God Works in Shitty, Shitty Ways

I’ve said it before: One of the things that makes adopto-blogging so difficult for me is that it’s the same damned stuff, day after year after decade.

So I invite you to behold “Adoption is what god wants for babies you like but didn’t give birth to,” Part 3,796. (I’m so tired, Y’all.) It’s about this video entitled “Mom adopted two children, months later discovered who they really are.” (“Creepy World” indeed, innit?)

Or don’t behold it (unless you don’t trust my summary, which would be fine). I watch this shit so you don’t have to, and I am here to lay the whole upfuckid mess out for you. This…is a video about Katie, a woman cursed with a vision disorder that tragically prevents her from determining how big a house she needs to live in all by herself after a divorce. No really: That’s her excuse.

Katie got divorced. Katie then, for no reason at all, bought a house way too big for her.  Oops! Four bedrooms and only one me?!

Katie decided this “mistake” meant she had a “calling” and that fostering kids was “the path meant for her.” Even though “it made her heart fearful,” “[s]he knew it was the right choice.” Then she decided she was entitled to adopt. Two weeks later, she was called about a baby boy OBVIOUSLY MEANT FOR HER.

This is not, of course, a rich white lady in a bigass house getting what a rich white lady wants. It’s DESTINY! The below is a direct quote from the video narrator and from Katie:

“Destiny at work: ‘I want him.'” 

Katie’s. Wants. Are. Destiny. She asked the social worker not to tell anyone else about the baby. She prayed to get the baby. She got the baby. She mystically bonded with the baby, was “a natural at parenthood,” and decided to adopt the baby.

(What, again?!! How long does it take you to decide whether or not you want to take on a responsibility, Lady? You asked the social worker to hold that baby for you and not tell anyone else it existed because you wanted to adopt and you are obviously the best parent for it, but you’re not sure? You’re going to Hell, One True Mommy.)

Anyway, Katie adopted the baby.

And Katie decided this one baby was definitely enough, because he needed so much of her time. (Because his mother took drugs, of course. Not because infants require incredible amounts of time and attention to raise, of course. What drugs was Mom on? Left unspecified, of course.)

Katie still wanted another baby, though, because Oh gosh, I bought TOO MUCH HOUSE! (I am not making this up.) So she got one. Katie was called about another infant, decided she had time for two infants after all, said god told her to, and got herself a baby girl to foster.

The mother’s name was on the baby girl’s hospital bracelet. Hence, Katie discovered she had acquired half-siblings. In other words, she may well have had more access to the baby girl’s records than the girl herself ever will. Ain’t god/Destiny GOOD?

Katie spent some time determining the babies were half-siblings. Then she visited their mother, and instantly KNEW this woman was the mother of both of HER HER HER HER HER kids. When this was later proven, Katie waltzed into the sunset congratulating herself, Katie, for keeping families together.

“Katie was amazed.” Katie was thrilled to learn she had a matching set. What a miracle that one woman can be deprived of two children! Katie adopted the second baby, and the narrator spooged himself a little bit: “Hannah was her daughter by law… How amazing!” Katie continued being *“a natural mother,” and was thrilled to learn that

(brace yourself)

Katie was delighted to learn that the “birth mother” had just given birth again! AMAZEBALLS!

Oh, how Katie pondered! She just wasn’t sure she could do it. She agonized, oh I’m sure she did. Then she snatched that third kid (not for her, for the children!) and eventually decided she could adopt that one, too.

Yes, you read that right. Again she says she took the sibling into her home with its sibling/s without reallllly being sure she could deal with this. (It’s not like it could hurt anyone if she gave one of them up later, after all.) It’s a good thing she’s lying. I believe Katie is too entitled to ever have questioned her ability to mother all the cute little babies in the world, by herself, in an oversized, semi-renovated house. Didn’t god say she could?!?!?

Well, the story ends Very Happily, as it must, with Katie being rewarded for her crimes against the family. Katie’s life is full of love and support. She met a wonderful man, but is still “raising the kids on her own” while working full-time, renovating her house, and starting a business. (He sounds like a keeper, right? Totes daddy material!) Insert advert for Katie’s business. Insert bullshit about how Katie nevertheless has time for all three kids, which she does NOT claim herself–she only says she hopes she’ll have more time for these kids later (what, when they’ll need it less?!). Katie has fulfilled her “crazy dreams!” and she’s hiring a nanny and giving god the glory. She’s been on Good Morning America!

