I am pretty sure that you were wondering whether my manure pile has produced any frisbee-sized mushrooms recently.
Meanwhile, I just heard, out of the corner of my ear, a commercial for a new reality TV show called Pregnant in Heels. I thought it was going to be a dramedy about prostituted women. Nope. Rich chicks. They attend MomPrep, the Upper East Side’s “premier training academy for mothers-to-be.”
Each week, viewers will join Rosie and her team as they tackle two new clients and their pregnancy dilemmas. From shotgun wedding planning and rock n’roll nursery makeovers, to daddy boot camps and even getting the baby into British aristocracy, Rosie Pope is the maternity concierge to the most affluent –- and hormonal -– expectant mothers in the city.
Pregnant in heels. That pretty much answers the question “in what deplorable state should the ideal P2K-compliant woman persistently abide?”
68 comments
Comradde PhysioProffe
May 13, 2012 at 9:28 am (UTC -6)
It is amazing that this kind of shitte is completely unremarkable, yet otherwise intelligent and perceptive people can with a straight face claim that there is no longer any institutionalized misogyny in Western societies.
yttik
May 13, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -6)
We used to be barefoot and pregnant. Now they let us wear shoes. Yay, progresssss!
Oh, wait.
Somewhat related, I just read a hilarious article about how women must stop letting “menopausal contentment,” cause them to gain weight. Apparently “contentment” is a Very Serious Female Dis-ease and has dire health consequences. Anyway, the article gave me a snicker, because no longer giving a shit what other people think of you now has a name, it’s called menopausal contentment.
quixote
May 13, 2012 at 10:27 am (UTC -6)
I love this blog. Not least for the commenters. Comradde: right on! (By the way, where’s Comrade PhysioProf and what have you done to him?) And yttik: “Now they let us wear shoes.” Christ on a pogo stick. So true!
caol
May 13, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -6)
I’m glad all of you are back for some kick-ass blaming again! This blog feels WAY better than home to me.
Antelope
May 13, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -6)
Here in Vancouver, we recently got our very own Real Housewives type show, which I guess was full of all kinds of laughably entitled behavior (Does this mean one of the women can follow-up by using her public laughably entitled behavior as a platform from which to run for Prez, a la Trump?).
Anyway, a local blogger blamed it all on “feminism” because that, she was certain, is what made these women think they should be able to have anything and everything their little hearts desire, no matter how absurd or contradictory some of these goals might be. Feminism, she seemed to think, is the belief that women are always right and always deserve to get whatever they want – and only men have to play by some sort of rules or pay attention to reality, the poor oppressed dears.
Friends who spend a lot more time around the teens and 20-somethings than I do assure me that this is a common belief about all Real Housewives shows & similar such TV – they depict the consequences of too much feminism, and are proof that it’s time to dial it back a bit.
Yikes doesn’t begin to cover it.
Jezebella
May 13, 2012 at 2:51 pm (UTC -6)
Now I want to start a band called Menopausal Contentment.
speedbudget
May 13, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -6)
I’m sure this will be done thoughtfully and with taste.
Murasaki
May 13, 2012 at 10:15 pm (UTC -6)
I wonder if they have full time waxxers on staff cos guess what!? Apparently now its actually considered RUDE not to get a brazilian when you go for a pelvic exam or give birth. Yep, thats right folks. Youre supposed to pay some stranger to rip all the hair off your perinuem while you are pregnant and your vulva is swollen with hormones as a favour to the hospital staff. Of course, you still argue that youre doing it for yourself and just cos its feels better and is somehow cleaner. Ya know.
Here in Antipodea (Astraya and the Land of the long white landing strip) if you dont keep your vulva smooth and well groomed well you are basically sending the message to men that you are not interested in sex. That was in an article printed in some rag this week. Of course that article, even despite that wee gem also insisted that waxxing is what you do for yourself – not for the menz or that patriarchy thingo that doesnt even exist!
Ugh.
slipperyslope
May 14, 2012 at 10:58 am (UTC -6)
I’ve been in menopausal contentment and I’m not menopausal yet. What should we call that “Just Leave Me the Hell Alone. I Don’t Want to Be a Barbie Anymore.” The P will do anything to keep women breeding and keep us out of what is really going on in the world. If more women paid attention to how things really are instead of putting on heels and scrapbooking, the world might not be in the mess it is in.
