Even More CyberScreaming about Honest Adoption Language
When will the adoption industry -- and its paid and unpaid t00ls -- get it?
The recent well publicized kerfluffle about the "b" word ( hereafter referred to as "the * word " in this post) is not the latest battle in the War Over Words that has raged for decades over Honest Adoption Language. The adoption industry has invested decades in teaching the public that the women whose children they take for adoption are mere incubators. *moms. Things be to used. Functions. Disposable. UnWomen.
The arguments for honest adoption language, and most specifically, the use of the *word, are clear and convincing.
1) The *word is dehumanizing. It relegates women to the status of objects to be used and discarded.
2) The *word is limiting. It limits our roles in out children's lives to their births. With reunion and the reestablishment of relationships with our children, this is manifestly no longer the case.
3) As one anonymous poster sagely observed elsewhere, the * word is a signal to society at large that the *mom is a woman whose boundaries can be crossed in ways that are wholly unacceptable in any other situation.
4) As Sandra Pace observed in "Out Of The Fog", the *word is not a word that many of us chose for ourselves. Like any other member of society, we have the right to name ourselves. The adoption industry does not have the right to name us. "It's our right to say {what we will call ourselves}; it's the job of the rest of society to accede to that right."
As our knowledge of adoption and its aftermaths changes and grows, the language we use to talk about it also changes and grows.
Honest Adoption Language and specifically the use of the words "natural," "first, " or even just plain "mother" to describe ourselves is an idea whose time is NOW.
9 comments:
The adoption industry/culture has spent half a century grooming Americans to accept its deviant and predatory advances. It's taken oodles of work and brainwashing and political lobbying for the industry to condition human beings into believing Dumbo can cry for his lost mother but human babies are happier without their mothers.
Calling mothers the "b" word needs to be openly challenged, and then if it continues, it is abuse plain and simple.
I believe most mothers of adoption loss are reacting to a sense of powerlessness as a
result of their experiences. One way to regain a sense of power is to
control our own identity by rejecting the labels imposed upon us and rename ourselves.
The insistence of so many people to continue calling us the "bee" word after having the implication explained by so many mothers, can only be presumed to be a need to marginalize our experience. *They* know best as to what our label should be!
The language preference for the Social Work industry is person first language. It is no longer appropriate to say a disabled man or a mentally ill woman. They are men or women with a limiting condition. Why would that self-same industry force the use of language that is not person friendly. It is clearly intentional, and clearly designed to dehumanize and segregate the person to whom they refer.
SLY: "The language preference for the Social Work industry is person first language."
So, "woman who lost a child to adoption" would be one way to say it.
"I'm a woman who lost a child to adoption"
When speaking to an adopted person, it would be "the woman who lost you."
An adoptee would refer to "the woman who lost me."
"I believe most mothers of adoption loss are reacting to a sense of powerlessness as a
result of their experiences. One way to regain a sense of power is to control our own identity by rejecting the labels imposed upon us and rename ourselves."
I don't know how it was for everyone, but I know they took every bit of control over my life from me. They took my name and even forbade me to have my own clothes while I was in the home.
Needless to say her birth was totally under their control, even down to them forbidding me to see my own child.
From the moment I entered their system, I had no power.
I am a person who believes that I direct my own life. I am directed and motivated from within. To have others inpose their visions and rules on my life was unacceptable then, and it is unacceptable now.
I totally agree. "Mother who lost a child to adoption" is what I like to call myself. Sure, that takes more time to say than "b&#%mother", but more important, it's honest and respectful. We are the only ones who have the right to decide what we will be called.
....or, simply Mother....
Mother.
What is so hard about that?
We have no problem talking about "your mothers, your fathers, your sisters and brothers" in blended families.
But adoption is not about blending. It's about ownership.
number 4 is especially interesting to me. We have the right to name ourselves, they do not have the right to name us. I agree. I totally agree.
I try not to give the word power because it makes it easy for people to use it as a form of abuse it I do, I now and then allow it on my blog but usually edit it out.
I am just a mother, no need for a prefix, if you have the time and respect to hear my story to let me finish my sentence you will soon know what happened to me and my child. I am not willing to condense my life into one word for someone's convenience.
What happened to me and to my child takes more than a word, it takes more than a sentence, it takes time and heart to hear it properly. One word just cheapens it and disguises the truth. It was an act of desperation, not a plan, not a willking choice, not a sanitised act, it was gut wrenching and torturous and it changed my life for ever.
So if it's ok with the rest of the world, I prefer to just labelled as a mother, because that is what I am.
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