A Comparative Free Write: The Wedding Industry vs. The Baby Industry

Crossposted at Feministe

Lately, my thoughts have been swirling around one comparative question:

What’s worse – the wedding industry or the baby industry?

Recovering my 2004 journal, the year I was engaged, I see loopy sketches of my fiancée with the word “love” underneath and short poems exploring life and commitment. To describe my decision to marry marriage I used phrases like “a symphony of mystery” and “frisson of pleasure.” Not too far from my blotchy sketches are wrinkled, tear-stained pages. I see I made a separate column called “hate” and I named every detail of the wedding process, the whole parade and folly of rings, illusion, disingenuous sales pitches and vendors, showers and parties, and the endless charade of enjoying it all.

[October 2004: Today I nearly passed out when trying on veils. It looked so ridiculous and false on me. The room was screeching with white-dressed bodies barking orders to whoever would listen. I had to sit down and breathe between my legs. I have to see myself when I look in the mirror. I have to see me. On my time. I have to see myself in this.]
I was never a bride.

I was just a person in love, ready to move forward.

I had choices and I did it. I got married AND had a wedding. The coming together of two radically different cultures, races, and expectations was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. Both families had religious backgrounds, so tradition had some role to play in the process and compromising on what was authentic and what was for show was a long, tedious process of discussion and frustration.

But I did it.

That transition from single to married was healthily marred with grief and mourning. Facing the profound changes in relationships, responsibility, lifestyle, and geography weren’t celebratory, they were somber and I took them seriously.

However, one of the things that that irked me the most was the response so many had when I shared I was getting married: “Oh, EVERYONE’S getting married!” That miffed me. And I would always say to my friends and confidants, “Yeah, but I’m not everybody. This is a big deal in MY life and I am trying to share this with you. This is me, not the whole world.”

In that time period of my life, I remember thinking that the blanket of the wedding industry and the superfluous toppings of details and colors erased me and my reality. It erased the very real and tangible truth that I had fallen in love and decided to commit to one person. That imminent torque in my identity was my focus. And love. Love was my primary lifeline.

It was rare to find an understanding person in those 9 months of engagement. No one likes to hear of hesitancy, fear, and doubt that can exist outside the vacuum of saying Yes to marriage. It wasn’t about the relationship I had built with him that was sturdy and grounded. It was about the internal conversion of accepting full and unpredictable responsibility that came with building a future with another person. It was about facing the fears of possible failure, adultery, death, dependency, sharing, and betrayal.

I was never a bride.

I was just an honest person, a writer.

And here I am again, faced with another 9 month transition and the roller coaster begins again.

It’s like falling in love again. My partner and I have been brought even closer because of this choice. The only time I truly feel at peace is when we lay on our sides and talk about how uncertain the future is, how our expectations are creeping in our consciousness even when we try to keep them at bay, how this person coming to us will be nothing like what we think or imagine. We laugh at our crazy inadequacies to be in control. We laugh at the idea of making a will when we don’t have much, financially or materialistically, to pass on. We struggle through naming guardians in case my partner and I die. We smoothed through bumpy parts of our interracial marriage. Now we will have an multi-cultured/-racial/-everything child.

And then there’s the baby industry and circus…Listening to advice I don’t necessarily need or want. Dealing with colors and decorating a room. Registering. Showers. Ooohing and ahhing over bellies instead of diamonds.

Within weeks of knowing I was pregnant, truckloads of magazines and websites found me despite my non-disclosing nature. The amount of THINGS I am told that I need exhausts me.

[August 2009: “A baby wipes warmer? Do I look like the type of person to warm up my own toilet paper?!”]

There was something eerily similar, I noticed, to the wedding industry.

[August 2004: “A ring is a beautiful symbol, but why an engagement ring? I’d be fine with just the wedding band.”]

A life-changing event, a shift in identity, another choice made in a hopefully egalitarian

manner…and the isolation sits in.

“Oh, EVERYONE’s pregnant these days.”

“Yeah, but I’m not everybody. This is a big deal in MY life and I am trying to share this with you.”

How is it that more people are interested in what kind of crib I will need than how my writing schedule will alter? How is it that more people are interested in the date of the ultrasound that will announce gender than the date I get a nuchal translucency screening that tests for Down Syndrome? When I do articulate feelings, why are my worries and fears minimized to a scattering of pulp when I muse aloud about my career, my ability to move and travel, the unknown, unpredictable future and that, yes, I am choosing this, AND, yes, am still scared?

Why do people equate decision making with the quality of unshakeable certainty? And why do we strategize to circumvent fear? Why is it endlessly equivalent to second thoughts, wanting to retreat or rewind time?