She’s got everything their mother never had, and I’m supposed to go “Aaaw, so sweet.”

We don’t know what became of the mother or of the other child she mentioned having when Katie tracked her down. But she was on drugs. She was definitely on all the drugs. Did I mention the mother was on drugs? That’s why one of the kids has amblyopia. SHUT UP IT DEFINITELY IS.

I kinda hope Katie chokes.

*Yes, it really says that. Natural. Mother. FUCK. YOU.

Black Friday Baby, Part Two

Egad, I’ve been dreading this, but I did promise. So here’s the rest of Funny Alabama Daddy’s very funny riff on how funny it is to be white raising a black child in the USA. Let’s get Aware about race and humor in adoption! Ready? Me neither.

Now that he’s gotten his “black Friday” joke in, Funnyman Daddy tells us about visiting a nursing home with his baby, where we learn all old people love babies, except for one impossibly old, bitter woman.

Because racism is for old people, and when they die, it will be gone, right? (Or maybe when we all interbreed humanity into a medium brown color, then it’ll be gone. Sure it will.) At any rate, the only reason we have racism now is the existence of old women Funnyman Daddy doesn’t like even though they make him look and feel very enlightened for doing fuck-all about racism.

Anyway, impossibly-old woman demands to know why Funnyman Daddy “didn’t get a white baby,” and his response is that it’s after Labor Day. Aha. Ahahaah. Funny Daddy then assures us the woman’s response was “Oh, well that makes sense,” which it almost certainly was not, anymore than the Wal-Mart security guard actually patted his gun. Then he laments that he cannot kick the old woman because she is in a wheelchair and the audience laughs. Funny Daddy says:

“And my wife is beautiful and my daughter is beautiful. That’s the number one question we get asked, is ‘Did you pick your daughter out?’ No, we did not. Most people don’t know this….”

Wait, what? Out of nowhere: The females I choose to have in my life are beautiful and that’s what I’m asked about all the time: whether or not we picked this baby out.” Non sequitur, or is he implying that since both are beautiful, he could have but didn’t choose a baby that matched his wife in beauty? What the fuck? Why are people laughing at this nonsense? Dunno, but it continues. “Most people don’t know this, but if you adopt a child from outside of the United States […] you immediately have to take the baby to a pediatrician.”

Annd? Are you implying the pediatrician will take one look at a newly-adopted baby, KNOW whether or not you picked her out yourself, and declare her unhealthy if you did? I mean, Sir, what the fuck are you saying? This is a routine you spent time perfecting at home, yes? And you’re doing it to prove–or you want us to think so, anyway–that there’s nothing wrong with adopting a black baby. So you’re giving us your funniest stuff and best logical evidence, right? Then what is this No, I didn’t pick her out, I had to take her to a baby doctor! mess? If you’re out of material, why not thank the audience and leave on a high note?

On he goes, and finally there’s a joke about the pediatrician’s telling Funny Daddy that his daughter’s skin will dry out easily and that he might want to apply something like coconut oil. Why is that a joke? Because it’s marinating the baby! And comparing a black person to food is just the newest, least-racist joke a funny white man has ever joked, isn’t it? (Seriously, if you’re not familiar with this, read some more books by white authors; they have a marked tendency to describe a black person’s skin color as that of a food item.)

And that’s all: the marinating thing is (mercifully) the end of the clip. We never find out what his point about NOT picking out the baby was supposed to be. He just…left it hanging there.

This is all they’ve got, Folks. This is the best the defenders of international and interracial adoption can do, and it’s old, stale crap. To any of my fellow white people who don’t already know: Being a little less racist than Lyndon Larouche doesn’t make you not racist. Being “color blind,” “not having a racist bone in [your] body,” or “not caring if someone is black, white, green or purple” doesn’t make you not racist, either: it makes you willfully ignorant and unwilling to engage with racism at all. And that is the opposite of being capable of raising a black child in a white world. Finally, laughing about the position you have put an innocent Kenyan baby in is…well, it’s deplorable. So are this man and his hooting audience.

I can’t wait for his high-larious routine about black hair, can you?

Here We Go Again

Yay! It’s National Adoption “Awareness” Month, in which almost nobody is made aware of anything about adoption except that it exists. Apparently people’s brains fall out every Halloween and they have to be reminded about adoption (and furniture and birds, for all I know).

