Nicknames

I have been mulling over the nicknames that APs and first parents give their kids in blogland as a screen for their identities. I fully understand that it's not okay to blog using their real names. But some of the nicknames make me truly queasy. I have discussed this over time with different adoptee friends of mine, and the other day someone wrote a comment over on Linda's blog about how that Five of My Own woman uses insect nicknames for her adopted daughters. I finally decided to write about the nickname issue to see if people would be willing to discuss it.

I have written before about how I feel that many adoptees (myself included) are treated in society at large as less than human. [N.B.: I do not include my aparents as offenders, many friends of mine, and certain members of my natural family who are trying very, very hard to throw off received wisdom.] Adoptees are so often treated as aliens who are expected not to have feelings, and when we express feelings, we are told that those feelings are invalid, we are laughed at, we are lectured on how we don't understand "science," or we are presented with predictable litanies about our ungratefulness. I don't think I need to list those things here. You can get a great summation from Von, right here.

I have nothing against cute nicknames or sweet epithets for children. My own father calls me "Pumpkin" quite frequently, if not "KJ," my initials. I call my sons "weasels," with love. They are squirmy and active. The thing is, however, none of these nicknames are carved, statically, into the public domain. They are fluid.

I would HATE it if my parents had blogged about me and created a public persona, out of my control, in which I was known as "The Pumpkin." I always struggled with self-image, and the thought of people knowing, or thinking, of me as a large orange vegetable, whether they intended it with love, would have been fucking horrifying. It is a private name, now public because I have told you, but still. My aparents didn't use it to create a one-dimensional version of me, insinuating that there was this gooey love, when I would suspect quite the opposite: especially when my life was being plastered all over the place, with lists of MD visits, my trials and tribulations, pictures of zits and braces. "The Pumpkin" this, "The Pumpkin" that. Whether it was my amom or C, writing about "The Pumpkin," wailing about "The Pumpkin" and how she made them feel: how much control would I, "The Pumpkin," have had over this? And would I have wanted to be "The Pumpkin"? No. Fucking. Thank. You.

My amom would never have done that, even if she were parenting me actively now. My other mother would not do so, either; privacy is everything to her.

So I wonder about these adopted children with their nicknames, taken from heavily sugared pastries and insects and furry animals and people of diminutive stature. Is it about creating identities for them that allow parents to show the public on the Interwebs that they're awesome parents? So loving and intimate? Because some of these parents don't ever fucking see or touch their kids. What intimacy? Puhleeze.

From where I stand, cutesy-ass foodstuffs/objects/animals seem so one-dimensional as identities, and doesn't allow these kids to be fully human. I predict that these young adoptees will struggle under the burden of the non-human THING (pastry, insect, movie-figure, what-have-you) and won't get to be who they are in this rarified atmosphere. Perhaps that's the point, though.

I don't know what the better option is; perhaps a pseudonym, an initial? I like that M calls her daughter "Ms. Feverfew."

Remember, we are HUMAN. Please DO NOT dehumanize us. It isn't "cute." It's sweet to use diminutives and nicknames in the privacy of a home, to express endearment. On the Interwebs, it's a little like making out in public to make a point about possessing a partner: gratuitous.

Many thanks to those of you who are parents and who already blog about your placed/adopted children as human beings.

I am curious to hear what other people think. I know, that because I am an adoptee, my opinions will be flamed!