Is it so unthinkable to posit that fear is the intuitive threshold to responsibility and acknowledging the parts of ourselves that are afraid takes more strength than pretending or that I don’t see how enormous this choice is? Could fear be reframed to be more of a guide than a disdained guest in our bodies?

Married, pregnant female seeks presence and companionship, not advice. Experienced and gentle minds to converse with and a community that loves honesty and facing unprecedented transformation are desirous. Above all, seeks wisdom, not distractions.

Raising Isaiah

Cross posted at Feministe

I think you should simply spare the little mongrel parasite from the burden of her life so that you can more fully experience the pleasure of a lifestyle unfettered by the Christo-fascist “reproduction memes” that are genetically engraved in the our DNA by the authoritarian patriarchy. Think about the lifetime “carbon footprint” of your potential child… can you live with yourself knowing the destruction you’re unleashing on your own home?

One of the most beautiful, and quickly disappearing, forms of writing is letter-writing. I’ve always adored writing letters, little notes, maximizing the potential the back of a receipt, leftover notebook paper, the last unloved post-it note in the pile with the least amount of sticky left.

The shining gem of personal letter writing comes from the built-in audience. You write to or for one reader, but sometimes the revelation can be shared with many. I discovered this from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a trouble-maker in Durham who once asked me to be a part of a writing collective, to submit a piece of writing about what it meant to be a woman of color, about what it meant to survive. It was entitled, "Without You Who Understand: Letters from Radical Women of Color," and published in issue 5 of make/shift magazine.

It taught me about the power of letters.

Everyone else wrote magnificent essays, essays that came with their own brass bands. My writing doesn’t have a brass band. My writing is more like a solo violinist or pianist. I shared a letter that I had written to a friend one winter evening when I couldn’t sleep.

Letter writing helps me focus on one person and simultaneously, somehow, channel my own deepest longings and contemplatives.

Which is why I chose to respond with a letter to “Margaret Sanger,” who left the above italicized comment for me in my first post at Feministe.

Dear Margaret Sanger,

It is with a complicated heart that I try to answer your questions and respond to your comment. You certainly have a superior grasp of language, I admire, and have little doubt that someone with such a mastery of words makes any mistake in your comment. Each word sounds deliberate. And as a writer who loves linguistics, I studied and thought about your words a long time before I gave my answer.

Your advice to me about ridding myself of the “mongrel” inside me so I can enjoy a better life gave me an opportunity to ask myself, and others, “Why do we decide to have children anyway?”

I’m sure the answered are as varied as there are children, but the most common answers I’ve heard always point to some mysterious Knowing, some sort of underlying and assumed desire that many of us will procreate. Or, that having children is simply “what we do” or should do or end up doing as we age.

Why birth? Why adopt? Why be a surrogate? Why help bring more life amidst so much wrong and untailored mess?

Well, Margaret, I can only answer for myself and I know you’ll be unsatisfied with my reply because it seems that we that you and I probably have very different perceptions of what it means to be alive. Exchanging thoughts about global warming, population and birth control may be a healthy discussion, but that is not the arena in which I understood your question. I heard it on a more personal level asking the age old question, "Why are you having kids when you know how terrible things are?"

What does it mean for me to enjoy “the pleasure of a lifestyle unfettered by the Christo-fascist ‘reproduction memes’ that are genetically engraved in the our DNA by the authoritarian patriarchy?” One, it means that I find my own piece and peace of the world that is, quite clearly, full of kyriarchal domination and destruction. In many ways, my ability to enjoy life is already limited because of this kyriarchy. Is it possible to fully, truly enjoy every part of life knowing so much suffering exists in the world? Is it possible to be drenched in pleasure when the majority of the world is going without, while I, somewhat easily go forth?

It took me many years of maturing to find the balance in being a real, sensing, authentic writer and feminist. I believe it is not our natural state to be overwhelmed by the wrong, which I was for a long time. I grew into a writer that not only wanted to survive but also wanted, as Gloria Anzaldua said, “to record what is happening in my lifetime, to note the progress, to annotate the struggles.”

To survive this endless tidal wave, to be around for the next few decades, to live through this hell we are witnessing, it is imperative, in the most urgent sense, to find ourselves, our naked feminisms that stand counterpoint to the kyriarachy. If the utter victory of kyriarchy is to beat, rape, silence, and make miserable the lives of women, I am surrendering a sacred part of my life if I believe that this world is capable of nothing more than oppression. If I believe that the only contribution of a life brought out of my very womb would be nothing more than a carbon footprint, then, for me, hope is gone and kyriarchy has won.

