February is World Building Month. Day Eleven: Addergoole

[aldersprig]

piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The eleventh question comes from anke and is for Addergoole.

How did the parents of the first generation of Addergoole students justify signing up their daughters for forced pregnancies?

---

So, I posted this to Twitter in musing about it, and Sky and Cluudle had some possible justifications, which I will post below.

The short version is: It really depends on the parent.

Some of them simply didn't care, especially some of the men. They were being well-paid to deposit a sperm and walk away after the naming ritual; some of the women were offered better compensation to do something similar after nine months.

Some of them didn't have a choice; they were collared and had been provided to the project by their Keeper - one example in particular is Ambrus.

Aelfgar, for his case, likes grandkids, and because as far as he's concerned all his kids are gay (he's wrong), this seemed like a way of ensuring some grandchildren.

Some of them weren't thinking about daughters at all, they were thinking about sons.

In a more overarching sense: this was not sold as forced pregnancy. This was sold as any number of things, depending on the target: a program for the education and betterment of half-breeds, in a world which despised them; an experiment in a more targeted form of Mentoring; the foundation blocks for the salvation of the world when the Returned Gods came back. It was easy to sell it as these things, because it was all of them.

And, as is said by one set of parents in a story I need to finish, it's easier to think in the abstract than when you're looking at your eleven-year-old daughter. When the child is a concept, that's one thing. When she's sixteen and the Director's letter arrives, that's something else entirely.

And then there are all the reasons Sky and Cluudle came up with, which I'm willing to agree were probably valid for at least one person each:

"I got pregnant during my Keeping."

"Didn't really think about it."

"I was starving." [Lyn: This one was rather common. Regine offered a lot of money to the mothers]

"Being pregnant is a beautiful thing."

"The work is important."

"I trust these people."

"Better she have children with our kind now than fall for a human later."

"It's not like she needs to raise them. It's a small price to pay for what they're offering (money/knowledge/etc.)."

"It's a small price to pay for years of protection. Have you heard what the Nedetakaei are doing?"

"Our race is dying." "The apocalypse is coming, I have to do something." "I was drunk." "I was mind controlled." [the latter was very rare, but it did happen, more commonly to fathers than mothers].

"People had kids at this age in my day." [This is actually part of Regine's argument, too.

"She's going to have kids eventually. Better with people that can handle her powers and the children's."

"I was on my third kid at that age /and/ I was married."

"It's for science."

"A purebreed is talking to me aaaaaaaaaaaaah I'm so flustered."

"Maybe this way she can find a Keeper or Kept around her own age. I hate how the older fae prey on the young."

"It's not rape if it's your Keeper."

And for after-the-fact justifications:

"I can barely handle this kid now. What am I going to do when she Changes? The school can manage better."

"There's no other way a half breed like her will find a husband."

"It's a half breed, why would I care what happens to it?"

"This is the best a half breed could hope for, a good education and a chance to breed pure."

"This is the only person who has offered to get her a Mentor."

"Anything is better than her not Changing at all and dying of old age."

Comments

[anke]

It's depressing how many parents don't even consider it might be wrong to control their children's lives completely. Me not wanting to turn into that kind of person and fucking up someone else's life is one of the reasons why I don't want to breed.

[aldersprig]

I wouldn't say that most of them would think of this as "controlling their children's lives completely;" it's a major decision, yes, but parents often make major decisions on behalf of their minor children.

[anke]

Yeah, they are amazingly short-sighted, to say the least.
They are treating their kids like cattle. They are completly denying them their right to bodily autonomy. This is not deciding when a six year old must go to bed, this is selling off your teenage daughter to be raped for twice nine months at least.

Y'know, I wouldn't mind so much if the children were raised in a different culture, in which these things were normal, but from what I read, I got the impression the first years of Addergoole students were normal American teenagers who had no idea they had been sold or given away into captivity, slavery, and sexual slavery including forced pregnancy.

[inventrix]

Look I get that you hate the idea of Keeping and Keeper/Kept consent issues and the two-kid grad requirement but let me ask you

if you had not read the story, if you did not know how things actually tend to go down at the school

if you knew this was a school which would teach your child important things about their heritage

if you knew this school would let your child meet and make social ties with their own kind

if you knew this school would give them a good Mentor

if you knew that there was a requirement that your child would have to have two children in order to officially graduate

why would you EVER think this school would involve rape

[anke]

Because I can't predict if my hypothetical daughter wants children or not.

