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.

 

Make-Believe Make Believe is Too Damned Real

I’ve been writing this blog on no particular schedule for over five years now (I can’t believe it either). Sometimes I go dark for month after month, and when I do, I ask myself, “Snarks, what’s it gonna take for  you to post again?” And then something like this comes along, and I can’t not.

Mrs. Kristy Aldridge of Winchester (?), Kentucky says she wanted to share her adoption story and teach children about adoption. But how? Should she start a blog? Write a book? Write a press release? Set up an interview? No, none of those.

No. She opened a fake hospital-cum-baby store for little girls. (So her “adoption story” is yet another one told from the POV of the AP. What a surprise.)

Two weeks ago, Kristy Aldridge decided to start Choosing To Love Babies, a baby doll adoption program in an infant nursery room at the Kids’ Discovery Center.

And, being an a’mom, surely Mrs. Aldridge knows the importance of telling the truth about adoption. She isn’t just doing this to be cute. She’s there to “educat[e] them on adoption.” Sure she is. The education these little girls are getting from her is that adoption is a rainbow of perfect newborns put on earth for their benefit, their amusement, their selection, and their *purchase.

Interested children and parents can schedule an appointment to meet at the Kids’ Discovery Center at 9 S. Bloomfield Road in Winchester, which has been transformed into a mock hospital wing.

That’s right. Adopted children Come From The Hospital (not out of a woman’s body), just like your little brother did. They’re never not newborn. They’re never special needs. You don’t have to wait for them. You just pick your favorite one:

“So basically what it is the girls get to come in and they get to choose a baby that they want,” Aldridge said. “We have different races and different genders for them to choose from.

Pet peeve alert: Genders? Really? Why are we so afraid of the word “sex”? (Or can you really tell an epicine baby doll from an agender version one baby doll? cause I can’t.) You don’t have different genders of baby dolls, you have dolls that represent babies of two sexes.

[“]And we’re educating them on adoption and they have to make the promise of taking care of the baby. That’s a big part of it.”

Little girls don’t know babies need care if they aren’t told so by Mrs. Aldridge. And promising to take care of the baby is “a big part of” adoption, but it’s not the most important part. If it were, it would probably be discussed first. The most important part is customizing your fresh new baby, just like real adoptive parents get to do!–Only not so much. Not anymore. Not if they aren’t filthy stinking rich. Settling for a child who really needs you sucks.

 “We convert one of our infant rooms into the nursery and all of us have scrubs on,” she said. “I mean we really try to make this feel like an adoption.

Again, this is nothing like an adoption, unless it’s one of the ones done by rich, coercive people who don’t care who they hurt as  long as they get a newborn. Why not require the girls to take the doll from the arms of its dolly mother? Why not give the dolls fake umbilical cords for the little mommies to cut? (Why not just sit at home and watch reruns of Adoption Stories?)

These little girls come with their baby carriers and we have babies in another room, so when we re-stock and bring them in we act like they’re just born.”

Straight from the baby store to you!

Part of the adoption process after a baby is chosen is a 15-20 minute medical routine. Aldridge and her team of volunteer doctors teach the children proper care of their baby, such as how to hold the baby and how to change a diaper.

And that’s all adoptive mommies really need to know, isn’t it?

[…]

The program quickly became much more than Aldridge imagined. Part of the program was to raise awareness about adoption, but it has become educational in other ways as well.

“Another thing that is kind of awakening that we didn’t expect is that the children don’t see color.

Again with this color blind horseshit. Of course children see skin color. Before a certain age, they don’t realize it means anything, but they certainly see it. And so do lying grown-ups who want to deny systemic racism.

While they are going through and picking their baby I get to educate them on the true meaning of adoption is just loving the baby.

Wait, didn’t you just say kids are devoid of racism due to their tragic, somehow-universal optical impairments?  Then why do they need you to lean over their shoulders crooning “It’s about luuuuurve, so annny color you want is juuust fiiine” when they literally can’t tell the difference? They don’t, but I bet doing that makes you feel good, Ms. Aldridge.

[“]I have an Asian daughter from adoption and that’s what I bring up that it doesn’t matter. A white family doesn’t have to have a white baby.”

Certainly not. A white family can have pretty much any child it can pay for, sue for, or otherwise acquire, whether they’re in the legal right or not.

[“]Pets are also available for adoption and include a lesson on proper pet care and responsibility.

“The pets we also put in the cribs.

(I originally thought they meant real live pets. They mean stuffed animals, which is bad enough.)

[“]It’s about teaching them responsibility and not just ‘Let’s go to Walmart and get a pet,’” Aldridge said. 

Let’s go to the fake maternity ward and get a baby–or maybe a sea turtle!