Sally
May 14, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -6)
This is a sort of movement of “defiance” that young women can still wear heels, not “giving up” or “letting one’s self go” during pregnancy as a form of empowerfulness. Also a bit of mother-hating in the sense of “we’re not going to be like our mothers in motherhood and let down our men by letting ourselves go.”
It’s like that. They defiantly won’t give up the power that comes with being appropriately “haut.”
It’s like being proud of being first wife of a polygamist, measuring herself in direct relationship to other captives instead of regular human beings, and fighting to remain so when actually, she could walk away from it.
Which – by the way, whenever I read someone say something like “take away my feminist card if you have to – ” or “go ahead and beat me up, but -” or “argue with me if you like but -” All of this makes me want to do what they ask.
Amanita
May 14, 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -6)
“Gag me with a silver spoon”
LOVE the mushroom hunting reference. Mushrooms and patriarchy blaming: my two favorite things.
Laura
May 14, 2012 at 4:03 pm (UTC -6)
Murasaki, that is so depressing.
When I gave birth 25 years ago, my OBGYN group was all female doctors. I got to the hospital and the nurse asked who my doctor was, and I said whoever was on call with X group, and she said, “Lucky you – they don’t have us shave their patients.” I also didn’t have to have an enema, which other doctors’ patients have to have. Shortly after that I heard that the male doctors in the area had followed suit, and none required those things.
It’s like, if the oppressors stop oppressing us, that’s OK, we’ll just oppress ourselves.
: (
TwissB
May 14, 2012 at 4:22 pm (UTC -6)
Twisty – Please identify that manure-pile mushroom.If you hadn’t included the glove for scale, the neat umbo would have suggested a small Lepiota species; but seen from above it does not look white-spored either. More views would be welcome, although the blaming angle might be hard to find.
Amanita – You have somehow managed to appropriate one of my favorite user-names. Drat.
Elizabeth Zanichkowksy
May 15, 2012 at 10:53 am (UTC -6)
yttik, that’s perfect. I don’t know whether to laugh more that they call a disease “contentment,” or they call contentment a “disease.”
DameQuixote
May 15, 2012 at 10:29 pm (UTC -6)
Contentment? In America?! We will have none of that.
We can’t do anything to truly please the P. We don’t even get old right. Does this make contentment a subversive act then?
(If so I have never wanted to be so goddam happy in my life.)
Margaret
May 15, 2012 at 11:41 pm (UTC -6)
Being happy is most subversive! The P’s not happy til we’re not happy. The P also hates being laughed at, which is why they say feminists have no sense of humor.
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
May 16, 2012 at 5:01 am (UTC -6)
Saw a thing on tv the other night about fungi. Fascinating! And it reminded me of all you lovely gals, because I know you are among the select few who would’ve appreciated it.
tinfoil hattie
May 16, 2012 at 9:02 am (UTC -6)
Excellent blaming, Sally! This show also sets up the “we’re not going to be like all those OTHER mothers our age who let themselves go, because we CARE about ourselves!” Ha, that’s really easy to do before the baby comes.
I also love the idea that wearing heels proves you care about yourself. One’s brain explodes.
Anecdote: When I was pregnant with my 1st child, I wore maternity dresses and Birkenstocks to work. The owner’s secretary and ersatz office manager tsked and shook her head and asked me if I could wear something nicer than those ugly sandals. This was during the very end of my pregnancy, where the baby rolled over & laid on a nerve for two weeks, causing me to limp along quite haltingly and drag one leg sort of behind me, because my lower back stopped working.
Yes, yes! I’ll go home & don the spikes for ya, is what I felt like saying. I just laughed and said, “Nope.”
I have never set foot in an office again. After the second kid went to first grade, I started doing bookkeeping from home & have done so for 12 years. Fuck the patriarchy. My wish is that all women could work for ourselves & for each other, out of our homes. And yeah, when I had the occasion to hire employees, I hired two WOMEN! One of whom used to do her laundry at my house & sometimes bring a sick kid with her to let him/her sleep on the couch upstairs & watch TV.
