#reproductive exploitation

[a-room-of-my-own]

A same-sex couple has filed a lawsuit against a Pasadena in-vitro fertilization clinic, claiming that their hopes of having a son were hampered after a female embryo was wrongly implanted in their surrogate and they instead had a daughter born in 2021.

Albert and Anthony Saniger filed the lawsuit against HRC Fertility and fertility specialist Dr. Bradford A Kolb, alleging breach of contract, medical malpractice, negligence and fraudulent concealment and violation of the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

The suit was brought on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages.

HRC released a statement saying, "At HRC Fertility, our mission is to provide world-class care. We have helped thousands of people, including the couple involved in this lawsuit. The couple ideally desired a baby boy but were blessed with a healthy girl. To their dissatisfaction, we have sought to address their concerns. Every child has value and limitless potential regardless of gender."

"We hope the Sanigers find love and value in their healthy child while so many across the country are struggling with reproductive issues. Since 1988, we have remained and continue to remain, dedicated to helping hopeful parents build families through assisted reproductive technology, compassion, expertise, innovation, cutting edge research and personalized care."

The Sanigers, married in 2013, dreamed of having two children, both sons, the suit states. Before they were wed, the couple chose first and middle names for their future sons in May 2015 and created Gmail accounts for their future offspring with their first and last names, according to the lawsuit.

Throughout the process, the couple was explicit with HRC and Kolb that they wanted only male embryos transferred to their surrogate and the defendants represented that the Sanigers would get to select the exact embryos, which had an identified gender, to be used in each transfer, the suit states.

Instead, the suit states, HRC and Kolb "negligently, recklessly, and/or intentionally transferred a female embryo to the Sanigers' gestational carrier."

HRC "specifically targets" families in the LGBTQ community and its website says the clinic is "dedicated to helping the gay and lesbian community achieve their dreams of parenthood," according to the lawsuit.

HRC's website also states that Kolb is internationally known for his expertise in complex reproductive matters and that patients come from around the world to seek his services, the suit states. The website further states that Kolb's practice is known for helping to develop and implement cutting-edge technologies in the genetic screening of embryos and the development of new laboratory technologies, according to the suit.

IVF is a particularly expensive process for male gay couples who must arrange for their children to be carried to term by a gestational carrier, the suit states. In May 2020, the Sanigers provided their sperm to HRC to create their embryos and arrangements were made for donor eggs and a gestational carrier through a third-party agency at a total cost to the plaintiffs of about $300,000, the suit states.

Unsuccessful transfers occurred in July and September 2020 before their surrogate became pregnant in December of that year, according to the lawsuit.

The Sanigers' daughter was born in 2021, the suit states.

"To this day, HRC has offered no explanation for how this error occurred," the suit states.

The financial impact to the Sanigers is "staggering" because they ultimately will be raising three children rather than the two sons for which they had planned, the suit states.

[taliabhattwrites]

Referring to this as "reproductive exploitation" is more succinct, refreshingly gender-neutral and also cuts to the heart of what the oppressive structure is *imposing* as a social regime instead of naturalizing sex as gestational capacity, especially since (as OP pointed out) the contours of how misogyny affects infertile women and childless women are also reflected in this manner. Women cannot 'opt out' of patriarchy by refraining from reproductive relations, as patriarchy itself is a coercive system designed to press-gang those it sexes as "women" into reproduction, punishing the ones who for any reason refuse the reproductive imperative.

Bonus: This framing gets you a leg up on understanding lesbophobia, anti-transmasculinity and even some aspects of transmisogyny as well, for free!

There is also a wryly funny addendum here, for people to chew on: Transmisogyny is as much "sex-based oppression" as any other aspect of the misogynistic regime.

I wanna rant a little bit about that last post coz like I have feelings about it.

Reproductive rights are a huge part of feminism, but it's really important that it ISNT "sex-based oppression" bc tying birthing ability to the universal experience of womanhood is actually REALLY FUCKING MISOGYNIST. Like you're rly gonna say that women incapable of having children experience less oppression than those who can?

The bioessentialist idea of "sex-based" oppression is heavily weighed on the idea of a cis woman capable of giving birth to children as the definition of woman as a sex & gender. It is a damaging social construct that harms all who are socially classed as women in some way, regardless of actual gender or actual sex.

