#adoptee

[dykeluc]

i have no idea why the best adoptee rep in [anime] fiction goes to genshin impact but here we are

[butch-reidentified]

1. What is a woman?

Argument for Using "Cis-Identifying"

And related: A conversation with a "NERF" about radical feminism, gender identity ideology, and what we/I actually believe.

2. Inform yourself on some of the work I've done for trans people before you continue the trend of cowardly hypocrisy.

3. My thread responding to the way much of the tumblr trans community handled my sharing my story of surviving the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting (often by stealing my lived trauma and removing my url) is easily one of the most - if not the most - important posts pertaining to trans discourse I've made to date, and Tumblr won't let me pin it. Of course. So here it is. And a bonus: This lovely ask.

4. Hope for Women (this is a very new project, WIP)

About Me:

I am a butch lesbian, married to a badass gnc (but not butch) radfem lesbian goddess whose misandry surpasses even my own; she does have tumblr but rarely uses it - @psychichologramnightmare is hers. I'm 27/Taurus/May baby, though I'll be real, I've never liked astrology and found my birth chart n whatnot always laughably wildly inaccurate to me (sorry astrology girlies). Former competitive rock climber, still in love with hiking and climbing. Wilderness survivalist. Trained & armed woman, advocate for female-only firearm ownership.

My wife and I run our own business, and bought our first home together at 24 & 25 respectively - it's a lovely 4/3 on a quarter acre where we have 5 mango trees and more, plan to start growing our own food and herbs, foster kittens, and provide free housing (and more) regularly for those in need. We do a LOT of IRL feminist action/work/organizing. I post about some of that work pretty often, but I couldn't possibly post about all of it (even if it were safe to do so). I am basically organizing (mostly offline, but some online as well) full-time now.

Survivor of abuse, CSA + captivity, trafficking in my teens where I was forced into porn as a minor, the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando 2016, and more. I am no longer affected by any of these in any negative psychological manner. I own my past, every moment of it, and wouldn't change a thing I've experienced. What I often tell people is, "I'm not glad it happened; I'm glad I was there."

I got my Bachelor's in Neuroscience/Neuropsych, used to work in a top neuro research lab, and have been a coauthor on a peer-reviewed scientific journal publication. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on POTS, ADHD, some of the relevant epigenetics, and norepinephrine dysregulation. I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos & POTS in 2015, before pretty much anyone had heard of them (including most doctors). My POTS is very well-managed now, but chronic pain from EDS is more of a struggle.

I practice witchcraft as a form of artistic expression. I don't consider myself spiritual as I've had a lifelong inability to "believe," but I am particularly passionate about lesbian-centered/lesbian-exclusive (esp butch & gnc lesbian) witchcraft. I am open to commissions for spell jars/sachets on a purely donation basis (we recently were victims of identity theft and are still struggling to recover, but I'll do them for free happily). This is essentially artistic expression to me, something to express love and sisterhood - why I'm not actually charging or anything and will even pay shipping and materials myself if you'd like one but don't want to/can't donate. To me, it's very similar to commissioning a painting or something of the sort, and I deeply enjoy the process of making them, esp for other women, the love that goes into doing so. See tags: #witchcraft, #brujeria.

Adoptee with complex history. Adoption-critical but not abolitionist - I plan to adopt with my wife in a couple years. I've talked a fair bit about my experiences, adoption trauma, ethical adoption, and more. Check out my tags such as #ethical adoption, #adopted, #adoptee, and so forth (tagged on this post for easy accessibility).

I spent many years surrounded by majority-trans-identifying friends/acquaintances both irl and online, deeply involved in trans spaces & activism, and even identified for a bit & was on T for a while. I am not "uneducated" or unfamiliar with trans-identifying people, their experiences, or gender identity ideology in general. You, like me back then, very probably have been lied to about radfems ("terfs") and what we believe and fight for. I am happy to talk in good faith (provided you do the same) 1 on 1 with anyone who is curious about what we actually believe and what we stand for, what common radfem takes on gender identity ideology & trans identity actually are and why.

