When I published “BJ Lifton booted” I knew it would be controversial , but I had no idea that it would turn into a sideshow. It’s been at various times fascinating, disheartening, and amusing to observe the Language Police, Special Victims Unit morph into an anonymous CLP purge team; a smear squad intent on naming anyone who disagrees with them, including yours truly, a crypto-adoptionist. Or something like that. Since I‘ve had leggies on a committee floor call me a “baby killer“ for opposing safe haven laws, I think I can handle the accusation.
Background: I did not break the story of BJ’s boot. Mirah Riben wrote about it first in her August 29 AdoptTalk blog. Mirah and I were on the same track. I just picked it up and expanded it. There were no hot and heavy emails as some surmised. BJ did not contact me or ask me to write anything. I contacted her– and had to scrounge around for her email address. So leave her alone. The blog is my responsibility.
Mirah wrote something very important that day regarding the language dispute, “Respect needs to be extended to our historical roots, especially in a movement opposed to changing the names of individuals.”
As an adopted person and a historian by training, I deeply resent any attempt to exclude, expel, expunge our fore- mothers, -fathers, -sisters and -brothers and their work from our collective political and social memory. Those who fight for adoption change do not have the privelege of practicing creative forgetfulness–even if it is to “forget” just a word. If it is BJ Lifton and her work or her language that is “forgotten” or excluded now, who is forgotten and excluded next? Jean Paton? Florence Fisher? Lee Campbell? Joe Soll? Helen Hill? Bastard Nation? The AAC? CUB? Origins? You?
History, as Orwell noted, is written by the winners. As people whose history is manipulated, whose identities and relationships are constructed by state intervention and decree, whose paper records are sealed, and whose rights are “balanced” against the rights of everyone else’s and found wanting, the right to self-ownership and self-expression should be paramount. We should honor and maintain our history, which includes our language, as a matter of survival. It is disturbing then, that a group of mothers who were turned into not mothers by a flick of the state’s pen would take on the mantle of the state to manipulate language and naming through exclusion.
At no time did I advocate the exclusive use or for that matter any use of the word “birthmother.” I don’t care what anybody wants to call themselves. Really. What many commentors conveniently skipped over was what I wrote upfront:
This doesn’t mean that language can’t and shouldn’t evolve and reflect contemporary thought. When writing about adoption I like to move around language, using what looks good syntaxicly or how I feel at the moment as my criteria.
and
The real issue, though, isn’t the word “birthmother” or any other word somebody does or doesn’t like. The real issue is the ability of individuals to self-identify and self-define–to use language with which they are comfortable without being bullied or kicked out of the clubhouse.
Tiresome intra-culture wars have been fought over politically correct naming since the 1960s. These disputes have served little purpose other than therapeutic diversion from cultural-political warfare. The classic dog-eat-dog scenario that debilitates justice movements requires no cost to the oppressor. The state maintains its control while grievants implode over sectarian language and other meaningless pissing issues relevant only to anal retentatives in English Departments. The therapeutic divide has been especially harmful to adoption “reform,” imbued since the Reagan years, with bourgeois individualistic victim-healing consumer “solutions” rather than tough political action based on an informed analysis and critique of the role of the hegemonic state in family life. Instead “reformers” have rut-lined themselves with an emotional reunion-at-any-cost compromise that marginalizes the rights of all while propping up the state’s over-arching control of family life and personal relationships. This does not mean that adoption does not causes real suffering; deep permanent pain. It does, and that should be respected, but “reformers have chosen to “heal” the symptom not root out the cause of the disease.
PEDIACENTRICITY: It’s all about the baby
The US is a pediacentric culture in which children are the worshipful prize that in post-capitalist culture have little value other than symbolic–an unquestioned entitlement unmarred by class. That doesn’t mean that parents don’t love their children. But unlike the past where they held utilitarian value, children today, viewed though through the gauze of sentimental parenthood and the paradigm of “choice,“ even amongst the Maury crowd, are signifiers of parental status, psychological well-being, and ability. That is the subtext of all contemporary adoption discourse. I deserve; therefore I am.
The American family system is designed to support the essentialism of procreative desire, through biology or statute. The public aesthetic is one of the consumerized family. Those who don’t (aren’t interested) or can’t (infertility, marriage status) fall for the scam are considered eccentric, selfish, and ultimately harmful to the health of the state– especially its tax base–and to its theologized superstructure.
The US economy is built on the family value of continual acquisition of material goods and services “for the children.” Hummers, real estate, electric can openers, iPods, life insurance, boutique grocery stores, home computers, “family friendly” restaurants, mega churches, TV, prepaid funeral plans, public breast feeding ordinances, family leave, dumb “child protection” laws like Amber Alert, taxes, jails, medicine, therapy, politicians, and war are all “for the children.” They are sold to us by “cute kids” in print and on television. It’s little wonder that so many people think they need one. Instead of cultivating a life of interests (antique collecting, NASCAR, travel, politics, gardening, platonic and romantic relationships, writing, carpentry, soap operas, bar-hopping, cats, JFK assassination conspiracy theories, church, fishing) they–particularly women–sign on to a lifetime of parenthood without a dot or a crossed “t” of critical thinking beyond the signature.
WORTHINESS: The corporate state v mothers
But parenthood has always been mediated by “worthiness.” Poverty, race, religion, marital status, morals or the lack thereof, status, and values play into who is worthy and who is not, to parent Worthiness varies. One hundred years ago, the white unmarried mother was frequently viewed by reformers as “our fallen sister” misused by a cad. (NOTE: The industry considers men superfelous and even dangerous to the adoption debate). Her redemption came through care of her child (with little chance of ever nailing down a husband) , despite the fact that some mothers had no interest in mothering. Regina Kunzel in her book Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945, reports an incident of rescue home escapees rounded up by police, returned to the home and forced to breastfeed their babies against their will. A generation later, “fallen sisters” had transformed into “social units” and female cads who sexually victimized innocent men. Their redemption came from secret infant surrender and de-sexing through what is today called “secondary virginity” in order to restore her and her family’s virtue and hopefully snag her a husband, despite the fact that some mothers had a great interest in mothering.
But even within the fallen class structure there were the “worthy:” upper middle class, middle class or upwardly mobile working class daughters from “good families,” and correct ethnic and racial backgrounds who deserved sympathy and support. The rest were dangerous flotsam and jetsam progenitors of tainted babies. Depending on the times, their unfortunate children needed to be kept by their mothers in some low-end neighborhood, segregated in baby warehouses away from healthy society, or placed anonymously in proper homes. Unmarried minority mothers, popularly regarded as hypersexual natural deviants, usually were left to their own devices, unless picked up by a middle class African-American female reformers and women’s clubists.
Today overt unworthiness in newborn surrenders is subsumed in the rhetoric of adopta-religio counseling embedded in baybee grab projects such as National Council of Adoption’s Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program and in christianized CPCs (crisis pregnancy centers or as I like to call them, CPICs– compulsory pregnancy indoctrination centers), often staffed by IAATP graduates. Minority newborns, though less expensive, are the new white meat. The new unworthiness, a seamless shotgun marriage of older ideologies to contemporary social concerns (abortion or job security, for instance), preaches that entitlement to one’s own child is selfish and inimical to that child’s “best interest.” Redemption comes from unselfish mother love, enlightened self-interest, a constructed desire to help the unfortunate (baybee-starved paps) and hopefully Bible study and salvation. Unworthiness is never spoken but internalized.
But there is a larger view of worthiness that goes unremarked in baybee adoption circles since apparently the only legitimate adoption worthy of admonition is the intra-class newborn transfer.
Historically, the child welfare system is scattered with the bodies of poor and working class parents whose children were confiscated “for their own good.” (think Charles Brace or Tennessee bitch kitty Georgia Tann) The 1940s-1970s here in Ohio, marked a horrific period of child removal at whim, not of newborns, but of older children (but not too old!) deemed “endangered” yet placeable. This does not mean that all removal was unjustified, but a substantial number of mothers and children were separated for no other reason than agents of the state, backed by a friendly judge, could.
I have personally encountered mothers who lost their children for the crimes of temporary poverty, working outside the home, keeping children in playpens, and fighting with family or neighbors. Vindictive phone callsl to Children’s Services over petty disputes seemed to have been a popular way to even the score. I’m sure they still are. Parents say they were told they had no legal recourse and never saw their children after they were hauled out the door. I have talked to adults who as children were removed from their mothers and never adopted, but whose foster care records are sealed tighter than adoption files. They have no idea why they were removed from their mothers. It’s not their business. Nanny Sam knows best.
This type of blatant and mass systemic abuse of child welfare is not so common today, if for no other reason than child welfare is under-funded, under-staffed and used as a strong arm in the War on Drugs. Incarcerated mothers, thanks to the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, are on the fast track to “surrender” if they have no “acceptable” family or friends to take custody. As “welfare reforms” made by the Clinton and Bush administrations continue to block low income female mobility, we should expect to see more “voluntary” terminations of parental rights. (One of the more attractive carrots is the state promise of open adoption since its cheaper and cleaner than adjudication for neglect or abuse). Particularly dangerous is the Bush administration’s marriage initiatives pushed by rabid pro-adoptionist Asst. Sec. of HHS Wade Horn, that divert TANF funds to drum up marriage amongst the poor. First dibs on the public dole would would be for worthy married parents with unworthy unmarried mothers picking up the scraps, if there are any. Of course, nobody says where all of these older confiscated difficult-to- place-children generated from this mess will go except the warehouse and Thursday’s Child.
At the same time poor women are being penalized as single moms, the definition of “unfit parenting,” has been expanded to include any number of odd characterizations heretofore considered private decisions, excluded from government purview. Private consensual sexual practices between adults, cigarette smoking, junk food, sugar intake, and “peculiar” but harmless religious beliefs, now warrant government inspection , intervention, and punishment, of even the most solid middle class families. Public schools force drug tests, behavior modification drugs, and psychological evaluations on children; men and women are sent off to fight imperialistic wars; abortion is “outlawed” for all but those who can afford it; contraception is the next target. The compromise detainee bill if passed will authorize the president to name any US citizen he chooses an ’enemy combatant” stripped of all Constitutional rights with no redress. The government owns your body unless you can climb into the crawlspace of privilege, an increasingly improbable accomplishment. Adoption is the model of social corporatism.
It is distressing to see posters on the Daily Bastardette ignore the issue of the individual’s relationship with the real enemy, the hegemon state: the master control switch of adoption, choosing instead to attack adopted persons, adopters and activists over esoteric issues that do nothing to promote change. It is especially disturbing to see mother-identified women, bubbling with middle class status-loss resentment, refusing to examine the broader view of parental un/worthiness seemingly preferring an US (good middle class worthy women) over THEM (bad other class women) when, in fact, you are all disenfranchised mothers through direct or indirect state action. Is Charles’ Murray’s “The Coming White Underclass” a study guide for mother-class war?
RE-INVENTION: the American pastime
It seems to me that what has been argued here on the Daily Bastardette is much more than the limited therapeutic effect of naming:” an attempt to construct a definition of mother– a word already with several millennia of accepted yet varied psycho-social-bio meanings inscribed.
What is a mother?
Who is a mother?
Is a gestational carrier a mother?
Is an egg donor a mother?
Is a stepmother a mother?
An adopter a mother?
Am I mother? Are you?
What about women like my natural mother who adopted two children herself? Is she 1/3 a mother?
Are mothers in polygamist families mothers?
Can adopted persons define their mother(s)
Can mothers self-define?
What if definitions collide?
Is adoption loss confined only to newborn surrenders?
Are you reclaiming the patriarchal family space as your own or carving out motherhood as a radical response to patriarchy?
How will your definition(s) change public policy?
Re-invention of the self is an American pastime. Re-invention and adoption are natural allies, but also natural rivals, each ightingn for the authentic self. In adoption, we are expunged from our own histories and memories. Self-naming and self-identification can send a strong political message when strategically used and placed, but we should accept each other’s language and never dictate those identities to others. If we do, we’re using the enemy’s weapons against each other.
Marley says: It seems to me that what has been argued here on the Daily Bastardette is much more than the limited therapeutic effect of naming:” an attempt to construct a definition of mother– a word already with several
What a bunch of disingenuous bullshit, Marley. Do you really think that your doubletalk excuses the fact that you accused someone of censoring when you eventually learned that isn’t what happened?
And that your accusation was thinly disguised as such when the reality was a slap at Joe Soll with your specific statement inferring that even the mothers of Origins were being bamboozled by Joe into using this word?
I had hoped you would have the class to at least admit that you got the story wrong, whether you broke it or not. A copy of the “Call for Proposal” that BJ had submitted to Soll was submitted to this blog which proved beyond a doubt that BJ did not receive this request to kindly try to refrain from using the B word at the last minute. Sadly, BJ must feel she is above ethics and not only insisted that she would use whatever term she wanted – mothers be damned – but she lied by ommission.