Raising Isaiah to be a teacher, or a dancer, or a shoemaker, or a poet will depend on what I carry forward, what I harbor in my own vessels. If I believe that he’s a parasite, he’ll be a parasite. If I believe he will unleash destruction on the world, in my home, then he’ll be a destructive force.

But what if my partner and I believe he can bring More to the world? What if, along with his inevitable use of resources and adding one more set of footprints to walk the earth, he grows into a person capable of goodness that you or I cannot even comprehend? What if he brings a seemingly unreachable understanding of life to me, my partner, to others while he lives? What if my partner and I don't believe that ceasing to produce life automatically equates a better living?

With a little bit of courage and whole lot of radical love, this experience is guided by my questions and deathless curiosity of what is possible and believing that my enjoyment of life is not the point of life, at least, not for me. It is with fearful hope, not certainty, that I choose this.

Be well,
Lisa

The Last Ungendered Day

I started using the self-descriptive term "feminist" about five years ago and although my life's work to create a better world extends much longer than those five years, the lens of feminism - my feminisms, to be precise - has positively enhanced the way I experience and percieve the mystery of socialization and gender.

Tomorrow, I have my 20 week ultrasound. Before pregnancy, I didn't know that 20 weeks is a milestone. Usually with prenatal care, an "anatomical" ultrasound is done, which means Adonis and I get to see the baby growing in my uterus. We see the face, ears, feet, hands...everything...including its genitalia.

Many things have surprised me about pregnancy, but none moreso than the impact of hormones in my body. My memory has been underwater, my moods sometimes swingy, but my emotions have been fairly calm. I've felt peaceful. One of the few pieces of anxiety I've been experiencing relates to gender and finding out the sex of the baby.

I've been pretty open about my feelings concerning my pregnancy through my letters to Veronica, my unborn daughter, which I started a long time ago...well before I was pregnant. And one of my fears is not just having a child, it's about having a son. I think that my fear dwells in my uncertainty if I can teach a child and have a larger impact than the rest of the world. All the lessons this child will learn will have to be undone at some level. It begins tomorrow. It begins the moment the ultrasound technician will say "boy" or "girl."

And the barrage of texts, emails, FB messages, and comments wanting to know will begin. Along with the pink and blue bull that I don't believe in.

Facing the reality that I am carrying life within me has meant coming to the reality that I am deeply responsible for the wonder and destruction this child shall bear on the world once it enters this life and takes its first breath.

I am faced with the reality that the men who rape women once had mothers too and I wonder what they learned (or didn't) about loving and treating women, both in personal relationships and strangers. I think about the way teenage boys careen by the waterfountain at school and mock the budding bodies of womanhood and adolescence out of their own insecurity. I am, essentially, afraid of what boys because, after working with violated women and children, I know what they are capable of.

I don't want to raise a son contributing to another woman's disempowerment.

But feminism has also taught me that not only are men capable, and actually prefer, to be loving, active, energetic leaders for goodness and wholeness, it's also taught me that women are not grouped together in their fight for equality. The bullying, the cut throat competition, the hidden jealousy, the betrayal...raising a daughter now terrifies me just as much as raising a son. After I've work with violated women and children, I'm afraid I'll raise a daughter who doesn't care about her worth and values her sexuality only at the price set by society and media.

Whether son or daughter, I'm afraid she'll give up on herself.
I'm afraid, quite simply, they won't care about the world they way I do and I won't be able to stand their selfishness.
I'm afraid that when they ask me questions about what I've done to make the world better, I'll look in the mirror and only see a half-worn human and full blown coward.

Somehow, in the years I've contemplated and studied gender and advocated that all persons are equal, I'm petrified I'll find that I've only kidding myself because I know the world can and will knock me on my butt with its cruel, streamlined, flick of the wrist power to teach domination, selfishness, individualism, and greed.

Knowing this child's gender makes it all real, too real, because once I know "boy" or "girl," I'll inherit an entire set of specific strategies the world has planned to brainwash my kid. I don't have anything except what I *think* I know, a lot of guessing, intuition, and a loving partner.

I hope those seeds are enough.

Will they know how to love, truly love themselves and another human being?
Do they know the world is not fragmented and we, all of us, are inexplicably connected?
Does having this much fear dictate what kind of mother I will be?
Who will be there to save me when I'm the one in trouble?

In some funny way, I want this child to forever remain as it is right now - perfect, growing, dependant on nothing but amniotic fluid, oxygen, and my voice. Not only do I fear about this child hurting, but I'm afraid of the harm the child will be capable of doing as well.

Tomorrow I will know if I am having a son or daughter.

