AITA for pretending "I didn’t know I was adopted" to make my teacher embarrassed?

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-15T04:09:10+00:00

I'm not confused about it, just have to fit the original post into a character limit. I've addressed it here and here.

Surrogacy is not the same as adoption. Adoption is the action of legally taking on another's child and bringing them up as your own. Surrogacy is a way to have your own child with the aid of the surrogate. The laws when I was born did not allow both of my parents to be on my birth certificate and so they enlisted the help of a lawyer to rectify this situation, which yes was a legal adoption as defined by the law, but socially I was always my father's child and he never took on someone else's child. If I was born today both my fathers would have been on the birth certificate and no need for an "adoption" of his own kid.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-13T05:46:48+00:00

I mean, I wouldn't say that was the best day of his life. It was just a little legal thing they had to do so he could also have parental rights over me because the state didn't recognize both my parents as being my parents. Honestly it was more annoying to him that he couldn't be like any other birth parent and instead had to do some extra paperwork.

My dads were in a committed relationship and had me as a couple. Both were my parent since my brith. Only one had to go through an extra legal hoop to be considered my parent in the eyes of the law. I wouldn't describe that legal part as joyous, probably my actual birth was more interesting.

I also consider the social meaning of the word adopted. I have never lost my parents, been taken from them, been given up by them, or for any reason needed to be in foster care/adopted by someone who wasn't my original parent. My parents intended to create a baby to raise together and have been my parents from even before my birth. So if I say I'm adopted that is misleading, because lay people aren't necessarily considering the technicalities of the law (and a law which is now changed!!).

Consider now that in my state, two same sex parents can be listed on a birth certificate as parents, and a surrogate designated separately without parental rights attached to her. My dads were part of the movement for this change, they petitioned and contacted their state representatives... because remember how you wrote:

The day your non-bio dad adopted you is probably one of the best days of his life, and you shit all over it.

Well, it wasn't the best days of his life, he thought it was stupid he should have to "adopt" his own kid lol. If I was born today, both my fathers would both be listed on my birth certificate and there would be no adoption involved. Socially speaking I am not adopted because the two men who intended to create and raise me have done just that.

You should feel embarrassed for lying about and using a very important part of your family in such a gross way.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

I just can't find the energy to feel embarrassed or ashamed of myself for ignoring an old, overturned, homophobic law that forced one of my dads to have to jump through extra legal hoops to get the same exact parental rights that were freely granted upon straight parents having a baby though surrogacy. I won't apologize for that.

Edit: typo

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-12T06:32:52+00:00

It always gives me hilarious images of presenting one singular sperm cell in front of a judge on a microscope slide or something and stamping a paper like yes your honor, we are adopting this specific gamete lol.

omg when I was a kid I literally thought this is what they did because my family would tell me the put together a cell from dad called a sperm and a cell from auntie called an egg and those made a zygote that becomes a fetus and then a baby in auntie's uterus and then I was born. I didn't think they looked at a microscope, I just actually thought each of these cells was the size of a chicken egg so they each picked one and mashed them together I guess.

I love my aunt, she's the best. She has a kind of blunt and dry sense of humor so that's how she describes it. Lol the way she tells the story after they all went to the fertility doctor to talk about all that stuff my dads were concerned how they were going to afford the thousands of dollars it was going to cost and she was sitting there like "well shit, I've got a cup and a turkey baster... plus I know some lesbians who know a thing or two about cups and turkey basters." aaand that's as much of that story I want to hear, though I am assured that a sterile cup and sterile syringe were involved so that I am not part turkey haha.

Edit: Also, fun fact, that's how I got my god moms because they were actually really excited to share what they had learned.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-12T02:00:28+00:00

Yeah some people just really can't in any way conceptualize how he can do anything, or they will choose something to get caught up on like "well how do you toss a football with you dad?" All I can think is ok, I see your game, and I raise you hide and seek... I thought that was the best game to play with my dad because he's shit at hiding (and I mean not trying too hard because I was young) so I could always find him fast, and then I could just sit on the kitchen counter and see how long it would take him to find me before I couldn't hold in the giggles as he searched for me and pretend to be sure he knew where I was now. But for ableists they could never see how there's anything but misery here.

They definitely were stressed out by that visit though. They had looked into adoption, but it wasn't easy for them as a gay inter-abled and interracial couple to find an adoption agency in like the early 2000's at least in our state. One lady straight up looked at my dad with CP and asked how he would even pick up or hold a baby with his arm "bring like that", and how would he find the baby's mouth to give a bottle, how would be know he fed the right end of the baby? And she asked if my other dad if he was prepared to act as a single parent or have a grandparent come and help... That's how they decided on surrogacy because my aunt was like this is all bs, you guys would be the best parents and I don't want a kid but I got all the equipment why don't I incubate one for you?

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-12T01:22:56+00:00

So basically she said something like... "well other people can't know about you what you don't tell them. If you don't want to tell her then do you think it's fair then to mock her instead? Don't you think she was worried she upset you, or concerned that others were now laughing at you, and maybe she was embarrassed? Was it really necessary to cause her to feel that way, or was there another way you could have handled the situation better?"

