BRAND X

The Asian Fetishism of Adoption

In an international perspective, the Korean War marked the beginning of the Cold War and the initial stage in global U.S. hegemony. The heavy U.S. involvement in the origins of international adoption and an early interest in Asian children can in other words be interpreted as an expression of a Cold War mentality.

Through a discourse of familial love as well as tropes of child rescuing, anti-Communism and U.S. paternalist responsibility, the U.S. was depicted as the benevolent “white mother” creating familial ties to Asians by sponsoring or adopting Asian children.

In this discourse, Asians were simultaneously infantilised and feminised, and portrayed as being unable to take care of their own children. International adoption therefore became an integrated part of U.S. foreign policy in order to facilitate political relations and legitimate anti-Communist interventions in the region, while at the same time giving ordinary Americans a sense of personal participation in the Cold War, as family ties became a political obligation.

The same pattern followed in country after country. Especially in the East Asian countries, which from the outset were the primary suppliers of international adoptees, the Korean situation became the standard. U.S. invasions in countries like Vietnam and Thailand, resulted in international adoption from those countries.

Thus, it is no coincidence that the leading countries supplying children for international adoption to the West almost all fall under the American sphere of influence and have been exposed to U.S. military intervention, presence or occupation. These include: Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, India as well as Sri Lanka in Asia, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in South America, and Ethiopia and South Africa in Africa.

The fact that adoption from Asia dominates the “market”, further underscores the Orientalist imagery at work, where, in many Western countries, Asian children are widely perceived as being docile, submissive, clever, hardworking, kind, quiet and undemanding – besides being cute, childlike and petite.

-Tobias Hubinette, Between European Colonial Trafficking, American Empire-Building and Nordic Social Engineering: Rethinking International Adoption From a Postcolonial and Feminist Perspective

Fuck all these clueless, paternalistic, prospective adoptive parents and their unthinking fetishism, stinking entitlement, and blistering ignorance of the grim meat hook realities of the adoption industry.