Given the relationship between material responsibility and the burdens generated by the creation of a needy child, it is not unreasonable for a man to seek to establish that he has been party to the creation of a child before accepting this financial responsibility. Some men are willing to become (material and moral) fathers to children irrespective of their involvement in the children's creation and whether or not there is a genetic relationship. Others feel differently. Given that parenting is a life-long commitment it is not unreasonable for those for whom genetic relatedness matters to request a paternity test to establish genetic relatedness prior to making it.

Once a man has become a (moral) father, however, we see no justification for initiating paternity testing, save in the interests of the child. Where it is not clearly in the interests of the child for her genetic origins to be established (urgent medical needs might be one such justification) we have argued that this is a decision that can be left for the child to make for herself when she is sufficiently mature. There is no justification for performing infidelity testing on a child. Because fatherhood is not contingent on genetic relatedness, suspicion of misattributed paternity is no justification for paternity testing.

On the other hand, a (moral) father ought not to feel that his position as a parent can be undermined by another man seeking a paternity test, even though this may result in the child having two (moral) fathers. In cases like this, however, both parties should consider the interests of the child, particularly as what is at stake here is the right to parent, which ought properly to be located in the exercise of the desire to be a responsible and loving parent.

The justifications for, and problems with, paternity testing suggest that it is something best sought by men antenatally, 7at birth or not at all.

Notes

Here we use ‘interest’ to mean a moral interest. This can be distinguished from interest as in a hobby or the like. Interests are not always to be equated with desires. Many people desire that which they have an interest in – continuing to live might be an example here. But not everything that we desire can be regarded as an interest simply because it is desired. Having an interest provides others with a moral reason to take this interest seriously, but it is not necessarily the same as asserting a right to it. That someone has an interest does not necessarily mean that this interest cannot be outweighed by the interests of someone else.

In making this argument, we recognise that people may desire to know the results of all kinds of genetic tests on other people for a variety of reasons. Waldby (2002), for instance, observes the value that people place on genetic information – its ‘biovalue’. Likewise, the information may be used to inform medical decisions or other major life choices (for instance, whether or not to have children or whether to save for the future or enjoy the present). And some people are enormously curious about their actual and potential genetic relationships with other people. In this paper we cannot evaluate every potential reason for seeking a test that provides genetic information, or even all kinds of genetic tests. We recognise that individuals might have a multitude of reasons to acquire a specific piece of genetic information or may value certain kinds of genetic relationships – perhaps without having reflected on whether this value is warranted. Rather, we are targeting particular justifications for a particular kind of test.

We should note that ‘under most circumstances’ is intended to exclude ‘thin’ causality – that which is insufficient to generate a moral responsibility for the child's existence. So, for example, both the fertility specialist and a gamete donor may play some causal role in the creation of a child, but this causal role is too thin to generate a moral responsibility for the child's existence. In this case, responsibility lies with the parents who initiated the parenting project since without their instigation neither the skills in infertility treatment nor the donated gametes would have been required or put to use.

See Fulscaldo (2006), Austin (2007) and Weinberg (2008) for good discussions of causal arguments of moral responsibility in relation to fatherhood.

Material fatherhood would usually be established on basis of providing physical support (or the means to it), but it may be sufficient to have shown willingness to do so – for example where disability prevents a man from being able to provide it.

In the UK, the consent of all parties to the test is required; The Human Tissue Act 2004 criminalised non-consensual DNA testing. Our point here is not related to the consent required from the adults concerned for the comparison with their own genetic material, but rather centres on consent for the child's tissue to be tested.

Assuming that this can be done using maternal blood sample.

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Draper, H., 2007. Paternity fraud and compensation for misattributed paternity. Journal medical ethics, 33, 475–480.

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Johnson, M., 2004. 21st January 2004: donor anonymity and review [online]. Available from: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/News/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH_4071490 [Accessed 16 June 2009].

Kaebnick, G., 2004. The natural father: genetic testing, marriage and fatherhood. Cambridge quarterly on healthcare ethics, 13, 49–60.

