The Only Words I Have Are Effwords

“Why,” asks Yemsrach’s mother, “did an adoption agency tell Angelina Jolie I died of AIDS when they gave her my baby?”

If she doesn’t know, she’s the only human being on this planet who doesn’t know. I will tell you why, even though you know and I know and everyone you know knows and everyone involved in adoption damned well fucking knows:

The agency told Angelina Jolie that because it’s what Angelina Jolie wanted to hear, and because the agency knew she would hand over the money without asking many questions. Everybody knows that. Absolutely everybody who’s read an article or three about international adoption in the past ten years knows the international adoption industry is an exceptionally corrupt one.

I’ve had it. I’m so tired of the constant, self-justifying drone of “not MY adoption” and “My baby was left by the side of the road/is a Real True Orphan/was totally gonna die.” So fuck international adoption. Fuck “We didn’t know.” And if you can’t do the amount of homework and research to add someone to your family that you’d put into buying a used car, then fuck you  and fuck your expectations of sympathy.

The sellers of children and the sellers of used cars have a few very important things in common: They want your money, they will lie to you, and they need to move the product, now, before it’s too old. You know this. Everybody knows this. Only one group, however, is selling human beings. That means they should be held up to even more scrutiny than the other group, because children are people and people are more important than things. Everybody knows that.

And if you did your research, discovered all the “used car dealers” you could find were crooks, and did business with them anyway because this was the “car” you wanted, even to the point of helping them steal the “car” yourself, well, fuck you twice, and fuck all your supporters, and fuck everyone who helped you, you filthy, underhanded, heartless, soulless thieving piece of shit.

And if you discover your “car” was stolen and won’t return him or her anyway? There are not enough fuck yous on planet Earth.

Really, is there any other situation in which someone stands to score tens of thousands of dollars from you…and you believe everything they say? Any other situation in which you’d think of paying a cash bribe as an acceptable way of doing business? And if you are rich and famous, all that goes double. You know you’re at a bigger risk of being lied to than the average person. And yeah, so does everybody else.

In 2004, when it became apparent that Rath’s adoption was dodgy, Angelina said “I would never rob a mother of her child. I can only imagine how dreadful that would feel.”

No, you can’t, Ms. Jolie. If you allowed  yourself to imagine it, you’d have to feel bad about the fact that you had a baby delivered to you on a movie set by a bad, bad actor. And I don’t give a damn if you didn’t know, because you didn’t bother to find out. The online adult adoptee community and others were raising the alarm about Galindo for a long time before anything was done about her. That’s how these stories generally go. With Lauryn Galindo, they go back to at least 2000. Angelina Jolie could have learned about Galindo before she adopted simply by Googling her name. But Lauryn said she was Doing Good, and that was good enough for Angelina Jolie, who cares so, so much about mothers who lose their children.

Jolie continued, “Maddox is my baby, he is by my side all the time, and I think I can give him so much. I can no more imagine living without him than not breathing.”

That makes it OK. That’s how some people sleep at night, secure in the knowledge that having money and things is much better than having one’s own country, language, and family. (Naturally, most of these sweetly sleeping grown-ups were brought up in their own families and countries, and they have all that stuff plus money and things, so they know alll about that trade-off and how it might feel to a child.)

Parents of international adoption, stop lying to a country that already seems eager to ignore any bad thing it ever hears about any adoption–especially if you’re rich and famous. You’re in a position to make international adoption better for everyone. You have the country’s ear. Stop using that power to make things worse instead of better (YOU GO MONYETTA SHAW!).

Stop lying to yourselves.

Stop lying to your children. You’re hurting them.

There is no excuse for this “I didn’t know”-ing. You did know. If you participated in international adoption, certainly within the past ten years, you know you were risking doing something very, very wrong.

And I don’t know why you think you should get to feel better if you really didn’t know. If you really didn’t know, what should anyone think of you? That you’re too selfish, blind and stupid to be raising any kids? That’s not one bit better, is it?

Children Deserve (White, Rich) Families

Nauseating. Repulsive. Incredible. UGH.

The snurchin doesn’t know anything about Katie Jay and her blog; I just stumbled on a link to this page.

This article slams kinship care really hard, but **provides no evidence for doing so. I can only conclude the author would never, EVER leave her own child in the care of her own parents (its grandparents)  because kinship care means a child risks being starved and denied an education. (You can’t trust relatives to look after your child. You can only trust strangers from another continent who will never have to give you an accounting of how they treated your child.)

Of course, Katie Jay’s grandparents would never deny her child any food or education they couldn’t afford to buy, because they’re white, and aren’t white people the best? Really, aren’t we just the most loving and compassionate people anywhere? It’s true because we say it is…so you can just ignore anything we do that might appear to be cruel. Like, you know, making a child’s very survival contingent on its being flown halfway around the world and expected to love strangers just because we like needy babies but don’t like needy grown-ups.

Or like killing children by starvation or beatings. Or like subjecting children to torture. Or like keeping them in cages. Or like adopting them just to get a government subsidy. Or like adopting them for the sole purpose of sexually abusing them and making them participate in child porn. Or like handing them off to people we know nothing about when they inconvenience us…while continuing to collect that government subsidy. No, no poor nation can possibly match our level of civilization, wisdom, love, and compassion.

“[W]hen some countries hear about rare instances of adoptive family abuse, it resonates with them: that is what they are used to seeing in their own culture.”

