Protest gegen “Men Having Babies” / Protest against “Men Having Babies”
27. April 2024, 13:30 Uhr, Konferenz “Men Having Babies”, Berlin Marriott Hotel, Inge-Beisheim-Platz 1, 10785 Berlin
Men Having BUYING Babies – WOMEN FIGHT BACK!
STOP SURROGACY
Am 27. April 2024 organisierten drei feministische Gruppen einen Protest vor dem Berlin Marriott Hotel, wo auf der Konferenz “Men Having Babies” Leihmutterschaft speziell für Männer beworben wurde.
Feministinnen vom Radfem Kollektiv Berlin, FEMEN Deutschland und der Terre des Femmes Städtegruppe Berlin hielten Reden über die Schäden der Miet-/Leih-mutterschaftsindustrie, verlasen die Namen von Frauen, die bei der Leihmutterschaft gestorben sind, und marschierten mit Schildern vor dem Hotel (mit Aussagen wie: “Lesbians/Feminists against surrogacy”; “Adopt don’t shop”; “Money is the coercion, It’s not a ‘choice’!”) und riefen (“Women don’t owe you kids”; “Leihmutterschaft ist Ausbeutung”, usw.).
Einige Frauen waren schwarz gekleidet, während die anderen rot-weiße Handmaiden-Kostüme trugen, um die ausbeuterische Natur der Mietmutterschaft zu symbolisieren. Wir verteilten Flugblätter mit unseren verschiedenen politischen Stellungnahmen. Die Passanten waren interessiert, hörten uns zu und sprachen mit uns.
Das taten auch ein paar Männer von der Versammlung selbst. Zwei Reaktionen von Männern, die den Kongress besuchten, fanden wir sehr interessant: ein Mann behauptete: “Niemand kauft Babys!”, während ein anderer Mann uns belehrte, dass “nur Frauen mit einem großen Herzen” Mietmütter werden.
Wir freuen uns über die Artikel, die EMMA bisher zu diesem Thema veröffentlicht hat, und über die Erwähnung unserer Gruppenaktion. Wir hoffen, dass andere Medien diese Menschenrechtsverletzung endlich aufgreifen und kritisch über Mietmutterschaft berichten. Unabhängig davon werden wir weiterhin im Namen der Frauen protestieren, die in dieser Branche ausgebeutet werden.
Women are not for rent; kids are not for sale!
Städtegruppe Berlin / Terre Des Femmes
Radfem Kollektiv Berlin
PRESSEMITTEILUNG
zur sofortigen Veröffentlichung
Berlin, DE: An diesem Samstag protestieren drei feministische Gruppen gemeinsam gegen die Konferenz „Men Having Babies“. Frauen vom Radfem Kollektiv Berlin, FEMEN Deutschland und Terre Des Femmes Städtegruppe Berlin werden am 27. April 2024 um 13:30 Uhr vor dem Berlin Marriott Hotel in der Nähe des Potsdamer Platzes gegen die Konferenz demonstrieren.
Diese Konferenz richtet sich an schwule Männerpaare und alleinstehende Männer, die durch Leihmutterschaft – besser: Mietmutterschaft – die in Deutschland derzeit illegal ist, Väter werden wollen. Mietmutterschaft beruht auf der Ausbeutung von Frauen und führt zu einer Kommerzialisierung des menschlichen Lebens. Bei der Mietmutterschaft werden die Körper von Frauen als Brutkasten für die Schwangerschaft und Geburt von Babys ausgebeutet, die lediglich Produkte sind, die bestellt, gekauft und verkauft werden.
Die Mietmutterschaftsindustrie verlangt die totale Kontrolle über die reproduktiven Fähigkeiten einer Frau, doch damit das System funktioniert – damit die Verbraucher zufrieden sind und die Unternehmen Gewinne einfahren können – wird die mütterliche Verbindung zu ihrem Baby untergraben. Bei der Mietmutterschaft gibt es keine Mutterlinie; die Mutter wird verdunkelt, ausgelöscht, vertraglich zum Schweigen gebracht und gerät in Vergessenheit. Männer nutzen Leih- bzw. Mietmütter, um ihre väterlichen Verbindungen zur nächsten Generation zu festigen, während die Mütter vage oder sogar rechtlich nicht existent sind.
Wir setzen uns gegen die Ausbeutung von Frauen und die Kommerzialisierung des menschlichen Lebens ein!
On April 26-28, 2024, the “MEN HAVING BABIES” conference is being held in Berlin. Its target audience is gay couples but also open to single men. This is the patriarchal and capitalist pink washing of the exploitative surrogacy industry. No one should have a right to order and buy babies and exploit women, inclusive of gay men.