Although, of course, “adopted” pets and adopted children do have some things in common: Some people will judge them for being adopted even though it was no fault of their own; and, if you get bored with one, you can easily discard it. I know you promised to take care of Baby, but grownups break their promises to pets and children all the time. It’s fine. You did your best. Your dolly or pet had RAD, or was otherwise simply unlovable. This currently happens to 25% of adopted children in the USA, but I’m sure Mrs. Aldridge doesn’t mention that at these events.

[…]

Adoptions are made through the week by appointment. The adoption experience includes a baby blanket, diaper, bottle, birth certificate, adoption certificate, baby and mom matching medical bands, a medical exam with the doctor and ends with the adoption promise for the baby or pet. Pricing and other information can be found on the Choosing To Love Babies Facebook page.

Ho lee shit. Holy shit, it IS like a real adoption! You, adopting little girl, are somehow both the adopting mommy and the doll’s only mommy ever. You have a birth certificate that says so and a hospital bracelet to back it up. Yet you also have adoption papers. If I were a little girl, I would be incredibly confused about all this, whether I already knew Where Babies Come From or not. In fact, as a little girl, I was confused about all this. I thought for a brief time that everyone was adopted. I also thought I had been brought home from a sort of combination supermarket and auction house. You know, kinda like this-here educational setup.

My cold and prickly heart is very sad for any little adopted girl who gets roped into this charade. Becuase you know it’s going to happen (if it hasn’t already).

I think if you want to give little girls dolls and impress on them the Whateverwhatever of Motherhood, that’s…OK, as long as it’s OK with the girls. I also think calling it adoption, and claiming to educate children about actual adoptions by saying this is what they are like, is preposterous and evil.

Now here’s the worst part: Mrs. Aldridge, who is busily teaching little girls (and, no doubt, her own adoptee) that adoption is a funsie wunsie visit to a hospital vending machine, is…well, you guessed it:

The Aldridges run Choosing to Love Ministries, where they help families during the adoption process. A portion of every Choosing to Love Babies adoption helps fund the ministry for those families. 

She’s grooming little children into future consumers at the expense of reality and of other little children (and their mothers). I can’t help but suspect her adult clients expect the same experience.

PS–How do I know it’s adopting families her ministry helps rather than relinquishing ones? Silly girls, adoptees don’t have families! Not until you pick them out and put them in your baby carrier!

*Fees aren’t quite mentioned in the article, but I think they’re strongly implied.

WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.

Readers, I apologize for what I’m about to lay on you, and I apologize for any vomiting, dislocated mandibles, or headdesk-related injuries it causes. Brace yourselves for the stupidest, most offensive question ever asked on Planet Earth.

These authors are serious, and they answer their question in the affirmative. Naturally they’re both men. Men doing a “thought experiment” they conclude is a splendid idea.

Imagine a world in which all the babies born each day were randomly redistributed among the biological parents. The infant assigned to any given set of parents could be white, black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, or any combination thereof (and that’s just the US); the baby could be perfectly healthy or grossly deformed. Parents would know only that their child was not their biological child. Let us call this social mixing.

No. Let us call this what it is: Imaginary barbaric social engineering by a couple of white guys who think racism can be imagined away if people only let go of the idea that women and children are human. Nobody who thought they were human could imagine something as horrific as swapping kids around at random. The authors propose this because it would hurt “lesser people” more than it would hurt them and because it sounds easier to them than actually confronting their own racism and privilege. (Also, “grossly deformed”? Isn’t that a delightful thing to call infants with drastic birth defects?)

This plan is of course politically impossible, perhaps even repellent.

You bet your ASS it is, Sirs. But hold on a sec–guess why it’s repellent? Because it would subject women and children to unspeakable cruelty? Because it would put the onus of fixing society’s problems on minority babies who would be raised in a racist society by people who may or may not be able to comprehend that racism or help the kids navigate it in any way? No, of course not. It’s because one’s own precious child might end up in the arms of a crack whore. No, seriously:

Is the idea so frightening? Yes it is. It is a frightening thought that your own biological child, the one sitting there now doing her homework, might have gone to an impoverished mother or a drug addict, perhaps have been beaten, perhaps starved.

It gets worse, though:

But why, save for genetic chauvinism, do we view with comparative equanimity the everyday reality of other people’s children subject to the same treatment by their own biological mothers?

What’s the “we” shit, you heartless pricks? How dare you? The reason you don’t care is that you lack human empathy. Assuming you’re white, which doesn’t seem  like much of a stretch, people like you run the country that lets women die in childbirth at a higher rate than any other “civilized” one, that blames women for their own rapes, that lets children grow up in poverty and go to jail because they’re the wrong color and/or their mothers weren’t married. Don’t throw your baggage on me, Sirs, because I fucking well do care.

You may argue that genetic bias is indelible in human nature. Social mixing would not only disturb the comfort of this fatalistic attitude,

Loving and wanting your own child is fatalism. Sure it is.

but also use genetic chauvinism for ends beyond mere economic equality, providing grounds for a compassion that goes beyond the wellbeing of our immediate families.