I find that pretty disrespectful to a couple of organizations that whether you agree with their mission or not, have done at least as much over the years and probably more than any other group of so called activists in educating the public about the impact on adoptees and mothers of the closed adoption system. Perhaps that’s the rub. While all the other so called adoptino activist groups are losing membership – Crossroads continues to grow.
The fact that you will not right the wrong of direct accusations against Soll by admitting you didn’t have the whole story is distressing. Several of us had a hunch you wouldn’t be straight about this, but I had hoped to see that for all your glib doubletalk, you were a person of ethics.
Winston,
You’ve been asking for an apology for days now. It sounds like a broken record. Are you so dense that you can’t figure out Marley isn’t going to give you one?
Do the words shut up mean anything to you?
Marley in one of the few people how bother to confront the incredible hypocrisy in this field. Everyone is ignoring the blatant commercialism and victimization that is going on today with a whole new class of children, here and elsewhere. The industry doesn’t get it. Policy makers don’t get it. But more importantly, the reform movement doesn’t get it either. Stop with the self indugent navel gazing people! This is an emergency!
Anonymous childishly asks?
Do the words shut up mean anything to you?
Yep, sure do.
And since you’re again having trouble with comprehension, anonymouse – no one asked for an apology.
Have fun kids. Just don’t expect to be taken seriously in the future by me. With Marley at the helm and your entitlement issues, you will continue to get nowhere fast.
And I know you don’t care what the hell I think but like I said before, I vote with my feet.
Marley quoted: “Mirah wrote something very important that day regarding the language dispute, “Respect needs to be extended to our historical roots, especially in a movement opposed to changing the names of individuals.”
Hello?????
Tell me why I need to respect the very movement that altered my identity in the first place?
The adoption documents I signed refers to me as the Natural Mother and Mother of my child. The prospective adopting parents were to become the “adoptive parents” once the adoption order was made.
If the adoption legislation knew it could not rewrite natural order by the stroke of a pen, I’ll be damned if I’m going to abide by the will of CUB or Mac or Mirah or JB who together decided (in their oppressive scramble not to upset the adopters claim to MY title) to alter my legal identity by adding a prefix to it. Adoption stole my son’s identity. Not mine. All it did was remove my right to parent him.
So the gals are just going to get over themselves and realise that the more we wake up and evolve as a reform movement the sooner we shake off oppressive terminology that keeps us in our allotted adoption box.
While you play by the rules within the system you empower your oppressors and condone your own abuse. So call yourselves whatever oppressive terms you wish, but this little black duck ain’t abiding by other people’s definition of me. Game over.
Di
Origins Au
Marley said the following:
Background: I did not break the story of BJ’s boot.
Mirah Riben wrote about it first in her August 29 AdoptTalk blog.
Translation: authored by it’s none of my business but…., pssssst pass it on
Mirah and I were on the same track.
Translation: music to my ears
I just picked it up and expanded it.
Translation: pssssst….passing it on and then some
There were no hot and heavy emails as some surmised.
Translation: don’t suggest passing it on means it was any of my business
BJ did not contact me or ask me to write anything.
Translation: nope, I was just ….passing it on
I contacted her– and had to scrounge around for her email address.
Translation: hey, it’s hard work brown nosing into other people’s business
So leave her alone.
Translation: Though it was none of my business for my passing it on, everyone else is to blame.
The blog is my responsibility.
Translation: just passing it on
” . . . this little black duck ain’t abiding by other people’s definition of me.”
Get over yourself.
Nobody’s asking you to (which was the whole point of this imbroglio, in case you missed it)
“The adoption documents I signed refers to me as the Natural Mother and Mother of my child. The prospective adopting parents were to become the “adoptive parents” once the adoption order was made.”
Same here. Thank you for helping me to rediscover my roots, as i never heard the other term until recent years, in coming out of my sleep, and it has sounded foreign to my ears. I am a natural mother.
Mirah wrote something very important that day regarding the language dispute, “Respect needs to be extended to our historical roots, especially in a movement opposed to changing the names of individuals.”
At the base of our historical roots, we are mothers, not bmothers.
Some of us identify ourselves as having been conscious entities before adoption disrupted our lives. The day my child was stolen by a nun was not also the day I suddenly came into existence.
I existed as a person well before adoption ruined my life.
I was not created by adoption or the adoption industry.
I define myself. The adoption community does not define me.
This infantile clinging to the b word is simply a form of codependence with the very community that nurtured and enabled a terminally confused nun with far too much power to kidnap my child.
This infantile clinging to the b word is simply a refusal to move forward in time and grow personally as knowledge about adoption grows.
This infantile clinging to the b word is simply another ploy to keep mothers on the plantation and in the place the adoption community dictates. If women want to cling to it, let thm cling to it. I, however, won’t.
I will no longer collude with my own disempowerment.
The fact that I am a mother is Nature’s doing. The State had nothing to do with it. The State does not own my heart, mind, memories, hormonal history, or instincts.
The State only extends so far.
The State can not wipe out millennia of human experience and the unconscious imprints it leaves on us all.
The Adoption Semiotics Police who wish to perpetuate their self serving philosophical structure – the one that keeps them in power within the adoption community and keeps plenty of dollars flowing to their doors -have no right to define my existence in order to justify their own.
They can try… but I don’t have to cooperate.
These people aren’t concerned with the real lives of real people. They are concerned with their place in history. If they actually cared about real people, they’d be less interested in clinging to words which perpetuate their power and more interested in honest, accurate language. Honest language encourages clear thinking. Muddy language encourages only confusion.
If you are worried about your place in history the way your post suggests perhaps you need to reevaluate your priorities, Marley.
BTW, as much as I love Orwell –and as prophetic as he was — his observation has been outdated by the rise of the Internet.
History is no longer written by the winners.
History is now written by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.
Ms Marley says,
“As an adopted person and a historian by training, I deeply resent any attempt to exclude, expel, expunge our fore- mothers, -fathers, -sisters and -brothers and their work from our collective political and social memory. Those who fight for adoption change do not have the privelege of practicing creative forgetfulness–even if it is to “forget” just a word. If it is BJ Lifton and her work or her language that is “forgotten” or excluded now, who is forgotten and excluded next?..”
omg! “the privilege of practicing creative forgetfulness”
This is the crux of the matter for a couple people’s and Marley’s diatribes against Joe and mothers.
Could there be an ego any more inflated than to be angry and worried over popularity?
Could there be an ego any more inflated than to be angry over thinking you’ve accomplished something and others aren’t grateful because the evidence is to the contrary?
Could there be a mind-set any more narcissistic than to bare sentiments like mothers who’s babies were taken are undoing all “their” work?
“the privilege of practicing creative forgetfulness” is way over the top Marley, get over yourself !!!
“As an adopted person and a historian by training, I deeply resent any attempt to exclude, expel, expunge our fore- mothers, -fathers, -sisters and -brothers and their work from our collective political and social memory.”
I see this a …well, I don’t want to say a logical mistake, but as a mistake in thinking.
Because language usage evolves does not mean that the words we used to use, have ceased to exist. They are still in the dictionary. They have simply fallen out of usage. They have not been expunged.
They are there to see for anyone who cares to look.
Honestly, Marley, I think you are confusing the evolution of the language we use, with the expunging of identity.
I feel like this may be part of the problem with all this clinging to the b word.
It’s almost as if people feel that their very existences depend upon the use of certain approved words. The introduction of other words becomes a threat to their identities, their lives, their existences.
They have constructed an identity around an approved word. To use any other word is to threaten their identity.
This is possibly the worst of the psychological damage done to women during the BSE. The destruction of core identity and its replacement with a construct both manufactured and approved by the Adoption Industry/Community Complex.
The fact that this construct still has such a robust existence is testament to the fact that some people simply have not “moved on” from the identity assigned to them so many years ago.
It seems to me — and this is of course just my hypothesis — that they are not as recovered as they may think they are.
They still cling to the past and do not live in the present.
My opinion, of course.
This is part of the reason, I think, that some women react so violently when we use the word mother.
I would ask you where the locus of control is in a situation like this.
Is adoption so much a part of your identity now that the use of the word “mother” threatens to extinguish all that you are?
Do you even know who you authentically are? Outside of the identity assigned to you by an industry intent upon milking you and your family for all you are worth, that is.
Someone said: “Get over yourself.
Nobody’s asking you to (which was the whole point of this imbroglio, in case you missed it)”
On the contrary. You get over yourself. This “imbroglio” is about respecting old oppressive terminology, in case you missed it.
Found mom said: “Same here. Thank you for helping me to rediscover my roots, as i never heard the other term until recent years, in coming out of my sleep, and it has sounded foreign to my ears. I am a natural mother. “
Good for you Found mom. Be true to yourself and you wont fall for the adoption cult mentality.
anonymous asked – is adoption so much a part of your identity now that the use of the word “mother” threatens to extinguish all that you are
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this theory. I’m absolutely floored that these people are so invested in maintaining the status quo and making sure these Mothers don’t get too uppity.
…so they dig in their heels like stubborn little babies screaming for their mama, and tell us they were here first. Their rules go on this playground.
Along comes the new girls and they’re smart thinking women but they’re changing the old tried and true lingo and Goddess knows what else? They’re not playing by our rules! WAH!!!
Now do you really think you’ll disappear because some women wish to call themselves Mothers?
This argument or constant arguing is not getting us anywhere. I watched a crime show where a natural/birth/bio/first mother went on a shooting spree, killing all those involved her child’s adoption (black market). So while we are bickering over what is said, what is construed, what should be said, and so forth, we are all being characterized as crazy and psychotic. Marley does bring up an excellent point. When are we, you and I, going to take aim at the state that created this thing called adoption. That created the shame and pain that went with this. Why is it important to argue like this? We are doing more damage to our cause by bickering and fighting like this. Heck we don’t even need the adoption industry to do this we are doing it to ourselves.
This argument or constant arguing is not getting us anywhere.
Amy, it may or may not be getting us somewhere. but the point is that terminology seems to be extremely important to most of us – on BOTH sides of the issue. By ignoring this issue like the elephant in the living room isn’t going to make it go away.
Apparantly this needs to be addressed because most of the mothers who are speaking out about their preferance, it’s an issue of personal empowerment and choice.
But this crowd couldn’t even agree to disagree. We’d never work together well on any other issues IMHO when our feelings were marginalized.
Anonymous said, in response to, ” “Get over yourself.
Nobody’s asking you to (which was the whole point of this imbroglio, in case you missed it)”
On the contrary. You get over yourself. This “imbroglio” is about respecting old oppressive terminology, in case you missed it.” “
So?
“Old repressive terminology” is a matter of opinion.
Tat for tit.
“So?
“Old repressive terminology” is a matter of opinion.
Tat for tit.”
Well, Gee, NO (tat for tit?)..that isn’t so. I have the right to refuse to be called a ‘BM’ and to refuse to use it. Your opinions/rights end where mine begin. If you want to call yourself a ‘Purple-Veined, Post- Adolescent’ or any other such nonsense, knock yourself out. But you don’t have the right to insist it be used to describe or name any other person, just YOU. BJ Lifton did NOT have the right to make that call.
The whole incident with Lifton has been mis-represented and I, for one, don’t see as how the lady was ill-used by a simple request to use terms sensitive to the venue and the majority of her audience. After all, it WAS THEIR party.
Would you refuse to remove your shoes when going into the house of a person from Japan, just because you’ve always been a ‘shoe-wearing person?’ From my viewpoint, it was just a matter of good manners and I don’t think that it was Lifton’s finest hour in that area.
In any event and whether anyone likes it or not, the times and the terminology are a’changing…Thank God. I know it will happen. When I was a child, we still called African-American people “Negroes.” Some things just need to change.
amyadoptee wrote:
“We are doing more damage to our cause by bickering and fighting like this.”
Aadoptee, if there is damage being done, it is being done by victims who are trying to maintain the abusing system for personal reasons, not by mothers who are behaving like free people in a free country instead of slaves.
There will always be slaves who try to maintain their own slavery and to enforce the slave rules on all other slaves. A few of them are monetary and ego profiteers, but most of them are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
It is distressing to see posters on the Daily Bastardette ignore the issue of the individual’s relationship with the real enemy, the hegemon state: the master control switch of adoption, choosing instead to attack adopted persons, adopters and activists over esoteric issues that do nothing to promote change
Ummmmm, do you read your own rhetoric, Marley?
And if so, do you really believe that it is ok for MARLEY to attack another adopted person or activist (Joe Soll, Crossroads, Origins) about esoteric issues that do nothing to promote change?
Yet anyone else who steps up to the plate to call you on your inappropriate and slanted rant – you are now scolding and calling disrespectful to our historical roots??! Your retort that what happened was merely an attempt to construct a definition of “mother”,is pure buffoonery.
I’ll tell you what is distressing, Marley. It’s reading your disingenuous and rambling justification as to why YOU attacked other activists and organizations without all the facts. And even more so, it’s your refusal to step up to the plate and take responsibility for fu*king up.
I am profoundly disappointed on a myriad of levels.
Your rights end where mine begin – all that really says is that rights are nothing more than an exercise in will.
It makes more sense to say that you have freedom of speech and expression so long as it does not directly interfere with my human rights.
