Twitter thread upset me yesterday.

As soon as an adoptee dares to disagree with the savior narrative woven into adoption, and specifically transracial adoption, the adoptees assumed lack of gratefulness becomes a target used, because, you know, we weren’t wanted and were saved and all. And sooner rather than later the old trope would you rather have been aborted bubbles up to the surface as well.

Every. Single. Time.

And it is adoptees who bear the brunt of the uglier pro-life messaging because they believe we would have been aborted because we weren’t wanted, or so they say, and yes, they say it to our face. And yes, some of us weren’t wanted, some of us were, some of us were wanted and unwanted at the same time with bad timing to blame or other common challenges.

That’s life playing out in real time, decisions made in real time, also decisions made for some mothers who had their choice taken away by societal mores, and mothers today have their choice taken away too.

And yet, it’s the non-adopted who think they have the right to dictate to adoptees how they should feel on the subject of being adopted. Yesterday, it was a man called Dinesh, or something like that, whoever he is, he was on a quest to shame an adoptee who authored a book on her experience being a transracial adoptee, a Black adoptee growing up in a white family.

But if this Dinesh fellow thinks yipping at adoptees about how they need to be grateful because they were adopted will silence adoptees, he has no idea. Really, he has no idea just how strong adoptees are, how many ugly comments we’ve received, how many names we’ve been called, it’s old hat to some of us, shouldn’t be when we simply voice our truths, but it is what it is.

But I do worry about adoptees who face it for the first time, and I hope the Adoptee in this story is okay.

But it was more than that for this transracial adoptee yesterday, so much more, below is the Dinesh guys tweet to the adoptee and I’m not going to include the adoptees name because she didn’t deserve what happened, she did nothing wrong, except she wrote a book about her experience – the horrors.

Dinesh tweeted: “If it’s “enduring trauma” for you to be adopted by a white family, you might consider that 1. The black patents that gave birth to you didn’t want you 2. There were evidently no black couples that chose to adopt you. Aren’t you grateful someone did?”

This ignorant attempt at schooling an adoptee has to stop, good grief, we didn’t just appear out from under a turnip leaf. And the Adoptee did nothing other than do a thread about the book she wrote. And it’s doubtful it’s the first time she’s been asked if she’s grateful someone adopted her, seeing as I’ve never met an adoptee who hasn’t been asked that once, if not dozens of times.

This Dinesh fellow also seems to have a merry band of followers, who then felt empowered to respond as well, most were just sheer ugliness, including bringing the you could have been aborted into the melee, tweet after tweet of ugly.

Just watching it happen left me deeply upset and I was just an observer, I feel so bad for the Adoptee in the middle of what seemed like a bunch of angry people verbally attacking her. I’ve copied two tweets to give you an idea and there were dozens along the same line, although there were some supportive tweets as well.

@Justinredalen tweeted: “Would you prefer you’d not have been adopted? Because abortion has been a hot topic latterly and I can think of far worse things than being raised by loving white people……namely, never existing because your mother had you aborted.”

Yeah, cuz no adoptee has ever had the ‘you could have been aborted’ thrown at them, so un-original.

And of course, one of this Dinesh guy merry followers is an Adoptive Parent @MMayhem2020 who said this: “It’s quite disgusting that you feel the way you do. I am an adoptive mom and it’s not an easy path to take in another woman’s child. The sacrifice required clearly is lost on you. I truly feel sorry for your adoptive parents who put their needs aside to take you in when” 1/2 “Your birth parents abandoned you. What a way to repay their selflessness than to disparage them because of their skin color. Clearly they didn’t see your skin color but you are using theirs as a weapon. What to talk about racism, look no further than your mirror.”

And a pause to note that reverse racism isn’t a thing, it really isn’t. The truth behind ‘reverse racism’, it’s not racism.

And I need to also make it clear that there is no chance that anyone had actually read her book, but because she’s adopted she’s obviously fair game to attack. Just think of all the tools you can use, you could have been aborted, you’re ungrateful, how dare you utter a word about those saintly white people who took you in, you could have been raised in an orphanage, (despite no orphanages existing in the US), but hey, facts don’t matter when you have an “ungrateful adoptee” to attack.

Ain’t being adopted grand, so glad adoption is so different now.

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