Mastodawn

Boots Chantilly Mar 17, 2023

Just for fun, here's my father (l) & me (r), side by side. He was about 30 in his pic, I was about 15 in mine. Pretty wild, no?

(A surfboard had broken my nose a cpl of wks b4 this pic was taken, but normally, we had/have the same nose.) #adoption #adopteevoices #adopteerights #adoptoverse #DNAmatters

Boots Chantilly Mar 16, 2023

"Adoption also isn't driven by children w/o families; it's driven by the desires & demands of unrelated strangers to add those children to their own families. The orphan discourse (& the resulting confusion about the actual numbers of orphans worldwide) reflects market demand for children, not children's actual need for care." Another Must Read about #adoption by an #adopted person. #adopteevoices #adopteesonadoption #adopteerights #adoptoverse https://adoptionpolitics.substack.com/p/orphans-or-orphans-whats-the-problem

Orphans? Or "orphans"? What's the problem, anyways?

In a world that's constantly shifting and changing around us, it's reassuring to know that some things never change, like the way people never fail to invoke the specter of orphans if you happen to say anything on social media even mildly critical of current or historical adoption practices and politics. It’s as predictable as the sunrise.

Adoption Is Political

Boots Chantilly Mar 7, 2023

"No intoning of words or signing of papers or, indeed, a lifetime of attentive & loving care, has the power to make or unmake kinship relations." This is a fundamental truth. & the linked piece is an absolute Must Read. #adoption #adopteevoices #adopteerights #adoptoverse https://open.substack.com/pub/corsent/p/unattached?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Unattached

An uncompromising statement: I am opposed to adoption because adoption is opposed to the truth. I need to qualify this. I am opposed to the dominant idea of adoption in our society, and in other Western societies, which is that adoption is a nonbiological means of building families with children who have been severed from their parentage. It is the idea I oppose. I do not oppose all adoptions, or even all adoptions carried out under this dominant idea. I do not oppose my own adoption—which is to say that I believe neither that I should not have been born, nor that my mother should not have relinquished me, nor that the people who subsequently called themselves, with legal sanction, “my parents,” should not have been able to do so. Opposition to the dominant idea of adoption is consistent with all of this. Different adopted people who, like me, oppose the dominant idea of adoption hold different views about their own adoptions. Some believe they should have not been born, i.e., that their parents should have had the option to terminate their pregnancies or, if they had the option, should have taken it. Others believe that their parents should not have relinquished them—either that they should have had the support necessary to keep their child, or that (assuming they actually did have the necessary support) they should have used it. Still others believe that the people who ultimately, by legal sanction, started calling themselves their parents should never have done so. These are all reasonable views to take, and every adopted person’s life is different. I oppose the dominant idea of adoption without opposing my own adoption.

This Is Not A Legal Record

Boots Chantilly Feb 13, 2023

Listen to adoptees. 🧵 https://mstdn.social/@abejaclaustro@mastodon.lol/109857747243075710 #thread #biracial #interracial #adoption #adopteevoices #adoptoverse #UnpopularOpinion

💝❤️ abejaclaustro ☃️❄️ (@[email protected])

1/ #UnpopularOpinion there should be no white #parent #adoption of racially othered #children. as a #biracial & #interracial #adoptee, my acceptance & belonging—lifelong—in the 97% white neighborhood where my #mother & #father live was extended conditionally: only as far as their social #privilege reached, & only as far as i was willing to "behave" or perform "properly" for white neighbors.

Mastodon.lol

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Boots Chantilly Feb 7, 2023

(As an adoptee who'd grown up in a closed adoption--w/ ppl whom I was NOTHING like, not physically or in any other way--being told I resembled someone was a very weird thing. I lived my entire life never looking like ANYONE--until I finally reunited w/ my mother in 2011. That message--you look like so-&-so!--never had any meaning for me. It was such an utter non-sequitur. I don't think non-adopted ppl get it, but that's a very weird, discombobulating way to live.) #adopteevoices #adoptoverse

Boots Chantilly Feb 7, 2023

When I was younger, old people used to tell me I looked like the actress/director, Ida Lupino, all the time. I was never able to see it. But now that I'm an old person, I kinda do. I think it's the mouth (& long philtrum). That's me on the left (at around age 38-39) & the late Ms. Lupino on the right. Do you see it or no? & who do ppl tell you you look like? Anyone? #adopteevoices #adoptoverse

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Boots Chantilly Jan 30, 2023

I am a pro-choice adoptee. It hurts my heart knowing my mother was denied her most basic human right to choose. Forcing ppl to reproduce against their will is unethical & immoral. IMO, it's downright twisted. I am #adopted & I am pro-choice, pro-health, pro-sex, pro-family, & pro-life. 6/6 #adopteevoices #adoptoverse #prochoiceisprolife #abortionisessential #happybirthdaytomybaby

Boots Chantilly Jan 19, 2023