Like you realise already that definition of womanhood excludes a huge amount of women? And that it is so untrue to these women's actual experiences of misogyny?

It misses how misogyny treats infertile women regardless of sex as being "broken" because they are unable to fit the social role of womanhood.

It's also just like incorrect to the wider experience of misogyny of women who can have children at certain points in their lives, bc girls & women aren't capable throughout their entire life of having children. But young girls still experience misogyny up until puberty & past that, & misogyny doesn't go away after menopause, in fact menopausal women are treated as undesirable or used goods because they aren't typically capable of having children anymore.

The bottom line to all this is that, there is no one single universal experience of womanhood as a social role beyond just being a woman & you cannot exclude trans women from the experience of misogyny. Misogyny isn't "sex-based", bc sex is socially constructed in a way that does exclude a lot of women.

I rly beg fellow transmasc's & trans men to go out & spend time with trans women, talk to them about misogyny & their experiences with misogyny.

You wouldn't have these weird ass ideas about misogyny if you branched out more & tried to relate to trans women & their experiences with misogyny. It would fix a lot of the misconceptions folks have about radfems, TERFs & transmisogyny. Ppl get too caught up on this idea that TERFs hate trans women for their supposed relation to men & maleness, which is actually deeply untrue because really the crux of TERF ideology & most transmisogyny IS misogyny. It's rooted deeply in trans women not neatly fitting into the box of cis perisex white abled womanhood, it's about trans women being the wrong kind of woman, which IS the universal experience of misogyny & womanhood that all women & those socially classed as women face.

The sooner you stop treating transmisogyny & TERFism as a symptom of hating men & actually about hating women, the better your understanding of these ideologies & the better your understanding of where trans women fit in social roles of womanhood AND of your own place as a trans man.

You should rly be open to relating to & talking with ppl about any experience of misogyny that is outside your own, be that from trans women, women of colour, disabled women, intersex women, ect, because there are facets of misogyny you haven't experienced that are important to talk about & recognize.

[she-is-ovarit]

Feminists also redefined rape as a method of political control, enforcing the subordination of women through terror. The author Susan Brownmiller, whose landmark treatise on rape established the subject as a matter for public debate, called attention to rape as a means of maintaining male power: "Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to present, I believe, rape had played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation in which all men keep all women in a state of fear."

- Judith L. Herman, M.D.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic abuse to Political Terror.

[2024skin]

Even if all of that is 100% true (which I don't know that it is bc you didn't provide a source from a single website or book)--- the surrogacy you described is NOTHING like commercial surrogacy.

In your own words, family members and close friends were the ones giving up their babies for other people. This is currently known as "altruistic surrogacy". Also, the "foreign exchange" program you described, even by your own words, HEAVILY implies that when people sent their kids away from home, they got them back "after a bit". This is NOT the equivalent of legally signing away all rights to your child for a sum of money.

Signing a contract with people you've met maybe once or twice, potentially in a language you are not fluent in (which can sometimes be the case in international surrogacy), and which legally binds you to give up your kid regardless of how You feel about them 9 months later when you are ready to give birth, is NOTHING like the altruistic "surrogacy" (which may actually just be communally raising children, based solely on Your description of how it worked and no other background knowledge) that you claim happened in Mongolia.

Commercial surrogacy is not like adoption, where a mother gets pregnant unintentionally and decides to give up a baby. Commercial surrogacy, the Majority of the time, involves a couple paying a woman that they Do Not Know to get pregnant for them and deliver a baby. Now, forget surrogacy for just a second. Do you know what happens when you get pregnant? In the vast majority of cases, you BOND to that fetus. You Build that thing with your blood and your energy and that is Your baby. And you know what happens when you decide to sell a baby that doesn't exist yet, and then change your mind once it does? The Majority of the time, it gets taken away from you.

1, 2

This may be hard for you to swallow, but the entire world does not work like bronze-age Mongolia. Commercial surrogacy is a contractual process that is underregulated and biased Against gestating mothers. They get no say in the fate of the child They made, even in cases where they are directly related to said child. (btw, like menalez said: gestational surrogacy most likely NEVER happened in the bronze age. unless Mongolia developed in-vitrio fertilization and then that tech was LOST for thousands of years with no trace evidence. Could have happened but more likely You just don't know what you're talking about).