Now, THAT is a workplace, amirite?
josquin
May 16, 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -6)
I just now figured out what “amirite” is. I kept thinking it was a blamer, or some other sentient soul.
Speaking of un-sentient souls, now that walking asshole Strauss-Kahn is suing the NYC hotel maid he raped. For one million dollars I believe. He should be thrown in jail for even thinking about filing such a lawsuit.
buttercup
May 16, 2012 at 1:44 pm (UTC -6)
I will be content when menopause finally occurs. I remain disconcertingly fecund for no good reason.
Doctress Ju'ulia
May 16, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -6)
tinfoil hattie, are you hiring now? Or, do you know anyone as cool as you that may be? I sure could use a job… it’s been almost a year and a half… D:
There’s a woman-owned and operated auto shop that opened here recently, maybe they need someone… sigh…
I could answer phones and do tuneups, and very well.
That is a mighty large fungus.
tinfoil hattie
May 16, 2012 at 7:21 pm (UTC -6)
Doctress Ju’ulia, wish I were hiring. But where do you live? And do you know bookkeeping?
tinfoil hattie
May 16, 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -6)
Confidential to Comradde PhysioProffe: Dansko has some gorgeous orange canvas clogs this season.
wisewebwoman
May 16, 2012 at 11:02 pm (UTC -6)
After many, many decades of PBing, I wonder and not for the first time, how terribly, horrifyingly stupid some females of our species must be to submit themselves, nay, to be so complicit in their own subjugation.
I only have to think of the RC church and fumes burst from my ears.
Pregnancy and high heels? Small potatoes. Though I’m surprised the Anti-Choicers aren’t on it already.
XO
WWW
Carpenter
May 16, 2012 at 11:34 pm (UTC -6)
Just read an interesting thing at TheNation that lead me to this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/fashion/06Culture.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
French philosopher fighting the good fight about the cult of motherhood, albeit in using extremely French rhetoric.
KelD
May 17, 2012 at 1:05 am (UTC -6)
Re: Menopausal Contentment, after I had my son a year and a half ago and was mind-boggled by the insistent cultural/peer pressure to “get my body back,” (Wait, where did it go? Whose body was I currently inhabiting? When would she be stopping by to reclaim it? Would I need to have it dry-cleaned first?), I discovered that the phrase “She really let herself go,” was an incomplete sentence.
I’m really letting myself go get some more food if I’m hungry. I’m letting myself go take a nap when my toddler does rather than do squat-thrusts. I’m letting myself go out of the house wearing sweatpants and flip flops, and with completely ungroomed body hair of all types. I’m letting myself go. . .wild and free!!
The thing that makes me really sad is that so many women think it is practically a moral imperative to erase every trace of ever having been pregnant from their bodies–and apparently, closets. What a stupid place and time we live in, when allowing any “pregnancy pounds” to hang around for longer than six weeks post-partum is an act of cultural sedition.
tinfoil hattie
May 17, 2012 at 1:47 am (UTC -6)
High Arka, go to Heck. Children are not a “scourge.” Sure hope you have nothing to do with any kids.
Kristine
May 17, 2012 at 7:25 am (UTC -6)
High Arka, I think you’re confusing revolution with revenge. One would cause full-scale societal change; the other just creates a new underclass, and foments yet more anger and injustice. Unless, of course, you were just fantasizing. We all do that occasionally.
Carpenter: I liked the article. Personally, I think the movement of perfect motherhood is more related to funfeminism than radical feminism, and I think Elisabeth Badinter wrongly assumed that they are the same. But other than that, good blaming. I find it ironicle that there’s nothing fun about funfeminist motherhood.
KittyWrangler
May 17, 2012 at 9:00 am (UTC -6)
@Murasaki
“if you dont keep your vulva smooth and well groomed well you are basically sending the message to men that you are not interested in sex.”
How exactly does that work? If you’re clothed, how is your bush sending any messages at all? And once revealed, I doubt the bush sends any louder messages than being naked in a bedroom with a man.
