Talk:Adoption/New Section Added October 30, 2005

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New Section Added October 30, 2005

Section on Honest Adoption Language Added by Unregistered.

Revert. Your additions were very POV. I am willing to work on improving the article, but not add an entire blatantly anti-adoption section. Danlovejoy 20:36, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Dan, in all kindness, you have no idea what you are talking about, since you have a blatantly pro-adoption POV. Your adoptism section is a case in point.No documentation whatsoever, but no one dare touch it. Your game is clear, Dan. Unregistered

I have yet to see any kindness from you, Anon. Care to start showing some? I could really use some.

I guess I should add my references to the Adoptism section - you are absolutely right. They are above in the Adoptism discussion if you want to research them. I will add them to the section when I have some time.

I am open to fixing the page's POV, to add a section on Adoption Loss, to add a section on Coerced Relinquishment, to add a new section on adoption agencies. I am also open to a complete rewrite. But I am not willing to add a section of blatant POV and vitriol to the article. Danlovejoy 22:00, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Dan. I checked your sources on "adoptism." According to a ctrl +f search of the paper you cite, the word "adoptism" appears exactly once, buried at the botom of page 206, appears inside quote marks, and is equated with racism against transracial adoptees, since the context of the sentence has to do with adopted persons of color learning to embrace themselves as they are. This is extremely underwhelming, Dan, and has little or nothing to do with the definition as you have written it. Furthermore, the paper appears on the website of an organization which provides support and representation to over 300 non-profit adoption agencies, ie, people with a pro-adoption agenda. The second link is to an Amazon ad for a book. I hardly consider that a credible cite.

As to your being open to change: That's not the idea I'm getting at all from you. If you were open, you would have left the new section on "Honest Adoption Language " and supporting links up and allowed input from others. But you deleted them before they could be evaluated and discussed, allowing the extremely POV 'Positive Adoption Language' section to stand, revealing your bias. My section and links must have really upset you. Does it upset you, Dan, to read that there are many women who have lost children to adoption who don't like being called "birthmothers" because they feel the term dehumanizes them? That's not a POV, Dan - that's a fact. Fact is, they don't like it. Fact is, they object to it. Fact is, they prefer to be called something else. So, it's OK for you to suggest via Positive Adoption Language, that a woman who has lost a child to adoption be called a "birthmother" but it's not OK for women who have lost children to adoption to demand via Honest Adoption Language that people call them by a less dehumanizing term, like original, first, or natural mother OR mother OR parent. And it's obviously not OK to provide the reasons why women make that demand. At least not women in the USA. Do you not want to hearthat we object to the terms "make an adoption plan" or "give up" because , factuall, that is not what happened? We did not "give up" our children. We did not "make a plan." Our chidren were either physically TAKEN from us, or we were subjected to a program of behavioral change designed to get us to sign papers. These are historical FACTS, and we acknowledge them via Honest Adoption Language. We were attacked. We were invaded. It was similar to a war on our souls and our psyches, and that is why we call it "surrender."

Personally, I think you are blinded by your own subjective needs regarding adoption, and don't recognize that you indeed have a POV which taints everything on this page.

Perhaps you're right. But I didn't write everything on the page, so it's hardly just my POV. Danlovejoy 03:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Not only did you remove my entire section on Honest Adoption Language, which presented a diffrent frame from your "Positive Adoption Language" (a POV if I ever saw one,) you have also removed six external links to sites in Canada, England and Australia , all of which support and document the Honest Adoption Language section. So, it's perfectly OK for you to cite a source with an obvious pro-adoption agenda ( alliance1.org, please see the section on "adoptism", but it's not OK for others to cite their own sources which present a set of facts, because those facts conflict with YOUR POV.

I apologize for reverting your input without giving it sufficient thought or consideration. Danlovejoy 03:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I simply don't believe you are capable of objectively evaluating this information Perhaps so. Danlovejoy 03:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC) and I think we need someone here to evaluate information who is not involved with adoption. So I have requested an arbiter.

This is a great idea. Danlovejoy 03:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I have just returned from reading about reading Wikipedia's guidelines on Vandalism and POV ( frequently used here as a rationale for removing uncomfortable information.) I encourage everyone to read Wikipedia's own definitions of vandalism and POV [Point_of_view|here]

"...in Wikipedia, a Point of view or 'POV is one way of looking at an issue. Wikipedia seeks a neutral point of view by including all relevant POVs while explicitly attributing them to those who hold them."

That bears repeating:

"Wikipedia seeks a neutral point of view by including all relevant POVs while explicitly attributing them to those who hold them. "

According to this,Dan, my section on Honest Adoption Language and its supporting links was entirely within bounds. I have not been here long, but reading back through the history of reverts, I have to wonder how many others contributions have been reverted for vandalism or POV when in fact they were good faith efforts to contribute.