In this case, that would mean you have the right to chose what to call yourself, but unless a word is unambiguously defamatory, generally understood to be obnoxious and clearly intended to offend, it is not within your rights to disallow another person from using it.
I understand why individual mothers who have lost a child to adoption would want to choose their own term to describe themselves, but in my opinion they do not have the right to insist that others use the same term, especially if those others are not persuaded that the language they use is offensive.
If it had been made clear from the beginning, rather than just hinted at, that the word “birthmother” was actually verboten at the conference, that would have been another matter. I think it would have been a lot more honest to put out it out there in black and white.
But of course, that way it would have had a potential for trouble that couldn’t have been deflected away from the organizers.
Anony says. If it had been made clear from the beginning, rather than just hinted at, that the word “birthmother” was actually verboten at the conference, that would have been another matter. I think it would have been a lot more honest to put out it out there in black and white
Anonymouse – haven’t you been reading all the posts??? It WAS put out there at the beginning – months BEFORE the conference.
I repeat – A copy of the “Call for Proposal” that BJ had submitted to Soll was reprinted on this blog which proved beyond a doubt that BJ did not receive a request to kindly try to refrain from using the B word, at the last minute
The word wasn’t verboten at all, however. There was merely a statement (not a hint but a concise and clear statement explaining why) on that Call for Proposal to try to be sensitive to the fact that the term was hurtful to many of the mothers attending. And none of the other authors and presenters had difficulty with understanding or out and out refused?
If you would go back and review the sequential order of events you would learn that indeed Lifton’s refusal to even consider the request was in your words “unambiguously defamatory, generally understood to be obnoxious and clearly intended to offend”.
It was curious that an author and self-proclaimed expert in adoption issues would react in such a hostile manner?
So your point is what?
Winston wrote: Have fun kids. Just don’t expect to be taken seriously in the future by me. With Marley at the helm and your entitlement issues, you will continue to get nowhere fast.”
Please list entitlement issues.
Marley
Do you own a dictionary, Winsome?
It was never stipulated as a CONDITION.
It was couched in the form of a request.
A request is not a condition.
Under the circumstances, I completely understand why Lifton responded as she did.
From the comment:”Marley quoted: “Mirah wrote something very important that day regarding the language dispute, “Respect needs to be extended to our historical roots, especially in a movement opposed to changing the names of individuals.”
Di: Hello?????
Tell me why I need to respect the very movement that altered my identity in the first place?
Marley replies: The adoption reform/change movement didn’t alter your identity or take your child, Di.The state did that.
I was referring to respect for people of the past who have led the way for us. People like Jean Paton, Florence Fisher,and BJ Lifton. If it weren’t for them and people like them nothing would be moving today. Very few people have ever stood up and addressed the systemic rot of adoption. If they had, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
You stood up and continue to stand up to that rot in Austailia and OUSA is doing it here.
I don’t know a lot about the history of the movement in Aus, but certainly you and Origins weren’t the first. You had the Lost Generation to build on, and I’m sure there were others –like Evelyn Robinson Did you cut off those roots to go off on your own?
Disagreements with past performance are normal and bring growth to any movement. But should we as activists disparage those who came before us and demand retroactive comformitiy to our way? We may criticize, sure, but criticism is not wiping away history.
Our adoption experience has excluded us all from history. I see no reason to carry on this exclusion in our own movement.
Marley
Marley
A couple of comments to “Kidnap”
Kidnap wrote:
The Adoption Semiotics Police who wish to perpetuate their self serving philosophical structure – the one that keeps them in power within the adoption community and keeps plenty of dollars flowing to their doors -have no right to define my existence in order to justify their own.
They can try… but I don’t have to cooperate.
Marley replies: Of course, your don’t. Why should you? I’m not sure why we are even having this argument.
But it makes no difference at the end what we or anybody wants to call ourselves: those who have the power will still treat you the same shitty way no matter what we call yourself. “Collateral damage” doesn’t change the fact that tens of thousands of Iraqis have been murdered in cold blood by the US government. A dead Iraqi is a dead Iraqi no matter how they want to spin it. Language is important, but actions are more important. If you want to create change then do it with language and actions.
I have said repeatedly that I do not defend “the b word.” I only heard the word a handful of times before I got on the internet in 1993. I always used the term “real mother” before then, which of course, is a term that gets you real beat up real fast in AdoptionLand.
I don’t care what term people use, but I’m not going to tell other people what words to use. That’s what liberals and Democrats do. Some people stil call me by my other name which I loathe. So what? I am not my name.
If you want to attack the Semiotics Police go for those who hold the power.
Under the circumstances, I completely understand why Lifton responded as she did.
Well good for you anonymous. That’s why you wouldn’t have benefitted from the conference like so many of us did.
But again, you continue to twist what happened for God knows what reason? Read my lips. It was never a condition – it was a request. Please go back and carefully reread the “Call for Proposal” that was posted on this blog before you jump in with your illogical comments.
You’ve made it clear that no matter what was said or not said,it was wrong just because it was Joe Soll’s gig. Don’t you ever tire of being so angry?
An anon person wrote:
omg! “the privilege of practicing creative forgetfulness”
This is the crux of the matter for a couple people’s and Marley’s diatribes against Joe and mothers.
Marley replies:
I have made no diatribe against Joe or others. I made no angry remarks nor did I call anybody names–which would be the hallmark of a “diatribe.”
I stated in the original blog that I like much of what Origins does and that I have friends in Origins. I didn’t mention it then, but I will now, that Bastardette links to OSUA as one of the “good guys” because I think it is. I may not agree with everything OUSA doe but neither do I agree with everything AAC, CUB or even BN does as policy.
I don’t know Joe. Obviously, I disagree with him in some places. I generally do not believe in therapy for anything, just not adoption issues. That is well known in AdoptionLand. But Joe is also one of the pioneers who should never be forgotten either, and I respect him for what he’s done. And Joe has perservered, while many have dropped out. That he is still with us says much.
Anon. continued later:
Could there be a mind-set any more narcissistic than to bare sentiments like mothers who’s babies were taken are undoing all “their” work?
“the privilege of practicing creative forgetfulness” is way over the top Marley, get over yourself !!
Marley replies:
“Creative forgetfullness” is a phrase from Nietzche. It should be clear from the context of the blog, that I am discussing global loss in adoption–which unfortunately now seems to include a desire to destroy the history of adoption reform/change and reframe it in a contemporary vaccuum via exclusion and forgetfulness.
Your personal history and my personaly history is destroyed through adoption. Those who have worked for the retrieval of history and the right to identity are those effected most by adoption: adoptees and their parentts–especially mothers. Do you think much of anybody else outside of this small island cares?
Please list entitlement issues.
Gladly. but first i’d like to hear your explain why you still feel that it’s ok to have twisted the story by clearly stating that Lifton didn’t know months ahead of time yet.
And please explain what you meant by the slam at Joe Soll with your specific statement inferring that even the mothers of Origins were being bamboozled by Joe into using the term mother or natural mother as opposed to birthmother? You cannot deny that you made this comment in your supposedly objective reporting that you passed on from Mirah’s blog, now can you?
And I am also a bit curious as to why you don’t report on other forms of censorship amongst adoption reform organizations including groups that you are even a participant in? I refer of course, to Jon Klaren,VP of CUB putting everyone in the group on moderated status which he has done on numerous occasions, just because there was a debate on the right of some mothers on that list to call themselves something other than “birthmother”.
And it’s no secret that the people who usually get put on moderated status on the CUB list are also usually the ones big MAC attacks constantly for being anti-adoption?
So why all this posturing and slamming Crossroads and Origins for denying free speech when in fact you lie by ommission by not policing other organizations for the same horrific offense?
Why can’t you answer some specific questions for once without your doubletalk? That’s what I wonder? It appears that you feel entitled to be above the rules that you impose on others. Say it ain’t so.
Winsome said, “Don’t you ever tire of being so angry?”
Huh? “Twist what happened.” Huh? “Wouldn’t have benefited from the conference.” Huh?
Are you sure you mean me, and it isn’t yourself you are calling angry?
It revealed itself as being a *hidden* condition, W.
If it had not been, Lifton’s blunt response, which stated her terms unambiguously, would not have caused her to be “uninvited”.
(And yes, I know she was re-invited, but didn’t take up the offer. Who could blame her? She’d have been mincemeat)
Marley replies:
I have made no diatribe against Joe or others. I made no angry remarks nor did I call anybody names–which would be the hallmark of a “diatribe.”
Well then Marley, since you’ve come to admit that Joe Soll and Origins are NOT the enemy – why not answer Winston’s questions in his last post?
Your comments that he refers to are hostile. Why? Just because you don’t believe in therapy for adoption issues?
Winston wrote:
And please explain what you meant by the slam at Joe Soll with your specific statement inferring that even the mothers of Origins were being bamboozled by Joe into using the term…
No, I won’t deny it. I threw it in at the last moment, literally, as an after thought. I’m not exactly sure why I did it, but at the time it made sense. Since then I’ve been told that Joe is not a big language wonk. I don’t know Joe, so I can’t say if that’s true or not. If this is true, I was wrong on that–but that is an extremely minor point of contention.
And since I’m not BJ Lifton I can’t speak for her. She says she was not informed of the language requriement until after the fact.
The original issue is the rotten treatment of people in adoption, not language useage amongst a small subset of the population that the rest of the population hates us.
And I am also a bit curious as to
Winston wrote:
why you don’t report on other forms of censorship amongst adoption reform organizations including groups that you are even a participant in? I refer of course, to Jon Klaren,VP of CUB putting everyone in the group on moderated status which he has done on numerous occasions, just because there was a debate on the right of some mothers on that list to call themselves something other than “birthmother”..
I publicly disagreed with Jon on his moderation policy. I don’t like moderation of any type. The discussion on CUB was vicious, however, with seriously nasty personal attacks on list members, that went way beyond debate.
CUB is a private list. I’m not sure who “owns” it since I don’t know how that stuff works. A privately owned list is ver held in a public space at which people pay to attend.
Bad Mommy wrote:
our comments that he refers to are hostile. Why? Just because you don’t believe in therapy for adoption issues?
Marley replies:
There is a difference between hostile and critical. I said nothing that I would construe as “hostile” If you want hostile go sit in on a records access hearing in Maine.
Marley replies:
No, I won’t deny it. I threw it in at the last moment, literally, as an after thought. I’m not exactly sure why I did it, but at the time it made sense. Since then I’ve been told that Joe is not a big language wonk. I don’t know Joe, so I can’t say if that’s true or not. If this is true, I was wrong on that–but that is an extremely minor point of contention.
Marley, I thank you for acknowledging this. I’ve known Joe for over 15 years and I do not see him as a “language wonk”…I have a few published friends whom Joe has written positive reviews for who use terms in their books that Joe might not use. One thing he is not, is a nit picker.
Actually, Soll is one of the most respectful men that I’ve ever met. Nowhere do you see him publicly bashing anyone whose opinion he disagrees with (meaning other activists)
The only statement in this last response I still take a bit of issue with, is your comment it was “only a minor point of contention”.
Sadly there are a small handful of shall we say, “old guard” adoption reformers and their naive lemmings who have such seething hatred of Joe, that they become irrational in their criticism of him. These folks show up spreading stories about someone they’ve never met anytime there is a controversy. Crossroads and Origins are anti-adoption so they must be crucified.
A small group of them appeared out of the blue last year on the AARP board. This time some ran with your blog and posted their own distorted and embellished versions of what happened with Lifton on their own blogs. And of course it’s easy to see that they’re here looking for blood. Wonder why? It’s tedious because it hampers intellectual debate.
Had you not editorialized by including that statement which was an insult to even the OUSA mothers (that Joe was somehow manipulating them into using terminology that they otherwise might not be concerned about) I seriously doubt that the fervor would have been anywhere near as intense as it became here.
Accusing someone of censorship is a very big deal and should not be taken lightly or without all the facts – especially one of our own who has done alot more than most of his critics to heighten awareness and promote change in this country? And it just seemed strange that smack dab in the middle of the Lifton incident, Klaren starts censoring on the CUB list and no one commented about that.
I think this has been an interesting debate and a good lesson in how easy it is to create devisivness. If there is any chance to make progress in changing (or ending) adoption as we know it, it is crucial to be able to agree to disagree on certain issues.
Marley said…””I don’t know Joe, so I can’t say if that’s true or not.””
I find your above statement quite puzzling. I found this on alt.adoption. I am not a master in figuring out totally who said what on that newsgroup. But I would like to know, were you quoting someone else or was this your very own ‘opinion’ on Joe Soll? This post on alt.adoption in regards to some flap over on AIML.
From: Marley Elizabeth Greiner – view profile
Date: Wed, Jul 24 1996 12:00 am
“”For the record, I would like to state that in my **opinion** Joe Soll is a pig snout and a traitor to adoptees and adOptees rights. So, Joe, sue me for my
opinion. “”
If this was not your opinion, could you or anyone here who is not a ‘Sollist’! please explain why Joe is seen as a ‘traitor to adoptees and adoptee rights’? I am very interested in any replies from Non-Sollists (LOL).