“[M]ere economic equality.” Pfft. Who cares about something that piddling? It wouldn’t fix anything OH YES IT WOULD. Go eat a bowl of bees, you dipwads.

Since any man might be your biological brother, any woman your biological sister, concern for them would have to be expressed by a concern for a common good.

Again you admit you don’t give a fuck about anyone who isn’t related to you and presume the same of everyone else. Yes, let’s doom everyone (except your generation and the generations before them, of course) to a lifetime of genealogical bewilderment because it would magically give you Yahoos hearts (not that I believe it would).

A second effect of social mixing would be to generate a strong interest in the health and wellbeing of expectant mothers, which would ultimately translate into an interest in the social and biological welfare of everyone. Since any child might end up our own, we would provide the social and educational environments that would best enhance their development. Ghettos and slums would be an eyesore for us all. Poverty, drug, and alcohol addiction are already everyone’s problem, but this fact would be more meaningful than it is now. The child of that addict might be our biological child. Every victim of a drive-by shooting might be a member of our genetic family. Each of us would see the link between our fate and the fate of others.

Worse and worse and worse. How can it go on getting worse? No point in giving a rat’s ass about women and children if there’s not a microscopic chance the women are carrying your future biological or adopted child.

And if you’re as heartless as you seem, then what you’d really do is tell yourself the chances of being biologically related to or being given the child of one random person are astronomical, so to Hell with that ghetto drunk and her prenatal check-ups: you still don’t want your tax dollars supporting the likes of her.

Third, the superficial connection between colour and culture would be severed.

SUPERFICIAL?!?! Also, that would be horrible. It would not result in white people sharing in black culture or Asians partaking of Latino culture. It would result in a homogenous, generic boring-ass cultural blandness of the kind white USAian people already have–and already hate so much that we’re prone to going around trying to steal other people’s cultures (white “Native American shamans,” white dreadlocks, white people using Cinco de Mayo as an excuse to drink too much beer, etc). Plenty of adoptive parents currently feel entitled to parody and degrade “honor” their internationally adopted children’s cultures already. Y’all need to quit kidding yourselves.

Racism would be wiped out. Racial ghettos would disappear; children of all races would live in all neighbourhoods. Any white child could have black parents and any black child could have white parents. Imagine the US president flanked by his or her black, white, Asian and Hispanic children. Imagine if social mixing had been in effect 100 years ago in Germany, Bosnia, Palestine or the Congo. Racial, religious, and social genocide would not have happened.

Just like when white slaveowners raped their slaves and sold their own children, right? and just like being raised by a “mammy” rendered white children not racist? Just like Hitler’s Jewish ancestry kept him from hating Jewish people? Even if this would work,  you are jumping ahead to the ends without considering the very human means to those ends, because apparently women and children only exist to fix your broken evil selves at the cost of their offspring and identities. You don’t care. I mean, here you are discussing what it would take for you to care.

[…] There are, of course, many natural objections to this idea. It will be said that one of the joys of marriage is for lovers to see the product of their love. To this we say that the product of one’s love lies not in the genetic production of a human being but in the mutual cultivation of the life of a child. But isn’t it true that either the genetic match between parent and child or a bond formed between mother and child in the womb makes each parent uniquely fit to raise his or her own child and less fit to raise another child? The evidence for such idiosyncrasy is slight.

OH IS IT REALLY. Spoken like true men–true unadopted men, possibly ones without children.

True, adopted children tend to have more mental and physical problems than non-adopted ones. But

we don’t give a flip!

…children are often adopted at relatively advanced ages, after they have formed close attachments with caregivers. Children adopted during their first year are at no disadvantage relative to non-adopted children.

Speaking as a person who was adopted before age one: You have no idea what you are talking about.

The authors rush to assure us there is no risk that under social mixing people will be as indifferent to their own *real children as they are now to the biological children of others. …[T]here are no grounds for such deep pessimism. Look at the behaviour of adoptive parents now, or look at the practice of surrogate motherhood. The many apparently infertile parents who adopt a baby only to have a biological child subsequently do not tend to reject the first child.

Except when they do, you chowderheads. I know many adoptees who were rejected or given short shrift when that biological child came along. And most couples who use a surrogate mother have her carry their own egg and sperm, so that doesn’t even count.

[…] It may be objected that parents’ desire to have their own biological children is so strong that they would be blind to the public good, that they would have babies and bring them up in secret. But those babies would not have birth certificates, they would not be citizens, they could not vote, serve in public office and so forth. If discovered, the children might be taken away after the strong bonds of psychological (as opposed to biological) parenthood had been formed. Few Americans would risk these penalties.

You two are officially horrible. You’re cruel, you’re monsters, I don’t even have words. You’re Frankenstein, you’re Nazis. You imagine and argue for a world wherein other people get rid of your prejudices for you no matter how much that hurts them. You have your brazen balls talking about “the public good.”

