Stereotypes

"Bitter and angry" adoptee? "Good" adoptee? "Happy" adoptee? "Well adjusted" adoptee? Are these really our only choices? Notice how they form a polarity?

I fully accept that adoptees come in all kinds, all experiences, all personality types. We are individuals, but we do share being adopted. Some people don't even want to be called an "adoptee," saying it's completely irrelevant to who they are. If that's their reality, I believe them. What I cannot stand, in corollary, are people who demand that we all kneel before the great altar of relinquishment because being adopted is nothing to them/was only happy for them/was a gift/is the most amazing thing God ever invented.

I was thinking about how our interpretation of words depends on our viewpoints and lived experiences, as always, although there are always socially entrenched stereotypes that are beyond our control, no matter what we do. Stereotypes are invariably tied to social and political inequalities.

Which makes me think of adoptive parents and first parents, and their privilege as adults in the constellation, and how much some of them do go out of their way, and how much some of them don't, to change the way that we carry on "dialogue" about adoption. Too often it's not really about dialogue, but about shutting it down. I have come to a point when I don't enter into "dialogue" (or only rarely) because if and when adoptees/first parents veer from the "happy, grateful" script, or if we assert that our feelings are as important as anyone else's, we are thrown the "bitter, angry" stereotype, or told that we need to offer up our personal experiences in detail (at least to counter the accusation that they must have been awful, given our lack of positive attitude). And then if/when we do, our experiences are not like other adoptees' experiences, so they doesn't count. Or if our experiences are like those of many other adoptees, the people with privilege in the conversation inevitably know someone who isn't like us, so our ability to speak to adoption is undermined from that corner. Or we're called hysterical, or not empirical enough, or told that real children have feelings but adoptees don't (data shows this, for example), adoptees are only real people when the privileged say so, but when we question such absurdities, we're hysterical again. Or that adoption is only a teeny-tiny thing, just an event on one day, that we're making a mountain out of a molehill, shouldn't we be over it already? Don't we have lives to live? Can't we see that there are orphans to save? Why do we "bitter, angry anti-adoption types" hate orphans so much? Ad nauseam, and it's all too predictable. I don't want to be measured against the "cousin's hairdresser's girlfriend's daughter, who is 'just fine'" with being adopted. I am glad that the cousin's hairdresser's girlfriend's daughter is happy, but the person engaged in discussion with me 1. is not that adoptee and 2. is an asshole for trying shut me down simply because I am saying things that are different than the script being handed around by the NCFA, i.e., "Adoption is what makes your life great. Don't question it. Be glad you weren't left in a dumpster/aborted. Be grateful. You owe everything to your adoptive parents. Your birth mother was just a woman who 'loved you enough' to give you away. You are a gift."

Stereotypes are used to keep people in their place. For that reason, I refuse them. They sometimes hold a kernel of truth, or are based on a kernel of something. Maybe some of us do sound "bitter and angry" because we are questioning the status quo, and change is scary. I get that fear; I cannot even change my dentist when I move and will drive for almost an hour. At the same time, I have friends who say that they embrace the "bitter and angry" label because they are angry that they don't have their original birth certificates, or lost out on experiences with their families, or many other scenarios. It's okay to be angry about things that are wrong! 

I see it differently, though. "Bitter and angry" are used to discredit outspoken activist adoptees in favor of the "happy, well adjusted" ones who know how to toe the line. Privileged people use these stereotypes to distance themselves from what makes them uncomfortable. That way, they can claim certain adoptees are aberrant and irrelevant, perhaps even crazy. Because we all know, crazy people aren't really people, right? We don't have to listen to them, and the adoptees who are "bitter and angry" because they had "bad childhoods" can be dismissed. So few people have "bad experiences," you know. I feel like there's some huge Kaffee Klatsch where these people go for their training in how to shut down adoptees who want their OBCs, or who want to reform adoption as it exists. At these support groups, they get their copy of Derailing for Dummies. The paucity of scripts and reactions truly makes me believe there's training: the responses (and claims of dumbfoundedness at what we say) are more predictable than a soap opera. Just kidding, but there is socialization and a shit ton of advertising (hello NCFA and your many tentacles!) that makes people uncomfortable when they think about changing adoption. "Remember the poor mothers in closets! Keep those 'angry, bitter' adoptees away from them because their 'right' to privacy trumps all! If we reform adoption, orphans will languish and never have family! Adoption is the only way for them to be happy! Those 'anti-adoption, bitter, angry' types are bullies, and by the way, they eat children." 

I had the immense pleasure of meeting Daniel Ibn Zayd in person last week, we were talking about the lack of equality in these so-called "discussions." He argued that we should not talk about personal experience at all in discussions with the privileged. Such discussions inevitably lead to stereotyping (and he is familiar with such things on many counts); he persuaded me, moreover, that giving an inch to people who will use stereotypes as bludgeons is a mistake. I have watched him weave together data and research to present convincing ideas, only to be shut down, over and over, as a zealot. He does not ask people for private information about their lives, but the people who stereotype do it to him as a rule, especially because of where he is from, and when he refuses, or says things about issues that are difficult and of moral importance that does not match their own values, he is banned from their blogs or discussions. He is formidable because he sticks to his guns and knows the right words--and most of all, is comfortable with who he is. While the personal is political, sometimes it's best to stick only to the facts, and then watch them squirm while they throw stereotypes at you. I agree.

I can see these stereotype-chuckers as insecure, and I can also refuse their stereotypes. I don't have to engage or explain anything personal, although adoption, being a lived experience for me, is tied to my identity. I no longer allow the stereotyping privileged to set the parameters of the discussion, which is their main power play.

So what do we do? What do I do?

I have been refusing to enter the "debates," as I said. There is no point in ending up in circular discussions in which the privileged claim victim status after about ten or fifteen minutes. I have been feeling quite defeatist, on the one hand, and empowered on the other. I am recognizing arenas where there's no point (and my blood pressure gets too high), and finding arenas where I can do good (i.e., disagree without being called a bully or having people insult me or ask about my private life when if I turned the tables, it would be considered an act of war).

I don't use stereotypes when I can avoid them in adoptoland, although habits are hard to break. I recently watched a very thoughtful, intelligent adoptive parent get skewered by a group of people who were resistant to real dialogue--or thought, for that matter. She was subjected to the same treatment and denigration usually reserved for adoptees. I was proud of her for sticking in there and speaking out because she is a major stakeholder, one of the privileged. It does take courage to take on the stereotypes and denigrations of a group you don't belong to, and I admire her greatly for doing so.

As a mentor said to me once, and I hold this advice dear, "It is not the job of the marginalized to change the rotten system for themselves, although they want to do that and should get help to do so. Systems must change from the inside, so the privileged must be willing to even things out, to give and recognize that the privileged will at first only accept challenges from among their own rank. It is our obligation to chip away at it using our own privilege and to support the marginalized."