“Pregnant in Heels.” That name is really a marvel of contemporary misogyny. It’s got everything: it makes fun of the women participating, it creates jealousy, it reduces women to reproduction and sex appeal and then ridicules them for it, it embodies inter-generational warfare and “mommy wars,” and it’s a scare tactic for the future of society. And it’s all packaged as woman-hating fun for the whole family! Those are some top-notch bigots over at Bravo.
@KelD Thanks for the description of contentment. I needed a pick-me-up after hearing about the VAWA vote.
Saurs
May 17, 2012 at 9:21 am (UTC -6)
(High Arka’s an anti-feminist stooge, folks.)
tinfoil hattie
May 17, 2012 at 10:20 am (UTC -6)
Commenting aloud to my dude-heavy family about all the dude shows on cable (Dudes building bikes. Dudes riding bikes. Dudes going fishing, crabbing, handfishing. river-monster hunting, gator hunting., ghost hunting, sasquatch hunting. Dudes buying shit. Dudes selling shit. Dudes blowing up shit. Soon, Dudes takimg a shit), I was instantly consoled by Nigel: “Come on, tinfoil. There are TONS of shows about women. Wives of NY. Wives of NJ. Wives of LA. Wives of Atlanta. Bride-monsters. And sister-wives.”
Yup.
Embee
May 17, 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -6)
Oh, KittyWrangler, this is some really good blaming. Thank you! It’s gonig in my collection of feminist quotes that I refer to when the Patriarchy has me prone and I need feminist smelling salts!
“Pregnant in Heels.” That name is really a marvel of contemporary misogyny. It’s got everything: it makes fun of the women participating, it creates jealousy, it reduces women to reproduction and sex appeal and then ridicules them for it, it embodies inter-generational warfare and “mommy wars,” and it’s a scare tactic for the future of society. And it’s all packaged as woman-hating fun for the whole family!
tinfoil hattie
May 18, 2012 at 7:02 am (UTC -6)
Oh, Embee – YOU should talk! Great blaming yourself!
Keri
May 18, 2012 at 8:01 am (UTC -6)
The new season of Sister Wives started on Sunday which was also mother’s day. What a lovely tribute to motherhood.
And speaking of reality t.v., I have found myself recently addicted to Long Island Medium and Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. The latter is a view into a fascinating Patriarchal microcosm where women must decorate them selves in ridiculous and yet hilarious “sexy” costumes from birth on, remain chaste until marriage at 16, and then cook and clean for a man while living in a travel trailer for the rest of their lives. In other words, it’s like the rest of the patriarchy but with a mandatory trailer.
pheeno
May 18, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -6)
“High Arka, go to Heck. Children are not a “scourge.” Sure hope you have nothing to do with any kids.”
Oh I dunno. After a weekend of teen girls raiding the kitchen, they can sometimes feel like a scourge.
(and yes, this is a joke.)
Triste
May 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm (UTC -6)
Am I an idiot? I thought High Arka was joking. I fuckin laughed, anyway.
By the way, few weeks back I saw an episode of Modern Marvels about fungus. Good stuff! Better than whatever torture porn they are showing on the so-called women’s networks.
Comradde PhysioProffe
May 19, 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -6)
Confidential to Comradde PhysioProffe: Dansko has some gorgeous orange canvas clogs this season.
Srsly? I’m gonna check itte outte!
gayle
May 19, 2012 at 12:41 pm (UTC -6)
So I’m watching it right now and Rosie is defending a wife who was going to have a home birth just to appease her obnoxious husband. (He really wants her to have the baby in a tree on dry leaves. No, really!)
Rosie seems to believe women have the final say in all things pregnancy related. For that I say: Yay, Rosie! Oh, and both the Moms-to-be, on this episode at least, are rather likeable and not the hormonal monstrosities the promo promised.
Maybe the show is not all bad. I will report back as needed!
Embee
May 19, 2012 at 1:18 pm (UTC -6)
Twisty’s final sentence has stuck with me lo theseseveral days. Whilst riding my bike through Baltimore County’s olling hills this morning, it occured to me that Reality Show Jeopardy could be an entertaining way to spend a few minutes (over margs, of course). So if I say “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” you might say “what life philosophy is ensured to bring a pox on your house?”