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#paternity testing #fatherhood #moral interest #genetic relatedness #ethics #family #moral fatherhood #deception #genetics #children's rights

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adoptiondetectivejudithland · 6 years

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“What’s an Adoption Detective?”

“An adoption detective is an individual who researches biological and genetic connections between individuals. They conduct searches of public and private records, research historical documents, and interview persons of interest for the purpose of uncovering genealogical information linking biologically related individuals, persons related by marriage, foster parents, and other key contacts.”…

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#ADOPTION #Adoption Detective #Adoption Search #children #genealogical bewilderment #Judith Land #Parenting

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ofbloodandfaith · 5 years

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Caradog ap Bran (sometimes spelled as Caradoc) is the son of the British king Bran the Blessed in Welsh mythology and literature, who appears most prominently in the second branch of the Mabinogi, the tale of Branwen ferch Llŷr. He is further mentioned in the Welsh Triads and in certain medieval Welsh genealogies. Caradog is the grandson of the sea god Llŷr, the nephew of Manawydan, Branwen, Efnisien and Nisien. Role in Welsh tradition The Irish king Matholwch sails to Harlech to speak with Bran the Blessed, high king of the Island of the Mighty and to ask for the hand of his sister Branwen in marriage, thus forging an alliance between the two islands. Bendigeidfran agrees to Matholwch's request, but the celebrations are cut short when Efnisien, a half-brother to the children of Llŷr, brutally mutilates Matholwch's horses, angry that his permission was not sought in regards to the marriage. Matholwch is deeply offended until Bran offers him compensation in the form of a magic cauldron that can restore the dead to life. Pleased with the gift, Matholwch and Branwen sail back to Ireland to reign. Once in Matholwch's kingdom, Branwen gives birth to a son, Gwern, but Efnysien's insult continues to rankle among the Irish and, eventually, Branwen is mistreated, banished to the kingdom and beaten every day. She tames a starling and sends it across the Irish Sea with a message to her brother Bendigeidfran, who raises a huge host in preparation for invasion. A council is held among the British and it is decided that seven men should stay behind to defend Britain; Bran's son Caradog is given seniority over the chieftains, namely Hefeydd the Tall, Unig Strong Shoulder, Iddig ab Anarawd, Ffodor ab Erfyll, Wlch Bone Lip, Llassar fab Llasar Llaes Gyngwyd and Pendaran Dyfed. Bran's host sails across the Irish Sea. Upon Bran's departure, Caradog and his men are attacked by his uncle, Caswallawn fab Beli, who murders Caradog's men whilst concealed by a cloak of invisibility. Caradog, whom Caswallawn had not intended to kill, breaks his heart in despair at the deaths of his kinsmen, and Caswallawn ascends to the throne. Caradog's paternal uncle Manawydan learns of his nephew's death upon his return from Ireland and submits to the usurper. The triads allude to both Caradog's role as a defender of Britain and to his death; Triad 13 names him as one of the Chief Defenders of Britain, while Triad 95 refers to him as one of the three people who broke their hearts out of bewilderment.

Caradog ap Bran - Wikipedia

#Cymraeg polytheism #welsh polytheism #welsh myth #welsh folklore #welsh magic #iolo morganwg is most likely a fake #for love of Llyr #the children of darkness have my soul #manawydan #Bran the blessed #Branwyn #rhiannon #ceridwen #pryderi arawn

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njawaidofficial · 6 years

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The Rachel Dolezal Documentary Isn’t Going To Change Anyone’s Mind

https://styleveryday.com/the-rachel-dolezal-documentary-isnt-going-to-change-anyones-mind/

The Rachel Dolezal Documentary Isn’t Going To Change Anyone’s Mind

Rachel Dolezal in The Rachel Divide.

