This entry was written by someone named Asa, posting on the Adoptive Parents - China yahoogroup. This is a frequently contentious space, as you'd expect from any large group that attracts both conservative Christians and bleeding-heart nonconformists.
It's no surprise that this piece has sparked off a major controversy.
I think it's very important.
Before I adopted, I was obligated to have several meetings with the social worker for the homestudy. We discussed many topics, including how I was going to develop my daughter's identity as a woman. I had always planned to continue living in a male commune.
There is a private school here, and while all of the students are boys, the academic program is excellent. There is also an occasional woman or two, so I feel like my daughter will be able to see other females like herself.
But of course, my social worker wanted to know how I was going to assist in developing my daughter's female identity.
So when I told him that I was planning on joining Men with Female Children from China, he was quite pleased. The men there have also been raised in all-male settings, so other men from the commune feel comfortable there and like the group a lot. The social worker said that he is very familiar with the program and it would be great for helping my daughter learn about her identity as a woman.
Among other things, the men in the group read books about women and even some written by women. The members try to learn as much as possible about female culture. They then hold events that celebrate girls and women and being a female. This will teach my daughter a lot about being a female. And of course, my daughter will be able to learn from associating with all those other little girls raised in all-male households.
I also have a woman acquaintance.
Of course, I have some concerns still. I know that my daughter will
probably be teased at school. I'll just tell her to toughen up.After all, I grew up in an all-boy environment and I think it's ideal. And everybody is teased sometimes. Maybe the boys won't want to play with her. But I imagine she'll be able to work it out. She could probably just become tomboyish, and that would solve a lot of her problems. Maybe if she dresses like a boy and acts like a boy, people will accept her as a boy.
The magazines, childrens' books and videos at the commune reflect only male faces. I'll have to try to buy a book or two with some women in it. On the commune television, women are only one percent of the featured players on prime-time. They are typically in roles such as homemakers and secretaries. This is pretty typical for woman, anyway.
But I tell my daughter she can choose any career she wants and that the sky is the limit.
Sometimes I forget my daughter is a female. I tell her I think of her just like any other normal child ... like a boy.
peace,
asa
He followed this post a day later with this list of links. I'm already familiar with the first two (and have been recommending Trenka's blog to pretty much everyone I know).
* Jane Jeong Trenka, the Language of Blood
http://languageofblood.com/
* The transracial abductee website:
http://www.transracialabductees.org/
Asa: (I especially relate to "A bunch of culturally
incompetent backtalk")
* Loss and Reclaimed Lives:
http://jps.k12.mi.us/~meier/koreanadoption.htm
* Adoptees' perception of international adoption:
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/proed/korfindings.html
So today's the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square -- at least, that's what the news says. Here in America, anyway.
Most people here know Tiananmen Square for one thing. They know it was where one guy, holding a shopping bag, faced down a line of tanks. It's a pretty famous picture. The little guy, for most of us, represents democracy, and the tanks represent communist totalitarianism.
Because today was the anniversary, the LA Times ran an interesting article about that brave little man.
Most people in China don't know he even exists. And nobody anywhere knows who or where he is.
(John Vanderslice wrote a pretty good song about that.)
He has become a cipher. An indeterminate figure. An icon.
From the above-linked article:
On the eve of the anniversary this week, Tiananmen Square was crowded with thousands of tourists and locals milling under floodlights — presumably watched by plainclothes policemen. Brigades of bicyclists passed on the crowded boulevards that surround the square, and a group of old women drew a curious crowd as they exercised to the beat of a drum.Yet several people nearby said they had never heard of the tank man or his moment of fame.
"I've never seen him," one man said. "Was he Chinese?"
A couple dressed in Western clothing, holding hands as they walked along the sidewalk, said they were too young to recall the incident.
A nearby cab driver in his early 40s was old enough to remember the crackdown. But he said most people had just tried to forget what happened. When told of the exploits of the lone protester, he said, "He must have been a very brave man."
But the thing with the Tiananmen Square protests wasn't that one guy stood up. It was that thousands did.
The protests were partially an outgrowth of the funeral of Party Secretary Hu Yaobang, a (disgraced) pro-democracy official, and partially an observance of the anniversary of the "5.4 Movement", when students gathered in 1919 to protest foreign influence in China. So this was, in some ways, a very patriotic observance for the Chinese -- students, journalists, Beijing citizens were all together, protesting for rights guaranteed by their own constitution by gathering in the imperial square named for the Gates of Heaven. The problem was that public will and the Communist Party were at odds... and the Party was supposed to be the embodiment of public will.
Instead, after days of blockading the city and hunger striking in that vast public square, the mass of protestors chose a different icon for themselves.
They called her The Goddess of Democracy.
She was thirty feet tall, made of styrofoam and papier mache, and served as a rallying point for the city-within-the-city -- facing down the towering, paternal portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates Tiananmen.
Even now, looking at old news photos, it's a tremendously iconic moment. A replica of that statue now stands in San Francisco, looking to the East just as Lady Liberty salutes the West.
Thinking about the Goddess of Democracy -- of democracy embodied as a female principle -- makes me think of one of the oldest symbols for my own country. Older than Uncle Sam. Older than Lady Liberty (although a close cousin, or perhaps a maiden aunt). Her name is Columbia.
You've seen her. At the movies...
In front the university that bears her name...
Or perhaps in more antique representations...
In her heyday, Columbia represented everything good and just and kind about America. She was, in her own way, an avatar of The White Goddess, that principle Robert Graves (and Sir James Frazer before him) described as the Moon Mother, an embodiment of poetry, transformation, and dreams for a wiser tomorrow. In America's mythic history, Uncle Sam only comes around when our young country is mouthing off and spoiling for a fight. Before that, when our military ambitions were dedicated only to defending the fragile dream of democracy, the spirit of the land was seen as a woman, this woman, Columbia, the Goddess of Democracy.
And 15 years ago today, she stood, briefly, in Tiananmen Square, before the tanks came.
I can't help but wondering, though -- styrofoam and papier mache can't stand up to tanks, but goddesses? They go where they are summoned, by need and by adoration.
So I'm wondering.
Where is she now?