I have a history of purely physical sex dysphoria (physical sensation like pain or itching). I got "top surgery" (elective mastectomy) due to this and other reasons: constant painful breast cysts & very large breasts (DDD even when I weighed under 100 lbs). I was not trans-identifying by the time I got this surgery (though I tried to briefly identify as nb/transmasc just bc I felt obligated, but hated it). I have never wanted to be a man socially and genuinely hated the very thought. I came out the womb feminist, got in trouble throughout primary school for fighting boys who tried to pull sexist bullshit, always lowkey believed in female superiority (I mean just look at our biology, lifespans, pain tolerance, the things we've done throughout history despite violent patriarchal oppression...). I spent years preparing myself. I read from & spoke to women who regretted this surgery, challenged myself at every turn, dove deep into my mind and thought processes, tried alternative treatment attempts, worked with a non-affirming therapist, made sure my past traumas were fully healed, and waited until I was in my mid-twenties so my brain was more or less fully matured. I have no regrets about it. I still have some (still purely physical sensation) dysphoria ("phantom male genitals" type of thing) at times, but have come to manage this very well. More on this here.

Formally assessed psychopath & participant in research by leading psychopathy experts (read on before jumping to conclusions). Check out this post and my #psychopathy tag (tagged on this post for easy accessibility) for info, particularly about high-EQ female psychopathy, & to find out everything you think you know about us is wrong 💕 (what you know about male psychopaths is usually right tho 💀)

Note: When it comes to politics, I strive to discuss exclusively that about which I am *uniquely knowledgeable* - by which I mean, essentially, that I (believe I) have something to contribute that is unlikely to be found on every other blog. I do not and will not make posts or reblog posts about topics I do not feel this way about. You are not entitled to know my views on every hot-button issue, and I have no intention of speaking on that which I know little about, or that I don't know enough about (through study or personal experiences) to contribute something you can't get a thousand other places.

Tag Guide (WIP):

#mine -> original posts, including ask responses

#ask -> ask responses only

#anon hate, #anon love -> should be self-explanatory. anon love does include some non-anon love for simplicity.

#catposting, #dogposting, #petposting -> images of cats, dogs, and both, respectively (not always my own)

#Wilder wives -> posts pertaining to me & my wife (last name Wilder)

#mvawg, #mvaw, #male violence -> male violence against women/girls

#ethical adoption -> my takes as an adoptee on the issues within the adoption industry & how adoption can be done ethically

#what we believe -> fairly new tag for posts trying to educate on what radfeminism is actually about/damage control for disinformation & misinformation about it

#trans violence -> violence committed by trans-identifying people, including threats of and graphic violent fantasies (primarily misogynistic ones)

#trans misogyny, #trans lesbophobia, #woke misogyny, #woke homophobia, #woke lesbophobia, etc. -> what it says on the tin

[miravariable]

"letter to my birth mother"

a brief memoir minicomic about being an adoptee.

[chaos-and-ink]

Meet the Artist kinda thing to get to know me.

Y'all can send Asks and ask me anything too, I love talking lol.

[kenmakaminari]

Things I thought were normal until people I know pointed out that they were trauma responses!!!

(people being my friends, and even my therapist(s))

18 bullets

WARNINGS: mentions of abuse, mentions of csa, mentions of death/dying, disassociation, talk about tampons, probably quite a few typo's

Disassociation, especially when people are yelling or i feel like they are upset with me

Over explaining myself

Not being able to make a decision, even a small one

Not crying for over 10 years!

Never feeling attached to anyone or anything

Reading. Not normal reading, but always having a book or my phone on me, ready to read whenever normal life felt like it was too much

Hypersexuality starting at age 8

Tampons never feeling comfortable, or my body physically rejecting them and pushing them out

Being scared to tell the truth, but also scared to lie. And therefore just saying "I don't know" to even the smallest things

Being afraid or adults or any form of authority, even other kids

Being scared of going to sleep, because i thought that I was going to die. But then being confused because I wanted to die, so why was I scared? (I was scared because I didn't want my younger sisters finding me dead, because I knew deep down that they would check on me before my parents ever would - found that out years later)

Forgetting that I had a baby sister when I was 5 years old (she was in a different foster home than my other sister and I. Luckly we were all adopted together)

Thinking that since my adoptive parents have never hit, touched, or neglected us I have no reason to complain about them, and I'm just being dramatic

Starring blankly at walls, or into space for minutes to hours at a time

being incredibly quiet one day, and then being super hyperactive and happy the next

Crying when angry, and then crying more because I'm trying to be mad not upset

Over-analyzing everyone's intentions, always thinking that people have ulterior motives for being nice

Knowing which family member is walking past my room by the sound of their footsteps.