Netflix

Rachel Dolezal, the white woman whose deliberate misidentification as a black woman was notoriously uncovered in a Spokane, Washington, local news interview that went viral in 2015, is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, The Rachel Divide, which premiered Friday. When the film was announced early last month alongside a trailer, it struck a nerve on social media. Many wanted to know why Dolezal, who has become nothing short of an infamous pariah, warranted the focus of an entire documentary, especially within an industry where actual black women are underrepresented.

Much ink has been spilled, along with head scratching and expended energy, trying to understand who Dolezal is and what she wants from claiming blackness. But given a shift in the political mood since Dolezal first entered the national conversation, the weariness surrounding The Rachel Divide is justifiable: No one, it seems, asked for this. It’s easy enough to understand why: Dolezal is a spectacle who takes up more space than many believe she should — so do we really need a documentary about her? The question is as much practical as it is moral. There are plenty of subjects worthy of the documentary treatment (and resources to make them), but here, a white woman masquerading as black has been given the green light instead.

That fact was not lost on The Rachel Divide director Laura Brownson (Lemon, The Rainmaker), who shot the film over two years, beginning just over a month after Dolezal’s “outing” as a white woman. Brownson made it clear that she’s aware there needs to be more films by black women and films that tell black women’s stories. She also said she made choices in The Rachel Divide itself to be inclusive. “People don’t just object to Rachel Dolezal for one reason; they have many reasons, one of which is she steals the spotlight from more deserving black women. So, creatively, I felt like it was important to include that,” Brownson told BuzzFeed News, a hint of fatigue in her voice that persisted throughout our interview.

The film is filled with a wide array of voices, from Kitara Johnson and LaToya Brackett, both of whom are black women and Dolezal’s former colleagues from when she led Spokane’s NAACP chapter, to KXLY reporter Jeff Humphrey, who finally exposed Dolezal as white. Her family is also heavily present in the film, painting a somber picture of the impact of Dolezal’s choices on them, and revealing the potential connection between her upbringing and these choices. We see her in intimate settings and public spaces as she navigates her newfound infamy, and her almost pathological confusion as to why society won’t accept her as a “transracial” black woman.

But even as The Rachel Divide provides a sometimes damning and sometimes troubling portrayal of its main character, it stops short of dehumanizing her. Which perhaps, as a white woman, Dolezal would never have been subjected to anyway. There are moments, too, that arouse sympathy — but not the kind that make you want to embrace her. Instead, they’re the kind that leave you hoping she finds the root of whatever it is that haunts or taunts her so she may rejoin the reality the rest of us live in.

For all the fascination surrounding Dolezal, and all the weariness The Rachel Divide may bring, as an intellectual exercise the film may test one’s individual openness to asking questions — without necessarily answering them — about what Dolezal means to a larger discussion on race in America. These are questions that go further than the obvious discussion of Dolezal’s white privilege in attempting to pass as black. One question, in particular, stands out: What does it say about blackness — created in opposition to whiteness, and historically based on the one-drop rule — that Dolezal attempted, and briefly executed, “passing” turned on its head?

Despite Dolezal’s cartoonish persona in our cultural imagination, there aren’t many funny moments in The Rachel Divide. The film mostly evokes a mixed response of discomfort, awe, second-hand embarrassment, and bewilderment. But there is a scene where Dolezal is talking to a black friend, discussing how to navigate being so disliked, to which her friend responds, “Everyone already hates you, so you might as well go on being yourself.” It’s a humorous moment that is telling of Dolezal’s character in the film and beyond — she is committed to living her life as transracial, that much is clear. Brownson, too, can attest to this. “I probably believed that there would be a more traditional character arc with Rachel,” she said. “I did not expect that she would remain as resolute as she has, and so I learned that Rachel as a human being, really sticks to her story. … She doubles down rather than backs up or readjusts.”

Watching The Rachel Divide with any expectation that Dolezal will have an epiphany is futile — it simply does not come. Despite the social costs to her family, her standing as a public outcast, and the loss of not one but two of her jobs — and job opportunities in general (in the film, she does hair to make ends meet) — Dolezal confirms her status as an unsympathetic character who is unapologetic for her transgressions. The only significant change is that if her wrongdoings seemed minor before, they now take on an enormity that goes beyond simple deception.

