This is continued from the previous post, where I've been writing about a brouhaha presently taking place in Internet adoption-related places.

A combination of factors has resulted in me being barred from International Adopt Talk. First, apparently, I became persona non grata because I pointed to this post from last week where I addressed the issue of blatant misrepresentation being used to entangle international adoption in the sticky, stinky web of human trafficking in response to someone posting the original article.

I didn't post this on the group because I didn't have posting privileges, but rather sent it to the yahoo mail address listed at the top of the post that posted the original article.

Well! If that didn't raise a stink. It seems I had highly offended the recipient by having the unadulterated gall to try to present a view, and I did that on HER PERSONAL EMAIL. (The caps are in an attempt to convey her rage at my impertinence.)

I would have apologized for invading her 'private space', but didn't get the chance. Before I had time to get back to that group, I was out.

It looks, however, that my attempt to share notions and information was not the only cause of my immediate dismissal.

On the same group, some very nasty chat was taking on a woman who had posted personal opinions on her personal blog ... gasp! Calling her blog Subversive Writer, it seems she tends to put her thoughts out and about quite a bit in the privacy of her personal public forum ... that rather being the point of personal blogs.

Somehow or another, word spread of her refusal to bow down before the alter of others' angst, and the onslaught began.

As far as I can tell ... and I've only read a couple of her posts ... she's neither an adoptive parent, a birth parent nor an adoptee, and in some books that disqualifies her from forming opinions on adoption at all. I don't see it that way, being a believer in the right of free speech and all, and finding a lot positive in thinking people thinking, even when I don't happen to agree with what they think.

Silly me, I left a comment on her blog.

That sealed my fate, I'm afraid, and the next time I tried to check IAT I was locked out.

I know that just writing about this here is going to increase the frantic jumping up and down, get me the hate mail, put me on the receiving end of name-calling and dirty tricks and so on, but those of us who really do want to have discussions must keep plugging away at our attempts, and continue to point out that intimidation, bullying and gang warfare designed to shut people up is not the way things in the adoption world will improve.

Dialog is a two-way street, and I keep hoping someone with something helpful to say will someday say it, rather than simply scream in my face.

In the meantime, break out the game and play another couple of rounds. I can take it. In fact, that's my job. I'm a mom, you know.