[theremina]

Adoption causes way more intergenerational trauma and collective health crises than I think many "kept" people realize.

If you bother to read it, the science is clear: adoption is violently traumatic, causing devastating, irreversible health issues for millions of human beings. Yet I'd have more luck conveying the severity and longevity of my own trauma to most non-adoptees with "I was dropped on my head as a baby."

Heck, I didn't begin to contend with the horrors of my own situation until my mid forties. Being yeeted directly after birth into foster care and eventually adopted by lovely, well-intentioned folks who were not prepared *at all* to help me deal with the lifelong neurodevelopmental disorders and physical health problems directly caused by my abandonment at birth has permanently damaged me. I'm saying so as one of the "lucky ones".

I adore my adoptive family. They're incredible parents. We love each other dearly. This doesn't change the fact, not for one second, that I wouldn't wish adoption on ANYBODY. Thankfully, my folks understand this. I wish more adoptive parents did.

The modern adoption industry* is, by design, deeply misogynistic, racist, transactional, ableist, imperialist, colonial. Ignorance and hate and apathy and coercion and subjugation and dehumanization and capitalism keep the machine running.

We're already seeing the beginning of Baby Scoop Too: Electric Boogaloo on Facebook. On Twitter. On Instagram. On other social media platforms owned and controlled by obscenely wealthy white men who don't consider private adoptions to be unethical.

You may *think* that legalized human trafficking doesn't really effect you, but soon, if the Christofascists continue their cultural blitzkrieg, the amount of infants and children who end up in the foster care system, adopted by unqualified people, in devastating private "rehoming" situations like the one shared above, or worse, is gonna SKYROCKET.

So...I'm barely on Facebook anymore for a few different reasons. One of them is that I couldn't handle watching a whole bunch of ignorant self-proclaimed feminists making shitty adoption jokes after Roe was overturned.

Another reason is that Facebook is LITERALLY A BABY MARKET.

ADOPTIVE PARENTS ARE BUYING AND SELLING CHILDREN ON FACEBOOK. WHAT THE ACTUAL UNFORTUNATE FUCK.

Nearly 100 million American families are in the adoption triad, with a majority of adoptees' needs and voices being considered last instead of first. It's so backwards.

Non-kinship adoption is a systemic violence that cannot help but touch the lives of billions. That is so very, very bad for ALL of us, not just abandoned infants and children or their struggling parents.

Some straightforward response questions for every person who has ever asked me about about my adoption:

Are you a feminist? Are you antiracist? Are you a humanitarian? Anti-ableist? Do you consider yourself lefty, liberal, or otherwise progressive? Do you respect science? Then please reevaluate your perceptions of adoption.

For every adoptive or bio parent you listen to, listen to three or more adoptees. For every shitty adoption "joke" you've ever told, check in with an adoptee (or first mom) in a kind and caring way. For every ignorant question you've ever asked an adoptee about our "real parents", crack a book!

Please. Do some research. Learn. Please. Center transracial adoptees, international adoptees, disabled adoptees, queer adoptees. Please. This stuff impacts all of us just as surely as countless other aspects of systemic rape culture do. Try to understand. Please.

I'm more certain than ever that we must abolish before we can rebuild.

Please give a shit. Please.

*The fact that adoption is an industry at all should shock and horrify us all, and yet... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[image description: a screenshot of a Facebook post with a black border and caption reading, “Welcome to America, where people try to regime adopted children on Facebook Marketplace.” The Facebook post itself reads, “So basically they either want him to come back home, or have CPS place him in a foster home. Or I can find someone willing to take him in, and ‘under the table’ pay them the stipend, we get. If CPS places him they will have to have an open case against me. In doing that I will lose my job. I cannot work at a daycare, school, group home etc. if I have an open active CPS case against me. How the hell do I go about ‘re-homing’ my child? Should I create a post in market place? Through no fault of our own, we are being forced to re-home our thirteen year old son. He can be the most loving, helpful young man. He does suffer some learning difficulties. He comes with a complete wardrobe and a monthly allotment. Only serious inquiries please.” End id]