I kid, of course. The one and only thing NAAM really wants us to be “aware” of is the fact that we should adopt because a Sad Child need us…only really it’s a baby and it doesn’t need us, we want it. This whole November mess was meant to be about moving kids out of foster care into permanent homes. Yet almost nobody considering adoption or even hearing the word “adoption” thinks about that at all. They think, as they have since adoption as we know it was invented less than a century ago, about a very pretty, very new, healthy white baby some woman is out there making Just For Them–possibly thanks to god, who in his infinite cruelty couldn’t find a better way to get that kid into their family where it belongs.

And that is the opposite of awareness. That is just more evidence that adoption, like most institutions that promise the impossible, wants your money. Those willing to spend that money always insist they are not buying a person, and in a way, they’re right. What they’re buying–what they’re willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for–is the illusion that the person had and has no other family.

NAAM never offers up much awareness of how it feels to be adopted (unless the answer is wonderful, grateful, and impossibly un-curious about one’s origins). It certainly doesn’t want to make anyone aware of how it feels to relinquish a child for adoption (unless the answer is grateful, glad to get on with life, and a little sad, but only in a very giving, very distant, blurry-lensed way: awww).

In short, there’s nothing special about November. It’s pitching the same “awareness” we’re told about adoption the rest of the year. That is bullshit, and it needs to change. Some of us who have an actual awareness of adoption have been trying to change it for decades now. Very few people listen.

So here we are again this year to shout a little louder. November is a wild ride, so keep your heads, arms and legs inside the car at all times. See you tomorrow!

Black Friday Baby, Part One

Or Better Late Than Never, Part Two: Part One!

I can’t stand it, Y’all. I can’t stand the way children are not people, but objects to acquire and then mock. Because children never grow up and watch Daddy’s stand-up routine…and if they do, they’ll keep their mouths shut unless they’re pretending to laugh, because this is Daddy, and Daddy couldn’t really mean all the things he said, could he?

Of course he could. Just ask Pastor Boob Job Baby how side-splittingly funny it is to bring a different-race child into your white white white family. No, really, it’s a riot! Suffering? Racism? Shut up. Know what you are if you think racism exists? A RACIST THAT’S WHAT.

[deep breath] Sorry, it’s been awhile. I get worked up easier than I used to. I’m also pissed off because I can’t find a transcript of the below, which means I’m gonna have to watch it over…and over…and over again in order to do it justice. Mercifully, it’s short. It’s a clip from a side-splitting standup comedy routine entitled “Black Friday Baby.”

SO. This funny man got married, wanted a family, couldn’t make a baby, and purchased one from Kenya. Sorry, “brought home [his] very own baby” from Kenya.

(Very own? Of course it’s their very own. They have the receipt!*)

“And folks,” adds Mister Funnyman, quite emphatically, “We could not. Be. Happier!” A new dad always has to say that, doesn’t he? When you get a child that’s really Your Very Own, nobody just ASSUMES you’re happy your wife gave birth, do they? Hell no! You have to make it. Very. Clear. How. HAPPY! YOU!! ARE!!!

Of course you don’t. The only reason Funnyman Dad here says this is because he knows it is assumed by others, including his audience, that he can’t be happy with this inferior Kenyan replacement baby. Naturally, to prove how not-racist they are and how great adoption is, the audience goes wild. Woo! Yeah! What a wonderful man you are, Sir, to stoop to taking in that black African…no, wait, we don’t believe that at all. Why are we acting like we believe that?

Funny, Funny Daddy goes on to say how thrilled he is that his wife “gets to be a mommy” and that he will have a token Negro in his family for basketball jokes. No, he doesn’t say he’s glad he gets to be a daddy. He says he’s glad to have a family member who “can dunk.”

“Can dunk.”

“Can. Dunk.”

“Can dunk” means “is black,” because everyone ever born with a certain amount of melanin in his or her skin not only can, but wants to, play really good basketball. Isn’t it amazing how not-racist this man is? And funny!

After a pause to say again how happy he is with his precious black baby and how he doesn’t at all whip it for not picking enough cotton, Daddy spoils the secret for us by mentioning that he’s from Virginia. Whaat?! A man with that accent and that black baby is a white Southerner? But if he were a white Southerner, he would already have lynched this baby! That’s what white Southerners do. ALL OF THEM. Except for this one guy who is So Special he finds it acceptable to, apparently, start an entire family just to prove how racist he ain’t. Sheeeit.

