Nothing too profound tonight. My unicorn hasn’t flown away, but he’s tired. He spent nearly the entire day helping me track down international adoptee political, search and support, and social organizations to go on the Daily Bastardette “Activism” menu. I had a good number up there already, but when I checked the links most of them were dead. Back to the drawing board.OH, and I kept getting knocked offline.
Even though I’m aware of the adoptee diaspora, every time I update international adoption links, I’m overwhelmed when I think about how many of us as a class have been distributed, throughout the world. Or shall I saw re-distributed? Some of us only go down the road, others to far away places with strange sounding names.Some of us go to “loving forever families,” other to sociopaths.
AdoptionLand is a strange place. By statute, Koreans become Americans and Swiss, Guatemalans become American, Americans become Irish, Cambodians become Brits, Brits become Swedes, Ethiopians become Norwegians, Congolese become Belgian, Oklahoma Indians become South Carolina Italilans, Jews become Catholics, Catholics become Nazarenes, Buddhists become Presbyterians at the flick of the Bic in the judge’s hand Let’ s not even start on race. We’re the original post moderns. Fluid, rootless, and without a context of our own, though we fit into other people’s contexts as neat as a Victorian parlor.. The product of 100 years of Progressive social engineering. And we still don’t get no respect.
And the really bizarre part of this is that nobody finds this identity shift on demand strange but us.
What I find exciting though, is that we are a worldwide movement of the :displaced, deidentified, disenfranchised, dismembered, undocumented, and colonized. We are everywhere. We must be dangerous.
Adoption is some sense is color, ethnic-, religious- and sex-blind. Our value is our easy commodification. Everybody wants us. Unlike Miley Cyrus ,who has the agency to commodify herself, the agency does it for us. (Sorry! That’s bad, I know!) For some reason the imagine of James Dean (as Cal Trask) in the film version of East of Eden comes to mind when I think of us.. We’re boxcars of lettuce tossed around and argued over until we’re useless. The lettuce may rot, but we grow up. Same thing..
The number of countries that spawn their own indigenous adoptee rights movements is growing. Each spawn has its own set of grievances particular to culture and law, but in the end it comes down to industry secrecy, greed, deceit, and entitlement, not particularly in that order in each country. . We are HUGE. When I was growing up China was known as the “sleeping giant.” Now we are.
I’m still working on my list, but am running out of steam. I’m particularity interested in adoptee groups in South America, India, the Caribbean, and the FSU. The entire continent of Africa has none that I can find. Surely there must be some Ethiopians organizing but I can’t find them.
Even if it’s not complete take a minute if you have time and let me know what’s missing on the list. . I’ve still got some FB pages to look through that I’ll be adding,, but not tonight.
******
On another front, I’m getting a lot of Bastard Moments. Thanks. There’s a glitch with the BN dashboard that I hope is fixed this weekend. Until then, I can’t put up a new page or edit an old one. (The blog, however is fine.) They’ll be up soon.
Join me on Twitter @DBastardetete