To date, writer Ijeoma Oluo has produced the most satisfying piece on Dolezal. Oluo describes Dolezal’s attempt to pass as black as a function of “white supremacy that told an unhappy and outcast white woman that black identity was hers for the taking.” It’s a powerful reading of Dolezal and the media’s fascination with her, and it allows us to come to terms with the unique Americanness of Dolezal’s identity claims.

In thinking of Dolezal’s passing as stemming from white supremacy, the connection to another feature of race in the context of US history becomes clear: blackness and the one-drop rule. Blackness, as Western history defines it, is in opposition to whiteness, in order to keep the latter “pure.” The consequence of this desire for white purity manifested in the United States’ one-drop rule — the concept that anyone with any heritage from sub-Saharan Africa is black. The effective result of the one-drop rule is that blackness, unlike whiteness, is not based on an idea of purity. Instead, blackness is open and inclusive because it has had to be to survive, at least in its American construction.

While Oluo, who spent time with Dolezal, says she “looks really, really white,” it is not beyond the imagination to come into contact with a black person, who, both because of the one-drop rule, and even without it — in say, someone who can trace a majority sub-Saharan ancestry — looks like Dolezal and is accepted as black. Of course, someone with that complexion may “pass,” according to the historical understanding of passing, where a black person’s complexion allows them to be seen or identify as white. It’s a lesser-known part of black history in the US, and perhaps one that Dolezal weaponized in her attempt to pass as a black woman.

“I think that is what pisses me off about Rachel Dolezal so much, is that she was kind of able to take advantage of [the inclusivity of blackness] and the fact that black families look different. … She took advantage of families that look like mine.”

Medium editor Stephanie Georgopulos wrote about passing in 2013 in a piece titled “Coming Out as Biracial.” (Georgopulos and I are friendly acquaintances from media and publishing.) In her piece, Georgopulos, who is biracial and white-passing, describes having white privilege without knowing a fully white or black experience. Georgopulos recently told BuzzFeed News that when she encountered Dolezal in the same way the public did — via the internet — she experienced a feeling of being “torn down,” and having to examine, “Am I like this person?” But Georgopulos also knows that because of her genetic and cultural ties, she is not. “I’ve always felt, other black people, regardless of what color their skin is, can spot each other. I think that is what pisses me off about Rachel Dolezal so much, is that she was kind of able to take advantage of [the inclusivity of blackness] and the fact that black families look different. … She took advantage of families that look like mine.”

Of course blackness is about much more than presentation and even genealogy — it’s about the many different cultures and subcultures of being black. It’s also about a myriad of black experiences and the suffering that accompanies navigating those experiences. Early on in theThe Rachel Divide, Dolezal’s colleagues at the NAACP paint a picture of a woman who utilized her black sons as conduits to claims of black oppression in order to affirm her (false) blackness. Later in the film, in a scene where Dolezal is a guest discussing what it means to be transracial at a college campus, a woman in the audience challenges Dolezal’s self-proclaimed blackness. Unlike Dolezal, the woman says she has “earned” the right to call herself a black woman because of a litany of negative black experiences she lists, such as being followed in a store.

Black experiences continue to be defined by this sort of suffering, known as “the suffering test,” which relies on the presentation of being seen as visibly black. Setting aside the frustration of defining blackness by pain, what else does this implicate? If our definition of blackness rests on visibility even more than genealogy, then blackness would not be as inclusive as it is now — it would exclude those who pass as white and, perhaps, more. If we then discount visibility in our construction of blackness — and therefore the experiences that might accompany it — and consider only genealogy, do we perpetuate the one-drop rule, despite its connectedness to preserving whiteness and white supremacy? That may result in even the whitest of white people, among other groups, claiming blackness because of some percentage of sub-Saharan African genetic ancestry. Or to avoid that scenario, blackness may exercise a limit to claims on identification based on a random percentage of African ancestry. But even if we could determine what would be the “right” percentage, blackness would lose its inclusivity.

