I got a comment that said that I should give Madison back to Jessica. I’ve heard this before because when I was doing interviews for the antiadoption-article-that-wasn’t; some of the interviewees told me this. Other antiadoption activists were horrified when I brought this up so to say that all antiadoption activists think every adoption should be undone would be a gross generalization. Still, I heard it often enough.

I’ve started doing interviews for the open adoption article, too, and hearing stories about all kinds of adoptions — the good, the bad, the closed, the open, etc. It’s all so complicated. Any black and white view of adoption (it’s perfect! No, it’s fundamentally wrong!) is going to miss a whole lot of grey.

Back to the idea of returning Madison. There are a whole lot of assumptions in there the biggest being the idea that Jessica wants to disrupt the adoption.

One thing I did find during my antiadoption interviews is that the most strident (again, not all) people I spoke with were pretty quick to dismiss Jessica. For example, one of the people I talked to (a big mucky-muck who’s done important, good work — I don’t want to be dismissive of him as a whole because I admire his activism) was talking about how adoption is always coercive. Now I can go pretty far in agreeing with that but in a very broad “it’s the patriarchy!” way; I don’t think that every adoption is personally coercive. Anyway, he was saying that Jessica’s parents probably really forced the adoption and I said no, actually, the pressure on her was to parent and she worked very hard to protect her decision to do an adoption. After seriously considering parenting and taking steps to parent she did finally want an adoption. And this activist sputtered and said, “Well, you see? No support!”

I believe in adoption reform and I support the antiadoption activists even though I don’t agree with them. Yes, some of them flame people and upset adoption bulletin boards but this, to me, is a pretty poor reason to dismiss the whole movement. I know that some of them have helped women get out of coercive adoption agreements. And I believe they have a place as a community for people who feel wounded by their adoption experiences and never had permission to talk about it before. That’s huge, that service. It’s just huge.

You know what the most vocal of the antiadoption activists remind me of? They remind me of the hard-core feminists I knew from college and shelter. You know, the stereotypical feminists — strident, angry and without humor. The ones who kept their arms crossed during every conversation, ready to catch the smallest breath of offense in your speech. They were front-line feminists — writing the letters, showing up at every march, wo-manning the hotlines, shouting into a bullhorn at every Take Back the Night march. When I worked at Women Against Rape they were the administrators. Being feminists with a strong belief in the power of collective they traded jobs every six months, which meant that Women Against Rape was one of the most poorly run places I’ve ever encountered. Oh every decision — big or small — was decided by consensus so we got nothing done because we were too busy discussing things like whether or not you could saying manning the hotline or if you had to say wo-manning. And we’d have to say it like this, “I feel offended by the casual use of the word ‘man’ and find it very triggering.” And the other person would say, “I hear you saying that ‘man’ is offensive and triggering for you. Womyn? Does anyone have feedback to share?” And then a third person would say, “This is bullshit that we can’t get anything done because we have to deconstruct the word ‘manning’ yet again!” And the second person would say, “I hear you saying that you are frustrated. Womyn? Can anyone share how they feel or do not feel frustrated about our segue?”

I mean it was crazy.

Anyway, as a crisis center WAR was pretty ineffective. But as a place for young feminists to come and declare their feminism — in all it’s hot angry, tearful glory — it was fabulous. It was a great place to think about being gay, to try on being gay, to shave your head, to stop shaving your legs, to rethink that creepy uncle’s overtures, to unearth memories long repressed. Many of us Columbus feminists of a certain era came of age there and I am deeply grateful for the few months I spent deconstructing the word “man” and learning to spell woman with a Y.

Likewise some of the most extreme antiadoption activists don’t make for such great activism. A comment about giving Madison back is unlikely to make me decide to give Madison back and it’s really, really unlikely to turn any adoptive parents or adoption-supportive people onto their cause but that’s ok because it’s not meant for us. I think of Angela’s comment sitting at the bottom of that entry and think that there will be some hurting person who will say, “Oh my god, there ARE people who think like I do!” and it’ll be a revelation.

The adoption reform movement — and at its fringes where the antiadoption people are — needs all kinds to get a dialogue going about adoption. In every movement there are black/white thinkers but sometimes it’s the black/white discussions that fuel real debate.

By the way, I am more than open to publishing a well-written, thoughtful, reasonable adoption reform leaning towards antiadoption OpEd for Literary Mama. There are some valid arguments in the antiadoption camp that get lost in the most extreme rhetoric and I’d really love to see those get some play.

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