Adoption causes way more intergenerational trauma and collective health crises than I think many "kept" people realize.
If you bother to read it, the science is clear: adoption is violently traumatic, causing devastating, irreversible health issues for millions of human beings. Yet I'd have more luck conveying the severity and longevity of my own trauma to most non-adoptees with "I was dropped on my head as a baby."
Heck, I didn't begin to contend with the horrors of my own situation until my mid forties. Being yeeted directly after birth into foster care and eventually adopted by lovely, well-intentioned folks who were not prepared *at all* to help me deal with the lifelong neurodevelopmental disorders and physical health problems directly caused by my abandonment at birth has permanently damaged me. I'm saying so as one of the "lucky ones".
I adore my adoptive family. They're incredible parents. We love each other dearly. This doesn't change the fact, not for one second, that I wouldn't wish adoption on ANYBODY. Thankfully, my folks understand this. I wish more adoptive parents did.
The modern adoption industry* is, by design, deeply misogynistic, racist, transactional, ableist, imperialist, colonial. Ignorance and hate and apathy and coercion and subjugation and dehumanization and capitalism keep the machine running.
We're already seeing the beginning of Baby Scoop Too: Electric Boogaloo on Facebook. On Twitter. On Instagram. On other social media platforms owned and controlled by obscenely wealthy white men who don't consider private adoptions to be unethical.
You may *think* that legalized human trafficking doesn't really effect you, but soon, if the Christofascists continue their cultural blitzkrieg, the amount of infants and children who end up in the foster care system, adopted by unqualified people, in devastating private "rehoming" situations like the one shared above, or worse, is gonna SKYROCKET.
So...I'm barely on Facebook anymore for a few different reasons. One of them is that I couldn't handle watching a whole bunch of ignorant self-proclaimed feminists making shitty adoption jokes after Roe was overturned.
Another reason is that Facebook is LITERALLY A BABY MARKET.
ADOPTIVE PARENTS ARE BUYING AND SELLING CHILDREN ON FACEBOOK. WHAT THE ACTUAL UNFORTUNATE FUCK.
Nearly 100 million American families are in the adoption triad, with a majority of adoptees' needs and voices being considered last instead of first. It's so backwards.
Non-kinship adoption is a systemic violence that cannot help but touch the lives of billions. That is so very, very bad for ALL of us, not just abandoned infants and children or their struggling parents.
Some straightforward response questions for every person who has ever asked me about about my adoption:
Are you a feminist? Are you antiracist? Are you a humanitarian? Anti-ableist? Do you consider yourself lefty, liberal, or otherwise progressive? Do you respect science? Then please reevaluate your perceptions of adoption.
For every adoptive or bio parent you listen to, listen to three or more adoptees. For every shitty adoption "joke" you've ever told, check in with an adoptee (or first mom) in a kind and caring way. For every ignorant question you've ever asked an adoptee about our "real parents", crack a book!
Please. Do some research. Learn. Please. Center transracial adoptees, international adoptees, disabled adoptees, queer adoptees. Please. This stuff impacts all of us just as surely as countless other aspects of systemic rape culture do. Try to understand. Please.
I'm more certain than ever that we must abolish before we can rebuild.
Please give a shit. Please.
*The fact that adoption is an industry at all should shock and horrify us all, and yet... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[image description: a screenshot of a Facebook post with a black border and caption reading, “Welcome to America, where people try to regime adopted children on Facebook Marketplace.” The Facebook post itself reads, “So basically they either want him to come back home, or have CPS place him in a foster home. Or I can find someone willing to take him in, and ‘under the table’ pay them the stipend, we get. If CPS places him they will have to have an open case against me. In doing that I will lose my job. I cannot work at a daycare, school, group home etc. if I have an open active CPS case against me. How the hell do I go about ‘re-homing’ my child? Should I create a post in market place? Through no fault of our own, we are being forced to re-home our thirteen year old son. He can be the most loving, helpful young man. He does suffer some learning difficulties. He comes with a complete wardrobe and a monthly allotment. Only serious inquiries please.” End id]
530 notes
·
View notes
BY: DAVID LITMAN
Earlier this week, several United Nations “experts” issued a statement claiming there were “credible allegations” of Israeli forces committing sexual violence against Palestinian women. As CAMERA has already noted, among the authors of the statement were individuals with histories of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. Moreover, the statement was noticeably devoid of any evidence. Similarly absent was any information to assess the credibility of the allegations, such as dates, times, locations, or identities. All readers had to go on was the word of the hardly impartial authors.
CAMERA was not alone in noticing the curious lack of details. At least one journalist, who asked not to be named, corresponded with the UN “experts,” asking if they could provide any details and sources for their allegations. The response from one of them, Reem Alsalem, was to say that she could not provide any details or sources. In fact, she even appeared to suggest that they’re not even sure where the alleged victims are.
The only source for the allegations they were willing to point to, after repeated requests by the journalist, was a public report by an organization called Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC). Given that this is all the public has to go on to scrutinize the allegations, it is worth examining WCLAC’s report. After all, if the UN “experts” consider the report credible, that gives some insight into the quality and nature of the undetailed allegations they have made themselves.
Knowingly Attempting to Create a False Equivalence
The WCLAC report begins with a curious argument. To provide some context, the report was sent to the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, who had visited Israel in January to probe the use of sexual violence by Hamas during the October 7 massacre.
In the letter to which the WCLAC report is attached, the organization expresses concern that the allegations they are raising against Israeli forces do not rise to the level of gravity that Ms. Patten’s mandate requires. The letter “raises a significant concern regarding the mandate” Ms. Patten apparently presented to WCLAC, which “limits sexual violence to acts of a grave nature, such as rape and trafficking” for purposes of her mandate. Apparently concerned that none of their allegations rise to that level of gravity, the organization calls for her to “reinforce” her mandate to “amplify” vague concepts such as “humanitarian work, upstream prevention, justice and accountability…” The letter than raises a “demand to consider Israeli’s (sic) violations of different forms of violence including sexual and reproductive rights and in your upcoming report on OPT” (an acronym for “occupied Palestinian territories”).
Put more simply, WCLAC wants the UN representative to change her mandate so as to create an equivalence between Hamas’s systematic use of horrific sexual violence on October 7 with the allegations WCLAC makes in its attached report against Israeli forces.
22 notes
·
View notes
i got heated once bc i’m in a fandom where there’s this character who is a rapist and pedo and people romanticize him so i get where you’re coming from in a sense. but at the same time, people are gonna write what they write and as annoying as others find it, they’re not going to stop
damn, that’s fucked up💀. sounds like ‘you’ lmao.
i will never understand how people think rape or ‘non-con’ (which is absolutely stupid as fuck because if you don’t give consent it’s rape) are so talked down yk and romanticised…
and (sadly) some people never learn but well, karma’s gonna find them i guess. (not meant in a way that i want the content of their fics to happen to them🧍🏼)
7 notes
·
View notes