Marley said Joe Soll is a pig snout???
What the hell is a pig snout and what does it have to do with adoption activisim?
Marley, if you said this you’ve got to know by now that your clueless minions are going to run around calling Soll a pig snout and not even know why!
and we wonder why we don’t get anywhere? Duh?
Anonymous said…
“If it had been made clear from the beginning, rather than just hinted at, that the word “birthmother” was actually verboten at the conference,….. I think it would have been a lot more honest to put out it out there in black and white.”
Excuse me – how much more clearer did it have to be?
Now get this anonymouse – the conference was sponsored by ORIGINSUSA.
Was it put out it out there in black and white? Are you kidding? You actally expect anyone to believe it’s been some sort of unknown secret. Hinted at? Good lord are you blind ? it’s been in print all over Origin”s website since it began. BJ Lipton KNEW IT along! Your trying to make excuses for her intentional lack of sensitivity and unprofessionalism not to mention your own lack of insight.
Anonymous said…
I understand why individual mothers who have lost a child to adoption would want to choose their own term to describe themselves, but in my opinion…..
Oh Bull Shit! If you had any understanding you wouldn’t be trying to make arguments against it.
“If you had any understanding you wouldn’t be trying to make arguments against it.”
And if you weren’t a narrow-minded fanatical ideologue you wouldn’t have made a really dumb response like the above.
“And since I’m not BJ Lifton I can’t speak for her. She says she was not informed of the language requriement until after the fact.”
Once again – BJ Lifton WAS NOT informed of the language that OUSA demands. To make any claim that it was only an “after the fact” is a total crock.
Annonymouse who knows it all speculates – And yes, I know she was re-invited, but didn’t take up the offer. Who could blame her? She’d have been mincemeat)
Annonymouse? Mincemeat?
Snicker.
I hardly think so since Soll has proven himself to be a gentleman and a class act. and since he doesn’t go snarking around the internet making degrading comments about people just because they disagree with him, I kind of doubt that anyone would be permitted to make mincemeat out of anyone else at one of his conferences. Can you really be this clueless?
You don’t even know these people! Shame on you, Annonymouse! why don’t you just nail the guy to the cross? For God’s sake – get a grip!
I was referring to respect for people of the past who have led the way for us. People like Jean Paton, Florence Fisher,and BJ Lifton. If it weren’t for them and people like them nothing would be moving today….. But should we as activists disparage those who came before us …?
Marley –
If it weren’t for them? – who came before us? – absolute bull !
I don’t give a rat’s behind about people who accomplish nothing that made a positive difference! Back in 1992 an adoptee could walk into a court house, pay $25 to get his/her records. Today, it’s $75 and the only way to get the records is by having a good medical reason. Some improvement, ha? The only credit that can be given for making progress to date is the internet.
We may criticize, sure, but criticism is not wiping away history.
Only sealed records buried deep in the bowels of the earth can do that. Do you realize even “the witness protection program” is more lientant than an adoptees access to their own records?
badmommy
Jealousy. That’s all it is –
Pea-green jealous envy of Joe.
Anonymouse says: And if you weren’t a narrow-minded fanatical ideologue you wouldn’t have made a really dumb response like the above.
Real funny coming from a mindless loser like yourself.
“”I was referring to respect for people of the past who have led the way for us. People like Jean Paton, Florence Fisher,and BJ Lifton. If it weren’t for them and people like them nothing would be moving today. Very few people have ever stood up and addressed the systemic rot of adoption. If they had, we wouldn’t be where we are today.””
Marley please clarify, detail..”nothing would be moving today”. What is moving today? And other than a handful of states now allowing access to OBCs,(thanks to many people all over this nation, not just a handful of people from 2 groups), please tell me how ‘they’ have ‘addressed the systemic rot of adoption’ and are now actively acting upon.
There is little to no regulation over adoption agencies, more $$$$$$ are pouring in from fed tax dollars to separate families for many times the vaguest of reasons and to offer Adoption Welfare to adopters. Where are the laws that ban adopters from offering dollars to the mother-to-be and the laws to ban mothers-to-be from accepting or asking for same? Search & Reunion and Adoption Reform/Change are 2 entirely separate agendas. Where are the laws to stop PAPs from hunting for the mother-to-be and the contents of her womb, laws denying PAPs access to the mother and her newborn while she is L&D and immediately after? Where is the law that out-laws the most fraudulent lie of all time and the forefront of erasing the child and mothers identity and medical history, the Amended Birth Certificate? Seems to me too many people in some groups are blurring the lines of 2 separate agendas, search & reunion and open records. Why aren’t more adopted people infuriated by the ABC, why do adult adopted people not fight for change in regards to the ABC?
Please let me know what all the Fore-Birthmothers and BN have done in regards to changing Adoption Law across the board(not just a few states allowing OBCs)and I just may actually listen. Or is it that BN has only one agenda, allowing access to OBCs and CUB eternally on the Search & Reunion mission??
Let me know when there is an org that clearly wants to make changes in all Adoption Law (beneficial to women/mothers and babies) across all states, I will gladly sign-up!
The only credit that can be given for making progress to date is the internet.
Precicely
Looks like we have a handful of curmudgeons around who just feel threatened by change.
Nothing is as sure as change. It makes much more sense so just roll with the punches.
“Real funny coming from a mindless loser like yourself”
Wow, the wit and wisdom, and cool smart remarks are getting better and better.
To CH
Gee, 1996. I had to go back and see what that was about.
The post was regarding Joe’s penchant for threatening legal action against people who criticize him. In this instance, he’d threatened the owner of AIML, for something somebody said about him. AIML had a strict rule about forwarding posts without permission, but when has that ever stopped anybody? Since then I’ve heard reports of other lawsuit threats–all of them have involved people forwarding emails off of private lists. Robin Harritt reported on alt.adoption last month that Joe had threatened to sue him twice that week–all the way in the UK.
I was trying to get a rise out of Joe to see if he’d threaten to sue me, too. He didn’t.
End of story.
I probably wouldn’t call somebody a pig snout today. I’d save that for the real enemies. Whatever ill feelings I may have had toward Joe when I wrote that, ended a long tim ago. My favorite Joe Moment was when he drove Bill off the Brian Williams Show, shouting “Tell the truth, Bill! Tell the truth!” One of the great moments in adoption history.
Thanks Marley for clarifying on the ‘pig snout’ comment.
ch said…
Where are the laws that ban adopters from offering dollars to the mother-to-be and the laws to ban mothers-to-be from accepting or asking for same?
It is illegal in every state for mothers to receive money from adopters. In some, not all states, adopters may pay reasonable pregnancy-related living expenses and medical expenses. A report of the expenses are supposed to be given to the courts. Mothers don’t receive money directly. A third party receives the money, distributes the services then gives an account to the courts. The issue here is the mother doesn’t know what the third party charges the adopters paying for a service she may or may not receive.
Now if your talking about surrogacy, that’s another issue.
Anonymouse says: Under the circumstances, I completely understand why Lifton responded as she did.
You are no more than words found on a computer screen, makes for a real credibile opinion. Not.
For all anyone knows you could be BJ Lifton herself.
Bless you anyway,
Pope John Paul IIII to be
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Marley ,
In the event that my comment about Joe Soll’s kindness is not clear , I reiterate :
Joe Soll out of respect for the dignity and rights of mothers in Origins , complied initially with Origins Aus wishes to be sensitive to any terminology which would objectify us. He therefore in his wisdom decided not to use that tautologically absurd term “birth” mother.
(Tautology —the use of words that merely repeat elements of the meaning already conveyed as in ‘adequate enough’ )
As much as I admire the writings of Betty Jean Lipton , she did make a mistake in introducing that term ; it spread like wild fire through out the western world and was grabbed with glee by the adoption professionals and adopters who for adoption propaganda purposes disregard grammatical rules. I feel that Betty very much regrets ever having started that wild fire.
I believe that sacrificing the correct use of Educated Australian/English/American language at the alter of pro abduction/adoption slang is reprehensible. What next ? More sacrifices in the interest of enabling (adoptive) parents -by -default. ?
The Origins Aus Tribe has spoken .
Good on ya mate Crikey Who do we think we are ? we are those yobbos from down under teaching you to suck eggs.
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” Do you realize even “the witness protection program” is more lientant than an adoptees access to their own records?”
I don’t know much about the witness protection program, but I don’t doubt that is true. The problem is, it is the concept of the forged/secret records themselves that is responsible, and that system is validated by the adoptees who give it their power and profess to just want “medical information.” They treat the adoption establishment like it’s the American Kennel Club overseeing their pedigrees, which is quite telling regarding the truth about adoption.
Adoptees and mothers who are serious about wanting change search and find on their own, then have the guts to run the restorations of their families themselves instead of relying on soulless professionals who enjoy controlling other human beings and make money off of keeping families apart.
Doing the same thing over and over is never going to result in change so it appears to me most adoptees and most reform groups like BN don’t really want change at all, that they like things the way they are regardless of their claims to the contrary.
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Reply to The Mother:
I agree with you totally. BN has never used a “medical” argument for the opening of records. Unfortunately, much of the deform movemenet does. That’s what happened in Maine. The committee testimony started out with a beg for medical histories and it went downhill from there. It’s all I could do to restrain myself from jumping up and screaming at these people. I knew within 15 minutes of the testimony (which went on for 6 hours) that adoptees were screwed.
Witness after witness stood there and yakked incessantly about how access to identity records would give them a medical history “that everybody else has.”
That’s BS, of course. How does an obc give anybody a medical history? Nobody has a right to anybody else’s medical history anyway. Plenty of people in intact families don’t have medical histories.
But the important point is, the medical history excuse is used by people who don’t have the balls or at least commonsense to ask for what they want. I was told later that the reason the medical history argument went down in Maine was because the people there were “advised” that the medical history argument was the way records were opened in New Hampshire. I was flabbergased when I heard this. The Maine bill was not a BN bill so we had no control over it. I have no idea who “advised” the medical argument, but it’s not true. Now, there may have been individuals who used that argument in their personal support, but it was never a strategy I ever heard of in NH and I was intimately involved in that campaign. In fact, the whole thing was delightfully medically-argument free. We won in NH strictly on the rights issue with the help of Sen. D and other legislators who really believed in the rightness of it. And that’s how we won in Alabama and Oregon, too.
The medical argument is not only stupid, but harmful. One of these days somebody will come up with the idea of an anon registry where closeted parents can send in an “anonymous” medical form to be placed the state-held adoption file; thus giving another “reason” why records remain sealed, and giving the state that much more power over us. We gave you this, you ungratefjul little bastards. Now shut up.
You can read about the Maine debacle and about the whole medical issue (that one written by Janet Allen) on Bastardette.
I don’t see anything similar happening in the US
Marley I agree with you about the who’s who in the adoption industry. Please don’t misunderstand this but maybe you don’t even realize your preaching to the choir. Mothers are very much up on what’s going on in the adoption kingdom.
Were you aware Australia’s adoption policies were influened by what was coming from the US? Would it surprise you to know that Hitler got the idea to forcibly sterilize people by what was coming from the US also?
The US is the grandpappy, the originator, the forerunner to what the world has been following, which is explains the depth to facing the cause.
Adopton is not a “left-right” issue in the US. “Everybody loves it and it’s the “cure” for abortion–not to mention baby dumping.
Adopton is a bias issue due to propaganda. I agree with your calling it the “cure” for these, but infertility is even more so. It’s amazing how someone can say they spent years trying to get pregnant, spent all kinds of money then in a blink of eye switch to the “fix” of adoption saying someone else’s child was “as if” their own.
The entire adoption industry can not be trusted. For years, they have infitrated groups, befriended mothers and adoptees only to to gain knowledge of what’s coming next in order to plan their next counter attack. Some mothers and adoptees are so caught up in the industry’s tactic of adulation and attention they’re blind to being used.
The industry is controlling the information that gets heard by keeping those close who they want to control. – when the hell are some adoptees and mothers going to get this?
I do disagree, not everyone loves adoption.
Adoption-worship is a very interesting subject. But there is a large and growing problem the adoption cultists must find a way to counter. The public is becoming more and more informed and savvy about the large number of respectable appearing men who are predatory pedophiles. You cannot tell by the way they look, you cannot tell by education or professional status or marriage status. We are learning more and more that these perverts are incredibly inventive and bold in how they satisfy their sick cravings for boys or girls. They are so driven by their perversion they go right into homes and grab children, and the other day, one went into a school and molested girls. It is not only naive, but criminal to claim they are not adopting.(One serial molestor in my area had adoption sites bookmarked in his computer.)
I know SW’s don’t care about children, but they need to be challenged about how they ferret out perverts who want to adopt. And if they are finding them ahead of time and preventing them from adopting, then why aren’t they seeing to it they are prosecuted since as SW’s, they are probably mandated reporters? I sure have not heard of SW’s stepping up to the plate in that regard so I am sure it is not happening. And I’d be willing to bet that is the one subject all adoptionists are terrified will be brought up and derail their gravy train.
