Show Notes In today's episode fern (they/them) talks with Myco (it/its) about its experiences growing up in the foster "care" system. Myco connects the dots to how marginalization and genocides leads to the foster and adoption systems. Image Description: The words "Adoption Abolition" pop out of the background in the center of the image. In the background a large pile of blue, pink, white and brown balloons stretches up toward the blue sky. Content Warning: Brief mentions of suicide, multiple genocides, child abuse, attempted murder, psychiatric incarceration, sexual violence, trafficking, neo-slavery, slave markets and the history of orphan trains. Transcript: transcript doc ADOPTION ABOLITION55:49 Fern: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Liberatory Naysayers. I'm Fern! I use they/ them pronouns, and today I am doing this episode with Myco. Myco: Hello. F: Myco uses it/its pronouns and today’s topic…we're just gonna dive right in, aren’t we?M: Yeah!F: You want talk about what today's topic is?M: Oh boy, um adoption abolition and my experiences and my perspectives on that because I feel like that's one that does not get talked about half as much as I think it needs to be talked about though I might be biased because I have experienced these things. F: Yeah, I have to imagine that you are not the only person who's had similar experiences and feels the same way and probably wishes…is maybe looking for other stories or other experiences to feel less alone in this nightmare. I'm really glad we're talking about this today, even though it's gonna pretty intense. Pretty, pretty tough. M: This is a topic where I frequently get very ranty and rambly and off track and lose what exactly my point is because I am very passionate about it and also I have a lot of flashbacks. That's a thing that happens, too.F: TrueM: I get lost a lot, but I'm excited to have you here to help keep this train on the tracks. F: I was just gonna say: I will be here to guide us through this. Before we listen to your story and your experiences, would you like to give a content warning? M: Yeah, so I haven’t planned anything out exactly, but broadly we're going to touch on genocide. My experiences hit the topics of saneism, ableism, incarceration, foster care/group home/orphanage-type experiences. I don't plan to dive too deep into descriptions of much of anything, but talk about it from a further kind of perspective systemically as opposed to the gory details, if that makes sense. I plan to talk about trafficking, abuse, white supremacy, horrifying stereotypes of orphans, psych wards, slavery (neo-slavery specifically, which I find isn't discussed enough considering our world runs on it)…So, you know…pretty much if it’s upsetting, we’re probably about to talk about it right now. Take care of yourself. F: Yes. Okay.M: Okay, do you think that's adequate? F: Yes, I do. After the episode--before we post—we’ll be sure to put anything we missed in this content warning into the notes. So check there if you are anxious or worried about what might come up. We'll have everything detailed there. Yeah. Cool.Okay, so why…why adoption abolition?M: The simplest answer to that is probably because I was a foster kid, and eventually adopted, and I have experienced what these systems do to children first-hand. I wanna talk about it. I wanna discuss it with people, and I wanna see more people understand that adoption abolition is necessary. Foster care and adoption are directly a product of genocide.F: Yes.M: Yeah. F: Before we started today’s episode, you lightly touched on how there’s this big picture of genocide that adoption abolition ties into. You sort of touched on it now. Do you want to expound upon it now?M: Oh, boy. Yes. So, from my perspective, our society is the product of many, many types of genocide. Intergenerationally. Over time. They have become systemic and invisiblized but are nevertheless completely real. So, we all know about chattel slavery an