Tales of Wonderlost
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The only thing I'll say about it
There are all kinds of messed up arguments flying around in favor of the baby box, but they really boil down to...
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I don't understand this logic that excuses unethical adoption because the end result is the babies who were stolen now get to live in 'cleaner' homes...
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Why it Matters
What are the odds of moving next door to another single white lady (as my mother is) who had adopted a child from Guatemala (as I am,...
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paolomein asked: Hi hyunsook...did u have an abusive adoptive dad, too? Hugs
Hugs to you, too, and to anyone who had to grow up dealing with asshole adoptive parents who were physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally, or...
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goawaywithjae said: WHAT? Hugs.
No this actually makes me laugh because their knowledge of Korea is so...
그녀는 한국입양인과 결혼했고 한국입양아를 키우고 있지만 지난해 8월부터 시행되고 있는 한국의 입양특례법을 지지하고 베이비박스를 반대하며 우리나라에서 해외입양이 좀 더 엄격하게 윤리적, 공개적으로 이루어지길 기대한다.
hmmmm have mixed feelings about this one for many reasons….
- 한국정부와 국회에 미혼모 문제와 관련하여 하고 싶은 제안이나 권고가 있는가?
“미혼모를 돕는 것은 곧 국가의 미래가 될 아동을 돕는 것이다. 아동을 돕는 것에 반대하는 사람이 있는가? 정부의 역할은 이들을 돕는 창의적 재원을 마련하고 운영하는 것이다. 지금 현재 입양기관에게 주는 재원을 친모에게 주라. 현재 한국에서는 편부모가 최저생계비 대상자일 때한에서만 한 아이 당 한 달 5만 원을 국가가 지원한다. 그러나 그 편부모가 생활고로 아이를 못 키우고 고아원에 보내면 그 고아원은 한 아이 당 한 달 105만 원에서 107만 원을 국가에서 지원받는다. 현재 한국은 입양을 사회구조적으로 권장하고 있다. 고아원에 주는 105만 원을 생모에게 주라. 그리고 아이는 상품이 아니라는 것을 명심하라.”
here’s the info on the “human library” event i’ll be taking part in, representing adoptee rights on july 6th @ 2pm. as you can see, one of the KUMFA moms will be representing unwed mothers rights activists. there will also be speakers representing conscientious objectors groups, lgbtq rights groups, hiv/aids patients rights groups, a human rights education author, labor rights activists, mental health and substance addicts rights activists, and activists for the rights of those living below the poverty line.
to register, click here. i’ve been told if there are people who want english translation for certain “books” (you sign up to hear one speaker), they will try to provide it.
for my followers living in korea:
i will be participating in a human library event on july 6th @2pm in hongdae to speak about adoptee rights. the topic is human rights so each speaker will be a human rights activist. in addition to myself, a KUMFA mom will also be speaking about unwed mothers’ rights in korea. that i know of so far, there will also be LGBTQ rights attorney/activist, persons with disabilities activist, with other activists currently being recruited.
i’ve asked them to provide english translation, if there are english speakers who want to attend. if you are interested, please let me know and which “book” you are interested in hearing (only five “readers” can register for each book).
THE LANGUAGE IN THIS IS SO DISGUSTING - their attitude is clear, the business of selling children must go on!!
We know what you’re thinking… The Korea program? Didn’t Korea just pass a law slowing the adoption process? And doesn’t Korea now require families to travel twice to complete their adoption?”
(The buying process just got harder for you because god forbid you should actually have to travel to adopt your child - so that they can get automatic US citizenship and avoid being deported like some adult adoptees today - instead of them being delivered to you in the past)
So give me one good reason why I should adopt from Korea?
(but here’s why you should still give us your money)
1. Because children in Korea still need loving families to adopt them.
(actually, no. most of them don’t. 90% of the children sent for adoption today are the children of unwed mothers who essentially have no other “choice” but to give their children up for adoption. if there’s no other choice, can we really call it a “choice”??? more here)
2. While the process has changed, the children have not! Although slightly older, children coming home to families are still toddler-age.
(the product is not as fresh, the toddlers might be a bit stale, but they still won’t have gone rotten by the time you get them)
3. Like most other country programs, all children referred from Korea now have at least some health issues. But their conditions are often so minor that children are actually considered healthy in the U.S. Common conditions include prematurity, low birth weight or a minor heart murmur.
(we are manipulating the slightly lower health conditions of children into “children with disabilities” in order to send as many children for adoption as possible)…. and finally….