And so on. I am going to give it a test run tonight over my weekly gin n tonics with my legion of spinster bitches.
tinfoil hattie
May 19, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -6)
@pheeno, INDIVIDUAL children, sure! LOL!
What’s chapping my feminist-assed, pissed-off, curmudgeonly hide this weekend is the hubub over Fifty Shades of Grey.
There’s just not enough bandwidth for the blaminf it needs.
tinfoil hattie
May 19, 2012 at 1:54 pm (UTC -6)
High Arka, if you were joking, I apologize. I am a humorless feminist, and sometimes I miss jokes.
buttercup
May 19, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC -6)
Danskos make me sad as they do not come wide or large enough for my giant ass high instep feet.
copykatparis
May 20, 2012 at 4:25 am (UTC -6)
“Let herself go”. Doesn’t that mean let herself out of prison? (What KelD said — yes yes yes.)
“Menopausal contentment” — quelle horreur! Women being… CONTENT? Without men?! It’ll be a revolution!! Oh nooooo!
(cackling in glee)
A bit reminiscient of the “hysteria” diagnosis, isn’t it?
Owly
May 20, 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -6)
I wish I had true pre-menopausal contentment. I’m half way there, I guess. I thought my hairy legs and decidedly unfriendly feminist attitude would put guys off, but all the hipster dudes in Austin love it. Oh well, at t least I’m not pregnant in heels.
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
May 21, 2012 at 5:02 am (UTC -6)
@Tinfoil Hattie: “Fifty Shades of Grey”: the most boring prn ever. Worse than romance novels with purple covers!
Keri
May 21, 2012 at 8:59 am (UTC -6)
I predict a wave of shows called ” _________ in heels.” Could be anything, fill in the blank.
This is based on my weekend observation of the degree to which young women dress like strippers. At my daughter’s university graduation, the MAJORITY of female graduates had on tiny dresses, and i mean barely covering their asses, and heels they could hardly walk in. I don’t know how they made it across the stage without sustaining broken bones or head injuries. Formal occasions have turned into a great opportunity to kick up your stripper look I guess.
I feel like women’s studies ought to be mandatory like home economics was for my mother.
Seeing so many together dressed this way was lobe blowing. IBTP.
TwissB
May 21, 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -6)
Yes, women’s studies – but not the fun kind. Subversion of this field by funfeminists is a real triumph of the backlash against feminism.
quixote
May 21, 2012 at 12:37 pm (UTC -6)
Keri, I was at a funeral a while back and was kind of bemused to see the stripper look even in that context. Done in black, of course, but somehow that color in that look doesn’t have the same feel as black for a funeral. Very bizarre. Very P.
Keri
May 21, 2012 at 10:01 pm (UTC -6)
Speaking of my daughter, she called a tirade by her dad a “mangent” , buwahahahaha!!
c2t2
May 22, 2012 at 2:36 am (UTC -6)
Keri, I see your “mangent” and raise you a “mansterical mantrum”. Adding man- to words amuses me.
On a related note, my term for all the dude shows is “White men doing man-things with their man-toys”.
Hane
May 22, 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC -6)
And lately I’ve taken to calling NPR the White-Men-’n'-Money station. Lots and lots of new shows consisting of Dudes Holding Forth, and “news/health” stories about how it’s Bad To Be Fat. I and my postmenopausally contented ass shall henceforth take our charitable donations elsewhere.
Oh, and I LOVE hitting that big ol’ Blame button.
Sleep Schmeep
May 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm (UTC -6)
Twisty. Come back and post more. My life is empty without you.
TwissB
May 25, 2012 at 12:09 pm (UTC -6)
Heard on local NPR station yesterday, the Washington Post TV critic listing new shows for fall mentioning a sitcom with a plot built around two gay guys looking to become dads via a “surrogate,” Critic and host agreed in an off hand way that that could be interesting.
Yup, saw that one coming,in real life and on TV, given the new media rush to sentimentalize gay [male] couples. Naturally, a baby must be brought in to fluff up the plot, complete with fussing over sperm donor and scenes of hugely pregnant mother in labor, no doubt.
It occurs to me that the media-hyped image of the surrogate is simply the latest version of the hooker with a heart of gold.