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

@kanansdume, I am thinking about something. While I like the Jedi and agree with their overall philosophy on not being possessive of people and being mindful, I do have one reservation and something I have a hard time with the fandom romanticizing. I saw your post about how it was a moral failing for Anakin to not accept the Jedi as his family compared to Leia and the Organas. I am well aware of how Jedi do not kidnap babies and how similar that argument is to real life blood libel. That said, as an adoptee, adoption irl isn’t always this happy thing. Here in the states, it’s often been used by white evangelicals to adopt BIPOC kids, strip their culture from them and many adoptees do have trauma from that. I know the jedi let their members keep parts of their culture but that’s not how it goes for many real adopted kids. This isn’t a pro 50s nuclear family post btw, but is it wrong for someone irl to want to know their birth parents or even meet them or bond with them? I consider it less like Anakin being possessive of Shmi and more like Luke wanting to know his father. If an adoptive family is abusive/let you down or you struggle to truly fit in, and I am aware the Jedi were not abusive btw, is it a moral failure to not see them as your family? I know SW is for kids and meant to be a black and white fairy tale, but it also tackles some deeper sociopolitical subjects and I am a bit curious about this. I am not an Anakin apologist and don’t blame the Jedi for his crimes, but I don’t think adoption is as rosy as portrayed in SW.

[babe-con-el-poder]

I'm adding excerpts from a story in today's NY Times because they trigger a flush of memories that I think speak to the core of transracial adoption and the perspective it creates. A perspective that I think only kidnapped hostages might relate to.

I remember 1998ish after my high school days when I met up with some friends of friends at a random garage party. I was the only one who wasn't white because I was only ever surrounded by white people my entire childhood. I'm not white though. I was always in danger of racism but in a particularly horrific way where it is not blatant. More of a gimmick or fetish. On this one evening I was surrounded by mostly young white men who liked rock music and beer. One of them was someone I recognized as actually a sweet boy from a few years back. As he talked to me and we laughed about school days he proudly showed off his new tattoos. Tattoos of large Nazi Swastikas. I was horrified. But I knew the unspoken game I was supposed to play...having been adopted into a white world...I wasn't a "real" threat as a brown person. I wasn't like "those trashy N-words". So I was safe. I could laugh at his stupidity if I wanted to and he would laugh in agreement that his tattoos were just meant to be a joke. A ploy for attention more than...being a Nazi sympathizer.

He flirted with me and asked me to sit on his lap while we chatted and drank. And as I did, my heart broke for him. And my mind downplayed my own fear of his probable violence. I was being brainwashed into white supremacy, so that I would remain safe. I put his comfort first and foremost above my own discomfort so much so that I actually felt empathy for him. But now I realize that I was heartbroken because this moment just proved all my fears were valid. That the mistrust of the all white environment I grew up in was legitimate. Again I was feeling the free fall of abandonment.

And I've seen this repeated by white supremacy over and over....the use of coercion and twisted humor to cover up the insanity of bigotry.

This NY TIMES story occurred decades after that crazy night in the garage. Kids are still dealing with the same problem. No matter how liberal or educated or wealthy a town and community wants to be in this country....there is a sickness that runs though our United States culture.

As long as it keeps being ignored and laughed off it will continue to thrive.

[official-oshun]

a lot of people both in real life and in fandom spaces don’t seem to understand what transracial adoption is, let alone normal adoption, and how it absolutely is a family formation. It’s not a vague “found family” without labels, but instead it is a family akin to blood.

and please, if you would:

stop calling canon adoption in media “found family” 

stop assuming adoption can’t be done by ppl bio related to the adoptee

stop assuming family needs to look alike, in real life and in fiction

stop using the “they are adopted” to explain why your ships is “normal”

stop assuming people who look “different” that are participating in culture festivals aren’t related to the cultural. ex: that black person you see participating in the krakowiak could be mixed or transracially adopted by a polish couple and connected to polish traditions. it’s not cultural appropriation if it is your culture.

[sweetlittledaisy7]

When you grew up conservative Christian but then went to college, grew older, and look at things differently.

Ever since my state made abortion illegal, I realized how shitty politicians are.

Adoption isn't the answer. I had to read stories of women bleeding in parking lots because they were suffering a miscarriage. The doctor couldn't do anything because of the abortion laws. They were in pain.

We have a lot of kids in foster care available for adoption. Yet, nobody adopting them or supporting them. I hate my state.

As an adoptee, I'm not your pro-life tool. My parents think it's fine because babies are being saved. I hate it when they bring me up. Especially knowing my parents had trouble getting pregnant and my mom had miscarriages. How can they support abortion being illegal?

There was a 10 year old pregnant rape victim who had to go out of state to abort. She was shamed. That's a child. I fear for the future.

