Back in 2013, I wrote a NAAM blog, Our Bastard Moments: Adoption “awareness” beyond November, about the experience of Class Bastard as Universal Scaspegoat and Microagressee
The Bastard Moment. Those times when as an adoptee you are insulted, embarrassed, patronized, degraded, demeaned, dishonored, silenced due strictly to your adoptive status. It’s part of the legislative process, but it’s also part of the personal process in the construction of Class Bastard.
Bastard Moments often occur out of nowhere when bumblers make rude, gratuitous. yet genuinely clueless and innocent remarks about your adoption, usually built around the theme of gratitude……Other remarks and actions are purposefully aimed at forcing the adoptee into silence and obedience. I back to the gutter you came from,” if he failed to conform to their expectations.
It is the rare adoptee, in fact, who has not suffered their own Bastard Moments. More than 20 years ago BN Founding Foundling B G Blackburn wrote an essay, Bastard Moments I Have Known, and one of my own Bastard Moments, The Stolen Birth Certificate was published recently in Visible Magazine. Social media is full of Bastard Moment narratives where Class Bastard recounts attacks, mostly by entitled adopters, forced birthers, and evangelicals, for any number of unPC missteps, such as questioning adoption ethics, the ultimate form of adoptee ingratitude.
Thanks to Lori Pringle’s eagle eye, we now have this: Conservatives demand remedial measures for MP who left Liberals after hiring sister. MP Ratansi, the subject of the news report, represents the Toronto area riding of Don Valley East in the House of Commons.
I won’t post a summary here and spoil the fun. Read the news story to the very end for the punchline. You don’t need any background to understand other than being adopted to get it. Taking the Bastard Moment public.
This cannot have a happy ending.