Transformative Blogging: A Free Write on Pregnancy, Feminism, and the Internet

Three years ago, I started blogging.

I was newly married, working at a university, confronting my disdain for the midwestern common, and beginning to fall in love with photography.

Today I am 4 months pregnant, working at a spiritual center, combing through my complex relationship with geography and identity, and am a freelance writer and photographer. My dreams are more realized, I can humbly admit to myself.

This summer has been a fragmented blogging experience. I've loosened my ties with the online world after experiencing an avalance of its toxicity. But I know of the power of the internet, the power of online communication and exchange, and I know that I will never completely sever my ties with blogging.

The frequency of my blogging came alongside the confidence to speak my mind about mainstream feminism, kyriarchy, and the destructive practices of dominating US-identifed feminists in the field of gender, sexuality, and "feminism." Somewhere, in the Bermuda triangle of my mind, online expression became necessary strength-training for my feminisms. Online exposure - seeking external information from strangers and "experts" - became one of the most frequently visited gyms to exercise feminist discourse. Until now.

Pregnancy has taken me inward. Deep into the reflective tissue of memory, trauma, joy, and motherhood. It has taken me into these far off places of security and fear, health and death, responsibility and loss of control. I've retreated into my body, less focused on the rest of the world and simply in the world growing below my belly button.

This event, for lack of a better word, has transformed me again beyond any trip, research, or moving poet could ever shift me before. At no other time in my life have I walked more slowly, spoke less with more to say, and allowed to open my life to truly not caring about the world whilst still loving it deeply, wildly from my corner in Cleveland, Ohio.

Early pregnancy was very much like discovering the internet - information overload. There was story upon story of miracle (once infertile now fertile) to the heartwrenching (still born stories that made me weep for days) and more "advice" than I could handle. It left me staring at my ceiling in bed, convinced I was sick, was headed into an unhealthy pregnancy, and needed more medical attention than any other person who had ever given birth in the history of baby-making.

I harbored no trust, particularly for my own mind.

My early experience of feminism and the internet was similar. Three years ago, my blog was somewhat directionless. It was filled with thoughtful entries, some humor, and candid glimpses into my life, but it lacked any true identity. It lacked the substantial stamp of SELF. PERSPECTIVE. AUTHENTICITY. TRUTH.

The exploration of how to effectively use media, the internet, blogging, and feminism to transform ourselves and our pockets of the universe remains an unchartered course, a hike for which an infinite weight of rations is needed. This might take a lifetime. But I have learned that while blogging has been very much a gift - delivering relationships, realizations, connections, and insight - it is also a place that can sometimes take you away. Away from your body, away from listening to your own authentic creations. I realize one of the biggest differences in my writing over the past three years is that I write less reactionary pieces and responses than when I first began blogging. I was exploding like a firecracker to a zillion commentors and posts that led me nowhere except away from truly reflecting and moving within my own consciousness.

This gift of pregnancy has not only given me necessary reflection and work to emotionally prepare for a new role as mother, but it has deterred and sharpened my eyesight to be selective in who I choose to read and listen to. It has taught me that more is not always better and reading an endless parade of memoir writing about motherhood will never grasp what the experience means to ME. What is happening to my body, my brain, my bones right now.

It has been through pregnancy that I see "Feminism" with new eyes and I see much more red than I ever saw before. Red bias, red intentions, red discrimination, red narrowness...I see red. Reproductive health rights are arrows pointing to the majority of heterosexual, young white women. Sexuality and spirituality are rarely explored as an interlaced relationship. The conferences change names, but still move in their same agenda. "Liberal" and "progressive" are thrown around without much depth and review. Blog wars still flare from time to time, roaming from appropriation to racism, but after a few months of quiet, you'll still find the same bloggers rowing in the currents of mainstream thought and contributing to US-centric, heteronormative rhetoric that alientates and ostracizes "unpopular" issues like the fact WE ARE STILL AT WAR IN IRAQ, WE ARE NOT A POST-RACE SOCIETY BECAUSE WE HAVE A BI-RACIAL PRESIDENT, and the violence of poverty and rape still choke the life out of womyn everywhere in the world.

Maybe the point is not for the blogosphere to be transformed, but for me to transform according to my offline life, my quiet purpose. And just hope and pray that others are doing the same. Maybe if we all did that, our blogosphere, our world would change. Maybe we could all go through something similiar to a pregnancy where we witness new life growing in some way and we are drawn inward to listen to the new beat of existence, a changed way of being.

Maybe if we listened more, talked less, we could actually hear something other than the deafening needs of our egos and more of the muted chants of our yearning hearts.