I kept waiting for him to say “Now, Y’all know we could totally have got us a white one.  I mean, they wuz ovair in Keenya just thowin white babies at us. But we dodged’em, because we are Very Good People, not like the racists we expect our baby to deal with all her life.” Yes, those racists: The ones in Virginia, the ones she would never have encountered at all if it weren’t for you and your wife’s perfect white love.

ANYWAY these white people in Virginny, unlike white people anywhere else, sometimes “ask  stupid questions” when they see a white man in close proximity to a black baby. You see, all the racism in the world has been concentrated in Virginia and other Southern US states. This is why black people outside of the Southern US never have trouble with cops unless they have committed a crime, never have trouble exercising their right to vote, and, as a group, have the same amount of property, money and political power white people do.

Bullshit, Sir. The only reason you were able to purchase an African baby is that they are seen as less valuable than white ones, and you know it. The system is racist. You are racist. I am racist. If we can’t admit that, nothing will ever change. But you got the baby your wife wanted and you’re making money on this, so maybe you don’t care.

Let’s get back to stupid questions.

Funny Daddy insists a white person asked him how his baby could distinguish him from other white men. You know, the way white racists can’t tell one black man from another! I have lived my half-century-plus life in the South, and I have never heard anyone ask this question or any question like it. I cannot imagine anyone asking this question. In order to ask this question, a racist would have to assume black people act and think the way s/he does because black people are as human as s/he is, which is not traditionally how racists think. It’s a bit too self-aware–obviously so. And that’s why I suspect Daddy made it up. For laughs.

If I were his daughter, I wouldn’t find this funny at all, because Daddy, I’m not a lion and I’m sick of representing the entire continent of Africa to you and everybody else, Daddy. I’m tired.

(She’s also tired because he made his Lion King joke too way long. I hope Seth McFarlane fries in Hell.)

Then Funny Daddy points out that it’s 2017 and people still say dumb things can ya believe it!? It’s not like we put a dangerous  racist maniac in charge of our country ten minutes ago. It’s just dumb people saying dumb things, and Daddy has fun with them, because they can’t hurt Daddy. They can only make Daddy look good and get Daddy paid. (I sure hope Daddy never did a routine about how bullshit white privilege is.) But it gets worse.

It gets worse when Funny Daddy says he snaps back at people who say dumb things because they make him “feel inappropriate.”

They make his white Virginia ass. Feel inappropriate. In Virginia.

Sir, nobody can make YOU feel inappropriate in Virginia without your consent. Your child, OTOH, will always not only feel but BE inappropriate. No matter how much you yourself (o thou white angel!) do to spread the gospel of anti-racism, which you are not doing, you will never be able to keep her safe. Especially not as long as you try to do so by laughing at the predicament you put her in. I don’t think that’s funny at all, and I find it very scary that you do.

The second dumb question Funnyman Daddy says he was asked is  “When’d’ja get’er?” This question is not “dumb.” It isn’t even offensive. It’s mere curiosity. It’s nosiness, which is rude at worst. It’s only “offensive” because a supposed Wal-Mart security guard supposedly said it, supposedly while patting his gun at white Funnyman Daddy.

Funny Daddy wants us to believe his black baby turned him black and therefore made him vulnerable to police violence. This is, of course, pure bullshit. White people who adopt black babies, while they are certainly inconvenienced and may experience racial discrimination, do not become black and do not lose their white privilege.

And that is really all of this mess I can deal with in one blog post. Stay tuned for Part Two.

 

*The lovely hair that Galla wears/Is hers–who could have thought it?/She swears ’tis hers; and true she swears/For I know where she bought it! — Martial.

 

Contempt, er Content Will Resume

…almost certainly both, almost certainly soon.

The Logic of Compromised Attachment

Who else thinks this is brilliant? Who else relates so much their body reacted before their emotions and brain did?

GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE

(Old news, but I wanted to post something.)

I wonder how many adopted girls/women have been saddled with this name? Well, here’s one more: The little girl delivered in the back of an ambulance by a fireman has been adopted by the fireman and his wife. Grace is her middle name, but they’re going to call her by it. You know, in case she ever forgets how lucky she is and asks too many questions.