It's iffy enough for boys, but at least there's a chance of getting around the "forced to have sex" part through artificial insemination, but making an oath that binds your daughter to carry children, whether she wants to or not, IS rape in my eyes.

[inventrix]

There isn't actually a requirement for anyone to carry a child. There are several instances of surrogates in canon.

I'm not even remotely attempting to suggest that the parents are blameless in forcing an oath on their descendants for several generations, but accusing them as a whole of selling their children into sexual slavery is incredibly unjust and as far as I can tell has no plausible rational basis.

[anke]

I'm fine with my loathing for the two-children-requirement, and related reactions, being labelled irrational, because a good deal comes from an aversion to pregnancy. The thought of having something grow inside me, squishing my innards, and moving around so I can feel it, is bloody creepy, and someone forcing that on me is pure horror. So, yeah, "irrational" is fair.

I do hold, and consider rational, that a parent who makes a promise that magically binds their children to produce offspring is taking the risk of that being a serious attack on their children's bodily autonomy.
And if the parents don't realise that, because they assume everybody wants children, or that it is no big deal, they are short-sighted, and if they don't care what their children want, and do it to make sure there will be grandkids, they're reprehensible.

Regarding the other comment about assuming that the parents know the kids can't back or flunk out it's an assumption, but I am assuming that at least most of those parents knew they are fae, that their promises are binding, and would have listened to the terms carefully.

[inventrix]

That is fair, but I would strongly disagree that taking such a risk or being too wrapped up in their own PoV to realize that their children might not want to have children is equatable to "treating their kids like cattle", selling their children, or offering their children up as rape victims, which is how you depicted them.

[anke]

I'll concede the second two points, but consider the part where the children are required to breed what constitutes treating them like cattle. Or any other animal that gets bred by people.
Not that most parents are likely to think of it that way, but putting someone into a breeding programme for people to me equates to treating them as animals.

[(Anonymous)]

I can think of a lot of human parents who casually/not so casually will say things like, "I expect grandchildren," or "It's your job to give me grandchildren." General culture accepts it as something people say, but this is just that attitude with slightly more magical backbone: I expect grandchildren before I'm too old to enjoy them, you are my child and you wouldn't want to make me sad, would you? Bodily autonomy is something I agree with, but I wouldn't say even in modern liberal culture it's caught on enough to change how people think about whether or not their kids have kids. Entering your kids into a breeding program doesn't strike me as 'you are cattle' it strikes me as 'isn't filial piety fun? No? Well, too bad, you get to do what I think is best anyway.'

~Wyste

[anke]

Am I ever glad my parents aren't wannabe pimps like that. I'd have to stop talking to them.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a very strong phrase. Do you actually think parents who say that they expect grandchildren want to be pimps, or did you mean something else?
~Wyste

[anke]

I appear to have very strong opinions about people who think they have a right to decide what other people do with their lives, and, particularly, bodies.

Someone who wants the right to order someone to have kids and be obeyed, so they can have grandkids, and someone who wants the right to order someone to have sex with a third party so they get money are not very different in my eyes. Both wish to treat other people as tools to get what they want, reducing those other people to things.

[(Anonymous)]

Sample: http://ramblingsofanangryirishman.tumblr.com/post/50259584532/kristen-bell-wins-all-the-mothers-day-awards

~Wyste

[inventrix]

That I'd not disagree with, but I'd put the blame there almost entirely on the Addergoole staff, though I'm sure there is a minority of parents who did actually willingly sign their kids up for what they knew to be some sort of breeding program.

[anke]

Maybe I should add: It is my impression that flunking out/not graduating to get out of the requirement is not an option.

[inventrix]

Is there a reason to assume that the parents would come to the same conclusion or have the same impression?

[anke]

OK, let me try to explain where I'm coming from.

I have the right anatomy to get pregnant, in principle (the whole PCO thing might make it tricky if I wanted to become pregnant).
And the thought of someone forcing a pregnancy on me terrifies me. I do not want to harbor a parasite feeding off my blood, making me sick, and squishing my innards, until either I have to squeeze it out through a hole too small for it, which is such an awesome process that the etymology of the German word for "delivery room" goes back to something meaning "screaming room", or be cut open.

