I Am Not an Information Booth

It's November and that means it's also National Adoption Awareness Month and also the month of my adoption day and that means triggers for my mental health. So I've been thinking about this subject a lot and I've been thinking about how I'm done educating those who feel entitled to my time and labor when it comes to adoption, but also when it comes to any of my identities honestly.  I have many intersecting identities and none of them exist to educate anyone. 

I couldn't give two shits about NAAM. For one, I don't think a single person is unaware of adoption. What they're unaware of is the trauma and risks of adoption, the unethical practices around adoption, and the oppression adoptees face, and so it would be one thing if this month were about educating people about those, but it never is. 

Which brings me to my second point. This month is chock full of the rainbows and butterflies narratives around adoption and which motivate hopeful adoptive parents to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to buy traumatized babies. We don't need any more of that and I, for one, am immensely triggered by it all. 

Which brings me to my last point. I don't talk about adoption to educate adoptive parents, hopeful adoptive parents, or non-adoptees. If those people happen to learn from me, that's fine, but I don't talk about adoption for them. I talk about adoption for other adoptees. I talk about my trauma and my struggles and my oppression for my community, to make other adoptees feel validated and less alone, and to hand-in-hand step into the light and speak our truths together. I do it for my community and no one else. My contact info isn't DIAL-AN-ADOPTEE. I don't exist to serve as an information booth. 

And the same goes for the rest of me. 

I talk about bisexuality for other bisexuals, to create community and safety and validity. I don't do it for any cis-het ally or parent and I certainly don't do it for any other letter of the alphabet mafia. They should know better anyway. 

I talk about my chronic illness and my mental illnesses for other people who struggle with the invisibility of illness and the taboos of mental illness and the struggles associated.

I talk about being fat and my journey to excise internalized fatphobia and fat oppression for other fat people, not for thin people to learn from. 

I talk about my child abuse for other child abuse survivors, not for parents. 

I talk about my religious trauma for other cult and fundie survivors, not for those who never had to escape such traumas. 

I talk about the things society doesn't want me to talk about for the other outcasts and misfits and traumatized precisely because society doesn't want me to, to create safe spaces to be free and break taboos and help others like me feel valid and deserving. 

I couldn't give a fuck about educating others on any of the above. When it comes to allyship, then I'll pick up that mantle and use my privileges to educate those LIKE ME on oppression DON'T experience. But when it comes to my own oppression, I don't need to spend any emotional labor teaching others. 

No marginalized or oppressed person owes you time or labor and you are not entitled to their expertise and lived experience. You can and should listen to us, but you don't get to demand. 

So, no, I won't be participating in NAAM or any other month that is about centering the privileged over the marginalized. My labor is too valuable.