The Korea program is still strong, and still moving…For 57 years, Holt has been uniting children from Korea with loving adoptive families in the U.S. Although rumors of end times in Korean adoption have ebbed and flowed over the years, children from Korea have continued to find homes overseas at a steady, uninterrupted pace – and we expect this legacy to continue for many years to come.
(if there’s money to be made by manipulating western couples’ desire to parent, unwed mothers’ guilt and shame, and adoptees’ birth records - we’ve done it for 57 years and can be damn sure we will find a way to continue to do it!)
via Jane Jeong Trenka:
For KADs doing birth family search, here is the law:
Chapter 5 Disclosure of Information Concerning Adopted Children
Article 36 (Disclosure of Adoption-related Information)
① According to this law, the adoptee can request adoption information regarding themselves that is possessed by the Central Adoption Authority (CAA) and adoption agencies. If the adoptee is under 18 years old, they need consent from their adoptive parents.
② Upon receiving the above request as of Article 1, the CAA or the adoption agencies shall disclose such information after they get consent from the biological parents of the adoptee. If the biological parents disagree regarding the disclosure of such information, the agency still shall release the information, apart from the personal details of the biological parents.
③ Despite the above Article 2, if the biological parents are deceased or cannot give consent due to inevitable situations, or if the information is needed for a medical purpose or for a special reason, the adoptees still can get the personal details of the biological parents.
LINK #1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/119741669/Special-Adoption-Act-2012
Here is the enforcement decree:
Article 13 (Adoption Information Subject to Disclosure)
Adoption information subject to disclosure as per Article 36.1 of the Act shall be as follows:(a) Personal information on birth parents (referring to the personal information at the time of adoption);(i) Name;(ii) Date of birth;(iii) Address;(iv) Contact number:(b) Information on adoption background;(i) Age of birth parents at the time of adoption;(ii) Date of adoption and reasons for adoption;(iii) Domicile area of birth parents (referring to the name of a
si/gun/gu under subparagraph 2 of paragraph (1) of Article 2 of the Local Autonomy Act):(c) Name, resident registration number, address, date of birth, and place of birth of an adopteebefore adoption;(d) Name, address, and contact number of the assistance facility or adoption agency where thean adoptee was taken into care before adoption; and(e) Other adoption information deemed necessary to disclosure by the Minister of Health and Welfare.
LINK #2
http://www.scribd.com/doc/119741513/Enforcement-Decree-for-Special-Adoption-Law
You are your own best advocate. Be righteously angry. Demand what is rightfully yours.
Okay. You guys have seen that “What kind of Asian are you” video that’s been circulating, right? The one by “Ken Tanaka”? If not, here it is.
Anyway, boredom led me to do some investigation into this guy, and now I kinda wanna slap him in the face.
I thought the video was humorous and kind of spot-on, but I’m a little sickened by the fact that the guy who made it, “Ken Tanaka,” is really an American actor who created this persona of a white person adopted by a Japanese couple, raised in Japan, and who’s now returned to America to search for his birth parents.
I’ve read a few articles and commentary about the whole thing that basically say, “Ha ha, it’s a joke, and even if it’s not true, it’s still amusing that he’s created this whole back story and is pretending to be a Japanese person stuck in a white person’s body.”
To that, I say: fuck. you.
I’m not quite sure what’s humorous about pretending to be a transracial adoptee, faking a Japanese accent, and then proceeding to make a bunch of videos about Asians.
I’m not sure why it’s funny to joke about searching for your birth parents or why we should laugh at the fact that he’s basically just mocking Asians, Asian culture, and transracial adoptees. I don’t think any of those things are funny, or material for white men to be creating miles and miles of jokes out of in order to gain some internet fame.
Fuck that. Fuck the whole thing.
i wrote about this already here, but i just wanted to reiterate what a fellow adoptee has to say about it. i said it in the post linked above, but people don’t even realize how fucking common it is for people to joke about being adopted, someone else being adopted, wishing they were adopted, being an orphan, someone else being an orphan, etc.
then there’s the concept that incest between adopted siblings is acceptable (there’s a korean-american actress lindsay price, whose parents are married adopted siblings… as in, her mom is an adopted korean and her dad is the biological child of her grandparents). and relationships between adopted children and parent figures (woody allen and soon yi) is forgivable… the hypocrisy of adoptees being told that we are no different than “real” family but then we see this shit. WTF! my brothers’ friends used to actually joke around and say “incest is best” when we were all together and we had to fucking laugh about it even though it’s NOT FUCKING FUNNY. especially when you know how fucking common it is for adoptees to be victims of sexual molestation and assault within our own families. NOT FUCKING FUNNY.
these are the things that adoptees see constantly being accepted in popular culture in regards to adoption and it’s NOT OK. our lives are not jokes, punchlines. they’re also not romaticized fairy tales - stop fucking saying you wish you were adopted. fucking stop.
