This is quoted from a “comment” from a grad student in clinical psychology. What do you think of those who want to “study” us? Your participation is valuable to my desire to bang my head against a wall.
Author Archives: Daniel Ibn Zayd
Some 30 years ago when I was a jerky Jersey Boy listening to new-wave and post-punk music in an effort to be “alternative” and “rebellious” (within the safe limits of suburbia of course) the English band The Beat came out with a sub-song to their “Whine and Grind” entitled: “Stand Down Margaret” [ link ]: […]
I came across this essay by Prof. Asma Barlas [ link ], entitled Racism’s Labyrinth. It’s a quick read, but quite interesting on a number of levels. An excerpt: Whether white people want to claim their whiteness or not, whiteness claims them by positioning them as potential saviors of people of color. Liberals speak on […]
“Through me you pass into the city of woe.” —Dante As adoptees who live on the razor’s edge between places, we are often asked to broker for or engage on behalf of those who are looking for roots as well, either as adoptees, or more often for me I must say, adoptive parents wanting to […]
Elsewhere on the site we have explored the “cost” of adoptee activism [ link ], and we have heard some stories of closed-down blogs and the like. Certain adoptee sites have erased past posts, or willingly avoid or openly mock the so-called “radical” in acts of self-censorship. Much of this is in the realm of […]
In the post discussing the devolution of adoption [ link ], at the heart of what was either seen as horrifying or else a cause for viral reposting was the mediation of an adopted child for public consumption. I am intrigued here because I have often been threatened by adoptive parents either directly or via […]
I’d like to pick up on the discussion in the item “Adoption as House Arrest” [ link ] where we were discussing whether formerly children might have been “better off” in an orphanage. My adoptive father’s parents and uncles were brought up in orphanages in New York City, and I think this was a core […]
Found in the search phrases for the site. Interpret at will.
There are three randomly connected ideas/facts that have come together for me in a rather disturbing way. First is a footnote from the conference paper I’m working on: As is often the single most common comment made when international adoption is discussed in online forums, the question arises: “Why not take care of American children […]
I was struck by a post at Adoption Coach Blog [link]. The post discusses children who were not adopted, “shadow children”. I find the idea of adoptive parents mourning a child they do not adopt repulsive, quite frankly. But it made me think of the children that were passed over for me. There was a […]
I keep thinking about this Adoption Horrow Show [ link ] and how it sets back humanity on all levels a couple of thousand years. And I keep re-reading what I initially wrote when I saw this: Adoptees have no will. Adoptees do what they need to do to survive, even if at the expense […]
I have argued long and hard that there is little difference between domestic and international adoption, if we consider that often the class differential of domestic adoption is from an internal “Third World” of poverty and the exploitation of those from this realm. I have argued long and hard that if we shift to notions […]
I came across this today in a Twitter bio: “Adoptive vanilla mama to handsome chocolate son.” Comments?
This question comes from the title of an article at Counter Punch [ link ], and I feel it is addressed to adoptive parents in one sense, coming as they do from the class with the will and the privilege to change things domestically if they so desired. Here is a quote from the article: […]
