It's been too long. But I'm back!

(Photograph copyright December, 2012, all rights reserved)

All righty then....

I'm back, as promised. I can see that it's been well over a year since my last post and all I can say is mea culpa for those that missed me. That's IF anyone missed me, of course. Since I am proud to tell you that Cary Tennis deleted a bunch of my comments, I figure that I really am back and on top form.

I wish I could say there's been a specific reason for my lack of posts, but I can't. The last year has been rather....fraught. It's been a lesson in how nostalgia is a Bad Thing for me, and something I should never indulge in. I withdrew from just about everything but my art for awhile, while I kicked myself in the backside for getting sucked in to all of the same old shit.

Yup. Time to stop kicking myself and start kicking stupid LWs..... Look for the originals in the usual place - Prudie's Thursday column on Slate.com.

SHADDAP!!

1. So. Where to start with your stupid, LW? 

You are adopted, like millions of other people. You have convinced yourself that, having attained the age of almost half a century without, you MUST "know" your biomom. You wrote letters. You phoned her and harassed her. You threatened to tell her family who you are. You even threatened to hunt down your biofather and smacked her in the face with that, too. 

SHADDAP! 

What the fuck is your problem, you moron? 

Why are you torturing this woman? Do you hate your adoptive parents that much? You don't mention them anywhere in your letter, so I'm assuming that either they were horrid people or you're just a silly bitch that doesn't know how good you had it. 

This kind of selfish shit really bothers me. You don't know anything about the woman who gave birth to you. You don't know if she was raped and got pregnant. You don't know that your biofather isn't her own father, even. Has it occurred to you that you don't know what her family is like? That they might make her life hell because of you? Did you consider the likelihood that the only people who even knew that she gave birth to you are dead of old age? You don't know how awful that phase in her life really was and apparently, you don't care. 

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! You shout. I DESEEEEEEEEEEEEEERVE to know my MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMY!

Idiot. You had a mother. She is the lady that raised your ungrateful ass. She CHOSE to adopt you and raise you and SHE is the one that you should be focused on right now. Instead, you go charging into the life of a total stranger, demanding all of her attention, and blackmailing her into being in contact with you, even though she doesn't want to know you at all! 

Medical records are a bullshit excuse for forcing contact on someone. You are almost 50 years old. If something genetic was wrong with you, believe me, you'd have known it a hell of a long time ago. The only thing you're showing now that might be genetic is the asshole gene.

She didn't answer your letters. She told you she didn't want to talk to you. She is frightened that you will choose to destroy the life that she's spent almost five decades building and YOU KNOW THIS. Why would you choose to harm this woman who did nothing but give birth to you? You are only here on this planet because of her, so why do you think you have the right to scare her and destroy who knows how many relationships she has with her own family?

If I were your biological mother, I would call the police. I would report you as a stalker - because that is how you're behaving. That would only be the first step. The second would be to get a restraining order against you. Then I would warn my family about you. By the time I finished with you, everyone I knew would know that you're an insane bitch-stalker-person and to stay far, far away from you. 

You don't have a "right" to know this woman. You don't have a "right" to interfere with her life. You don't have a "right" to any kind of relationship with her extended family, either. THEY ARE NOT YOUR FAMILY. You already have a family. If you don't like them, then it sucks to be you.

If this garbage you're pulling is because you don't like what you've done with your own life, then get over yourself. 

Take the hint. Leave these people alone. 

2. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww, poor ickle babykins! How rough your life is! 

You are 31 years old. You are studying to be a veterinarian. You finally wised up and dumped the guy who's been treating you like a fuckpuppet for who knows how long. 

These things tell me that you are not stupid. At least in terms of IQ. 

Prudie was right, though. You ARE an entitled silly bitch. 

SHADDAP!

You are dating the guy your parents always told you to hunt for. I'm guessing you stalked the poor bastard like an innocent gazelle, pouncing at the first opportunity because you've told yourself that he is the farthest thing from your former loser boyfriend that you can think of. But you don't like the guy. 

You have no chemistry with this man, and his looks are a deal breaker for you (which says more about you than anything else), and you will never love him. So what is your problem? Are you keeping him around so you can show him off to the people who have been telling you that the previous idiot was...well...an idiot? 

You say, as if it's no fault of your own, "...isn't passion and attraction an essential ingredient to a healthy relationship?"

Gee, shithead, ya think? How dare you! You are letting this nice man think that you are sincerely interested in him, and you know darn well all along that you're nothing but a liar, stringing him along until the next bad boy dampens your panties for you. 

You say, "....I'm scared my family will love him so much I will be pressured into marrying him."