It will be objected that incest would occur frequently in a society where biological kinship was obscured. In answer to this, we now have the ability to test prospective parents and to forbid marriages between people with close genetic overlap – whatever the cause.

Who’s gonna pay for all those DNA tests, Doofuses? And in a country where people continue to spread STIs and experience unexpected pregnancies even though condoms are freely available, do you really think horny people are going to wait for test results to come back before they get it on?

But even if we did not have this ability, is it likely that incest would be more frequent under our plan than it is now (notwithstanding taboos) among close biological relatives living together? […]

I dunno. Why don’t you ask all the adoptees who have experienced genetic sexual attraction, Assholes?

It may be objected that people would not want to bear children only to have them raised by strangers.

YA THINK?! As it is now, desperate girls and women have to be coerced and purchased or paid to do it.

But genetic narcissism may not be the optimal motive for having children. There may be no correlation between the biological capacity to have children and the ability to cultivate the optimal development of a child. It may be a good thing if only people who passionately wished to be an integral part of the life trajectory of another human being raised children.

It would be, and that’s why women need better access to birth control and abortions, not an excuse for you to snatch their kids for great victory over racism. You do realize “people” includes women, right?

Genetic chauvinism lives on very strongly in our culture. Modern fiction and cinema often present adoptees’ searches for biological parents and siblings in a highly positive light.

How very tragic and unfair NOT.

The law in child custody cases is biased towards biological parents over real parents.

You really, really don’t know what you’re talking about.

You might claim that this bias itself is ‘natural’. It is so common as to seem part of our biological makeup.

It’s also the cornerstone your stupid argument rests on, but don’t let that bother you.

But subjugation of women was also common in primitive human cultures and remains so in many cultures today.

You are literally arguing for the subjugation of women to your wishes.

Unnatural as it sounds, social mixing promises many advantages.

Perhaps it does. But I find it very interesting that you propose this convoluted mess instead of simpler solutions, like eliminating redlining and otherwise arranging things so minorities can live next door to well-off white academic types like you. You could move into a “ghetto” neighborhood anytime you wanted, you know. But that would involve your taking a risk and your being inconvenienced, and those things are for women and babies.

If we are not willing to adopt it, we should consider carefully why. And if naturalness is the key, we should ask ourselves why on this matter, ungoverned nature should trump social cohesion.

Look, there is no magic racism eraser. There never was one and there never will be one. We–white people, because we have the power–need to get rid of racism by doing the hard work of educating ourselves, examining ourselves, and then putting our money and energy into  effecting change. And we don’t get to decide what the changes will be. If we are so lucky as to win their trust, underprivileged people of color will determine what help they do or don’t want from us. In the meantime, hands off other people’s kids.

White people made racism. Expecting minority women and babies to fix it for us is just another form of racism.

 

 

 

*YES, “REAL.” THEY ACTUALLY WENT THERE. They suffer the same genetic chauvinism they intend to erase by using genetic chauvinism.

Some Pedestals Are Higher Than Others

A friend called my attention to this blog post. I don’t want to critique the whole thing, because I don’t find it 100% horrible. But something really struck me about the way the a’mom involved chose to describe herself. So:

Has anyone else noticed The Adoption Process Moral Pedestal has levels? That it’s more an Adoption Process Totem Pole? Andrew MacDougall got to climb it because he brought a whole kid from overseas instead of just sending money for food. The maker of the “adoptees dodged a bullet” graphic got to climb just it for not being a relinquishing mother, which seems like a lower level to me. Pastor Boob Job Baby got to climb it for being just a little less ignorant about international adoption than the average person who isn’t involved with adoption is–fairly low, but probably still higher than Graphic Maker. Deb Goldberg got to climb it for presuming to tell the poor they need to save their money, which any non-adopting slob can do. And Jeff Gates got to climb it just for being insulted about being taken for a pedophile. (His pedestal’s probably pretty low, but he can still lord it over Masha Allen’s “adoptive dad,” right?)

So I’ve been thinking about the pedestals and how they’re measured. Here’s what I’ve gathered from the way I’ve seen people react online and IRL to adoption stories about APs (hey, is there any other kind?).

Rich couples who advertised themselves to “birthmothers” and scored a white, domestically adopted newborn get the lowest pedestal. Not only is there a chance they waited less than nine months to get their baby, they didn’t even have to get a passport. And they didn’t have to settle for a lesser product, the way people who get foreign or older or otherwise special needs kids do (did you know not being white is a “special need” in adoption?). All they had to do was put out a lot of money and get chosen by a “birth mother” who didn’t change her mind. Hell, they probably didn’t even do it because god told them to.

As the adopted person becomes less ideal (less white, less healthy, older) the pedestal gets higher. The pedestal also gets higher to the extent that the adoptive parents talk about religion.