IBTP
.
Kristine
May 25, 2012 at 2:45 pm (UTC -6)
TwissB, you hit the nail on the head. I knew there was something fishy about surrogate motherhood (other than the fact that it involves buying the use of a woman’s uterus.)
Hane
May 26, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -6)
In the days before I learned to hone my blaming skillz, my daughter and I were discussing women who choose to become single mothers via artificial insemination. I was concerned about the message it gave any boy conceived thusly, that he was essentially nothing more than a conduit for sperm. “Mais, c’est vrai,” replied my intelligent daughter.
I am more concerned, however, with the idea of a woman’s body as A Thing You Can Buy.
Murasaki
May 27, 2012 at 7:22 am (UTC -6)
I watched an interesting doco last year on two Brit blokes that have 3 kids I think via surrogacy. Mega rich of course, not many people can afford to rent top of the range American uteri – however this is probably the most ethical option. They seemed like good parents – if a little egotistical and they seemed pretty “eewww ick” about vaginal birth – they were hoping their surrogate would have to have surgery – which was kinda creepy – especially considering they are raising a girl child. But then vagina hate is pretty prevalent in our culture – hardly the sole domain of homosexual men.
I have heard about also but havent been able to watch “Google Baby” which is about the surrogacy industry in India – quite a lot more disturbing. Just recently I read an article about a woman that died there after surgery. Apparently its quite common for the western buyers to request surgery even when there is no medical indication – presumably because they dont want their precious genetic material touching the vagina (brown vagina at that). Ho-hum vomit.
I just want to add to this though – I feel much sadness and empathy for people that wish for a genetic child and aren’t able to have one. I can’t imagine. So this is not a diss to people that are considering or have had a child through a surrogate. Off to kiss my babies good night before bed.
quixote
May 27, 2012 at 8:49 am (UTC -6)
TwissB:”It occurs to me that the media-hyped image of the surrogate is simply the latest version of the hooker with a heart of gold.”
This gave me one of those light bulb moments I keep getting on this blog. You’re absolutely right. That’s it. Woman as body serving others and she digs it.
Then the next few comments have me going “Whuuuut?” People (or is it just men?) who hire surrogate mothers want birth by surgery? What’s that all about? Is it to make them feel like the whole process is more test tube-like?
TwissB
May 27, 2012 at 8:38 pm (UTC -6)
Quixote – Not only more test-tube-like, although the in utero part remains an esthetic problem as would the icky vaginal contact, but simply a desire to literally cut the woman out of the picture.
The instrumentalizing and dehumanizing of women knows no bounds.
KF
May 29, 2012 at 5:04 am (UTC -6)
So I was thinking “that mushroom doesn’t look that big”, then I noticed the glove. o.O
qvaken
May 29, 2012 at 7:05 am (UTC -6)
Sigh. So, our vaginas et al. exist for the pleasure of other people’s penises, our uteruses exist for growing other people’s babies, and non-white people exist to fulfill other people’s wants (slave work, sex work, entertainment, adoption, surrogacy, etc.). And when we use women’s bodies in particular ways, especially non-white women’s bodies, then our main requirement is that their vaginas not get humanised by having contact with a new human being – or is it that we’re worried that their dehumanised vaginas will get dehumanisation onto the newborn baby? Even though the baby will experience a swift transfer of ownership at birth.
Where does the P come up with this stuff?
Fede
May 29, 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC -6)
Cutting the woman out of the picture. You explicated that well enough to give me the chills, TwissB.
Hearing that people are actually opting for birth by surgery in cases where there is no medical reason for doing so makes it very hard to imagine alternative interpretations.
I have to say – and in this I am in disagreement with Murasaki and probably others here, too – that I have no sympathy for people that wish for a genetic child simply for the sake of having a genetic child rather than any child. Sadness I may feel for such people, but not sympathy. Their wish is utterly selfish and nonsensical. Having genetic children is not a human right. Being treated as a human being once one is born, is. There are plenty of children out there whose needs should take priority over someone’s irrational gene discrimination.
If people wish to be parents and are infertile, the obvious course of action should be adoption. Heck, in a perfect world, the obvious course of action for anyone would be adoption until there were no orphaned children left.