“Men having babies”? Really? This level of male entitlement might sound shocking, but it is no surprise for feminists.
Remembering the words of late Maria Mies:
“That is really a problem from time immemorial until today that men can not accept that human life comes out of a mother, out of a woman…. If men do not respect that they are not the beginning of life, then there’s no hope for a better world.”
What we see is not only a desire to become parents, the pure entitlement of this desire is also a problem of our civilization: “I want a baby with my own ‘superior genes’! I must have it no matter what -even if it risks another human’s life- and that should be my basic RIGHT!” Patriarchal institutions have always been in favor of the rights and desires of men, and that still holds true today. Including Germany, many governments shape and try to pass laws in line with campaigning, advertising and the lobbying work of the global surrogacy market some of which are represented in this conference…
Surrogacy relies on the exploitation of women and results in the commodification of human life. This ancient practice continues the father’s lineage, while the mother is irrelevant, preferably invisible and powerless. Women in surrogacy are treated as resources: vessels for production, raw material for extraction. Assyrian marriage contracts and even the book of Genesis record such patriarchal arrangements. Technology developed in the last 4000 years, but so has surrogacy’s exploitative nature. Today the global surrogacy market promotes reproductive slavery as a baby-making solution for wealthy consumers worldwide. Surrogacy as we know it today is the product of “techno-patriarchy” layered over the age-old bible story.
Male domination has historically distorted the feeling of social belonging among human beings and turned that human connection into legal ownership. Today this ownership can be gained simply by shopping. For wealthy consumers, surrogacy is a technologically and legally sophisticated procedure for gaining ownership over newborn babies. On the other hand, women are economically coerced to grant institutions and strangers total control over their bodies, the eggs they produce and the babies they birth.
The surrogacy industry requires total control over a woman’s reproductive capacities, and yet for the system to function – for consumers to stay happy and companies to reap profits – her maternal connection to her baby is undermined. In surrogacy, there is no mother-line; the mother is obscured, erased, contractually silenced into oblivion. Men use surrogate mothers to solidify their patrilineal connections to the next generation, while the mothers are technologically vague or even legally non-existent.
Surrogacy mechanizes the female body to a degree likely unthinkable a century ago, but today it achieves legitimacy under the cover of women’s hard-won agency. As feminists, we understand that the slogan “the personal is political” reveals the political conditioning of our desires and choices. In this context, we recognize that the mother-role is inflicted on women not only as a duty of social conformity, but also as a life-goal to achieve. Women should want to be mothers. When this socialized desire cannot be realized, for example in the case of infertility, women either become consumers of the commercial surrogacy market, reinforcing the sex-based system of exploitation, or they become laboratories themselves.
At every step of this process, women’s bodies are used as mines, labs and factories to satisfy the patriarchal need for progeny. This system of reproductive exploitation is accepted, just as systems of sexual exploitation are accepted, because patriarchy designates a group of women for whom exploitation is acceptable. As feminists, we call for an end to the social conditioning that forces women into motherhood. We call for an end to surrogacy, the economic coercion and reproductive slavery that dehumanizes and exploits women worldwide.
Read more at: The Wish for a Baby Comes with a Price
Update 15.07.2024
We were recently informed that the Junge Freiheit, a right-wing populist publication, covered our protest in an article using our photo as a headline image. This photograph was used without permission and explicitly against our will. Before publication, Junge Freiheit Editor Mathias Pellack contacted us via Twitter asking to use a photograph from our protest. Our response was clear: we do not want them using the photo, we do not want them writing about us or contacting us again, because their political positions are untenable to us.
We refuse to be instrumentalized by right-wing media. Any agreement or report that right-wing actors might have on basic points of our feminist politics does not mean that we consider it beneficial to collaborate with them. Our collective identifies right-wing populism as fundamentally anti-woman and anti-feminist – not to mention its racist, nationalist, and homophobic tendencies. On this basis, we make the political decision to not give any material or support to such a publication.
Furthermore, their conscious violation of our political boundary does not surprise us. This is just another example of how men do not accept “no” for an answer. They do not respect women’s personal or political boundaries. Our actions cannot be represented with value by the likes of Junge Freiheit, as they actively disregard our stated boundaries, using our protest to push their narrative. Despite our clear and timely response, they went ahead and used the photo anyway, in both print and digital forms. This violation could be argued to be aligned with rape culture under male supremacy and has very little to do with journalistic integrity concerning feminist actions. Junge Freiheit‘s nearly all-male editorial team finds it acceptable to steal women’s work and act against women’s will. Instrumentalizing women and our feminist movement is obviously more important to Junge Freiheit than the actual political demands radical feminists have.