International adoption is complicated: The pedestal might get higher because the APs have rescued an orphan, often for Jesus. But it might get lower because “American kids weren’t good enough for you?!”

The pedestal gets higher the longer the APs wait to adopt, and it grows a yard or more for every adoption they don’t complete because the first mother changed her mind. And if they ever had physical custody of a child and lost it because that custody was not entirely legal, their pedestal shoots into the clouds, borne aloft on a fountain of righteous anguish. Your pedestal grows if you claim your adoptee has RAD, and it gets taller the more out-of-control, dangerous, or even murderous the child becomes while in your care. Oddly enough, it retains its height should you decide to get rid of such a child. And, as we’ve learned recently, having one’s adoptee search still boosts the pedestal in some people’s eyes.

But the very highest pedestal is reserved for those for people like Megan (sorry: Megan!!!). Not because she adopted six times. Not because at least one of her children is from overseas. Not because she is a cheerleader for adopting older children, as if everyone were equally prepared to do such a thing. (Yes, it really is that simple–do it.)  Not because she has adopted four older children, and not because she congratulates herself for doing such a “simple” thing. (Most would snarl their faces with the thought of adopting an older child, let alone an older boy but not us.) Not even because, at least in one case, she and her husband had “paperwork approved for an infant” but instead chose to adopt an older kid (and let me tell you, very few things ramp up a pedestal in most people’s minds like turning down an infant in favor of an older kid).

No, Megan is the best kind of AP because, for her, adopting was never “plan B.” If there’s one thing that sets my alarm bells off, it’s the AP who takes pains to point out that s/he didn’t have to adopt. Not like those infertile slobs who had to settle for less…wait, not for less, because adopting is universally wonderful and your kids rock! So what the Hell were you doing just now besides taking potshots at people who couldn’t have their own kids?! I mean, isn’t that kinda…low?

I know, I’m silly expecting this stuff to make sense. So I’ll accept it. Nothing (except maybe ditching a kid you adopted) proves your worth as a human being and an adoptive parent like bragging about owning the functioning reproductive system most people take for granted. AdoptoLand is a strange place.

 

“No Clear Answers”

(Oh shit, it’s another day in November, and I haven’t posted yet.  Forgive me for using that as an excuse to shovel out that drafts folder some more, please?)

…No clear answers, Mr. Gates?

That’s what anyone who lives adoption is most disturbed by: the stunning (OH HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! –Because you adopted, that’s how) lack of clear answers.

Naw, not quite. Adoptees want clear answers. Original parents want clear answers. APs who feel ripped off want clear answers. APs who got the product they paid for often want lovey-fuzzy-schmuzzy “answers” that assure them they did right. They want them so badly they can pretend, in a porn-saturated culture, that they had no idea anyone would ever suspect white them of making fetish objects of their different-race daughters.

This is what you signed on for when you adopted from China, Mr. Gates. Oh, you didn’t know that? You never heard the phrase “China doll”? Nobody ever told you “Asian chicks” were “submissive” or (please forgive me) “sideways”? I don’t believe you. I do believe you never expected those stereotypes to matter to you or to anyone you love. That’s why you didn’t spend a single jiff considering the consequences of such stereotypes for your daughters before you adopted them, isn’t it? You thought it wasn’t going to happen to your girls because you think of them as yours, which means you think of them as white.

I’m not making that last part up. If someone thinks I am, I will gladly go and dig up all my links about white APs who didn’t see their Chinese daughters as Chinese…and don’t seem to think that means anything. And my links about the Korean woman who says she grew up thinking she was white. And so forth.

I’ll try to be more up-to-date tomorrow.

Fasten Your Seat Belts

No, Payton Won’t “Understand”

The snurchin has very little to add to this article/editorial about the white couple who got the wrong sperm by mistake and are now suing for the “wrongful birth” of a biracial daughter.

It’s not them, you see. It’s their families and friends who just don’t understand

“[Payton] will understand it wasn’t about, ‘We didn’t want you. We wanted a white baby.’ That wasn’t what it was about.”

Then what is it about?

Not About Adoption, Yet So *Vomitrocious

This post isn’t about adoption. It’s about a certain white Western mentality that contributes to attitudes about international adoption, and the way this mentality is displayed in an ad for a charitable organization called Feed A Child.

This ad is terrible. The only thing worse than this ad is what some are calling the apology for it. It is not an apology. It is nothing like an apology. It is a long version of the old derailing tactic that says “Pointing out my racism makes you racist, so you should feel bad, not me.” And it has the gall, the unmitigated brass-balled nerve, to ask for money while it’s busy not apologizing.