The process of paying for someone else's pregnancy raises several ethical and legal issues for every country that legalizes it. God forbid op or anyone else care about a system that exploits women and mothers just for the sake of having more babies. That would be crazy. Worrying about the unmitigated exploitation of women might even be *GASP* evil feminist shit. I know you wouldn't want that, especially since you talked to all the surrogates from bronze-age Mongolia and found out that they Love society and don't want it to be fixed in any way.

:readmore:

Additional sources on the legal rights of a surrogate mother who changes her mind about giving up her kid: tldr; she has basically none.

celebs will really say with no irony "pregnancy terrifies me and I didn't want it to change my body, so we hired this lady to get pregnant for us" like omfg

[haggishlyhagging]

Another fundamental principle operating in the defense of technological reproduction is that persons have a biological need to reproduce. Terms like genetic continuity, biological fulfillment, reproductive imperative, and maternal instinct mystify motherhood and fatherhood, detracting from our ability to recognize them as personal and social relationships. When male claims to children are asserted, as in surrogacy disputes, we hear about men's right to genetic "fulfillment." When new technological procedures are launched for public acceptance, we hear about "women's natural need" to reproduce. Patrick Steptoe, lab parent of the world's first IVF baby, asserted, "It is a fact that there is a biological drive to reproduce. Women who deny this drive, or in whom it is frustrated, show disturbances in other ways."

What defenders of new reproductive techniques regard as natural, feminists challenge as political. As feminists have attacked the false essentialism that the male sexual urge is uncontrollable and therefore men need prostitutes to satisfy their sexual needs, so too feminists oppose the idea that reproduction is a biological imperative. Feminists challenge men's need for so-called surrogates in order to fulfill their supposed genetic destiny of fathering children. Technological reproduction has also been grounded in women's need for children, thus providing the excuse for many invasive and mutilating procedures. It is rationalized that women who submit to such techniques are fulfilling their basic mothering instinct. In both examples, anything a man or woman does to procreate is a natural urge, an instinctual force, that must have an outlet. The difference is that men do not usually consent to their own exploitation but to the exploitation of a woman, whereas a woman undergoing invasive reproductive medicine must submit to a violation of her own bodily integrity, even if she consents to the procedure.

Since the nineteenth century especially, the so-called laws of nature have come to be understood more and more in scientific terms. Scientists analyze, dissect, and categorize what were formerly natural or divine dictums such as racial and gender differences. Procreation is perceived as a law of nature that, in the context of new reproductive technologies, acquires an expanded scientific mandate. Scientific legitimacy makes it more difficult to challenge the medical model of procreation as a natural law demanding fulfillment.

At this historical point when feminists have de-essentialized motherhood—politicizing the natural definition of women as mothers and distinguishing between motherhood as experience and motherhood as institution—along come the reproductive medical fundamentalists to put mothering back into the sphere of women's natural destiny. The new reproductive technologies represent an appropriation by male scientific experts of the female body, depoliticizing reproduction and motherhood by recasting these roles as fundamental instincts that must be satisfied.

-Janice G. Raymond, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women’s Freedom

[ovaruling]

if you want and need milk so badly, you should be drinking human breast milk!!!! after all, it’s formulated specifically for us. it has a special ratio of fats and proteins that is for our special development as a species.

and if you balk at that idea, and find it horrendously exploitative and inappropriate, then i urge you to consider why you think other animals’ breast milk is yours to take. why do you deserve a cow’s breast milk more than the calf it was produced for, from that cow’s own body?

if you’re so hellbent on getting milk, ask the nearest nursing mother for some. ask her if she’ll consider having more babies, constantly, back to back, for the rest of her life so that you get to have some of her milk.

ask her if she’ll be willing to have each of her infants held hostage behind a fence away from her so that they cry hysterically, all in order to force her milk to let down on the other side in hearing the cry of her child.

see how she reacts to these requests. and remember to remind her that you just love cheese so much and can’t give up the taste!

[taliabhattwrites]

A useful concept here might be 'degendering'.