I don’t trust people who use the term “bitter” in reference to women who’ve been jaded and hold righteous anger. Bitter signifies waste, a sign of spoil, repulsion and indigestibility. I don’t trust people who treat the human condition of hurt as a permanent expiration, thus deeming womanhood a static nuisance. I don’t trust people who don’t examine why bitterness is a common element amongst women, people of color, third world folks and the working class. Who’d rather, in extreme laziness and apathy, write off a whole category of persons as inherently (rude expletive here) as a virtue of characteristic.
How lazy and demoralizing and stoic.
i hear bitter, angry, resentful, and much, much worse whenever i talk critically about adoption. but no one wants to think about why i (and a whole lot of adoptees) feel in a way that they consider “bitter, angry, resentful” - doing this puts the responsibility on me (and other adoptees) to get over my (our) bitterness, anger, and resentment. it also conveniently excuses the adoption agencies and the systems of oppression in place that keep the adoption market running full steam ahead. instead of asking how the adoption system is responsible for making us “bitter, angry, and resentful” and how it should be changed to prevent continued outcomes of this nature, it implies that we as individuals are just angry and bitter - as if the fact that this is a common pattern among adoptees is a complete coincidence.
(via susurrations)
Anonymous Asks:
peaceshannon Said:
(in regards to this post)
that’s exactly how i felt about my boyfriend (at the time). i felt sick. i wasn’t angry, just really disappointed. and i thought to myself - this person has known me for how long, has heard me talk about being adopted how many times, has met how many of my adoptee friends, has been to how many adopted-related conferences, movies, etc. and it was exactly how you described it. i couldn’t look at him the same way after that. we broke up a month later. plenty of people said (or insinuated) that i was overreacting. but i don’t have to explain or rationalize the way something like that changes a relationship. i didn’t break up with him because he was “wrong” or “bad” because yes, anyone can make a thoughtless mistake. but because i couldn’t look at him the way i did before (i tried for a month and it didn’t work).
goawaywithjae recently wrote this post about this video (which i also found funny). but goawaywithjae points this out about the creator of the video:
Oddly enough, it comes courtesy of Ken Tanaka, whose youtube user name is helpmefindparents. In his bio, he says he was born in the U.S. and adopted by a Japanese couple, who raised him in the Shimane Prefecture of Japan. He is back in America searching for his birth parents, John and Linda Smith.
Um. Sure. Because there are so many Japanese couples looking to bring home white children to the Shimane Prefecture.
According to Wikipedia, Tanaka actually is David Ury. I get that he’s a comedian and that he has a schtick. But I don’t find it funny to make a joke about being adopted. There are literally thousands of adoptees who are searching for their biological parents, and most will never find them.
That is not a laughing matter.
as an adoptee, like jae-ha says, i was also really put off by this.
people think its funny to joke about the fact that adoptees spend their lives looking for their parents?? what the fuck? do these people have no capacity for empathy?
adoption jokes/comments are all over the place and people don’t even fucking pick up on it. i can’t even count how many times i’ve heard people lightly say they “wish they had been adopted” or joke that their sibling is “adopted” if they do something stupid or that they don’t want to be associated with. do you remember the joke in the avengers when thor, after first insisting that loki is his brother, finally says “he’s adopted” when confronted with the fact that he’s killed a 80 people. i remember sitting in the theater stunned when literally EVERYONE, including my boyfriend at the time, had a big belly laugh at that one. at that moment, i felt completely lonely, even with my boyfriend (at the time) at my side. i was stunned that was even funny to people, but i guess i shouldn’t have been surprised, i’ve been listening to this kind of insensitive shit all my life. and when adoptees and adoptive parents took to the internet to criticize it, they were met with ridicule and hostility backed up by illogical rationalization (“The “he’s adopted” punchline shows us that Thor has enough of a sense of humor to correct himself, and that he’s distancing himself and all of Asgard from Loki’s treachery.” - ummm thanks for illustrating criticizer’s points??) i’m so fucking tired of adoption being used as the punchline to a joke. this is real people’s lives, trauma and pain, it’s not a fucking joke.