The social construction of race means that there are real consequences of race — such as racism, racial hierarchy, and the racial categories and groups we use today. By definition, groups are exclusive entities where some people are left in and some are left out. We know that whiteness is exclusive, and has gone through great and violent lengths to maintain that exclusivity. And we know where blackness begins, and despite all of Dolezal’s attempts, we know what it is not — it is not her. But in watching The Rachel Divide, and thinking of all the black people who look like this white woman or pass for white, do we know where blackness ends? The inclusivity of blackness is its greatest strength, but is it also a weakness that allows imposters like Dolezal to assume what looks like the final form of cultural appropriation?

Rachel Dolezal with her sons, Izaiah (left) and Franklin (right), after her interview on NBC’s Today show studios in New York City in 2015.

Stephanie Keith / Reuters

At the beginning of the documentary, Izaiah, Dolezal’s adopted brother who became her adopted son, and Franklin, her other young teenage son, are understandably defensive of their mother. By the conclusion of the film, Izaiah is off to Spain seemingly to get away from it all, while Franklin appears to be exasperated by both the filming and his mother’s status as a pariah, and just wants an end to the circus that has become part of their lives. Dolezal is also shown as pregnant, and later, with a healthy baby boy, agonizing over how to racially identify him in what appears to be official forms. Though the boy’s father is black, Dolezal says that in the state of Washington, a child’s race is automatically the mother’s race. (An official at the Washington State Department of Health told BuzzFeed News “that it does not collect the infant’s race on the birth certificate” or “assign a race to the infant.”) On the forms that Dolezal completes, she eventually decides on putting both both black and white for the newborn.

Dolezal’s adopted black sister Esther also appears frequently in the film, and credits Dolezal with introducing her and their other black siblings to some understanding of black culture, and helping her get away from their parents. Esther, Dolezal, and Izaiah all say their parents beat them and their siblings throughout their childhood (although their parents have denied this in previous media interviews). What’s more, Esther said her parents’ eldest son, Joshua, sexually abused her as a child — an allegation that led to Joshua being charged with four counts of sexual assault in Colorado in June 2015. The charges were later dismissed in August of the same year, soon after Dolezal’s identity became national news.

Along with her siblings, Dolezal tells the story of a questionable if not sordid upbringing by her biological parents, Ruthanne and Larry, who, in 2015, confirmed that their daughter is white. Born and raised in Montana, the Dolezals grew up in a strict, fundamentalist Pentecostal home. Fostered by a calling from God, Dolezal’s parents adopted four black children. As Dolezal and Esther recounted the stories of their peculiar childhood in the film, it’s not a reach of the imagination to connect the dots between Dolezal seeing her black siblings as people to save from her parents, and Dolezal seeing their blackness as a way to save herself. Her upbringing, apparently, has as much to do with Dolezal’s claims of blackness as white privilege and white saviorism do. This possible hypothesis, not explicitly made in the film, is certainly stupefying, and perhaps even a stretch because of Dolezal’s own obfuscation of the truth. But against the backdrop of any attempt to understand Dolezal here, it’s a conceivable theory that stands alongside Dolezal’s own whiteness, and also one that comes to life in the film, prompted by Brownson, when Dolezal is at a particularly low point.

“And you know, the harder I sort of pushed Rachel, the harder she pushed back. She does not change.”

“I felt for two years that Rachel sort of stayed Rachel, and there was a moment where I felt that I really needed to confront her with, This is what I’m seeing in the world, and this is what I think the world would like to see from you and to see you do, and to, perhaps, watch you change. And you know, the harder I sort of pushed Rachel, the harder she pushed back. She does not change,” Brownson said.

In tears, Dolezal suggests to Brownson — only known by her voice, invisible in the scene — that a reversal in her decision would mean her parents’ triumph.