Let's see what some other neutral Wikipedians say. The term "positive adoption language" is NPOV. Perhaps the vocabulary ITSELF is POV, but at least it's descriptive. "Honest Adoption Language" implies that all other language is dishonest. The term itself is propaganda.

Other than the term itself, "honest adoption language", I really appreciate the information you've provided. I think the table itself is now quite a mess, so we should probably think of a better way to organize it.

Thank you for your contributions to the article. I will review and make suggestions for formatting and POV. Perhaps we can come to some understanding.

I doubt you will believe me, but I REALLY DO want what's best for the Wikipedia, so you're just going to have to take my word for it. Consider this your chance to educate me. Danlovejoy 03:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

YOU are reporting on a language construct its creators have dubbed "Positive Adoption Language." I am reporting on a construct its creators have called "Honest Adoption Language." I'll wager that no one invented these names with Wikipedia's neutrality policy in mind. They invented these names to express their intended goals for the construct. One goal was to present adoption "positively" ; that's propaganda, sir. The others' goal is to present adoption "honestly" : you call that propaganda.

All that aside, I did not come up with the moniker "honest"; I'm just reporting what others have said, and attributig it to them - and if you had not deleted all my supporting links, you would have seen that. I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you are just reporting too.

Would you prefer that I made up a name more in line with Wikipedia's NPOV policy (and more to your liking) than report accurately? I think not.

The table looks fine to me. If you had not deleted the table that contained only HAL, which I posted directly beneath the PAL table earlier today, the two could be compared with each contained within its own boundaries. But, alas. Combining the two tables and renaming the section seemed the only alternative that wouldn't be ripped out of existence on a nano's notice.

UnregisteredUUser

Both types of language deserve includion, but I do think the current table is clumsy and hard to follow (admittedly this may be due to very little sleep for me this weekend :-) ) How would people feel about having two separate tables for both types of language? Bastun 08:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Bastun, I can tell you how DanLoveJoy feels about two tables. I had put up a separate table for HAL yesterday directly beneath the PAL table. Dan took it down in under an hour and posted this:

": Revert. Your additions were very POV. I am willing to work on improving the article, but not add an entire blatantly anti-adoption section. Danlovejoy 20:36, 30 October 2005 (UTC)"

The contents of the first HAL table were identical to the HAL contents you see in the combined table that is out there now. I will be happy to separate the two, but my best guess is that Dan will delete HAL as soon as he sees the restoration.

I'm really at a loss here, Anon. What more can I say? What more can I do to defer your hatred? I've apologized for reverting your last edit. I'm open to further edits. I've complimented your work on the PAL/HAL section.

How much more conciliatory and apologetic do I have to be? Do you have any grace within you? Any willingness to discuss and compromise? Care to stop attacking me and discuss the issues? Take this as a challenge to do so. Danlovejoy 16:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Not attacking you, Dan, just reporting on what you did. Actions speak louder than words, after all. You took the table down once, I expect you to do it again if I put it back up.

1:06 est Two kinds of adoption language now separated into two tables. by UnregisteredUUser ( I was not logged in when I did it)

``````` I revised some inaccuracies in the intro to the "Language" section and added a bit of info to the HAL portion. I was present when PAL was first "officially" introduced at a national convention of adoption agencies in Washington, D.C., around 1988. I was a speaker at this conference, along with Dr. Dirck Brown, psychologist and adoptee.

PAL was created by some adoption arrangers, then picked up and disseminated by some adoptive parent groups. It is slick, manipulative adoption agency advertising copy designed to sell a product (infant adoption) to mothers who don't need it (or want it judging from the stats) in exchange for their children, who do need them. That's it. If people who are not natural mothers wish to patronize us and tell us what our experience is, I suggest they actually go through our experience before inventing Adoptspeak to describe it. PAL does not describe our reality, there is no controversy amongst us about that, and I haven't noticed any adopted persons with their panties in a bunch about it, either. I am sooo tired of these seemingly endless attempts to create artificial controveries and portray natural mothers as wild-eyed fanatics. This diverts attention from the central issues in adoption: manipulative, dishonest, cruelly inhumane adoption practices that should have been outlawed decades ago. There is no justification for them. People are dying because of them.

PAL is a transparent attempt to "normalize" the abnormal, similar to the archaic practice of issuing 'amended' birth certificate for adoptees. PAL, and much else on this adoption page, glosses over tragic realities and social injustices in adoption that are well-documented, and were being brought to the public's attention at the same time PAL was introduced...by adoption agencies...whose paying clientele were not adopted persons or natural mothers. Conflicts of interest? Nothing new there! One last thing: I'm tired of this "anti-adoption" labeling as well. It's yet another diversion tactic among many. Yes, okay, we are the Enemy...yawn. Laura 65.139.20.72 07:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

your contributions are going to be POV then? --Giddylake 22:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)