by Anna Linde
I grew up in Sweden as a Black child with white parents. Originally, I´m from Brazil and was left for adoption at the hospital where I was born. The complexity of being brought up in a white-dominant society and never being fully mirrored in my skin colour, personality traits and hair texture made me very conscious about my appearance and my position in Swedish society. This was the main reason for me to pursue a BA in Social Work, and an MA in Sexology; I craved more answers to my lifelong questions. Sweden has the largest proportion of transracial and international adoptions in the world (Yngvesson, 2010; Hübinette & Andersson, 2012; Hübinette, 2020; Hübinette, 2021) and with that, great opportunities to contribute to the understanding of adoptee-specific experiences. One identified problem in understanding the adoptees’ experience is that the colourblindness silences and excludes experiences of everyday racism, which means that the adoptee-specific experience is not possible to talk about (Hübinette & Lundström,2014).
I conducted my MA thesis on international adoptees’ perspective of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) as an interview study with the aim of contributing to a new narrative around the adoptees’ specific experience. The psychological and psychosocial needs of adoptees have been a topic for discussion but has not yet concluded in a specific policy plan in the context of healthcare, at least not in Sweden. The aim of a national strategy from the Swedish Public Health Authority (2023) is to make sure SRHR is recognized for every person in need of healthcare. The publication identifies vulnerable groups that are at risk for not getting their SRHR recognized, where racialization and discrimination are two main identified challenges which need to be addressed. Even though international adoptees are by number a very large group in Sweden, we are not identified as one of the vulnerable groups in this publication, albeit still at risk of suffering. I argue that this is a consequence of deprioritizing to conduct research from adoptees’ lived experiences, as well as continuing to frame SRHR needs for adoptees from a non-adoptee perspective.
The way to enable a marginalized person is by giving vulnerable groups a voice in creating their own narratives (hooks, 1989). This process contributes to the transformation of the margin to a decolonized center, which in the area of SRHR has not yet come to adoptees. The ongoing socialization where intersecting oppression of racism, sexism and classism (hooks, 1981), forces many Black women – including myself – to prioritize, understand and fight for the right to be a Black woman, leaving other parts of our identities behind. Racism operates in this way; distracting the affected person from their true purpose and longings (Morrison, speech from 1975). I argue that adoptees, like non-adoptees, long for intimacy, strong connections, and empowering sexual experiences, which should include the recognition of their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
The challenges international adoptees face nationally and internationally are special, compared to both national adoptees and native-born people. In Sweden, the group has shown to have higher levels of mental illness, maladjustment, suicide attempts, addiction problem and unemployment than their Swedish-born peers (Vinnerljung, 1999; Vinnerljung et al., 2006; Hjern et al., 2002; Hjern et al., 2020). Raised in Sweden, we integrated the narratives socially forming the Swedish culture and identity, while constantly getting treated as Others. The colourblindness left many of us without words to describe our pain, which shattered both our self-esteem and self-confidence. We did not pass as Swedes because of our non-white bodies (Hübinette, 2020), and we quickly learned how we are always visible but never seen. Experiencing exclusion based on our skin colour, we needed to fight for our rights to belong and be treated as Swedes, making many of us treat other non-white people as Others.
The norms of white supremacy burdened us with internalised oppression and self-hate, leaving a strong and bitter aftertaste. This embodied mix of confusion, guilt, and shame affected all our interactions, our sexual communication and our daily self-perceptions. This socialisation and internalisation have deeply affected how we interpret our relationships, intimacy and what should be acceptable for us in terms of sexual connections. Since the problematic understanding of anti-racism in Sweden did not allow us to address racist behaviour, we were told to be grateful when offended by racist comments disguised as compliments. When comments about our ‘chocolate skin’ and ‘almond eyes’ were made without our consent, the expected reaction from us was to swallow them with grace.
This non-consensual desire expressed towards our racialised bodies—by our adoptive parents, the society, and our partners—set a standard for us: that consumption fantasies towards adoptees should be accepted, no matter how they made us feel, and that our consent was not needed in order to consume our bodies (see Wyver, 2019).