Because trans women disrupt gendered fixity, specifically by defying compulsory manhood (thank @maidensblade on Twitter), the forms of punishment we are subject to degender us. Ironically, under patriarchy, being 'cast out' of gendered categories looks a lot like misogyny, because patriarchal gender is already a somewhat unipolar phenomenon: 'man' is autonomous, independent, dominant, aggressive, virile, imbued with agency, while 'woman' is a subordinate category characterized by dependence, infantilization and sexualization, define by an 'incompleteness' where men are whole, and thereby abjected as less-than human when compared to the whole, intact humanity of 'man'.

As such, transmisogyny is both a hurling out of gendered categories, with the commensurate dehumanization that entails, while also being an intense form of sexualizing misogyny that relocates the trans woman's sole, singular purpose as a site upon which any (sexual) violence enacted is justified. She becomes, in essence, an inviolable woman, because she has no dignity, no worth, and thus can never be meaningfully considered violated irrespective of the harms enacted upon her.

How does this differ from the forms of transphobia directed at those who aren't trans women? I've written a lot on the subject elsewhere, but the key difference is that the misogynistic intensification differs if patriarchy views someone as a lapsed reproductive asset instead of a failed, degendered human. One form of transphobia is corrective, reclamatory, a re-assertion of patriarchal womanhood over a trans person, while the other is a hurling-out, a totalizing dehumanization that expels the one who would not further a patrilineal bloodline and cannot be a reproductive vessel into an untouchable underclass.

Isn't it funny how cis people appoint themselves the transphobia deciders? Also the rhetorical shift from transmisogyny to transphobia. @dianapocalypse's added tags are fire

[jesse-pinko]

Btw people who are super invested in animal rights but don’t put that same energy into advocating for human rights racial justice reproductive rights LGBTQ visibility etc don’t actually give a shit ab animal rights they only perform empathy for those they feel the least threatened by those who can’t contradict them those who they have complete control over those who hey would you look at that don’t have any rights or any voice there are actual conversations to be had about the value of animals beyond human consumption and these people set that conversation all the way the fuck back

[abuddyforeveryseason]

Here comes the sun, doo-doop-doo-doo...

It's the Buddy for May 9th. the sun! You know, the incredibly old giant ball of fire around which everyone you know is rotating. Do not look directly into it.

The first drawing I posted, for May 12th, was the moon. So, it's pretty fitting that the sun will be one of the last.

You know, I'm not really an artist. My dad is. He's not like, a famous painter or anything, but, he can paint - he can have an idea for something, sketch out the perspective on a piece of canvas, mix the color in the palette and come up with a finished, professional-looking painting.

He's also way into cars and motorcycles, so it's hard to put him in a box like that. Parents are complicated creatures.

I have eight things in my house that could actually count as "works of art". Two of my dad's paintings - one he made in the seventies, the other, a few years ago. Three made by my aunt (his sister), I put in the living/dining area over the table. She really liked my comments on them so my cousin gave them to me. A reproduction of The Persistence of Memory over my bed - the same one every college kid who didn't like Fight Club had. A reproduction of an abstract Jack Kirby painting over my TV I got from The Jack Kirby Collector. And a reproduction of the French poster for silent film serial The Exploits of Elaine, which I've seen on the background of Friends for eleven years.

I think it's an okay-looking place. Not as well-cleaned as some people would like, but I'm comfortable.

[tenth-sentence]

Although most such animals do reproduce, it appears that in some ways they are not exploiting their reproductive potential to its fullest.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[taliabhattwrites]

I don't think there is a significant or notable number of people who believe transmascs are not oppressed.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

I sincerely hope that whoever needs to see this post sees it, and that something productive--more productive dialogue, at least--can arise from it.

[coochiequeens]

It's not everyday this blog agrees with the Pope but when it comes to surrogacy we agree that it exploits women and babies.

Rome — Pope Francis on Monday called for surrogate motherhood to be banned worldwide, calling the practice of surrogacy "deplorable" and saying an unborn child "cannot be turned into an object of trafficking."

In a wide-ranging speech to ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, the pope said surrogacy represented a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child and that it exploited surrogate mothers' financial circumstances.

Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer at the Vatican, Jan. 7, 2024.VATICAN MEDIA/­HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

"A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract," Francis said.

In 2022, the pope called surrogacy "inhuman," saying "women, almost all poor, are exploited, and children are treated like goods."

