Tuesday 16 March 2010

The authorative voice vs. bitter

I just googled the word authorative when I came across an adopting blog being curious I read on. This person did not like so many bitter histories of adoption since she herself had felt no pressure to put her baby to adoption. Her choice of words catched my eye, bitter. Such a little word and seemingly innocent, too. But by calling other stories of adoption bitter she was at the same time making the negative stories seem less true. It was just the stories of bitter persons. Her story was the authorative one, a happy adoption story by a happy person. But those called bitter they stories are not made up people lived through an unhappy adoption story being coerced to adopting a child.

It was interesting to read the comments. It was much fighting over reality. But the truth is that happy and unhappy stories can happen side by side. The morality of calling one own story the only authorative story is not good. Unfortunately too many unhappy stories happen because adoption agencies want to make money on babies and many wants to adopt a cute baby. All is not well just because it was worse 20-30 years ago.

Why is this here in this blog? I am not adopted or have anything about this to do. But the word bitter is often used to make other people's feeling or even knowledge less true. This is the time of "thruthiness" as coined by Colbert in the Colbert report. But the truth is not a feeling, it is a fact. Sometimes feelings are facts like when a person feels pressured into something, to call that just a feeling is to negate the reality of that person because even if you just wanted to tell a person some facts it can feel and therefore be pressure for that person. To say to a human being YOU CANNOT FEEL THIS WAY is to disrespect that feeling. I see this often in comments on the net and in the insensitive excuse of politicians and others, SORRY THAT YOU FEEL THAT WAY. Yep, it should have been sorry I hurt your feelings.

I hope I will know the difference when I go wrong.

For more reviews from my travels, see www.operaduetstravel.com

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