And goodness knows it isn’t Alza Rautenbach, founder of and spokesperson for Feed A Child, who should feel bad. The entire so-called apology is a glorification of Alza’s miraculous, impossibly racism-free mind, which is stunningly similar to the minds of “color blind” white liberals everywhere. This ad is a window into the minds of the people who will make any excuse for any international adoption, no matter how corrupt. “If one child is saved”…”Like a child, I don’t see color…race, or politics”…”Be like me and look past the racial matter.” Because I am wonderfu–I mean, saving little children is wonderful! Aren’t you ashamed, just a little bit, for not being Above All This, like me? [beatific smile]

No, she actually says “Be like me,” a white Western woman who’s never missed a meal in her life. She has also never been compared to animals because of her skin color, been perceived as representing the entire white race wherever she goes, or been asked to play the part of a servant crossed with a begging dog in an ad that could have made its point in countless other ways. What she has is “a deep-rooted affection for all children,” and this is very unusual in human beings. We must stifle our gag reflexes, because we can’t perceive her ad is so much better than we unenlightened, non-child-loving people think it is.

The white woman’s burden is so heavy. So very heavy. Alza bears it gladly because, unlike so many of us, she knows that all children are children. They are all equally deserving of care and respect. (That’s why her ad only shows a black child being fed puppy treats by a white woman.) But she won’t bear it alone: Alza wants your money! Send it now, lest she run out of Scooby snacks for the children!

I really wish this ad were its own opposite. I wish it were a commentary on how shitty and wasteful and condescending white people can be, and how we think everything and everyone else revolves around us…but it isn’t, even though it might have been (sort of) intended to be. It certainly intends to make viewers ashamed of ourselves, but only just ashamed enough that sending a small amount of money will make us feel better. It says “It’s perfectly fine for South African children to live off the scraps from your table. The scraps are all they need (whereas real children also require air, shelter, love, water, an education, and human dignity), and here you are throwing them down the Disposal when you could save a child instead! Text this number to send children who are so hungry they don’t care what they eat your garbage now! You’ll feel so good about you.”

If I’d made an ad that misfired this badly, and which seemed likely to dissuade people from helping the children I wanted to help, I’d issue an actual apology. An actual apology contains ingredients like these:

1) Remorse–the realization that one’s actions have hurt others.
2) A public admission that one was wrong and/or hurtful, intentionally or not.
3) Some kind of reparation; at the least, an assurance that one understands one’s offense and promises not to commit it again.

If you see any of those in the “apology” video, please tell me. (Seriously: This video made me so angry I kept cussing it out, so I may have missed the actual apology.)

Also, is anyone else tired of having Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata ruined by people who use it as a cheap, cheesy emotional device to get us to turn out our pockets?

Also-also, what’s “connotivity”?

*”Vomitrocious” is a word I learned on the AAAFC forum. I wish I knew who invented it, because s/he deserves the credit.

Adoption Is Tits! or, Better Late Than Never?

So there was apparently this…thing going around these…places online that is Very Clever and Funny and not at all demeaning or sexist. It’s a fresh! new! take on Positive Adoption Language, which totally exists only to spare the feelings of adopted children!

Sure it does. Here’s what it’s teaching me now:

Adoptees are blobs of silicone or saline designed to look like human breasts. Our composition doesn’t really matter, though. What matters is that being implanted into our families made us real breasts forever and OMG YEY that’s tits!

Isn’t that just fucking perfect? Probably unconsciously so, but perfect. Adoption gives you fake breasts which are completely your real breasts. They are neither better nor worse than your own breasts are/would have been, which is why you went to all the  trouble of surgery. They’re put on your chest without any input of their own and are expected to enjoy the attention they get, which makes them doubly boobs. (Seriously, what kind of adult calls breasts “boobs”? And why does breast augmentation surgery have to sound like something a prostitute might get paid to do for a man? as in head job/blow job, hand job, BOOB JOB? I suspect my readers know very well why; but I digress.)

For starters, note that “the boob job things” are things said to “Us, or adoptive families that we know.” Not to “our adopted children,” the ones who are truly in a position to be hurt by insensitive/lying adoption language; to butthurt grown-ups. (Yes, “adopted families” is supposed to include the adoptees…just like “and the rest” was supposed to include The Professor and Mary Ann.)

So the metaphor works beautifully: Adoptions are breast augmentations because bad things said about your/your wife’s breasts cannot hurt the feelings of  said breasts. Breasts lack emotions. Things said about them can only hurt you, the human.

To be fair, the maker of the video has adopted a child who looks too young to comprehend what’s being said about her. That changes nothing about the fact that adoption is always firstly, foremost and lastly about the adopting parents and not the adopted children.  Also, IME, people talk about us in front of us long after we’re old enough to understand, and that shit does not hurt adoptees one bit less if (Example One) a word like “biological” is substituted for a word like “real.” But I guess it makes Mom and Dad feel better, and that’s the point.

Example Two: “Where’d you get her from?”
Daddy protests that his daughter is “not a trendy accessory that you get from a boutique” and suggests asking instead, “Where is [she] from?” Why? I had to think about this one, and I think this: They’re the same question, but one version has an active subject, “you,” the adoptive parents. The preferred version does not. In other words, the Good sentence says a baby teleported herself from one family into another, perhaps by magic, and the Bad one says you adopted her. You’re not ashamed of having adopted, are you, Pastor Boob Job Baby? Because you sound here  like you’re ashamed of having adopted.