Adoptees commonly experience unwanted separations (often more than one) or start life without the opportunity to develop a secure attachment with a primary caregiver. Our attachment styles serve as inner working models for how we form relationships, maintain their quality, approach and create intimate connections. Consequently, establishing secure attachments and interpersonal relationships is more complicated for adoptees than for non-adoptees. Sims (2017) made an important contribution to understanding how attachment theory is connected to the complexities of relationship and intimacy issues. His focus was on adult adoptees within the UK, predominantly white informants, whereas my informants are non-white (identifying as non-white, describing themselves as racialised, or not appearing ‘white-passing’). The findings in my study, as in Sims’ (2017) dissertation, suggest that the pre-existing narratives and theoretical ideas linking attachment theory and adoptees’ ‘primal wound’ offer a limited explanation of the adoptee experience.
Since sexuality and sexual identity formation develop within a complex intersection of social, psychological, and biological dynamics, it is crucial to address them from a different theoretical paradigm—one originating from the adoptee’s point of view. Sims (2017, p. 223) expresses this clearly: ‘Arguing that establishing an adoptee’s existence within just one theoretical paradigm is to miss, and demonstrate a clear omission of, the biopsychosocial dynamics or holistic perspective that exists in an adoptee’s life’ (ibid). Transracial adoptees understand by heart how racist behaviour impacts our mental health, the quality of interpersonal relationships, and, consequently, our attachment styles.
From a sexual health perspective, I argue that we need to explore how racial desire affects non-white adoptees. The sexism and objectification of the adoptee’s body, as well as racially marked sexual violence, risk becoming invisible, especially in a colour-blind society. This invisibility arises when there is a lack of space where these concerns are taken in consideration, making racialised desire socially accepted.
While sexual and intimate encounters can offer us connection, belonging, acceptance, and love, they can also be intense, shame-filled whole-body experiences. As I state, these encounters can be sources of racialised trauma, expressed directly or indirectly across generations (Fortuna, R. L. & Shah, D. L., 2023). An example of how these traumas can be transmitted intergenerationally is through the fetishisation of children of colour (Ozor Commer, 2023), which is common in adoption stories. Similar to intimate and sexual connections where consumption fantasies about our bodies are expressed, the exotic details of children’s skin colour and hair texture make them more or less wanted in the adoption process (without these children being in a sexualized context). The billion-dollar adoption industry sanctioned by the state, legalise life changing decisions around families and reproductive health questions. Adoption is from this perspective political. Consequently, the impact on mental health that adoptees navigate in their lives, also includes sexological challenges that our group encounters.
My informants described fear of rejection and of not being chosen, as well as a fear of being a second-hand choice based on their position as an Other. Some informants described the negative perception of being Othered as dating someone who didn’t want to introduce them to their parents or that the parents showed disappointment, not choosing someone with the same-genetic or/and ethnicity for the future of the family. The grief as well as the embodied visualised proof of being the “wrong link” in the chain of belonging, is unfortunately what many adoptees consider as normal. Many informants also shared how the fear of rejection was highly present in their own families as well; choosing a partner that would be perceived as an Other made the adoptee become less accepted. Some described being excluded from their own (adoptive) families and parents just because they chose a non-white partner. Some informants choose partners that were a better match to their adoptive parents’ expectations and wishes; and with that, reproducing the pattern of being an Other that Others.
The sexual and intimate meetings with an adoptee body is not only a melting point where different bodies, desire and internalized oppression come together but is also an intersection of strong original myths in our society and how love and connection are understood in that country, at that time. Ideas that the adoptee should be “grateful” is not only leaving crumbs from the already finished meal but is also creating more hunger. Assimilation is not the same as feeling safe and accepted in our true self.
With this blogpost I want to highlight the importance of bringing the adoptee narrative to the center. Our lived experience is a consequence of governmental interventions that are lacking to recognize and to prioritize our SRHR as the connection between mental health challenges and sexological challenges. Our lived experience is the knowledge missing in developing our SRHR as well as creating a safe space for us; a decolonized center where our voices can be heard.
Anna Linde is a transracial adoptee, born in Brazil and raised in Sweden. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a Master of Science in Sexology. In addition to being a Certified Sex Coach, Anna is currently training as a Somatic Sex Educator. Her master’s thesis explored the sexual and reproductive health experiences of international adoptees in Sweden, providing the foundation and inspiration for this blog. Looking ahead, Anna aims to further investigate the diverse aspects of sexual and reproductive health for adoptees and advocate for the integration of their universal human rights into a more holistic approach to wellbeing.
References
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