An eye-opening look at the power of an AP
Times sure have changed....
Ten years ago, when I first started to post my litany of complaints about abuse in adoptive families, it felt as if all AP's were unified (and ready to attack) on all adoption forum fronts. Not a negative word about an AP could be said/written by an angry adoptee, without a pack of AP's offering their outraged 2-cent opinions. In other words, the more I was banned repeatedly because I kept writing about the many ways AP's can be messed-up in the head, the more I thought adoption, as a practice, was (and continues to be) REALLY F-ed up.
The blogging-world sure seems to allow more honest, uncensored truth. <WHEW!> This truth in blogging is giving me an odd feeling -- hope.
Today's find comes from an Amother's blog, Adoptiontalk. Kudos must go for the AP who finally sees just how crazy life can be for the adoptee "chosen" by/for a well-to-do family with some serious identity issues:
The speaker was a proud father. To illustrate his comments about a piece of art that celebrated the wonders of modern medicine (and which he had just donated to a local hospital), he told a story about his adopted Asian daughter. He described her as a beautiful, happy child in whom he took much delight. Her life, he told the audience, had been improved dramatically by the miracle of modern medicine. When she joined her new Caucasian family, her eyes, like those of many people of Asian descent, lacked a fold in the upper eyelid, and that lack was problematic—in his view—because it made her eyes small and sleepy and caused them to shut completely when she smiled. A plastic surgeon himself, he knew she did not need to endure this hardship, so he arranged for her to have surgery to reshape her eyes. The procedure, he explained, was minimally invasive and maximally effective. His beautiful daughter now has big round eyes that stay open and shine even when she smiles.
[From: Eyes Wide Open: Surgery to Westernize the Eyes of an Asian Child ]
The hardship this adoptee has to endure has nothing to do with her eyes. Her hardship has to do with the way in which she is seen by her all-loving, all-accepting Aparent, who also happens to be a nut-job with a medical license and a knife.
What I, a self-proclaimed angry adoptee, appreciate most, is the comment written by the Amother who featured this reported story. In her blog, Malinda writes:
when a parent modifies features of a child that have nothing to do with physical impairment but can be integral to identity, and bases that decision on his own needs or aesthetic preferences, he asserts physical control over the child's body in the same way that he might assert control over a piece of property that he can modify to his specifications.
When I was a sophomore in high school, my Amother told me my birthday gift was going to take care of a problem. In my case, my "problem" was my nose. According to my Amother, it was too big... too ethnic. It had to be fixed. I had to be fixed. If I got fixed, more of "the right" people would like me. If I got my face fixed, everything would be perfect.
As my stupid luck would have it, the plastic surgeon she chose for me was old (close to death/retirement) and not that great. As a result of that surgery, I have these annoying nodules I'd like to have removed, but won't because it's not anything I can afford to do... and quite honestly, I wouldn't want a plastic surgeons nose, anyway. My annoying nodules give me "character"... a quality many seem to like, once they get to know me. [Anyone see the irony in that statement?]
The point is, I believe there are many AP's in this world who are serious closet control-freaks and demented psychos. There are many AP's with some really weird identity issues ("I am the master race/ethnicity and superior being" sort of thing) that need to be resolved. There are many AP's who treat their adopted children like objects, not real human beings with real feelings. There are many AP's who should not be allowed to keep pets, let alone adopt a child. Once other AP's begin to see this truth, maybe less children placed for adoption will be placed in these sort of homes, where all sorts of unfortunate events can happen. (At least, one could hope.) Because the way I see it as always being in Adoptionland.... things will only get fixed (reformed) if an AP sees a serious problem.