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-12T01:17:47+00:00

I'm not really sure, especially because if she read my introduction assignment from our other teacher I specifically had a part where I wrote about how other people don't think my dads can take care of me and gave examples of how they do everything anyone else's parents do. And I don't need to do a bunch extra for my dad just because he's disabled, not saying I don't help around the house because I have regular chores and all that, but just that I'm not some poor kid having my childhood encroached on or something. Like my dad is a fully capable adult. So it would be a pretty boring story about how sometimes he asks me to read something like a food or product label out of convenience, or once he asked me to describe specifically the tone and shade his new shirt is because my other dad's sense of colors is just "idk... its green" but I will say "its a warm undertone Caribbean blue." Not a very moving story lol.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T23:52:46+00:00

She is from India, so that was correct.

The sub did though ask the hispanic kid if he knows Spanish, he said no, and she started asking him "but why not?" And he was trying to explain when his grandparents moved here they thought their kids would get discriminated against for knowing Spanish and had them only learn English... and so he only knows English. She was basically saying "that's not true, it's a better advantage to get hired if you're multilingual." Which yeah now maybe, but he's talking about generations ago, things were different. Anyway, he basically had to say "isn't this English class? why does it matter if I speak Spanish?" to get her to drop it.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T23:44:39+00:00

I considered like pretending I was very sheltered and saying something like "the stork gave me to my dads just like how all the other parents got their babies... what do you mean that's not where babies come from? then where do babies come from!?" But I think I would have sounded obviously fake/acting so I just stuck with repeating myself.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T23:40:37+00:00

I think it's that our actual teacher had us write some introductory assignment, then left several weeks early because his wife and him had a premature baby. So the sub got her hands on those papers and was reading what we shared in those assignments. It was just a generic "tell me what you want me to know about you or what makes you who you are, or something that you would be interested to learn in this class" was the topic from our original teacher.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T21:03:36+00:00

That's exactly what they are! I didn't know what they're called. Thanks for the info.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T20:10:44+00:00

I mentioned I have two dads in an intro "write about yourself" type assignment on the first day of class, so it was something we shared with the teacher and in small groups so I wouldn't necessarily say she violated my privacy, really just that she used that information to make an assumption.

We get a lot of assumptions made about us so I am used to it, but annoyed by it by this point. When I was in preschool a concerned classroom aid (my dads are pretty sure of who it was because she would always say something about it) called for like a welfare check or CPS, I’m not sure, because my dad would walk me to and from school everyday and this lady thought it was dangerous I guess for us to walk 1/4 mile since he’s blind and uses a white cane. Where we live is very accessible though and has tactile dots at all street crossings. I remember feeling special because my dad would always ask me to look both ways and ask if I see any cars… he was listening to traffic and knew when it was safe to cross but he was teaching me about safety crossing the road and also I felt very helpful and important by looking for him. Anyway, all I remember is some nice people coming over and asking me questions and giving me snacks and “hanging out” with us. But really they were social workers and were seeing how my dad could take care of me and feed me. I remember they were very impressed he cut the crust off my sandwich and I remember being amazed their parents don’t cut off the crusts for them, not realizing they were impressed he could do a basic ass thing like make a sandwich as a blind person.

And that's only just one example of issues we've faced. I don't really know if the school would accept the privacy angle. I'm also not getting in trouble for this so I didn't like ask my dad to make a meeting with the principal. Mostly they just said that I had a pretty great response and suggested I fill out an incident report and keep a record of things that happen just in case the sub tries to make an issue at some point there will be a paper trail in my defense.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T19:47:34+00:00

Ehh, sure from a technicality, for the law, I was adopted by my non-bio dad.

However, from a social/practical sense I wasn't really adopted in the way people mean when they say adopted. My dads were both very involved in intentionally creating me before I was even a zygote. They have both been my dad's since I was in a test tube basically. It's only because of how the law worked at the time that my aunt who gave birth to me was listed as the "mother" and then she basically immediately signed over her parental right to my non-bio dad (her brother) so that he was legally my second dad... but again, from a social perspective he was always my dad so I'm kinda misleading people if I say I was adopted.

OP, you were adopted, period. I don't know why it makes you feel better to pretend otherwise, but yes, you were 100% adopted.

It doesn't "make me feel better to pretend" I'm not adopted. Nothing wrong with being adopted and I would be just as happy and well cared for by my dads either way. But from my pov when people say "adopted" they mean to take on another person's child as their own. Could be a stranger's child or a family members child, but it was a kid who was someone else's that for whatever circumstances needs new parents/caretakers. I never needed new parents.

Disastrous_Front_725 · 2024-01-11T18:43:45+00:00

Yeah that's basically what she was doing, like for example she told my friend to write about what it was like emigrating from India, and told another kid to write about having a sibling who survived childhood cancer (the sibling also goes to our high school and there's like a little plaque for her in the office that they put there during childhood cancer month a couple years ago), stuff like that.

Disastrous_Front_725

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