What are you, nine? Get over yourself. If your family can still "make" you do things you don't want to do, YOU'RE the one with the problem, not them.

Then you pop out with this little gem, "How do I improve a man without demoralizing his ego?"

Seriously? You don't get to change people. He is an adult. He is fully cooked. He has a life, and he likes it. 

You're STILL contemplating marrying this man that you are not sexually attracted to and don't respect? I've got news for you, sugar. If you really wanted to spend your life with this man, you wouldn't even notice his hair - because it's nothing more than a part of who he is. You wouldn't give a damn about his exercise habits, because you'd respect him as a human being enough to know that people who truly love each other can't be identical in all ways. 

Advice? You want advice? Break up with this guy and let him find someone who loves him. You aren't it. At the rate you're going, NO man with a lick of sense would go near you with a barge pole.

3. Ok. I have to admit that I read this letter more than once. Frankly, I couldn't finish it the first time because I was laughing so hard. I suspected that Prudie had found some ancient letter from the '60s or '70s from some village idiot who had decided to go "back to the earth" and give birth squatting in a dirt-floored yurt in someone's back yard, right next to the outhouse, conveniently located next to the chicken coop. 

But no. You're serious. You truly think that it's a good idea to force nine-year-old girl that isn't even your own child to watch you give birth. You think that seeing the blood, the crying, the yelling, the doctors, the whole nine yards will somehow be "beneficial" for your stepdaughter. 

Hoo boy. Where to start with this one....

SHADDAP! 

This is not your child. You don't get to make the decision as to whether she's in the room or not when you give birth. She HAS a mother, who apparently has more sense than either you or her ex-husband and can absolutely veto this stupid plan. Her mother even offered to go along with it...provided she was in the room to explain things to her daughter and leave the room if the kid gets upset. 

Is that good enough for you? Nooooooooooooo....you're worse than any bridezilla. It has to be your way or no way at all? I don't think so, kid. 

I'm tempted to remind you that for many generations...and we're talking HUNDREDS of generations, not just in the last 50 years or so, children got kicked out of the house when Mommy was giving birth. Even the most primitive tribes still do that. There is zero evidence that any children's sibling relationships were damaged by not seeing their sibs pop out of the cave in person, as it were. 

I'm also tempted to tell you that I can see only one benefit to having your stepdaughter watch a birth.... It's probably the best form of birth control on the planet. I can't think of anything more revolting for a kid to watch than a blood-smeared, howling infant pop out of a blood-smeared howling, sweating woman who isn't even her own mother. Having seen that, there is no damned way she'll ever want to go through it herself.

This is aside from the fact that things don't always go well in the delivery room. Prudie was bang right on that one. Watching Stepmommie give birth to her dead brother or sister? That really makes you one sick bitch. 

Leave this alone. When you are in labor, call the child's mother to take her home. She can go to the hospital AFTER you've had some sleep and her baby sibling is all pink and clean and cute, and all that stuff. 

4. There isn't a lot here. Prudie said it all. Becoming umbrage-taking-girl isn't going to get you far in business...and might just get you fired. Grow the fuck up, take your lumps, and do better next time.

______________________________

So that's it for this week, folks. I have to add a note on adoption, for all the people who are going to crap on my answer. 

My brother and sister are both adopted. He was born in 1968, she was born in 1965. This was an era when adoptions were closed. They were handled by the Province (we're Canadian), through the foster system and there were no records available to adoptive parents other than a very basic profile (for example, my brother's biomom was 16 when she had him and had come from Romania originally), the date of birth, and the hospital he was born in. 

This was never an issue for them. They never gave it a ton of thought. 

In the '80s, the laws changed. Adoptions were no longer entirely closed. A registry was set up so that the biological parents and adopted kids could register with their information IF they were interested in contacting each other. This worked extraordinarily well. See, they were only put in contact if BOTH parties wanted to meet. 

At the time, my mother put together all the information either of them needed to register if they wanted to. They chose not to register. It just wasn't that important to either of them. They still aren't interested. I don't think that's going to change.

The LW this week has an attitude that is increasingly common, and I find it very disturbing. Much focus has been placed on adopted children and their "rights" to  know their biological parents. Nowhere is there any mention of what the biological parents' rights are. These women CHOSE to give up their children. No one does this lightly or for no good reason. For whatever reason, they wanted their kids to grow up in another place. Maybe where they were was unsafe. Maybe they couldn't support their babies. 

Whatever the reason for the adoption, these women have the absolute right NOT to be in contact with the children they gave up, if that is their choice. They have the right to refuse contact without being judged for it. Their rights are just as important as anyone else's, and their choices deserve our respect.