Chinese Adoptee Mythology: Objectification and Trivialization of Chinese Adoptees
The good adoptee (the well-adjusted adoptee, the lucky adoptee, the grateful adoptee)
This adoptee is one of the good ones. Completely unaffected by her adoption or only just slightly sad with just the right amount of tact to never make any adoptive parents feel bad, she is often held up as the ideal. Too bad, she isn't real.
The angry adoptee (the ungrateful adoptee, the bad adoptee)
This adoptee feels angry about their adoption.They miss their birthparents and they aren't afraid to let you know it. They disagree with human trafficking, baby exploitation, and with perceived attempts of objectifying them. The enemy of adoptive parents everywhere, people pray for a child who isn't one of these. Good thing, she isn't real either.
The Chosen One
This adoptee was plucked from death row and plopped into your adoring adoptive parents' laps. Her birthparents didn't pray as hard as you did for a child, so God took the child from the birthmother and gave her to you. Because God loves you more. Adoptive parents often say: "We chose her" as if from a store shelf, or "God chose her for me" because you prayed night and day, or she is "God's gift for me" because her birthparents' desires don't matter. Did her birthparents not also want their child? Did her birthparents also not love her enough? Who cares what the birthparents want! Who cares what the baby wants! This baby was built for you because of Fate and Destiny.
Just a little note: you are disrespecting adoptees every time you try to legitimize your family by minimizing their family. Can't we all be one big, happy family?
The "Changeling" or inappropriate or heavy usage of the term "Foundling"
We aren't leprechauns. We don't shit rainbows. And we don't have wings.
A changeling was a fairy baby put in place of a human baby stolen by fairies.
A foundling is an abandoned orphan who is found. And if you ever watch a show about an orphan, you better believe they will be saying "foundling" five thousand times instead of orphan. Why? It just...sounds more mysterious and magical! Oh, the dainty little foundling! Please stop giving us magical names that inspire allure and hint at mysterious and perhaps even otherworldly origins. It was called the One Child Policy, enforced with forced sterilizations and abortions. In many instances, police officers would forcibly take the baby from their mother or threaten the family. There is nothing quaint about the One Child Policy. Nothing magical about it. If you must use the word foundling for clarity, don't abuse the term, please. Just use it once or twice. The foundling this, the foundling that, the foundling...
"We saved her."
"We rescued her."
"We gave her a home."
She isn't a charity case. Adoptees have rights, dignity, and value too. Adoptees are just as worthy as biological kids. Humans should be adopted out of love not out of a humanitarian sense of goodness so you can pat yourself on the back for being good people. It puts too much emphasis on the "you would have been dead without us" and implies the adoptee is "worthless" because she was clearly tossed aside to warrant such a rescue effort.
The Red Thread
Nothing really matters because Destiny was involved. The Red Thread is a part of ancient Chinese (and other East Asian cultures) mythology. It says that a man is tied to his wife by a red thread of fate and that they are always destined to meet and be together. Often, in adoption, this is shown as the picture below. It is used to tell adoptees that destiny is involved, so don't feel too badly or think too deeply, and if you have any negative emotions, suppress them, because it is all up to Fate. What a cop-out for adoptive parents who don't want to know their own child.
I get it, there's a whole language barrier issue with the word abandoned vs. lost, still though, if you're an American news outlet, please just delete the term Lost Girls from your vocabulary. We aren't lost. We're right here. We're not in a mystery novel, or in Peter Pan, and there isn't buried treasure where we stand. If we are missing, please file a missing person's report. Otherwise, please stop acting like we "vanished" oh so mysteriously.
German dolls (1840-1940) made out of porcelain. Let's reiterate, you cannot own another human being. That's called slavery and that's wrong. So don't objectify adoptees like they're just dolls to have and dolls to play with. Adoptees are people too and we aren't exotic commodities that you can just buy.
Banana/Twinkie/White-washed/Honorary Whites/Any other "clever" name to allude to our dual identity
Adoptee identities are so varied, that it is often something everyone determines for themselves alone. Calling an adoptee names, because you think you're so clever in pointing out how she's not acting stereotypically Asian, is not helpful. And owning such a term for yourself isn't so much witty as it is demeaning.
Why don't you stop trying to sort out the "true Asians" from the "fake Asians" and examine your own life?
Chinese adoptees must balance between the world of who they are and how people perceive them. There is such a strong, Westernized idea of the beautiful, exotic, submissive, quiet, and sexual "Oriental woman" that objectifying us is actually pretty gross. Are you adopting a child or buying a slice of her home country? We aren't objects and we aren't food and we aren't make-believe empresses. DO NOT objectify adoptees. We are people too. You cannot buy people. You cannot own people. So don't objectify us.
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