Tag Archives: John Willke

U Are a Gift: The Commodification of the Female Body on a Very Bad Website. Your value is in your Unplanned Pregnancy

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The other day, the ever eagle-eyed Claud D’Arcy found a website, U Are a Gift, that is truly beyond words.  If I didn’t now better, I’d think that U Are a Gift, with its bizarre pictures of gift wrapped pregos, is a parody page. After one gets over the trauma of puerile aesthetics (Ad Busters take note!), one can only wonder who would take this site seriously.  The average 12-year old, with no prompting from any of us, should figure out quickly that U Are a Gift is somebody’s fantasy in pink. U Are a Gift is operated by a MILF  named Carol  (no last name) who wears jeans and suffers from grammar, punctuation, and capitalization impairment.  We think she thinks she’s cool–a word she uses to describe open adoption (the film Juno is a great model for living-a-happily-ever-after life) ). Carol tells us that before God, or rather, “Jesus, CEO of the Universe,” whispered in her pretty ear to set up her page (or mission, or business or whatever it is) she was: ….in the executive search business for 20 years. In my business I have always created opportunities for people and not allowed them to miss out on Continue Reading →

Ohio Adoptee Rights Historical Document: HB 419 (1995-1996)

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In conjunction with Ohio Adoptee Searches I have started a new blog:  Ohio Adoptee Searches:  News and Views on Ohio Adoptee Rights, Search, and Reunion.  I’m old enough to remember when adoptee rights and search were two sides of the coin, and search tended to lead to activism.  (Special thanks to BJ Lifton, Florence Fisher, and Jean Paton) No later than the mid-1980s, though, search had been co-opted by therapists and so-called reform organizations who packed the hearing room with nose blowers with beggars’ bowls, who despite their use of “rights” language,  chose reunion over rights.  And still do. The Internet, in many ways, has reinforced this victimization,  through hundreds  preaching-to-the-choir-misery-loves-company forums, Facebook pages, and blogs. Because I’m so damned old, this strikes me as nonsensical. Back in the day search was subversive.  Today it’s become the dead end of change. To cut the the chase my OAS blog is a forum to stir the pot:  educate Ohio adoptee searchers on issues,   the politics and language of open records, the history of sealed records in Ohio and past attempts to rescind our tiered system to  bring all adoptees under the pre-1964 open access law,  practical knowledge on how to Continue Reading →