Social stigma

I call them the reluctant adopters.

And why did I not want to talk about it? Well, because there's shame and social stigma associated with it.

So their big blocker is shame.

So that's the third group, shame, the reluctant adopters.

Yeah, let's

talk about the psychographic profile of reluctant doctors.

So they're facing shame and social stigma.

And what needs to happen is three things that would address the shame and social stigma.

The stigma- the, the stigmatizing of adoption into 21st Century.

In her 2000 article, Adoption, Family Ideology, and Social Stigma, Katrina Wagner takes this conclusion a step further, writing, "The failure to recognize adoption as a stigmatized societal institution might explain why post-adoption services in general, and services that would help adoptive families to deal with issues surrounding stigmatization in particular, are not standard part of the process." She gets into a whole thing about, but I mean, it's actually like why there's isn't the next step, which we haven't-

Mm-hmm

... that was interesting to me.

So we need the civil magistrate to come in and say like, "Hey, if you produce or distribute this stuff, you're, you're going to jail for a really, really long time." And, and, and guess what? They'll, they'll stop doing it.

The-- And then you'll get social stigma attached to it because the law automatically, when something becomes illegal and it's actually enforced, that brings social stigma always.

Always.

Now we need to be socially stigmatizing stuff like this anyway.

I feel like you just do such a good job in the workbook of giving examples that can kind of spur self-reflection, and, like, if that example isn't what you experience, it's very easy to kind of identify something in your life and work through the exercise.

Before we even talk about some of the framework of the book, I feel like we should lay the groundwork for what stigma and self-stigma are.

And I don't know if you and I talked about this book, but there's a book that's just called Stigma.

I remember I was recommended it when I was starting advocacy because, you know, I would talk a lot about stigma, and honestly, in the beginning, I don't even think I understood it the way I understand it today.

And the definition that you give in the book just made so much sense to me, and then how it translates to self-stigma.

So it says, "You, my friend, have a superpower, the power to fight stigma just by being you.

We touched on this idea in Chapter Six.

Stigma feeds on ignorance and misinformation.