I’ll say immediately that I know adoption is a ‘service’ that has been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism, and in that respect I have every sympathy for the would-be adoptive parents who aren’t wealthy enough to qualify for adopting. I can see why people would turn to artificial insemination or to the surrogacy industry in this imperfect world, but I don’t have to support their doing so out of anything other than practical reasons. All children, irrespective of genes, should be equally lovable.
TwissB
May 29, 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -6)
Fede – I’m glad that you took the trouble to express that view because, of course, I agree. It’s true that there is always the possibility of exploiting women as an essential link in the supply chain of adoptable children, and one has only to note the evidence in those “Problem Pregnancy?” come-on ads by anti-abortion-sponsored clinics that try to persuade girls and women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and then give the baby up for adoption. A heartless scheme designed to compound the birth mother’s pain.
If feminists who catch on to this latest abuse of pregnancy want a target for push-back, that is probably suirrogacy. There was plenty of resistance to it when the “profession” first appeared, but, sad to say, the liberal feminists who have long since succumbed to the liberal men’s mantra “If we say it’s sex, women gotta love it,” mewed that surrogacy must be, like prostitution, something that women should be “free to choose.” Since Masculine Systems work together to keep women down, the very fact that the religious right professed to oppose surrogacy ensured liberal feminists’ acceptance of it.
Pop media are further normalizing the practice by including lots of photos of celebrity couples wheeling out their adorable surrogacy-produced twins along with the floods of features on adorable celebrity moms and dads with their very own cute babies. And then there’s Angelina Jolie who supports the pro-natalist agenda via foreign-baby adoption as well as apparently producing her own.
Since there is no way to eliminate private surrogacy arrangements however exploitive, public rejection of surrogacy calls for criminalizing any type of professional involvement in surrogacy by lawyers and physicians. There were tentative efforts in that direction before heavy liberal and media popularization of the practice worked to normalize it. I’m not sure that any of the state laws prohibiting surrogacy remain in effect.
I say it’s prostitution and I say the hell with it. IBTP.
Jezebella
May 29, 2012 at 3:59 pm (UTC -6)
How do y’all like these apples: the new, even more technically aloof, term for a surrogate mother is “gestational carrier.” Gah. Heaven forbid the woman who *MADE THE BABY* gets to be called a mother, for even a minute.
Fede
May 29, 2012 at 6:20 pm (UTC -6)
TwissB, good points all. I forgot to mention the people who make use of surrogate mothers not because they can’t afford/otherwise qualify for adopting a child; not because they are infertile themselves – but because they don’t want a pregnancy to ruin their own/their wife’s figure! I forgot to mention this group because their utter decadence is so confounding to me that I keep forgetting anyone even thinks that way. The mindset of such people disgusts and scares me. The children growing up in their homes are off to a materially privileged but emotionally impoverished start in life.
Jezebella, that is just rank. ‘Gestational carrier’? Really? More cutting the woman out of the picture, I believe. Plus, it just makes it sound like a disease is involved. Which, when you think about it, is very true, only it’s not the biological mother who is sick.
quixote
May 29, 2012 at 8:30 pm (UTC -6)
Gestational carrier? I think they should simply call them “uterine replicators” and get it over with.
qvaken
May 30, 2012 at 7:36 am (UTC -6)
In discussions that I’ve taken part in about abortion and miscarriage, pregnant women were referred to as both “hosts” and “incubators”.
Embee
June 6, 2012 at 11:42 am (UTC -6)
There are differences, and it isn’t a perfect anaology, but the fact that selling your organs is illegal but renting your womb is not seems inconsistent. If the primary argument against organ selling is to prevent the commodification of the human body, and the second is to prevent the exploitation of the poor for the benfit of the rich, then how does surrogacy differ?
Oh, wait. It’s perfectly acceptable to (and there is much precedent for) exploting uterus-owners.
IBTP
KittyWrangler
June 11, 2012 at 11:11 am (UTC -6)
@Murasaki
I suppose this thread is dead now but I just read this and was reminded of your comment about Indian surrogacy:
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2012/06/11/let-us-colonise-your-wombs-surrogacy-in-india/#more-4664