What happens to the children?
In Marley’s blog she put a link to The Coming White Underclass Charles Murray
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/050410_underclass.htm
He writes.
“One of the most short-sighted excuses made for current behavior is that an adolescent who is utterly unprepared to be a mother “needs someone to love.” Childish yearning isn’t a good enough selection device.”
If a child is raised by a woman that is totally unprepared for motherhood and if she has no support from the grandparents.. What happens to the child? Will these children be able to cope in the new IMO much more difficult society that is coming?
Jackie
Hi Marley,
Sorry to confuse you ; the last two comments were not by Dian , the founder of Origins.
Once again I have to comment about your reference to the publicity received regarding the ‘Bringing Them Home Report’ in 1997 ,which was published by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission . The issues of indigenous ( Aboriginal people) have very little in common with non indigenous people in this country. The forced separation of Aboriginal children from their parents occurred in entirely different circumstances than ours .The Aboriginal people had no laws to protect them. The government policy regarding the control of indigenous Australians from the 1920’s to 1960’s was based on Assimilation ,where if you were born part European you would be automatically removed from your parents. This policy does not exclude the fact that depending on the whim of the time , all children regardless of the fact of their part European parentage could be taken and abused in instutionalised ‘care’. A certain percentage of indigenous children were adopted ,but their was no voluntary relinquishment due to the Ordinances of forced removal.There was also genocide ; a dramatic example of genocide was the killing of the entire State of Tasmanian Aboriginals in early colonial days. Since those days the people have been murdered in custody or have died from European introduced diseases.
There was NO government policy with respect to white mothers. We had laws in place to protect our rights which were the same as married mothers. That the health and welfare authorities took it upon themselves to introduce hospital practices to abduct babies from their mothers is NOT government policy , but a clear violation of common law . That the mothers were put under duress to sign documents after the abductions had occurred is obviously a fraudulant practice and violates the Adoption Statute.
Legislation was changed here due to the genuinely co operative effort of adopted persons and mothers.
I hope you can get assistance about the matter of New Zealand.
“”It is illegal in every state for mothers to receive money from adopters. In some, not all states, adopters may pay reasonable pregnancy-related living expenses and medical expenses. A report of the expenses are supposed to be given to the courts.””
Illegal, shmlegal…it is done all the time. Laws were meant to be broken and these so-called laws are broken all the time.. There is a great article in the LA Times about a month or so ago, about the money, in various forms given (by adopters)to a mother-to-be and the daddy-to-be. This was a facilitated private adoption. I don’t feel sorry for the adopters who lost the money and didn’t get the kid, but nor am I any fan of any mother-to-be or mother who takes money for her kid. Plain and simple is buying and selling of human flesh. There should be mandatory prison sentences for both adopter and mother-to-be for giving and/or asking/accepting money.. whether for rent, a car note, hotel rooms, getting her hair and nails done, new clothes etc. And when will agencies be made accountable for their ‘service fees’??? That’s another joke! The business of adoption holds lots of profit. Is disgusting to me that children can be bought and sold, especially in America.
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Jackie asks. If a child is raised by a woman that is totally unprepared for motherhood and if she has no support from the grandparents.. What happens to the child? Will these children be able to cope in the new IMO much more difficult society that is coming?
Jackie, I believe that in the rare cases where a mother is unwilling or unable to raise her child and there is no support from her family, then set up a legalized guardianship situation whereby the child’s obc isn’t sealed.
This way the child doesn’t have to suffer from genealogical bewilderment and has access to their family of origin.
Children adapt to all kinds of situations -divorce or death of a parent and they can certainly adapt to an honest and open living arrangement if they understand the truth.
“If a child is raised by a woman that is totally unprepared for motherhood and if she has no support from the grandparents.. What happens to the child? Will these children be able to cope in the new IMO much more difficult society that is coming?”
Hanging a mother out to dry is criminal. It is the worst kind of abuse. And if she is very young herself, it is child abuse which is even worse. And refusing to help a mother, then punishing her baby too by taking it from her is even worse abuse. There is nothing noble or kind or moral about participating in such a pile-on. Not by anybody, not by grandparents, friends, SW’s, physicians, judges and especially not by the people who take advantage of the abuse of the mother by grabbing her baby for themselves–people who then get adoption welfare, help that was denied to the real mother and her baby!
And what makes you think there is some kind of “much more difficult society to come?” What do you think you know that we don’t? And if there really is a “much more difficult society to come,” then it is even more unconsionable that babies be taken from young, strong mothers and sold to infertiles. The more difficult the times, the more blood ties count and the more youth and fertility count. And why is it that a mother with a baby coveted by strangers with checkbooks is labelled by the coveters as someone who will always be young? Life changes for everyone, very quickly, so what is that all about anyway?
And as for “being prepared for motherhood” as you call it, what is that, what are the rules, what are the laws mandating this preparation? Who decides and what group of people decides? Who do you give your power to? Catholic priests? Republican Congressmen? Who do you want to decide who is “prepared” enough and who is not? Who do you want to decide for you? Or should I say, who do you want to decide for other people?
There is no such thing as “benevolent dictators,” just dictators and I for one am not going for that idea. And even though I know there are alot of people who don’t like it, in many ways, this is still a free country, and it’s not too late to make it even more so by honoring all mothers and babies. In fact, it’s vital that we do so.
What you wrote sounds very much like what the eugenicists wrote prior to WWII, or what the racists who for decades were allowed to steal Native American babies from their families wrote. If you are buying into it for yourself, that is pathetic, if you are forcing it on others, that is immoral.
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ch said…
“Illegal, shmlegal…it is done all the time. Laws were meant to be broken and these so-called laws are broken all the time..”
I absolutely agree with you 100%, which is what I was saying in the rest of the paragraph you were quoting.
It is illegal in every state for mothers to receive money from adopters. In some, not all states, adopters may pay reasonable pregnancy-related living expenses and medical expenses. A report of the expenses are supposed to be given to the courts. Mothers don’t receive money directly. A third party receives the money, distributes the services then gives an account to the courts. The issue here is the mother doesn’t know what the third party charges the adopters paying for a service she may or may not receive.
ie., in some states the counseling comes under the “medical expense” catagory which is paid by adopters. The third party reports to the courts and tells adopters the medical expense that the mother received was for “so many hours” of counseling. Adopters can’t know for sure and the mothers can’t prove the time she received or not. Even if a mother were to sign a paper saying she received “so many hours” of time, it doesn’t prove “how the time was presented to her” to get her signature.
As we know these people are expert manipulators.
One more thing ch..
When I said
“In some, not all states, adopters may pay reasonable pregnancy-related living expenses and medical expenses.”
I meant the emphasized as sarcasim
mimmicking the industry’s b.s.
Carol C. comments…
“Jackie, I believe that in the rare cases where a mother is unwilling or unable to raise her child and there is no support from her family, then set up a legalized guardianship situation whereby the child’s obc isn’t sealed.
This way the child doesn’t have to suffer from genealogical bewilderment and has access to their family of origin.”
I wonder how many people are willing to be legalized guardians..
Open records are very important.. Genealogical knowledge is very important.. I do not think that is the issue.
I can not comprehend what it must be like to be put into foster care at the age of five or six or nine or ten years of age..
And I believe that is what happens to some children who are kept by women who did not have the resources necessary to raise a child..
Carol C. also writes..
“Children adapt to all kinds of situations -divorce or death of a parent and they can certainly adapt to an honest and open living arrangement if they understand the truth.”
I do not think children adapt easily to being abandoned by their parents and put into foster care because the parents were unable to care for the child..
The Mother wrote..
“Hanging a mother out to dry is criminal. It is the worst kind of abuse. And if she is very young herself, it is child abuse which is even worse. And refusing to help a mother, then punishing her baby too by taking it from her is even worse abuse. There is nothing noble or kind or moral about participating in such a pile-on. Not by anybody, not by grandparents, friends, SW’s, physicians, judges and especially not by the people who take advantage of the abuse of the mother by grabbing her baby for themselves–people who then get adoption welfare, help that was denied to the real mother and her baby!”
Adoptive parents are not the ones hanging the pregnant girl/woman out to dry.. They are the ones taking in the child she is unable to care for.
And if the parents or persons in a pregnant girl/woman’s life do not want to help her.. then even tho it is unfair.. I ask what happens to her?
What happens to the baby?
The Mother also wrote..
“And what makes you think there is some kind of “much more difficult society to come?” What do you think you know that we don’t? And if there really is a “much more difficult society to come,” then it is even more unconsionable that babies be taken from young, strong mothers and sold to infertiles.”
The United States.. IMO is bankrupting itself trying to get the oil it needs to keep its economy going..
As a small example..It has to have the oil in order to run the trucks that deliver fresh produce from California or wherever to the industrialized cities in the north..
If the US can not secure the oil it needs then I believe there is going to be some very big problems.. for a lot if people..
Social welfare and help for the poor girl who wants to keep her baby is not going to happen.. the wars and the troops and the guns and all that other stuff is going to be the prime directive..
And.. Di.. it is so nice to see your letters here.. I hope you are well..
I am very well.. hubby and I have retired to the country and I am working on my art..
Jackie..
Jackie: And.. Di.. it is so nice to see your letters here.. I hope you are well..
I am very well.. hubby and I have retired to the country and I am working on my art..
It’s nice to see you too, Jackie, and to hear that all is well. I’m okay. Still fighting the good fight and the big news is that my son has recently taken over my business. So we’re in constant contact and have found a common ground without the ‘A’ word ever being mentioned. He’s back home at last.
Di
“Self-naming and self-identification can send a strong political message when strategically used and placed, but we should accept each other’s language and never dictate those identities to others.”
Not even when people insist that I fall into a category they call “b”mothers, Marley?
“But it makes no difference at the end what we or anybody wants to call ourselves: those who have the power will still treat you the same shitty way no matter what we call yourself. “Collateral damage” doesn’t change the fact that tens of thousands of Iraqis have been murdered in cold blood by the US government. A dead Iraqi is a dead Iraqi no matter how they want to spin it. Language is important, but actions are more important. If you want to create change then do it with language and actions.”
Changing the language I use IS an action.
Jackie said,
The United States.. IMO is bankrupting itself trying to get the oil it needs to keep its economy going..
Oil takes second place to the sell out of corporations to foreign investment.
Social welfare and help for the poor girl who wants to keep her baby is not going to happen.. the wars and the troops and the guns and all that other stuff is going to be the prime directive..
Don’t forget the demise of social security and more pay raises for gov officials. Let’s build more air conditioned prisons so we can continue to provide food, clothing, shelter and college education for prisoners. Let’s spend hundreds of gov dollars on toilet seats and more golf courses. How about coming up with more ways to increase the social welfare programs that will help adopters to adopt so they can continue to go on without conscience taking babies from poor mothers knowing she wanted it. We can call that showing real love for a child. Let’s bow down to gods we customize to our own desires then we can all go to hell in a handbasket.
Yes, welcome to what was called the “thousand points of light”, otherwise known as the new world order.
“the poor girl who wants to keep her baby”
Oh, dear. So you are psychic and know some really bad people are taking over and all “the poor girls” should just bend over and give these really bad people their babies w/o a peep? Hmmm.
And no money to help mothers because of all the money going to war–well, the US govt. finds plenty of money to promote adoption and give to adoptionists and adoptors… But I guess that’s–different?
And gosh, if the society “the poor girls” live in runs out of oil and food and the like, aren’t the adoptors going to run out of oil and food, too? Or are they presumed to be of some elite and privileged ruling class that will eat the poor and throw them in the furnaces of the power plants to keep the adopted children warm?
I’m not sure I follow your–logic. Or your reasoning about why anybody should be going along with this, (“poor girls” can still vote) or how it justifies adoption. So please elaborate some more, please tell us more.
Kidnap says – If you want to create change then do it with language and actions.”
Changing the language I use IS an action
Bravo Kidnap! I agree – even if it’s only a baby step – change is for the good.
I am always mystified by the accusation that we should be worrying about bigger changes and not something so petty as language!
Jackie said,
“I can not comprehend what it must be like to be put into foster care at the age of five or six or nine or ten years of age..
And I believe that is what happens to some children who are kept by women who did not have the resources necessary to raise a child..”
So line up adopters – look, how fortunate for you, why not take the opportunity and take advantage of a mother without resources.
Here you with the resources necessary to raise a child so why not take the newborn child from it’s mother. After all, why help a mother and child stay together when it is set in stone that you will never fall on hard times and your resources will always be there.
Jackie said, “I can not comprehend what it must be like to be put into foster care at the age of five or six or nine or ten years of age..”
I can’t comprehend what it must be like to be a child available for adoption in foster care and watch adopters moan and groan over wanting healthy newborns instead.
“After all, why help a mother and child stay together when it is set in stone that you will never fall on hard times and your resources will always be there.”
