Hubris

I feel as though I cannot escape the hubris of so many pathetic people at the moment. It is horrible and haunting. At the best of times, you can stand back and just await the sure hand of Nemesis, but she is slow moving these days, and I feel claustrophobic looking all around me at the idiocy. 

I am sure that many of you know all about hubris, but some of you don't, so bear with me while I explain. Those wonderful ancient Greeks had fabulous concepts for bad behavior. Hubris, defined by my trusty old Attic Greek-English lexicon, describes it loosely as being violently overbearing, or stepping above one's station to the detriment of another (violating them). Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, describes it as "doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim...simply for the pleasure of it." Sound familiar, readers? 

Lots of this in adopto-land, especially leveled at adoptees. I wish in my life recently it had been confined to adopto-land, but that's another story.

First, with the death of Steve Jobs, there has been much discussion about how his being adopted influenced his life and career. Most people can accept that his being adopted had something to do with the formation of his personality. Even he mentioned how being adopted informed his choices in his Stanford speech in 2005, whether we take that as myth-making or not. Certainly, he searched for his family and had ongoing relationships with his mother and sister. Yes, he was a prickly character and was well known for being hard to get along with. Many CEOs share that quality. But there are some people, namely the "scientists" with the blinders on, who have written that being adopted and losing his family can have had NOTHING to do with his personality because he was simply a product of his time, and all those other assholes are assholes, and look at Donald Trump, who isn't adopted. Well, "scientists," trying to erase Steve Jobs' own life and story and narrative is hubristic. He said that his natural family mattered, and if his intimate partner said that his personality was like shattered glass because of his being adopted, I take her account over all those NCFA-sponsored "studies" that show adoptees are all right because they find homes before six months of age. I love that Steve Jobs was an asshole because I am sure he didn't waste his time worrying about people like the cabal, and as I wrote elsewhere, I invoke the Steve Jobs asshole option from here on out. As C said, as well, "Stop being so 'nice.' It's bad for your health." She is soooo right. And I am making progress. I say "NO!" much more often, and more loudly. 

Over the past few months, the same old factions have realigned. There are wonderful APs, but their first concerns are making things palatable for other APs. They don't want to get too dirty with us for fear of scaring off potentially "nice" other APs. Fair enough, I get it. We hew to our own. 

There are some fmoms who really will go the distance with us, and I am so happy to have them in our corner. But I am also tired of being hung out to dry by the fmoms who can only hear their own pain. When I began talking to my own fmom I would walk on eggshells and worry that she would hang up on me when I would mention my APs because the most vociferous ones in blogland would always mention that talk of APs was like a stab to their hearts, etc. I would backpedal and sweat and worry that I had offended her, and prostrate myself. She, by contrast, is a person who seems to have dealt with her shit, or at least isn't laying it on me like a ton of bricks. At one point during all my freakout worry when I mentioned the drama, she basically said, "What were you supposed to do, raise yourself?" And it was done. She recognizes that the past is the past, I am who I am because I combine what she gave me and what my APs gave me, and that's just how it is. So there's no drama. It's such a relief. She reminds me so much of my dear Lori C! No more holding hostage or shaming me for using the "wrong" words. As an fmom you may have had no choice, you may have had a gun to your head, it may have been the worst day of your life, but I wasn't there, I am not your kid, I love both my moms, and I am okay with that. I know you have your own pain, and it's your pain, not my pain. I can't absolve you, I won't play the pain game. I am sorry that you're sad, I can support you, but please don't displace your anger onto me. 

But really, who will stand up for adoptees, as when an unbelievable AP woman (I cannot bring myself to call her "mother") posted a picture of her beautiful daughter, adopted from Asia, pulling at her eyes and asking, "Mommy, do I look Chinese?" What. The. Fuck? (Read Joy's response to it. I don't want to link to this woman's blog and give her traffic. Yuck.) And when called out on her racism, she told reasonable people, including a Taiwanese international adoptee, to "take a chill pill"? Where do these people come from, and how do they pass home studies? Oh yeah, the money part. HUBRIS. She has lots of it. She kept telling us she wouldn't listen because Von and Mei-Ling weren't being polite (they were) but exactly how polite, for how long, can you be to a racist person who is degrading you? In my mind, you shouldn't be polite at all. That's an unreasonable request, and one meant to further degrade you and silence you, US. And in the end, who was arguing? It was only adoptees. No APs, no first parents. Just adoptees. And the racist woman's Greek chorus of racist friends. Horrific. There was no point in arguing, because there was no listening, just accusations and defensiveness. Dialogue is impossible with such people. It breaks my heart, but my heart is always broken at such times. This poor little beautiful girl will grow up and know her mother degraded her on the Internet. What a horrible thing to bear, and what's worse is that her mother is blind to it. Willfully so. 

The upshot is that I have triple the resolve to take care of my own tribe. We adoptees are all we have. I see, more than ever, that we are still the commodity, still the silenced part of the "constellation," still the plaything out there that people seem to want to shame like a toy, a non-human. Well, fuck that. I *am * a human, a smart human, and a human with a voice who very much refuses to be a doormat. I might not have the balls of Steve Jobs, but I will pretend that I have his training balls. 

And those of you who are acting hubristically: there is punishment. Beware your lack of insight and compassion. There is always Nemesis, who brings about divine retribution if your infractions displease the gods. Maybe you will overstep that boundary. Maybe you are Christian, and don't believe in all this. If so, do you believe that shaming people for pleasure is something that Jesus would think was appropriate? 

Thank you, Joy, for stirring me to write again.