False Sense of Empowerment

[Delphinium20]

While I personally feel that I could never have donated my eggs because I can't imagine thinking there'd be a child of mine out in the world, I am pretty sure I didn't think much about this until I was older and considering my own family. Nordic Model Now just published an article on egg donation advertising and how it's marketed to U.K. women (with some examples also from the U.S.). I have 2 DD and I don't like the idea of them seeing these ads of false empowerment. I continue to worry that young women have no idea of the risks or long-term impacts.

I wanted to share because regardless if you pay much attention to egg donation or surrogacy issues, this falls into the 'women: be kind' trap.

nordicmodelnow.org/2021/02/21/egg-donation-empowering-really/

Woah. I find that chilling.

There's a link in there to a UN conference where donor-concepted and surrogate-born children talked about their experiences, and how govts are failing to consider the rights of children. It includes the following:

Recommendations drafted and presented on the Plenary, 20 November 2019 - United Nations Geneva

There is a need for urgent national and international measures, which are inclusive of and made in consultation with a broad representation of donor-conceived and surrogacy born persons. These voices need to be heard, listened to and acted upon.

States should create international and national frameworks and laws that:

Ensure the right of donor-conceived and surrogacy born children to access information about their identity and origins regardless of when these children were conceived and born and to preserve relations with their biological, social and gestational families.
 

Ensure that comprehensive and complete records of all parties involved in the conception of the child be held by the State in perpetuity for future generations.
 

Respect and promote the full and effective enjoyment of all the rights of donor-conceived and surrogacy-born children in both the immediate and longer terms. 
 

Ensure that the best interests of the child be the paramount consideration in all relevant laws, policies and practices and in any judicial and administrative decisions. This requires a best interests assessment pre-conception on an individual case by case basis. 
 

Prohibit all forms of commercialisation of gametes, children, and surrogates including, but not limited to, the sale and trafficking in persons and gametes.

Egg donation should be illegal full stop

Prohibit all forms of commercialisation of gametes, children, and surrogates including, but not limited to, the sale and trafficking in persons and gametes.

I should think that commercialisation would include advertising, even if compensation is only for covered costs.

www.yourtango.com/2015282227/why-i-severely-regret-donating-my-eggs

Thank you for sharing this. Really shocking.

The adverts infuriate me with their emphasis on "be kind and generous, empower another woman" etc.
Also I note they always talk about helping another woman. Why don't they mention that a gay couple (or indeed a single man) are likely customers for the eggs I wonder?
And that the eggs are likely to be used for surrogacy rather than to help an infertile woman - some women might feel differently about facilitating surrogacy than helping an infertile woman.

This is the experience of one egg donor: she suffered ovarian torsion and was very ill. Now she has PTSD.

Yes - you might be helping an infertile couple. Or a gay couple. Or a single woman. Or a single man.

What background checks are carried out on recipients of egg donation under IVF? Adopters have to jump through so many hoops before they are allowed to adopt. What safeguards are in place for the children conceived through egg donation?

I wouldn't sell or donate my eggs (which would become my children) to anyone anyway, least of all to someone who hadn't been vetted.

I'm afraid I have very strong reservations about allowing an un-vetted single man to commission a baby.

(Unless I am wrong and recipients of egg donors are subject to background checks).

So be kind and risk your own health and future fertility? Fuck that noise.

I went through infertility and never did have a child. I met women who were desperate to conceive and happy to go abroad to use 'donor' eggs. I didn't think much about the ethics in those days, but I was horrified.

I've never found empowerment a convincing bit of corporate speak. I keep hearing that bit from Buffy about blah blah menstrual moon force life thingy.

As wrongside says, be kind, be nice, be swayed by advertising, risk your health and fertility today and hand over the bits to make a child you will never know or be able to take any responsibility for what happens to! It's great!

......

"Blah blah Gaia, blah blah moon, menstrual life-force power thingy."

That's it! That's the one!

My tribe live here.

@WhoStoleMyCheese

Egg donation should be illegal full stop

Agree. This is terrible.

DS was telling me some of his uni housemates had created OnlyFans accounts to get them through lockdown with normal avenues of work not available to them.

They would be ripe for the picking for something like this.

Oh but ladies we must be kind, how often does a chance come along to really impact someone's life and change it for the better?

🤮

www.twodadsuk.com/blog/egg-donation-a-life-changing-act-of-kindness/

Certainly it's a chance to really impact a child's life. Really impact it.

Chilling it is...

And it should be right up there as being illegal to advertise like this. Like it is illegal to advertise that alcohol might give you sex appeal.

I recommend the eggsploitation documentary on Amazon prime. Egg donors are becoming infertile themselves as a result of these procedures. Their own fertility sacrificed to providing a child for someone with more money.

It's sickening.

Eggsploitation was frightening Barracker - I also don't understand why there isn't any discussion around early menopause.

If you have multiple eggs sucked out of you wouldn't that take a couple of years off?

Even aside from the risks, drugs and potential cancers, 60 eggs is 5 years worth.

'Empowering' is the biggest bullshit word in the English language and people need to start treating it as such. The only way to be 'empowered' is to be given actual power, to be given the ability to effect actual change.

If after an experience you do not have actual, tangible, demonstrable power that you did not have before then no it was not 'empowering'.
It made you feel good - and no one should ever mistake feeling good for 'power'.

The 'empowerment' myth is actually a way to disempower you because you get so caught up in the endorphin hit of 'feeling' powerful that you remain perfectly content with your lot in life and don't seek to make changes to the system to improve it.

The Buffy quote has it correct in the way it mocks 'empowerment' (though Joss being the man he is I rather think he is mocking women rather than highlighting the con being perpetrated upon them - and the quote comes from 'Hush' so it's definitely a Joss line) and yet people call Buffy an 'empowering show'. A T.V show cannot make you more powerful! It can inspire you to seek change but it does not give you the power to make it happen.

There needs to be an understanding that every time you see the word 'empowering' what it really means is 'this is a calculated effort to keep you down and trick you into accepting that.' Because Buffy isn't empowering, and stripping/ prostitution/ glamour modelling isn't empowering and donating eggs to create your own biological children who you will never meet and won't even know if they are OK is not empowering.

Having actual power - that is empowering. But you never hear people with actual power use the word for themselves do you?

There needs to be an understanding that every time you see the word 'empowering' what it really means is 'this is a calculated effort to keep you down and trick you into accepting that.' Because Buffy isn't empowering, and stripping/ prostitution/ glamour modelling isn't empowering and donating eggs to create your own biological children who you will never meet and won't even know if they are OK is not empowering.

Hell yes.

Great post Icantreachthepretzels

For what it's worth I complained to the advertising standards authority about these ads a while back. You go on their website and send it that way. Generic reply and nothing since.

But maybe if they received a batch of complaints about the same issue?.....

Excellent post @Icantreachthepretzels

The 'empowerment' myth is actually a way to disempower you because you get so caught up in the endorphin hit of 'feeling' powerful that you remain perfectly content with your lot in life and don't seek to make changes to the system to improve it.

And in other news, an excellent article on how sperm count and women's fertility is decreasing..:which I fear will make desperate people with actual power push for the right to have a child.

www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/endocrine-disruptors-sperm.html?referringSource=articleShare