Laws on surrogacy differ widely around the world. Only a few countries, and some states in the U.S., allow commercial surrogacy. Others allow "altruistic" surrogacy, where no money is exchanged.  Many other nations, including most in Europe, have banned it altogether.

Francis included surrogacy in his list of conflicts and divisions threatening world peace in his annual speech to the diplomat corps, sometimes referred to as the pontiff's "state of the world" address. This year he also reflected on the ongoing wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, the immigration crisis, climate change, arms proliferation, antisemitism, the persecution of Christians and artificial intelligence, among other topics.

The pope said the wars in Gaza and Ukraine prove that all conflicts end up indiscriminately affecting civilian populations where they are fought. 

"We must not forget that grave violations of international humanitarian law are war crimes," he said.

[gynkgobilobo]

When you think that so much of gendie female denialism comes, ironically, from the exclusively female experience with fear regarding reproductive objectification a lot of stuff starts to cement on how reproductive care is still something that true feminism is called to fight to achieve and that this actually tends to be the main overarching problem that if settled properly, would very much improve tipping the scales in the favor of the female population. But until this exclusively female issue isn't dealt with, the patriarchy will hold the highest monopoly upon exploiting the capabilities of the female body whilst devaluing the humanity of the class individuals by means of successfully objectifying and convincing the female individuals to also objectify themselves (and their entire social class based on the same trait) in relation to their own bodies.

On the other side of the road, males in denialism of the rooted nature of womanhood devalue it either because of unconsciously or consciously absorbing the basis of their casualty-free side of the female reproductive objectification problem. Moreso, it strengthens their egos hence they get taught to take land for themselves, to reap and to sow the benefits. As for the other side we are very well familiar of how the ostracized fill female spaces out of horror of being failures in the eyes of their own social class in which males will brutalize one another for failing to meet the expectations of the rigid roles meant to elevate them above the class they intend to oppress for the many obvious benefits.

Regardless of either reason, this puts the males that are guilty of this phenomenon into a neat box of an insecurity-fueled egotistical manner of treating the opposite sexual counterpart of their own species and viewing them as a resource meant for consumption

The basis of misogyny is thus born out of starving males that would sooner devour the females than inqure about the nature of their cravings.

[extinctionstories]

On April 19th, 1987, a bird known as Adult Condor 9 was captured in the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, near Bakersfield, California. After decades ravaged by the threats of lead-poisoning and pesticide exposure, and intense debate over the ethics of captivity, it had been determined that captive breeding was the final hope to save a species. As his designation might suggest, AC-9 was the ninth condor to be captured for the new program; he was also the last.

As the biology team transported the seven-year-old male to the safety of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, his species, the California Condor, North America's largest bird, became extinct in its native range. It was Easter Sunday—a fitting day for the start of a resurrection.

At the time of AC-9's capture, the total world population of California condors constituted just twenty-seven birds. The majority of them represented ongoing conservation attempts: immature birds, taken from the wild as nestlings and eggs to be captive-reared in safety, with the intention of re-release into the wild. Now, efforts turned fully towards the hope of captive breeding.

Captive breeding is never a sure-fire bet, especially for sensitive, slow-reproducing species like the condor. Animals can and do go extinct even when all individuals are successfully shielded from peril and provided with ideal breeding conditions. Persistence in captivity is not the solution to habitat destruction and extirpation—but it can buy valuable time for a species that needs it.

Thankfully, for the California condor, it paid off.

The birds defied expectations, with an egg successfully hatched at the San Diego Zoo the very next year. Unlike many other birds of prey, which may produce clutches of up to 5 hatchlings, the California condor raises a single chick per breeding season, providing care for the first full year of its life, and, as a consequence, often not nesting at all in the year following the birth of a chick. This, combined with the bird's slow maturation (taking six to eight years to start breeding), presented a significant challenge. However, biologists were able to exploit another quirk of the bird's breeding cycle: its ability to double-clutch.

Raising a single offspring per year is a massive risk in a world full of threats, and the California condor's biology has provided it with a back-up plan: in years when a chick or egg has been lost, condors will often re-nest with a second egg. To take advantage of this tendency, eggs were selectively removed from birds in the captive breeding program, which would then lay a replacement, greatly increasing their reproduction rate.