Maybe you should be. In the first place, of course your daughter is a purchase you were able to make from a privileged position. If she weren’t, anyone would be able to raise her, perhaps her own Ethiopian family. In the second place, I repeat: Your daughter’s feelings will probably never be spared by this distinction, only yours. And by your feelings I mean, of course, your defensive attitude about having done something you very probably should not have done. Because we’re all supposed to congratulate you 24/7, not bring you down with reality.

And you’ll never celebrate your daughter’s “Gotcha Day,” right? Because damn, would that ever make her seem like a trendy thing you purchased.

Example Three:
“‘Did you, like, get to pick out the kid that you wanted?’ …The question you probably wanted to ask is “How does the adoption process actually work?” (or, “How Are Sausages Made?”)
In the first place, they didn’t mean to ask that at all. Nobody gives a flying fuck how the adoption process works. My experience in being adopted, talking about adoption, and blogging about adoption is that how it works is the LAST thing anyone wants to know. I tell them how it works and they jam their fingers in their ears and sing love songs to the US of A. What they want to know is how they can get a baby. Now.

In the second place: Again, you certainly did choose her. People with less money have to settle for older children from countries that are not so very trendy. Some of them have so little money and influence that they have to settle for USAian kids who are old enough to know they have other parents. (Ewwww! Kids who really need to be adopted are such a buzzkill.)

In the third place, Pastor Boob Job Baby, one does not only “choose one’s orphan” in Hollywood musicals.  PAPs who want to see kids in need of adoption performing for them need only go online, or attend one of those horrible “picnics” where they are not only permitted but encouraged to choose the spunkiest, singing-est, most optimistic, tap-dancing-est orphan that strikes their fancy.

Example Four: Couldn’t have your own? You should have asked “How almighty are your gametes?” because infertility is apparently some kind of personal failing. (Hint: It isn’t.) Looking back, I realize how fortunate I am to have been raised by two people who truly didn’t give a flying fuck I wasn’t “their own.” I saw zero evidence my dad ever felt “less-than” because he had the mumps as a teenager, ever. I mean, yes, this is a rude question, but  unless you do think infertility is a personal failing,why would it bother you? Just say “She is my own,” and let the jerk who thinks infertility is so important stew in his/her juices.

Example Five: asking to touch the baby
Yes, there are some people who want to touch and hold every baby they come across. I’ve never known this to hurt any parent’s feelings. (Maybe it does, but I’ve never seen anyone respond to “Can I hold the baby?” with anything other than “Sure! Isn’t she adorable?” In fact, when I meet people with new babies, I am very often invited to hold the baby. I’ve held many, many babies, and I’ve never once asked to hold a baby.)

If an actually outlandish number of people are asking to “touch” your adopted daughter, Pastor Boob Job Baby, it’s not because you adopted. It’s because you adopted a black child. The older she gets, the less likely white people will be to even ask before they touch her hair, because racism exists. If you don’t understand this yet, you need to work on it, NOW. No, yesterday. No, last year. No, really, three or four years before you adopted. Because being black in a white culture that does not value black people is going to be your daughter’s life, and you made that happen. If she comes home crying from elementary school about how someone called her the N-word? That’s your doing, and you show no sign of being ready to deal with it.

Example Six: Do you love her even though she’s not yours? Doesn’t it bother you you’re different races? How much did she cost? Pastor Boob Job Baby says the answer to all these questions is “Just don’t.”

I’ll admit that being asked whether or not one loves one’s child is the kind of thing that would upset any parent, and I’ll admit the other two questions seem rude. I don’t care. As long as the child doesn’t hear them, I don’t give a single damn how often people who set themselves up to be asked these questions feel about being asked these questions, because if they are not constantly asking themselves these same questions, they’re fucking it up . It is in fact very important whether or not you can love her. It is very important that you’re different races. It’s very important that money is driving adoption. But not to Pastor Boob Job Baby, who doesn’t understand many things about adoption or society. For example, he doesn’t grok that objectifying women is neither a joke nor a compliment:

Example Seven: “It’s not polite to stare…unless it’s at my butt.” See? A man’s staring at the fresh new double-dees you paid thousands for is wroonnnnnnng, but only because it reminds you those breasts aren’t your original, natural breasts. Certainly not because being yelled at, threatened with rape by, and reduced to a fucktoy in the minds of many heterosexual men who see your breasts is bad, oh no. That’s good!  Because staring at Pastor Boob Job Baby’s ass is awesome.