Bullshit. If abuse were what they were used to seeing, they wouldn’t get all butthurt and do tacky shit like stop letting USAians stop adopting their children over it, would they? If abuse were what they were used to seeing, they wouldn’t think of it as abuse, just childrearing…wouldn’t they? So who’s the person minimizing and normalizing abuse here, Katie Jay? YOU ARE.

But no, other cultures are just screwed-up. They cage their own children and make them star in porn films all the time! As Katie Jay’s about to tell you, they don’t even understand the importance of having a permanent family, even though they might well have been raised in one (just like Katie Jay! Oh shit I did not just say that! these people are nothing like Katie Jay!):

“But because of a growing awareness that a child has a human right to a permanent family, countries that don’t offer adoption are in the hot seat. And they are on the defensive.”

Other countries need us to teach them children deserve permanent families. The family, like “true adoption,” is a “modern phenomenon” white people invented. Why, before we happened along to Show Them The Way, people of non-Western cultures swapped babies every month for the sheer fun of watching the babies get confused. They might have kinship terms that are more elaborate and specific than our language can accommodate, but they have no idea what they mean, the savage morons. Love? Family? What are those? Teach us, Great White Mother, for your ways are clearly superior.

(And I can’t believe she brought up Cinderella and the fairy godmother. You understand the only character an A’mom might play in that fairy tale is that of the stepmother, right, Katie Jay? You know, the one who treats a child not her own the way you say poor, nonwhite people’s kin treat them?)

“When countries see foreigners embracing their children in a way that they won’t, they are embarrassed. And suspicious. This shame then morphs into xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, which creates or sustains horrible child welfare laws.”

Let me break this down for you, Katie Jay. Well-off whitefolks in Western nations don’t embrace children in a way their real families/nations won’t; they do it in a way those families/nations can’t afford to. They’re not pathological and they are not inhuman. They’re simply the victims of an inhuman pathology (white privilege, colonialism, whatever one calls it) that is almost certainly responsible for their being so desperately poor as to sell their children in the first place. If they don’t want to smile as they sell us their children, that’s not their shame, it’s ours: We expect them to smile as they sell us their children.

“Sell me your baby for the kind of money it would take you ten years to make…or I will turn my back on you all, and   you and Baby will die.” How on earth could anyone take such an enlightened, compassionate attitude as an excuse to feel shame, xenophobia, *racism, or nationalism? I mean, really, what is wrong with these people, Katie Jay? Don’t they know nationalism is only appropriate for citizens of certain, superior countries? And wouldn’t you behave more graciously in their place?

Of course you wouldn’t. And it seems clear to me that you’ve never spent any time imagining being in their place. I don’t understand why you aren’t ashamed of yourself. And, if I were a parent in another land, I’d never let you adopt my child. Because if you hold me in such obvious, unapologetic contempt while you ask me to trust you with my child forever, you will surely raise my child to think of me with contempt. One day you will look at that child and see my face, and you will very possibly feel contempt for the child. Or you will never look at the child and see me–only your pale and perfect reflection, meaning you will have no consideration for my child’s struggles in your world.

To top it off, you don’t even discuss corruption. You don’t even nod at it and call it this thing that rarely happens; you just ignore it. Kidnappings, forced childbirth, abductions…they don’t merit a mention. (And sealed records? What’s wrong with those?) You do mention that these primitive creatures people don’t understand true modern adoption, but say nothing about how this misunderstanding has been purposely manipulated, over and over again, to convince parents who don’t know what adoption really means to sell their children. They think the kids will be educated and sent back to them. They actually believe in the goodness and compassion and benevolence of the USA and its citizens, just as you claim to do, Katie Jay. The poor fools. The poor, desperate, starving fools. Obviously, they shouldn’t be raising children.

But you’re not the racist. You’re not the xenophobe. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I…just…holy shit, Katie Jay.

*Again: The resentment of people of color for the way white people have treated them for the past five centuries or so is not racism, and it never will be.

**Or does it? I don’t remember seeing such, but the OP provides a link in the comments.

Gotcha!

Traditional definition, according to Wikipedia: Gotcha and I gotcha are relaxed pronunciations of “I[‘ve] got you”, usually referring to an unexpected capture or discovery.

definition according to Google:

got·cha

ˈgäCHə/

informal

exclamation

exclamation: gotcha; exclamation: gotcher

1. 1.

   I have got you (used to express satisfaction at having captured or defeated someone or uncovered their faults).

noun

noun: gotcha; plural noun: gotchas; noun: gotcher; plural noun: gotchers

1. 1.

   North American

   an instance of publicly tricking someone or exposing them to ridicule, especially by means of an elaborate deception.

Current internet usage: “We both know that’s bullshit, don’t we?“

So are APs who celebrate “Gotcha Day” tone deaf to their own language, illiterate, stupid, or just plain lacking in empathy? I know which explanation I find most likely.

 

The Opposite Of Snarky Is

1) Sincere
2) Sentimental
3) Muppets

Shut up I sniffle because I have allergies SHUT UP.

This looks familiar, vaguely familiar,
Almost unreal, yet, it’s too soon to feel yet.
Close to my soul, yet so far away.
I’m going to go back there someday.

Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls.
Is that a song there, and do I belong there?
I’ve never been there, but I know the way.
I’m going to go back there someday.

Come and go with me, it’s more fun to share,
We’ll both be completely at home in midair.
We’re flyin’, not walkin’, on featherless wings.
We can hold onto love like invisible strings.

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.
Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay.
I’m going to go back there someday.
I’m going to go back there someday.