Ah, yes, one of adoption’s many great unanswered questions. Having read of and heard personally the experiences of numerous mothers who have found over the years, it is quite striking how many of them find adoptors who are terrible failures as human beings. Not by the standards the mothers themselves were accused of not living up to, but by the standards of anybody anywhere. This seems to be especially true of mothers whose babies were taken during the BSE, as anyone with a marriage license could adopt and the SW’s were busting up real families right and left.
This was the shocking ending to my search, also. Alcoholics at a young age (long before they got my child), no education, child and spouse beaters, divorce and multiple marriages and other family members (the same alcoholics who raised the messed up adoptors to be what they were) begrudgingly having to help out with the care of my snatched child. And all this going on while I screamed and begged for my baby and my own decent family of origin disintegrated due to the unspeakable loss.
The “helping professions” have traditionally and criminally suggested adoption to people who have problems as a way to solve the problems–alcoholism, a shakey marriage, inability to conceive (usually due to STD’s), depression or other mental illness. So it is not surprising that so many mothers find something awful at the end of their searches. And it is also the reason every mother needs to search.
the mother said,
“The “helping professions” have traditionally and criminally suggested adoption to people who have problems as a way to solve the problems–alcoholism, a shakey marriage, inability to conceive (usually due to STD’s), depression or other mental illness. So it is not surprising that so many mothers find something awful at the end of their searches. And it is also the reason every mother needs to search.”
annoymous,,said
yes, that is what I saw too in reunion my son “raised” by a can you imagine,,a single woman who divorced soon after receiving not one BUT two healthy white, male, newborns,,taken from their “single” mothers for the crime of being young,pregnant and unmarried! She went on to marry eventually again to a man that emotionally abused,,my son. She witnessed this and stood by her provider this abuser.
Oh, by the way the first male adopter disowned my son,,because he took the amom’s current husband’s name. Both of these men where 25 years older than amom. RED flags! But I was the one who was deemed unsuitable to raise my child, my blood while this stranger, was deemed “acceptable” what a joke adoption is and will always be those who are deemed better are in reality no better than the family they are taken from.
Anon, regarding what you found at the end of your search: I am so sorry. While I was being worked on to get my baby-to-be from me, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that adoption was wrong for us. And I always thought of it that way in the years before I found him, and then after I found him, I thought, “yes, I always knew it was wrong and how right I was!” Now I never simply think that–that it was wrong–I know it for the fact it is, it is just part of me now, not something that has to be thought about. I have seen it for myself.
Finding out fixed nothing of course, but it certainly validated what I knew to be true.
The adoptors my child was taken for also got their hands on another child from the same place and not that long afterwards, though their household was a nightmare, and divorce and more marriages soon followed. I have read that during the BSE, adoptors were often made to agree to take more than one baby because there were so many babies being taken from their real families at that time.
The Mother wrote:
“The “helping professions” have traditionally and criminally suggested adoption to people who have problems as a way to solve the problems–alcoholism, a shakey marriage, inability to conceive (usually due to STD’s), depression or other mental illness. So it is not surprising that so many mothers find something awful at the end of their searches. And it is also the reason eve
Yes, I agree, but who but the most delusional–or state agendized– actually believe that children improve relationships, depression, or mental illness? They cause them. The famiily is the root of all oppression–political, social, ecoomic. It’s the model of up-down power, and children are the linch pin that holds it all together. Pull out that pin and you’ve got a society of free people who can’t be “controlled.” It makes no difference what the system of government is, the results are still the same.
Bad Mommy wrote:
I am always mystified by the accusation that we should be worrying about bigger changes and not something so petty as language!
Marley replies:
I never said that language is petty, but words don’t mean a thing if the oppressor has a gun at your head. Remember: Nobody ever raped a .38.
Marley
I’ve got a bunch more commengts to make on ya’ll’comments, but it proably wont’ get done until tomorrow.
Marley
Marley replies:
I never said that language is petty, but words don’t mean a thing if the oppressor has a gun at your head. Remember: Nobody ever raped a .38.
Not sure I’m following you on this one marley. doesn’t sound to me like you’re comparing apples to oranges.
All I know is that every little action taken toward changing the broken adoption system is a step in the right direction. Call me crazy but I just happen to believe that appropriate language is important. The response to mothers who are choosing to change the label that was imposed upon us years after the loss of our child to adoption was dismissive. We were and still are scolded and scoffed at by a handful of dissedents who keep insisting that what we call ourselves shouldn’t be a concern since there are bigger issues to address.
That’s just bullshit.
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
– George Orwell
Marley said,
The famiily is the root of all oppression–political, social, ecoomic.
Marley, if you had said the adoptive famiily is the root of all oppression–political, social, economic it would have made more sense.
For someone who faults only the state you parrot them like a supporter. Wake up!
“But that will take a concerted push from a lot of people demanding that the adoption process be overhauled and policed through reforming the legislation. I’ve been around long enough to know that you cant go from a pro-adoption culture to anti-adoption overnight. It’s a process of social reforms to get to that stage. Not that it is necessary to be anti-adoption once the process has been cleaned up. However, I do believe that if you introduce transparent legistation that protects the mothers legal and human rights throughout the counselling and consent taking process you will in turn eradicate the coercion and exploitation inherent in adoption and in doing so you automatically protect everyone’s rights.”
I’d be for that. When I asked on another thread what was people’s program or strategy for social change this is precisely the sort of response I was hoping to see. It’s too bad you’re on another continent, we could use you here.
“Marley, if you had said the adoptive famiily is the root of all oppression–political, social, economic it would have made more sense.”
Adoptive families are simply simulacrae of biological families. Whatever oppressive power dynamics they possess they possess by virtue of the state granting them the right to be an as-if-biological-family.
Bad Mommy wrote:
Not sure I’m following you on this one marley. doesn’t sound to me like you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Marley replies:
I’m saying power only listens to power. Until you have the power to hurt somebody, nothing much will change. Words may hold a theraputic value and have a possibility of changing perception over time, but when push comes to shove,it’s power and pain that count.
marley wrote: “The famiily is the root of all oppression–political, social, ecoomic.”
Huh? I’m not quite sure I get this. You mean each of us should belong to the state and the state distributes us as it desires and that’s how it should be? Like dogs from puppy mills? Geez, I guess I am more a hick than I knew because that idea does not resonate with me at all. Is that some party line I don’t know about or did you think that up yourself? Isn’t this what they believed in the Soviet Union?
If family is crap, who raises the children? Golly. Man alive. I’m picturing giant orphanages with all our children in them. Are you sure that’s what you want? Are you sure you are not confusing family with patriarchy?
Badmommy said: “All I know is that every little action taken toward changing the broken adoption system is a step in the right direction. Call me crazy but I just happen to believe that appropriate language is important. The response to mothers who are choosing to change the label that was imposed upon us years after the loss of our child to adoption was dismissive. We were and still are scolded and scoffed at by a handful of dissedents who keep insisting that what we call ourselves shouldn’t be a concern since there are bigger issues to address.”
I agree totally. Reclaiming our authentic selves/identities (before falling prey to the adoption system) is the first step in disempowering the “powers that be” who have relied on us all to abide by our allotted roles in order to perpetuate the construct of, and ‘success’ of adoption.
Reclaiming our identities is thumbing our noses at a system that had controlled our minds and lives for far too long.
Continuing to use PC adoption speak such as the ‘B’ word, will continue to control us in much the same way as a chain around its leg controls a circus elephant who remains shackled within his own mind….even when freed.
Di
Di said,
Reclaiming our authentic selves/identities (before falling prey to the adoption system) is the first step in disempowering the “powers that be”
To stand before legislatures referring to myself as a
birthmother diminishes my stance.
Anon said: To stand before legislatures referring to myself as a birthmother diminishes my stance.
It certainly does. It also suggests that yours was a voluntary decision or else you wouldn’t be towing the party line by accepting your officially belittled status.
Di
At the top of this comment page, Winston wrote:
“While all the other so called adoptino activist groups are losing membership – Crossroads continues to grow.”
Since Crossroads has no apparent political strategy and exists primarily to provide psychological and emotional support services rather than activist or political organizing training, then comparisons between its membership numbers and the membership numbers of true activist groups are irrelevant. Crossroads could have half a million members, but if Crossroads doesn’t energize them into coherent political action, those numbers are meaningless.
“Reclaiming our identities is thumbing our noses at a system that had controlled our minds and lives for far too long.”
Unfortunately thumbing your nose at the freight train that ran you over usually doesn’t stop the freight train. Self-identifying can be trivial or crucial; trivial if self-identifying is the sum total of your political program; crucial if it is contextualized in a larger strategy.
Words may hold a theraputic value and have a possibility of changing perception over time, but when push comes to shove,it’s power and pain that count.
I do not disagree. But, do not marginalize the importance of *theraputic value*, as you call it. Dealing with the emotional issues first is often the way people become empowered enough to then feel comfortable in the political arena.
And while I agree that Crossroads is more of an organization that deals with the emotional and psychological aspects of the adoption experience, many future activists needed to start there in order to fight for equality for all. This needs to be respected.
Victims of rape as an example, often stay stuck in the victim role until they begin to get help for their issues around the experience. That gives them the confidence to stand up for the injustices and I think it’s the same for us. Or at least for some of us.
I found it insightful that many of the members of the adoption political organizations who insist they’re more comfortable with the status quo or the continued use of Bee word for all; debating here about wanting to make change. If you need support from other adoption system survivors, it’s a bit foolish to belittle our need for a language change.
I took note of the fact that the few people who wrote angrily that we had no right to change the terminology that BJ or CUB or whomever put into place; stopped debating when the discussion became more respectful and open about change and the need to compromise. They seemed to only be interesting in shouting down Joe soll and/or those of us they felt were not “toeing the line”.
JMHO.
bbchurch, hope your move went well and i’m anxious to hear you on the Adoption Show.
Bad Mommy wrote:
I do not disagree. But, do not marginalize the importance of *theraputic value*, as you call it. Dealing with the emotional issues first is often the way people become empowered enough to then feel comfortable in the political arena.
Marley replies:
I don’t marginalize it, but if that’s as far as it goes, then it’s pointless. You have to remember that the people who hold the power hate you. Even if you feel good about yorself, they hate you. The corporate class holds producers, the product, and consumers in contempt. We are all a means to an end.
You may call yourself “mothers” all you want, but even the hated “birthmother” is a kind word compared to what they really think of you. You are simply objects to be “protected” and demonized so the industry can push its agenda of profitable social enginnering.
The adoption industry hates nparents, adoptees and aparents equally. It tolerates each of us since we fulfill their corporate goals of social control, moneymaking, and in many cases the spread of evangelical christianity.
Marley
An anon. person wrote to Jackie: I can’t comprehend what it must be like to be a child available for adoption in foster care and watch adopters moan and groan over wanting healthy newborns instead.
Marley replies:
But there are people who prefer to adopt older children. Older children were the norm until around the time of WW2. If I were to lose my mind and adopt a kid, in no way would I want a baybee. Who wants to be up all night and change dirty diapers?
Die wrote:
Marley, I didn’t build on anything.
Marley replies:
Did bad publiity help you in anyway, though? That’s just what I’m wondering. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t already some sort of “badness” in the public psyche about adoption.
DI:
At the time the focus was on reunion. The lobby group I joined before starting my own thought I was nuts claiming the establshed adoption practices were illegal. Common logic said otherwise. So I set out to prove it and the rest is history. Yes I’m back in Court again. Over soon hopefully.
Marley:
You were absolutely right and I’m glad you said that. What I’m seeing here amongst a good number of posters and elsewhere is still a reunionist agenda. Yes, many people want a reunion or a least information (well, I think everybody wants information), and there is nothing wrong with that. But, a reunionist legislative agenda is a loser. Rights need to be asserted and wrongs addressed. The law cannot interfere with personal relationships.
One thing that this whole brouhaha has served is to remind me just how hateful current practices still are. Not that I’d forgotten, but these posts have brought an immediacy to it all. The whole “secret” adoption agenda is stupid, heartless, and makes no sense outside of social control punishment, and… well, I can’t articulate it very well…the continuation of the myth of the bourgie family. More than that, but it takes a lot more space than here to express it.
Marley:I don’t see anything similar happening in the US–
Me: For the very reasons you listed, I think it can be fixed.
But that will take a concerted push from a lot of people demanding that the adoption process be overhauled and policed through reforming the legislation. I’ve been around long enough to know that you cant go from a pro-adoption culture to anti-adoption overnight. It’s a process of social reforms to get to that stage. Not that it is necessary to be anti-adoption once the process has been cleaned up. However, I do believe that if you introduce transparent legistation that protects the mothers legal and human rights throughout the counselling and consent taking process you will in turn eradicate the coercion and exploitation inherent in adoption and in doing so you automatically protect everyone’s rights. The infant adoption figures would drop like a stone in consequence.