And what of the eggs that were taken? The tendency of hatchlings to imprint is well-known, and the intention from the very beginning was for the birds to one day return to the wild—an impossibility for animals acclimated to humans. And so, puppets were made in the realistic likeness of adult condors, and used by members of the conservation team to feed and nurture the young birds, mitigating the risk of imprintation on the wrong species.

By 1992, the captive population had more than doubled, to 64 birds. That year, after an absence of five years, the first two captive-bred condors were released into their ancestral home. Many other releases followed, including the return of AC-9 himself in 2002. Thanks to the efforts of zoos and conservationists, as of 2024 there are 561 living California condors, over half of which fly free in the wilds of the American West.

The fight to save the California condor is far from over. The species is still listed as critically endangered. Lead poisoning (from ingesting shot/bullets from abandoned carcasses) remains the primary source of mortality for the species, with tagged birds tested and treated whenever possible. Baby condors are fed bone chips by their parents, likely as a calcium supplement—but, to a condor, bits of bone and bits of plastic can be indistinguishable, and dead nestlings have been found with stomachs full of trash.

There's hope, though. There are things we can change, things we can counteract and stop from happening in the future. It was a human hand that created this problem, and it will take a human hand to fix it. Hope is only gone when the last animal breathes its last breath—and the California condor is still here.

-

This painting is titled Puppet Rearing (California Condor), and is part of my series Conservation Pieces, which focuses on the efforts and techniques used to save critically endangered birds from extinction. It is traditional gouache, on 22x30" paper.

[mxmorbidmidnight]

In paganism there seems to be an ongoing issue with people not acknowledging its many issues. Pagans will often claim to be the “accepting” religion, with an absence of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. It does appear that way when you first enter it. This is a lie.

No religion is immune to bigotry, brainwashing, abuse and exploitation. Pagan communities can be breeding grounds for abuse just as churches.

White supremacy is rampant, as is cultural appropriation. Women are treated as reproductive objects while in other more modern spiritual circles exists misandry. All religions are capable of harm. Do not be arrogant enough to think ours is an exception.

[xxchromies]

Admittedly the way people talk about motherhood makes me a bit sad. Both in the world at large and on here. It's true that as women we have essentially been treated as incubators and the natural capability of our bodies was/is exploited and used to keep us in line. But I really do think that motherhood, carrying and raising children, is beautiful and something to be appreciated. We literally have the power to create life and men don't. True, not all women can give birth but anyone who can give birth is a woman. And while I capitulate that we used to be treated like incubators in the past, some people use this term to even describe pregnancies that are wanted. And I think it's a bit misogynistic to compare something as cold and machine-like as an incubator to something women are naturally able to do. It feels objectifying.

I feel like a lot of radical feminists talk about pregnancy as if it were a travesty. As if you've become corrupted by an evil force. I know that pregnancy can have a serious impact on a woman's body but sometimes I feel like the way people talk about pregnancy on here is misogynistic towards women who want to be pregnant. I don't think it's really that progressive to talk about something that women's bodies are naturally able to do as if it were some sort of curse. Many of us see it that way because men used to use our reproductive capabilities as a way to control us, and still do to an extent. We can't stoop to their level. It's not inherently a bad thing.

I've also noticed that a lot of societal messaging seems to imply that pregnancy is an inferior state. Both misogynists and radical feminists talk about it as if it means your life is over. That you're nothing more than a mother now. That you've been defeated by the patriarchy. And while I understand that the feminist perspective is different (it's critiquing the misogynist perspective), I've never really seen radical feminists try to empower mothers or talk about how we can change the way society views motherhood. A lot of them seem to think no women should be mothers at all. Motherhood is just going to be a part of our reality. We're living things and it's in our nature to reproduce. It is ultimately a choice but human nature is powerful. Antinatalism is not going to happen, sorry. And I feel like pregnancy is mocked. Women are mocked for things like morning sickness and cravings. Pregnant women often aren't taken seriously because of their "hormones". There's a reason why so many people find m-preg so humorous.

In many ways it does suck to be a mother, but that's because of societal issues. I do believe it's misogynistic to denigrate the concept or pregnancy as a whole. I'll never believe that something women's bodies are naturally able to do cannot coexist with female liberation.