Bastardette: Malfeasant ruins it for everybody.
Please join Greg Luce and me for the premiere edition of What’s Next: The Adoptee Rights Podcast. I am thrilled to be his first guest. We cover an array of subjects including the upcoming legislative year, coalition building, Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Bill Pierce, the History of Bastard Nation, and adoptee rights movement history retention–or lack thereof. How typical is that? Even our movement history is a blank slate! We are freaking 69 years old for Pete’s sake, and lots of adopted people still don’t know the movement exists. And, then there’s those deform toxics who declare that rights activists are malfeasants that ruin it for everybody. We also discuss how adoption made me feel like a piece of shit when I was younger and my 40-year affair with General Hospital. and soaps in general. Why shouldn’t I be? Adoption is one big soap opera.
Greg Luce: NPR is calling.
I’m really looking forward to future podcasts. This is about empowerment, strength, and action, not a moan and groan TikKTok session. Greg makes us sound like we’re on NPR.
Greg says he wants me back for more. He’s brave. I need to take a few elocution lessons (did I really spend 15 years in theater?) but I’ll be happy to drop by his shingle any day. .I’ve got some ideas for future topics and guests. Adoptee rights is full of brilliant people buried under state-grown cabbage leaves.
I was unreasonably thrilled to see you in the New Yorker, unpacking (with uncharacteristic restraint?) the outlandishness of Amy Coney Barrett’s Safe Haven musings.
We (you and I, not ACB) used to correspond decades ago on the Bastard National listserv. I was the adoptive mother with Black kids in an open adoption. I learned a lot from BN and from you.
Now my girls are in their 30s, both active in adoptee rights, and both adoptive parents through foster care. Yet another generation, trying to make things less fucked up.