Marley replies:I absolutely agree, but how is that accomplished? Again, I don’t know what the situation was in Aus, but in the US, adoption is a cornerstone of domestic social policy and an intergral part of church growth and evangelization. Destroy the anti-abaortion movement and it would be a lot easier to decimate newborn placement, but that won’t happen–not when you’ve got the government funding anti-aborts and pushing an adoption agenda on them. It’s all about baybee saving. There’s even an office of adoption located in the Whitehouse. This won’t change much if any, when Bush is removed from office. Nearly everybody I know in the Beltway and in otherwise the higher echelons of adoption/foster policy is sick to death of the whole thing. Nearly all their work goes for naught
Di:
Forcing Leglislative change is the only way to weed out the corruption. And that take public shaming and lots of it. We didn’t get our inquiry by asking politely. We accused the Govt of stealing our babies and exposed the illegality in every media outlet we could use. I think they gave it to us to try and shut us up to be frank.
Marley reples:
I like the shaming element, but here the agents of destruction historically are agencies. Agencies carry out certain social policies of the state, as I always argue, but the direct line would be very difficult for anybody to follow or care about outside of foster care. Privately owned agencies, facilitators, and lawyers not the state are the prime movers. The state just oversees and implements the laws that let these scum operate.
Adoptino is a cash cow for agencies with all sorts of federal and state subsidies. Many agencies couldn’t exist on the money they extort from paps alone.
DI wrote: In NZ, contact BIRTHLINK at the following address:
Adult Adoption Information Officer
Department of Social Welfare
Adult Information and Services Unit
Private Bag 6901 Te Aro
Lower Hutt
New Zealand
PH: (0011) (04)385-7889
Fax (0011) (04) 3842250
As long as the adopted person is 20 or over they will do the searching for you. Or put you onto someone else who can.
Marley erpleis:
Thanks, I’ll pass this on. I knew a dad in Lower Hutt, who I forgot about until I read this. He was an anthropologist whose son was adopted out from under him by its mother. He fought but lost. He also had some great tattoos.
Remember though, a lot of Kiwis live in Oz now. So it might entail contact with Oz as well if they can’t be found at home.
Di
Thanks.
Marley
I don’t marginalize it, but if that’s as far as it goes, then it’s pointless. You have to remember that the people who hold the power hate you. Even if you feel good about yorself, they hate you.
Again, I agree with the fact that we’re hated but not that it’s pointless to deal with the emotional impact of adoption unless we’re going to use what we learn for legislative change.
It’s naive to think that everyone involved in adoption wants to be an activist. People have lives with jobs, partners, school, kids, hobbies etc. I know lots of folks who only come out to support an open access bill and sometimes they need urging to even do that. Rarely have I met born activists. Most people I’ve met through the years do anything else after therapy or counseling or reunion or whatever they’ve done to deal with whatever issues that have around their experience.
That’s ok too. I think it’s self defeating to make all inclusive statements like you just did “it’s pointless if that’s as far as it goes”. It most certainly is NOT pointless.
Everyone isn’t cut out to be a street fighter Marley. Several adoptees or Moms that I referred to this list after your Lifton debacle, jumped off fast because of the obvious rage at those who were choosing at this point in time to only deal with emotional stuff or search or reunion. There was a militant feeling here and a need to put down anyone who wasn’t on the same page.
That’s the kind of stuff that burns people out and causes them to fall away from wanting to help with any kind of reform efforts. I have found that anyone who was screwed the way we all were by the adoption industry is typically pretty turned off by an authorative, demanding directive telling them that there is only one way to do things.
Do you want to win the battle or the war?
BB said: Unfortunately thumbing your nose at the freight train that ran you over usually doesn’t stop the freight train.
Me: True, but tampering with the established signals will put it off track and send it hurtling off into another direction.
BB: Self-identifying can be trivial or crucial; trivial if self-identifying is the sum total of your political program; crucial if it is contextualized in a larger strategy.
I see it as the crucial first step if real change is to be made. The seeds of change begin in the mind. You can sow empowerment or disentitlement. Only one will reap rewards.
Di
Di wrote:
“Forcing Leglislative change is the only way to weed out the corruption. And that take public shaming and lots of it. We didn’t get our inquiry by asking politely. We accused the Govt of stealing our babies and exposed the illegality in every media outlet we could use.”
The problem here in the US is that it’s not illegal for the government to take your child by coercive means; as I’ve noted several times in this discussion the US foster care system separates children from their families through involuntary terminations of parental rights at a rate at least ten times that of adoption. The notion of the state’s right of parens partriae is embedded like a tick in all levels of the government here.
“I do not disagree. But, do not marginalize the importance of *theraputic value*, as you call it. Dealing with the emotional issues first is often the way people become empowered enough to then feel comfortable in the political arena.”
IMO, at it’s best therapy is like podiatry or proctology; it’s something you do to take care of a personal problem, it’s not political. At worst, in a group setting, it validates feelings of victimhood and can be disempowering. Psychological therapy is palliative, not revolutionary or even reformist; 99% of therapies promise only to make you able to fit into the acceptable social matrix, not to effect social change.
The adoption practices we’re criticizing were drafted by social workers and co-signed by therapists; it wasn’t too long ago that the psychologist community decried single mothers as sociopathic. I move around in different political circles, and Adoptionworld is the one place that’s lousiest with therapists and social service types. And I’m talking about the “reform” side, not the pro-adoptionists. My view, we should respectfully show them the door and get down to business. If folks need to have their bunions trimmed, their prostate probed or their psyches plumbed, then they can go to the appropriate care giver. If folks want political and social change, then they go to where they can get the resources to do that.
Again, IMO, folks are better off learning how to play cut-throat poker, game theory is far better preparation for politics than therapy.
It’s a good thing that black American culture holds little truck with psychological therapy, or the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s would have been bogged down in the Black Primal Wound movement and we’d still have separate drinking fountains and poll taxes for blacks.
QUOTE: An anon. person wrote to Jackie:
I can’t comprehend what it must be like to be a child available for adoption in foster care and watch adopters moan and groan over wanting healthy newborns instead.
QUOTE: then Marley replies:
But there are people who prefer to adopt older children. Older children were the norm until around the time of WW2. If I were to lose my mind and adopt a kid, in no way would I want a baybee. Who wants to be up all night and change dirty diapers?
Reply:
Marley the comment wasn’t about adopters adopting older children. It was about the older children available for adoption “watching” adopters want only babies instead of them.
BB said: The problem here in the US is that it’s not illegal for the government to take your child by coercive means; as I’ve noted several times in this discussion the US foster care system separates children from their families through involuntary terminations of parental rights at a rate at least ten times that of adoption. The notion of the state’s right of parens partriae is embedded like a tick in all levels of the government here.
That may be so but we should not be melding the two family separation programs together. CPS and the private adoption agencies are based on two different criteria. CPS has, as part of its job description, the State’s authority to remove what is claimed to be children at risk. That is why it can’t be sued for wronful removal…even if the parent get the kids back.
Infant adoptions are an entirely different matter. In our csses the law was there to protect us from having our babies wrongfully removed. Unfortunately, as history has shown, it has been assumed that those involved in the infant adoption system, and who were in no way CPS officers, also had a right to introduce routine adoption procedures (see doctors, nurses, social workers etc) to deprive us of our right to our babies – without any court orders giving them authority to do so. And that’s what makes infant adoption’s illegal.
As it turns out, in law, only a Court Magistrate can legally decide what is or isn’t in the child’s best interests. The adoption system aka SW’s doctors etc., placed themselves above the law and became a law unto themselves. And now they are being brought to account.
It’s important not to blur the lines between CPS and infant adoptions.
Di
BB Church said…
Again, IMO, folks are better off learning how to play cut-throat poker, game theory is far better preparation for politics than therapy.
BB Church makes my point exactly.
As a mother my therapy was learning the game, who the players are, how they play and the key to anticpating their next move.
I realize this isn’t the therapy route for all mothers, each of our strength is in what helps gets us through the next moment but know my spirit is always with mothers of adoption loss.
badmommy said…
If you need support from other adoption system survivors, it’s a bit foolish to belittle our need for a language change.
Agreed, however, our need isn’t for language “change”, because it was “changed”. Our need is to “restore the replacement language.” Big difference.
Aonoymous said: Our need is to “restore the replacement language.” Big difference.
ABSOLUTELY! It is reclaiming what is rightfuly ours.
Di
“It’s important not to blur the lines between CPS and infant adoptions.”
I think it’s a grave error, both in principle and in practice, not to analyze the US systems of CPS TPRs and adoption as part of the same flow of power dynamics separating children from their families. The general assumption in the US is the adoption is *always* in the best interest of the child, any child, under any circumstances. It doesn’t matter that the adoptive family breaks up through divorce a week after finalization, the daddy drinks and the mom is bipolar.
IMO any attempt to radically reform adoption in a way to make it equitable will have to address the foster care industry, because if you did away with infant adoption tomorrow, the foster care industry would simply step in and TPR vulnerable mothers at a quicker pace to take up the slack.
“the mother” asked in an earlier post if Marley’s critique of the family meant that she was in favor of state controlled child rearing. For half a million US kids a year (and growing), that’s what the foster system is.
BB: I think it’s a grave error, both in principle and in practice, not to analyze the US systems of CPS TPRs and adoption as part of the same flow of power dynamics separating children from their families.
I didn’t suggest they shouldn’t be addressed. I suggested that the lines between the two shouldn’t be blurred.
The vast majority of the 500,000 foster children are not available for adoption and are returned to their families within weeks months or years. A large number are being cared for by extended family members who act as foster parents. A smaller number age out of the system.
There are around 500,000 children in the care system at any given time. This doesn’t mean 500,000 new kids are placed into care annually. Many are still there from previous years, or go back into care time and again.
Of those who do get adopted from care, their adopters are paid to adopt and rear them. And quite handsomeley. So in effect they are still foster children, but in a permanent placement arrangement.
BB: For half a million US kids a year (and growing), that’s what the foster system is.
And it will remain that way until somone wakes up and realises that it would be cheaper on the taxpayers purse to provide better services (and wages ) to parents to enable them to provide for their own kids. Not all are abused btw. In the care system neglect is often another word for impoverished.
IMO promoting infant adoption is giving older chldren in care a raw deal. Perhaps if the baby well dried up, those people who really do want to care for children in need would look towards taking in those older children who for various reasons cannot be returned home. It would certainly weed out the psychos who believe adoption is no different to giving birth and want topretend they gave birth to another woman’s baby.
Di
Di wrote:
The vast majority of the 500,000 foster children are not available for adoption and are returned to their families within weeks months or years.
About half, give or take depending on the year. The number “available” went up dramatically after the passage of the Adoption and Safe Family Act, which incentivised states to expedite TPRs and promote adoption by using a carrot of federal monies and a stick of the withholding of other federal monies if adoption targets weren’t met.
“A large number are being cared for by extended family members who act as foster parents.”
24% are cared for by relatives, 4% in pre-adoptive homes, the rest are in non-related homes, group homes, or institutions.
“A smaller number age out of the system.”
About 20,000 per year age out.
“There are around 500,000 children in the care system at any given time. This doesn’t mean 500,000 new kids are placed into care annually. Many are still there from previous years, or go back into care time and again”
As of 2004, the most current year of published AFCARS data, approximately 300,000 new kids entered the foster care system.
“Of those who do get adopted from care, their adopters are paid to adopt and rear them. And quite handsomeley. So in effect they are still foster children, but in a permanent placement arrangement.”
Clinton’s “Adoption and Safe Families Act” conflates the two quite well, and created expedited TPR processes.
BB: For half a million US kids a year (and growing), that’s what the foster system is.
“And it will remain that way until somone wakes up and realises that it would be cheaper on the taxpayers purse to provide better services (and wages ) to parents to enable them to provide for their own kids.”
Di, if you think that common sense and logic dictates child welfare policy, you’re not as bright as I thought you are. The Adoption and Safe Families Act came out as a compliment to the welfare “reform” package of laws in the mid-90’s which eviscerated what was left of the social safety net for poor families. This isn’t about prudent public spending, this is about punishing poor women.
“Not all are abused btw. In the care system neglect is often another word for impoverished.”
IMO promoting infant adoption is giving older chldren in care a raw deal. Perhaps if the baby well dried up, those people who really do want to care for children in need would look towards taking in those older children who for various reasons cannot be returned home. It would certainly weed out the psychos who believe adoption is no different to giving birth and want topretend they gave birth to another woman’s baby.”
Fat chance.
Di
Di said,
“It’s important not to blur the lines between CPS and infant adoptions.”
It’s important but the problem is the infant adoption industry is attempting to blur the lines on both ends.
First, on one end, some states have allowed private agencies to change the way they operate programs. They have made foster parenting and adoption a continuum of service, rather than two discrete functions. By combining two programs into dual licensure, fost-adopt, or foster/adoption, it allows wanna-bees to be licensed fosterers to the newborn they want to adopt before parental termination. How do they get the infant into these fostering/adoptive homes? By offering the undecided, ambivalent new mother foster care for her baby so she can decide about making an adoption plan without “pressure”. If the mother decides against adoption, the foster/adopters claim the baby is bonded with them, fight her in court and she loses her baby.
Second, on the other end, by pointing out the “numbers” in foster care, projects such as “early intervention”, or “prevention of foster care” is a strategic maneuver for the infant adoption awareness.