[dykeluc]

keep your fucking fugly ass adoptables out if the adoption tags. it should ONLY be used for actual fucking adoption, wether its human or animals [sadly i wish it could only belong to the adoption community but animals being adopted is just as important]

you are just romanticizing [human] adoption even if your doing just because of "animal adoption so cute!" wether you like it or not

[transracial-trainwreck]

Can we all agree that celebrating the day someone decided not to keep you is mad weird

[butch-reidentified]

ima go ahead n answer both these at once if that's good w yall.

here's the referenced post for anyone who missed it.

I've posted a LOT about adoption before. feel free to search #adoption, #ethical adoption, #adoptee or #adopted, etc in my tags for those posts. if you can't find them bc Tumblr is shit at searching lmk and I will try to dig em up. I have a Google doc of organized/categorized Tumblr links because of the search function being such a joke

anyway that said. what I meant is that it is sooo obvious to most adoptees from a young age that it's a consumer industry and we are a product for sale. most of us who always knew we were adopted have that horrifying realization very very young, far too young to know how to deal with it. yes I am glad when other people figure this out too but it's a bit irritating for non adoptees to act like this is some mystical wisdom they alone could've uncovered when it's part of the trauma inherent to adoption to realize you were purchased 🤷

I'm not against adoption like some adoptees are, but I could write ESSAYS on my criticisms of the industry and how it SHOULD work. in fact, I have written essay length posts about it in the tags listed above. but ultimately nobody gives a fuck & NOBODY of any political orientation wants to hear that adoption perhaps isn't the utterly selfless flawless silver bullet solution to unwanted kids that everyone treats it as. yet statistically we KNOW most adoptees are extremely damaged by it, the research is there but nobody talks about it. nobody likes you if you talk about it. the walls go up real quick.

one of my favorite things is how adoption seems to be the ONE area that absolutely nobody respects lived material experience about. even loads of leftists/radfems who are always going on and on about the importance of listening to people's real, lived experiences will aggressively talk over us adoptees if we dare have the audacity to critique adoption/the adoption industry or acknowledge that it's fuckin traumatic even for an infant being yanked away from the only stimuli you knew for 9 months and put somewhere where you can't recognize yourself in anyone or anything for the next 18+ years. and that's best case scenario! scenario where they don't abuse you or spend your childhood guilt tripping you because they oh so selflessly took you in when nobody wanted you and now look how difficult you are, crying all the time n shit... just as 1 common experience I know many share from my own life and talking to other adoptees.

but nearly every time we try to talk about this, even if it has nothing to do with criticizing the adoption industry and we are JUST tryna get painful shit off our chest, some non adoptee or 8 is/are gonna jump down our throat (and often even say all the same shit our parents guilted us with as kids lmao)

it's also 1000% a feminist issue bc SO many mothers are forced into adopting out a kid they wanna keep, or adoption being available is used to justify forcing women to give birth instead of aborting an unwanted pregnancy when those women would otherwise choose the latter. not to mention the designer baby shit & the preference for white male babies... and the fact that it's human beings being literally sold as a good. Just because it's legal and isn't outright sex slavery or "forced labor" (tho adopted kids are so often viciously abused and often in those exact ways) doesn't make it right to buy or sell a human being, doesn't make it not human trafficking. & I say this as an adoptee who was ALSO trafficked as a teenager.

[whoisthisguyandwhyishehere]

Media that is centered on adoption/has an adoption storyline/has adoptee characters that is made by non adoptees can be so painful to sit through. Like the ignorance can be astounding

[fakeboitherottengirl]

There is a lot of discourse on tiktok about how adoption is immoral and of adoptees coming out and saying they hate their adoptive parents and i was wondering, as a woman who does not want to have biological children but still wants to open my home to kids in need when I get the stability financially, is there an ethical way to go about it?

[red-envelopes]

trying to trace your biological roots as a transracial international adoptee is like trying to get through reinforced concrete secure walls

even if you have the best tools available to you its still difficult to break through the barriers. nothing is getting past those walls.

even though I am one of the more fortunate ones (v supportive parents, a team of social workers, a national support group, vague information re: the biologicals) it is so so difficult to break through bureaucratic red tape even if we have the best resources

hopefully we'll get there this year

if it's so difficult for me, I wonder how it is for others who have nothing and no one. it's saddening to think about.