“But in that interview, there’s this nugget where she says, I can’t go back to being white because I can’t go back to being Amish, wearing Amish dresses, and letting my parents win. And I do think that is really the kernel of all of this,” Brownson added. “It doesn’t let her off the hook necessarily by including that. I’m saying that I do believe that’s how she got to where she did. Had her parents not adopted black children, I don’t think Rachel would be who she is.”

But neither The Rachel Divide nor Rachel Dolezal herself is needed for conversations on blackness or whiteness or passing or race. Yet, if the audience can view the documentary, despite its subject, as an opportunity for an intellectual exercise, then it can contribute to larger discussions about race. Still, that may be asking too much of an audience that is likely fed up with the documentary’s central character before they even watch the film — and that might find her completely odious after it.

Rachel Dolezal in The Rachel Divide.

Netflix

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annerase-blog · 7 years

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Amy was conceived through sperm donation, and though she had recently learned the identity of her biological father, she did not particularly want to meet him. "I never understood the collective obsession with genetic heritage ... We all know what it is to yearn for more, and to question our place in the world. Most people eventually develop a sense of place and personhood, or at least learn to live with feelings of uncertainty." A person's confusion and distress over not knowing their biological mother or father is known in mental health literature as "genealogical bewilderment". Some donor children talk about being "freaks" or "products of experiments" or somehow "incomplete". Amy's story shows this is not always the case, and the sense of being incomplete is very much a product of culture - the intersection of our growing fascination with gene technology, and age-old knotty questions of identity: What makes me, me? www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/a-daughters-search-for-her-anonymous-sperm-donor-father/7201012 (at Victoria)

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twitter-pch · 12 years

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#adoption #genealogical_bewilderment "The loss of the thread of family continuity, a deep identification with his ancestors whose genes are stamped into every cell of his body, contributes to the sense of insecurity felt by the adoptee. No matter how competent and loving the adoptive mother, the child shares no genetic history with her. He is deprived of that primitive relationship with the mother with whom he did share that history

"Adoptees are sometimes preoccupied with existential concerns. Being disconnected from his genetic heritage and randomly placed in another milieu causes him to lose any sense of the rightness of things. Rather he feels that life is purposeless, chaotic, and irrational, without order or meaning. This causes difficulties in his spiritual life, and poses problems in making significant choices, such as a career or a mate. The wish to search for birth parents becomes a means by which he may attempt to end the chaos, alienation, and isolation which result from the break in his genealogical history. Often the death of an adoptive parent or the birth of his own biological child will bring on an even deeper sense of genealogical bewilderment and a wish to search for birth parents.

"The search for identity, which commonly takes place during adolescence and early adulthood, is a time of conflict and dissent for most parents and their children. For adoptees, however, there is the added complication of not having any genealogical connection to the people who reared them. Even if they want to identify with their adoptive parents, the personality traits which they inherited from their birth parents may make this very difficult. On clinician put it this way: 'Adoptees have a Swiss-cheese identity--there are a lot of holes in it.' When physical appearance, personality, and ethnicity or culture are also different, each of these aspects makes identity with the adoptive parents that much more difficult.

"This lack of personal identity precludes having a sense of belonging to the greater society. The question becomes, on a more global scale, 'Where do I fit in?'..."

— Nancy Newton Verrier, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, c.1993, pp. 102-103.

#genealogical bewilderment #adoption #adoptee #identity

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Heather Draper & Jonathan Ives, Paternity testing: a poor test of fatherhood, 31 J Soc Welfare & Family Law 407 (2009)

Abstract

The justifications for, and problems with, paternity testing suggest that it is something men should seek antenatally, at birth or not at all.

In this paper we explore some of the ethical and conceptual problems associated with paternity testing. We explore two triggers for testing – the interests 1 the man has as a father/potential father and the interests of the child. We argue that both of these triggers highlight difficulties with the ways in which paternity testing is sometimes justified, which are especially apparent when a man seeks a paternity test after a paternal relationship has already been formed. We conclude that specifically paternity testing should be performed at birth, antenatally, or not at all. 2

We will begin by discussing, in the context of some recent empirical research, what we mean by ‘father’.