And the thought of my body producing hormones that make me like it makes it more creepy.

I've got issues relating to autonomy, too, but I want to write those up in my journal rather than here.

Am I fucked up? Yeah, sure. But I'm 100% certain it's reasonable to assume that not all teenagers want to have children immediately.

[aldersprig]

Oh, no, I'm not arguing that what the parents agreed to was a bad idea! I think we just have a level of scale of bad-idea-ness.

[anke]

OK, I think I misunderstood.

By the by, to me the most sympathetic reason to me is trying to make sure the kid'll have a Mentor.

[aldersprig]

I think they made sometimes-understandable bad decisions, sometimes-not-at-all-justifiable (depending on the parents).

And that's a good one, of the bunch. I do like "this will help them save the world." But it is a bit problematic.

[clare_dragonfly]

"It's a half breed, why would I care what happens to it?"

This one is particularly interesting to me. Surely most of the parents are half breeds? If they're pure and that snobbish, I wonder how Regine got them to agree to create a halfbreed.

Stories about parents/potential parents who refused?

[aldersprig]

That's a good idea! /adds it to writeme list/

/needs a longer scroll/ -D

[aldersprig]

http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694764.html
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/715132.html

[natf]

the foundation blocks for the salvation of the world when the Returned Gods came back.

So, the return/apoc was known about in advance?

[natf]

Also, I forget. Does "half-breed" refer to ele+human or one specific breed of ele(I-forget-the-long-word-right-now) with another, e.g. Mara+Grigori.

[aldersprig]

Yes.

A "half-breed" is a totally inaccurate term referring to any fae that does not show the distinct Changes of one of the three (five) "pure-bred" breeds.

[aldersprig]

It was, more or less, foretold: seers started going nuts with it about 150 years ago. Err, 150 years before it happened. Which is about a blink for fae.

[(Anonymous)]

Presumably, unless the mothers in the program gave up rights to the fathers, the fathers didn't and don't have any say in what happens to their children. That's how I always interpreted the Belonging Law. So it was for the most part, the mothers that made the decisions and the Oaths. Most of them would have been, self-evidently, mercenary enough to get pregnant for some sort of reward, and would have probably assumed their child would be the same, if they thought about that at all. Of course that doesn't take into account that they're freely making that choice, as adults, and their children wouldn't get that chance.

Regarding the "I got pregnant during my Keeping." and assuming the above is true, I'm not sure how that could work. Kept can't make Oaths but their children still Belong to them. So wouldn't it be the case that they couldn't make the multi-generational Oath the school requires? Can a Kept be ordered to give up ownership of a child? Wouldn't that count as an Oath and thus something they couldn't do while Kept?

Something in the parents' defense (as much as I don't want to defend them) is they didn't know about the faux Keepings, so they probably assumed the children would have at least some say in where when who and how their required babies were conceived. They didn't know they were consigning their future children to be sex slaves, to be raped hundreds of times, over the space of at least a year and possibly as long as four.

Of all the reasons listed, the one that had previously jumped to my mind was the immortality one. One might think, if they weren't thinking it through all that well, or weren't very empathetic, that two babies were well worth the long life and access to magic that the school's guaranteed Change promises.

This is not to say that it was any kind of right to make this kind of decision for anyone else, let alone your own children. And I fully condemn the parents for their actions. But I can see where they may have been coming from when they made it. I still lay almost all of the blame on the Staff.

As a bit of an aside, from everything we learn in year 5, I have no idea how someone like Kai's mother would agree to this sort of thing. Unless she became what Kai implies she is now out of regret for that decision.

A few other responses:

"Being pregnant is a beautiful thing." If you got to choose to be that way, sure.

"I trust these people." I guess what they say is true, a sucker is born everyday.

"People had kids at this age in my day." In a culture that accepted such a thing as normal, a culture you were brought up in, and these children were not.

"It's not rape if it's your Keeper." Not going to even touch that one. Everything that is wrong with it should be self-evident.

"This is the only person who has offered to get her a Mentor." That might be an almost legit reason, along with the immortality one.

Kuro_Neko

[aldersprig]

The fathers - for the most part - chose to donate their sperm to the project and unanimously named the children; they had that much choice at least.