This man is raising a daughter. A black daughter. If she ever asks him for help dealing with the double dose of objectification she will face for being both female and black, Daddy will just tell her that she’s real, that she’s not an accessory, that he didn’t pick her out, that he loves her….and that the thousands of people who will judge and profile her by her femaleness and blackness all her life should simply be directed to look at Daddy’s ass instead. Problem solved!

BTW, you know what it’s appropriate to say to someone about the “boob job” you think she may have had? Nothing, EVER, unless she brings it up. That’s not how conversations about adoption work or should work.

I now throw this post open to comment. But remember, readers: If You Wouldn’t Say It About a Snotty Little Privileged White Male Pastor, don’t say it about adoption. Go!

 

Racism In Adoption

Snark 1102
Teacher: Today’s lesso–
Bright young student [reads blackboard]: Oh! Oh, I know, pick me!
Teacher: Yes, bright young student?
BYS: This is gonna be one of those things where we find out there’s racism in adoption and that’s terrible because an AP might get hurt by it, right?
Teacher: Well, you have been paying attention. That’s exactly what this is.

The author of two books about adoption and a’father to six says he chose Russia because “[o]ur adoption/foster system here in the States is a big mess, and adopting within [it] proved to be a nightmare. That isn’t to say it gets better when you adopt internationally. It actually gets worse.”

Wait, what? You adopted in Russia because it’s so much harder? I think what I really just read was “I know I’m not supposed to say ‘because I didn’t want to have some kid in my house who might never be legally mine,’ or ‘because I didn’t want to deal with a first mother’ or ‘because US foster kids are more messed up than Russian orphanage kids’…but what will I say? Um, it’s easier but harder! That’ll fix’em.”

It didn’t. Perhaps perplexed at not having gotten an answer, the interviewer asked again why he and his wife chose Russia.

“I’ll be honest. It was racism. To my wife, race didn’t matter. For me, personally, I could have had a child from any race and it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Still, I was afraid that as a child aged, it might matter to them.”

Of course it will matter to them! And you shouldn’t even contemplate an interracial adoption if you can’t take a long, hard….what? What did you say?

“I was afraid of being rejected by my adopted children.”

No. No, that’s not possible. It must be these glasses. [rubrub, squint]

“I was afraid of being rejected by my adopted children.”

He was afra… [counts to ten] He was fine with bringing some hypothetical kid here from Ethiopia or somewhere. He was fine with the idea of raising that kid in a society that would judge him/her inferior by skin color forever. He was fine with doing that even though he, as a white parent, can do little or nothing to help that child negotiate racism. He was fine with all that. That would have been dandy. But a resentful child? Oh no, racism, now you have GONE TOO FAR.

Adoption is about rescuing a kid who’s properly grateful for it. It’s about the wants and feelings of well-off Western whitefolks, and if some kid’s gonna resent them, it’s just not worth it!

The assumption that no child who “looks like” Mr. Simmons will ever dare find fault with his parenting skills is not merely racist, of course. It’s outright harmful to adoptees of all backgrounds. Back before people knew any better, a lot of us grew up feeling that using anything short of gushing praise to discuss our a’parents was disloyal. Some of us grew up thinking all our confusion was our own fault, and that we must have been given up because somebody knew we would think secret bad thoughts about our parents. And if we looked a lot like our a’parents, we were expected to be like them and have fewer problems than adopted kids who didn’t “look like” their parents.

We know better now. Psychologists, adoptive parents, everybody knows better now. Surely a man who published two books on adoption knows better?

Anyway there it is, the “racism” in adoption. (Scare quotes signify that the resentment of their oppressors felt by the oppressed never has been and never will be racism.) Any questions?

BYS: Oh! Oh! Miss?
Teacher: Yes?
BYS: Is at least one of Mr. Simmons’ books on adoption drowning in sugar?
Teacher [marks extra credit column]: He calls it “saccharine,” but that’s close enough. Here’s why:

“First, it’s easier to write fiction. If you don’t like a part of the story, you change it. If you want to make a point, or you don’t know a detail, you don’t need to do research, you just make something up.”

Mr. Simmons, as a writer of fiction, let me just say that is not exactly how I or anyone I know writes fiction.

“Secondly, there are a lot of beautiful experiences that come with adoption. Why cloud it up with the uglies? Paint a rainbow on the bedroom wall, give the kid a stuffed unicorn and live happily ever after.”

(He actually. Said. Rainbow.)

(He actually. Said. Unicorn.)

But yeah, why not go on spreading the same sweet lies about adoption? It’s not like the book will have an effect on anyone–

“It was pretty easy to use a little saccharine (to artificially sweeten the story). I wanted people to adopt, so why not ‘sell’ it?”

You want people to adopt based on a prettied-up version of adoption. Well, that kind of thing never leads to expectations a child can’t live up to, does it? And those could never in turn lead to a little white child’s resenting his or her white parent/s down the road. Mercy, no.

To give him his due, Mr. Simmons would seem to be doing good work in Russia for those children who won’t be adopted.