What is a father?

Being a ‘progenitor’ – the one who provides the sperm – may be significant in terms of providing a moral reason for becoming either a material or moral father but it lacks any normative value. Rather, what is important to ‘fatherhood’ is the formation and continuation of a particular kind of relationship, which is distinct from biological kinship. (Ives et al. 2008, p. 82) Causing a child to exist carries, under most circumstances 3 , an obligation to ensure that the material costs of raising the child are met, and this is premised on the notion that a person is morally responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their voluntary actions. 4 Whilst we acknowledge that causal fatherhood incurs moral responsibilities, our claim that it nonetheless lacks normative value is based on our empirical work that found progenation itself is not valued as a moral ideal, and where it is valued it is valued instrumentally – for what it is thought to achieve socially (Ives et al. 2008). Genetic relationships, in this sense, can generate moral responsibilities without being intrinsically valuable in themselves. Our argument is that even if a man has no desire to be a moral father, and even if the conception was unintended, there is a duty of justice to ensure that the other party to the procreation is not left to carry the financial burden of caring for the resulting child alone. Child support is, we argue, therefore owed not to the child but to whoever has to bear this burden, and most often this will be the mother. This material relationship is, therefore, primarily one with the mother (or whoever has the financial burden of caring for the child).

Tests for fatherhood

Triggers for paternity testing

Given this understanding of fatherhood and means of determining it, when might paternity testing be appropriate? The answer to this question depends in part on what motivates or triggers the test.

Triggers related to the interests of the man

i. A preference for a genetically related child

ii. The possibility of misattributed paternity

iii. To exclude the claims to fatherhood of another man

This brings us to a discussion of whether paternity testing can be justified in the interests of the child.

Triggers related to the interests of the child

We close with two observations about paternity testing instigated by (moral) fathers. In the case of minors, parental consent or a decision of the court is required before testing can take place. 6 Any decision made should reflect the interests of the child concerned. We have argued that the harm of not knowing one's genetic origins is a contingent harm and it should not, therefore, be assumed that all children will benefit from knowing their genetic history in all circumstances. For this reason we have argued that acquiring knowledge about genetic origins should, all things being equal, be treated like knowledge of late onset genetic disorders – something best left for the child to decide for him/herself once he/she is sufficiently mature to do so. Our first observation is that for this reason there will be few circumstances where a (moral) father ought legitimately to consent to paternity testing. Our second is that if the purpose of the test is to establish the absence of genetic relatedness with a view to presenting this as justification for ceasing to behave as a (moral) father, not only is this an erroneous justification (as we argued above) but his motivation undermines his moral authority to make the decision. Given that the authority for consenting on the child's behalf is derived from his status as the child's (moral) father, and given that his intention in instigating the test is not to serve the child's interests but rather to demonstrate that he is not after all her father, it is difficult to see how this man has the moral authority to consent for the test on behalf of the child, regardless of whether the law regards him as a person with parental responsibility.

Conclusions

The justifications for, and problems with, paternity testing suggest that it is something best sought by men antenatally, Here we use ‘interest’ to mean a moral interest. This can be distinguished from interest as in a hobby or the like. Interests are not always to be equated with desires. Many people desire that which they have an interest in – continuing to live might be an example here. But not everything that we desire can be regarded as an interest simply because it is desired. Having an interest provides others with a moral reason to take this interest seriously, but it is not necessarily the same as asserting a right to it. That someone has an interest does not necessarily mean that this interest cannot be outweighed by the interests of someone else. 7 at birth or not at all.

Notes

See Fulscaldo (2006), Austin (2007) and Weinberg (2008) for good discussions of causal arguments of moral responsibility in relation to fatherhood.

Assuming that this can be done using maternal blood sample.

References

#paternity #family #parenting #paternity testing #fatherhood #human reproduction #families #moral interest #genetic relatedness #moral fatherhood #law #consent #ethics #child welfare #best interests of the child #deception #paternity deception

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