Marley: Did bad publiity help you in anyway, though? That’s just what I’m wondering. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t already some sort of “badness” in the public psyche about adoption.
Me: The bad publicity was more to do with the grief and loss inherent in adoption and the realization that it wasn’t the panacea it was thought to be.
Marley: But, a reunionist legislative agenda is a loser.
Me: Can you explain what you mean by that?
Marley: Rights need to be asserted and wrongs addressed. The law cannot interfere with personal relationships.
Me: That’s true of course. However providing identifying information allows people to make that decision themselves.
Marley: One thing that this whole brouhaha has served is to remind me just how hateful current practices still are. Not that I’d forgotten, but these posts have brought an immediacy to it all. The whole “secret” adoption agenda is stupid, heartless, and makes no sense outside of social control punishment, and…
Me: it’s not only the “secret’ adoption agenda. Open adoptions are just as heartless. To reduce another human being to a lifelong sentence as a Dancing Bear who has to perform to the tune of adopters or its back into her cage she goes, is cruelty beyond measure.
Marley: but in the US, adoption is a cornerstone of domestic social policy and an intergral part of church growth and evangelization. Destroy the anti-abaortion movement and it would be a lot easier to decimate newborn placement, but that won’t happen–not when you’ve got the government funding anti-aborts and pushing an adoption agenda on them. It’s all about baybee saving.
Me; Their collective power and saviour mentality lies in the fact that they all believe the babies were/are unwanted and their mothers got on with their lives. I’ve yet to see any mainstram TV program interview mothers whose babies were taken from them, or adoptees who publicly declare how they were stolen and hidden from their mothers before any legal documents were signed. To dispel the myths you have to call spade a spade and that means not dancing around the truth or using PC terminology. If your mother was denied her parental right to make an infomed decision about you then you are essentially a stolen child.
Marley: I like the shaming element, but here the agents of destruction historically are agencies. Agencies carry out certain social policies of the state,
Me: Then publicly shame the agencies too. Agencies have no legal authority to act for the State by implementing a corrupt procedure. They have the responsibility to comply with the laws of the land. There is no law in any land that allows the use of coercion/corruption to obtain a persons signature on any contract or quasi contract – including an adoption consent.
Marley: but the direct line would be very difficult for anybody to follow or care about outside of foster care. Privately owned agencies, facilitators, and lawyers not the state are the prime movers.
Marley: The state just oversees and implements the laws that let these scum operate.
Me: There were and are laws in place to protect the mothers rights. For instance a signature/consent of any kind cannot be obtained by fraud, duress, undue influence, or any other improper means. However the State has turned a blind eye to the corruption of the agencies because it suits their purpose to do so, just as it did in Aus until we got wise and brought them to account.
The idea is to give adoption ‘procedures’ a bad name.
I think at the end of the day if you focus on the illegal aspects of the consent taking process, including failure to warn young mothers of the known psychiatric injury permanent separation is known to cause, not to mention the harm to many children, it won’t matter what your adversaries have to say. The law will have to begin being complied with, or like Aus, their consent will become invalid.
I borrowed the following quotes by US judges in Court system whic give a glimmer of hope. Found them on a UK site:
“There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed to rip husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly than our present Family Court System.”
Judge Brian Lindsay
Retired Supreme Court Judge,
New York, New York
“There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation.”
Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge,
Cobb County, Georgia
“This is a matter of conscience,” – “How can I know what’s happening to children and families out there and still let it continue to happen?” -by Nev Moore –
Marley:He also had some great tattoos.
Me: I love Maori tats. They’re so Art Deco.
Di
BB: About half, give or take depending on the year.
Me:I read the figures were around 120,000 aged to 17 years. Up from 50.000.
BB: 24% are cared for by relatives, 4% in pre-adoptive homes, the rest are in non-related homes, group homes, or institutions.’… etc.
Me:Thanks for the breakdown.
BB: Di, if you think that common sense and logic dictates child welfare policy, you’re not as bright as I thought you are.
ME: ooh I’m just as bright as ever:-) I didn’t suggest that common sense prevailed in the system. I was hoping someone would wake up who did possess some of it.
BB: Fat chance.
ME: True. Forgive my senior moment.
Di
Anonymous said: It’s important but the problem is the infant adoption industry is attempting to blur the lines on both ends.
Me: I see. Thanks for pointing out the new regime. Still, newborn CBS figures are miniscule by comparison to older children in care. while their plight is just as important to address, one has to be careful not to allow all debabied mothers, past and present, to be labelled as child abusers, abandoners, neglectful, drug addicts, or otherwise bad parent material. That’s what will happen if you blur the lines. IMO each has to be dealt with separately to avoid that scenario.
Di
Di said….one has to be careful not to allow all debabied mothers, past and present, to be labelled as child abusers, abandoners, neglectful, drug addicts, or otherwise bad parent material. That’s what will happen if you blur the lines. IMO each has to be dealt with separately to avoid that scenario.
Thanx Di, what your saying here cannot be understated, especially in the light of what the industry is trying to do.
BTW, NR – I know Holloween is coming but there seems to be 2 “Di’s’ in this thread.
Anon said: what your saying here cannot be understated, especially in the light of what the industry is trying to do.
Me: Thanks. I think there’s only one of me here ‘though the thread can be confusing 🙂
Di
Di wrote, of families reunited after foster care:I read the figures were around 120,000 aged to 17 years. Up from 50.000.
Again, in 2004, about 300,000 kids entered the foster system, so 120K reunited is less than 50%.
Di:
while their plight is just as important to address, one has to be careful not to allow all debabied mothers, past and present, to be labelled as child abusers, abandoners, neglectful, drug addicts, or otherwise bad parent material. That’s what will happen if you blur the lines. IMO each has to be dealt with separately to avoid that scenario.
Me: Then you’re willing to accept the foster industry’s definition of mother’s of loss while fighting tooth and nail to change perceptions regarding adoption’s mothers of loss. I think that’s a bad choice; for one it sets up class divisions between mothers of loss, “We’re not like those *bad mothers*, we’re good mothers…” By doing so you use the system’s values and terminologies in the same way you decry in the use of the term “birth mother”. The system uses the public perception of “bad” mothers to snare the very mothers you’re trying to protect; poor, unmarried and young mothers, or poor married mothers are “at-risk” to become *bad* mothers and therefore require intervention. IMO, without solidarity between all mothers of loss you may tweak the system, but you may also trigger unintended consequences that make the real situations of mothers at risk of loss worse rather than better.
BB Church said,
“….for one it sets up class divisions between mothers of loss, “We’re not like those *bad mothers*, we’re good mothers…”
The difference is between
“consent” and “termination”.
“Consent” is a signature that can be obtained through force and coercion.
Whereas with a “Termination” obtaining a signature is not necessary, it’s court ordered.
“The difference is between
“consent” and “termination”.
“Consent” is a signature that can be obtained through force and coercion.
Whereas with a “Termination” obtaining a signature is not necessary, it’s court ordered.”
And a court order is not coercive? IMO a court order is the essense of force and coercion.
BTW, there was an interesting article on Salon regarding the Le Leche League and a woman named Tricia Shore, who uses some of the same essentialist rhetoric some have used here to describe adoption, “unnatural”, etc. As I noted in an earlier thread, the essentialist argument that only biological families are authentic families can be used against gay and other family groupings, Shore makes that leap. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/10/12/la_leche_league/index.html
a court order is not coercive? IMO a court order is the essense of force and coercion.
Court ordered terminations do not require a signature. In this case the argument is not about obtaining a signature through force or coercion.
I understand the effects of separation are the same in both situations but the stance is about
“how” a signature is obtained.
I believe Tricia is an adoptee.
“I understand the effects of separation are the same in both situations but the stance is about
“how” a signature is obtained.”
IMO, how a coerced relinquishment is obtained is splitting hairs. IMO, the same population of women that is vulnerable to coerced relinquishment to adoption is statistically at greater vulnerability to TPR to foster care. I’m hearing the reluctance to link the two, but I don’t see a great deal of difference from an theoretical standpoint.
“I believe Tricia is an adoptee.”
So I gathered from the column she wrote linked to the Salon web article. Although I agree with her interpretation that the Moses narrative hardly represents a happy adoption outcome, I noticed she completely omitted mention of Jacob and the handmaiden’s tale.
BB Church wrote:
IMO, how a coerced relinquishment is obtained is splitting hairs. IMO, the same population of women that is vulnerable to coerced relinquishment to adoption is statistically at greater vulnerability to TPR to foster care. I’m hearing the reluctance to link the two, but I don’t see a great deal of difference from an theoretical standpoint.
Marley replies:
I couldn’t agree more. I’ll add that the omni-present Childrens Services in some jurisdictions are now offering the carrot of open adoption to get women accused but not yet found guilty of neglect or abuse to voluntariy terminate their rights. This does away with the bother of a case plan and the expense of court proceedings and possible jailing. It’s a deal. Terminate your rights voluntarily (which as a non-adversarial action requies no legal counsel) and we’ll drop the charges against you. These women are poor, politically and socially disenfranchised, and stuck with pubic defenders who are severely over worked and grossly underpaid. You can give up your kid or go to jail.
Every woman of child-bearing age is endangered by CS and their ilk. Abuse and neglect can be anyhing a social worker cares to define and a judge rules Women are incarcerated for drug useage during pregnancy and charged with child abuse upon delivery. What next? Drinking? Running? Working? Social workers literaly stand in the delivery room to take physical custody minutes after birth.
Most of these kids removed from their mothers will never be adopted and the state knows it. This is all about misognony and power. It will only get worse as female poverty grows and routes to contraeption and abortion continue to be shut off in the pronatalist culture where the unbotn hae mroe rights than the living and every sperm is sacred.
If you play into this, by not recognizing the link beween the “classes”‘ you’re playing right into the state’s hands. It’s the old worthy v the unworthy game, and you’e letting he state define “unworthy.”
Marley & BB Church:
Do either of you know anything about eugenics?
“….. coerced relinquishment is obtained is splitting hairs.”
Beg to differ. The foster care system of today and the BSE is not splitting hairs. It’s two seperate issues.
Redress & justice is the issue of BSE mothers. “How” the number of healthy “white” babies were taken in emasse’ from mothers who put into maternity homes specifically to be stripped of their babies is the BSE issue.
That doesn’t mean BSE mothers don’t care about what’s happening today, but saying their splitting hairs is saying these mothers can’t demand justice for their own experience. BN’s interest of wanting open records doesn’t include wanting mothers to also have access. Shouldn’t BN be accused of spitting hairs? Shouldn’t BN be accused of classism because their interest of wanting open records doesn’t emcompass the entire foster care system? I don’t think so.
Hi, I’m Tricia, who wrote the article that the http://www.salon.com broadsheet was about. There is evidently now an “Adoptive Parents Anti-Discrimination” club that has helped to delete me from the La Leche League speaking circuit and, consequently, has deleted me from editing a book on breastfeeding. These folks are out for blood, literally, in a weird sort of way 🙂
It’s hard to believe that the La Leche League would side with people who wished me a miscarriage (too late–I already had one this past summer) and “secondary infertility,” and wished ill on my children. But they did. So much for “breastfeeding support.” Only if you have the politically correct ideas, or if you haven’t been separated by adoption.
Thanks for this excellent forum!
I reunite families for free in my spare time. I try really hard not to use any qualifying words to describe a person’s mother, father, son, daughter, sister, etc. A child is the product of his mother and father. Those titles should not be assigned legally or socially to people who did not produce that child, its confusing. People that adopt kids dont replace the mother and father, they just do their jobs for them in their absense. I think the law should leave it to the people who adopt and the person they adopted to determine how they privately refer to one another but legal documents should not refer to the child being adopted as the son or daughter of the persons doing the adopting nor should the people who are adopting the child be referred to as either mother or father. An adoption certificate should be issued with gender neutral adult 1 and adult 2 adopt minor child. It should be a felony to pretend to be a child’s mother or father thru adoption or by anonymously provided sperm and eggs.(donor is a stupid description and vendor seems to rub people the wrong way)
I’m very distressed to find that certain lies about me and my work have been posted on your blog. These lies were spread about me some years ago by a particular person and this only stopped when I threatened to take legal action. However it seems that some people have accepted what has been said about me without ensuring its accuracy. I am sure you would not want to be unknowingly perpetuating false information. I have written four books about adoption and my views and my experiences are very public. The comments on me in this blog are untrue, offensive and potentially libellous. You may wish to refer to my web site (www.clovapublications.com) for accurate information about me and my work and I am always happy to clarify anything which is unclear. I have worked tirelessly for many years on behalf of those who have experienced adoption separation and I know that, because of my efforts, I have gained enemies. Some see me as radical because I propose an end to adoption. Others have had their own reasons to try to discredit me. I am sure you would not want your blog to be perpetuating lies and I am requesting that you remove this inaccurate information about me.
Kind regards,
Evelyn Robinson
Thanks for clarifying, Evelyn. I think the erroneous posts all have been removed . If you find any, let me know.