“We have never hidden it from her,” Marc told “Today.” “If you ask her where she was born, she says, ‘My daddy delivered me in the back of an ambulance.’ She knows the whole story. I wanted her to know as soon as she was old enough to understand.”

Sir, that…is NOT the whole story. Her story began when her mother got pregnant, just like yours did.

His wife says they wanted more children,

“But I was pre-term with [my biological sons], so we knew that it wasn’t possible to have anymore babies.”

I do not know what that means. Can anyone explain it?

Hero Fireman added: “I don’t even think about her being adopted. She’s ours and we love her.”

And your not thinking about it (because you don’t give a fuck about her mother or where she came from) means she’ll never think about it, right? That grace god reserves for adoptive parents truly is amazing.

Why don’t they start calling all the male adoptees Lucky? It’s the same damned thing.

Kill a Kid, Run to New Zealand

Oh look, another little boy who hurt himself to death like Max Shatto did. I don’t want to read another damned word about how people who can have their own children but “can’t” raise them are privileged over those who can afford to purchase someone else’s child, especially if they choose to feed him honey instead of taking him to a doctor, make his care a sixteen-year-old’s problem, blame him and his mother for his own death, and then have the gall to beg for funeral money before bugging out to New Zealand.

And I don’t want to read one word on this blog about how biological parents do this too. They do, and it’s horrible, but adoptive parents are being entrusted with someone else’s child, and that means they should be held to a higher standard. Obviously no parents of any ilk should be allowed to get away with this.

Seven -year-old Seth “ultimately died from an inflamed pancreas and blood disease.” His APs “had issues with going to doctors.”

“Babies have become commodities” complains baby broker

Kinton, who founded Amazing Grace nearly 20 years ago, says licensed agencies like hers are struggling to stay in business because pregnant women are choosing to give up their babies through independent facilitators.

Look, Lady, we all know why your business is failing: Most women want to keep their babies, and nowadays, they can. The pickings were slim when you started, and they’re slimmer now. And that’s great!

“When I first started, we were pairing 20 babies with forever families every year,” Kinton said. “Now a good year is 10.”

If adoption were really about the children this would, of course, be cause for celebration, not whining. But no: God’s “Amazing Grace” is supposed to benefit Ms. Kinton and her paying customers, not babies and their existing families.

With fewer babies to pair, agencies such as Amazing Grace have fewer families paying to complete the adoptions, which keep the agencies afloat.

The fact is, PAPs want what they want and they want it now, regardless of cost. They always have. I wondered where on earth they learned that a baby is an item to be purchased? Surely it isn’t anything private adoption agencies ever did. Surely Ms. Kinton isn’t complaining just because those facilitators are stealing her money.

She adds that adopting families are vulnerable to adoptions that may not follow all legal protocols, plus there is a danger to the pregnant woman with no guarantee of the health and wellness of the new baby’s home.

Lady, you crack me up. Nobody cares about the pregnant woman. And no woman who relinquishes has anything like a guarantee of a well and healthy home for her baby.

“We have social workers who we know have gone into these homes.”

That’s right, it’s that “one home study makes you the best parents evar” nonsense again.

“If you have a mom here and the baby is going, say, to the state of Utah, we don’t know if anyone has gone into the home.”

Isn’t it IN ter est ing that she mentioned Utah of all states? Utah, which makes it easiest for a woman to relinquish without the father’s knowledge? Pure coincidence, I’m sure. Couldn’t possibly be that Ms. Kinton loses big bucks every time one of her pregnant women absconds to Utah. Obviously, the only reason a woman would got to Utah is to deny her baby a safe home and deny Ms. Kinton’s rightful fees. Sure it is.

Ms. Kinton, you got into this business twenty years ago, which was already twenty years too late for you to be pitching this BSE bullshit. I don’t care about your business going under. I care about the women you’re complaining about having sniped out from under you because you are the one who believes babies are commodities.

Seriously, who do you think you’re fooling?

The very first sentence

…of this article about transracial adoption begins with the phrase “Adoption, like parenting…”

Dear people who write about adoption: STOP IT. Stop assuring us adoption is exactly like raising biological children out of one side of your mouth and saying this shit out of the other. We hear you. We see you. And adopted children who are supposed to be “helped” by this article see and hear you.

Both dads say honesty is important while raising your kids.

If you honestly don’t think adoption is parenting, Dana Kozlov, then don’t write articles about adoption. You’re not helping.