(no subject)

[theweaselking]

"Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process."

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Sara Rahman '09 said, in her opinion, Shvarts is abusing her constitutional right to do what she chooses with her body.

Must be a Communications major.

[larabeaton.livejournal.com]

One of Jack Womack's books had a woman who did that. I never thought someone would actually do something liek that.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

hmm, is it wrong that i find this far less offensive than the artist who starved a street dog for art?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That one still isn't confirmed as having actually happened. And no, I wouldn't call it wrong. Dogs are alive.

[larabeaton.livejournal.com]

Found it, it was from "Elvissey":

'As a form of protest, these fictional fetal artists achieve in-body pregnancy, and selectively introduce toxins to distort the fetus, "deliberately exposing themselves to select media during pregnancy to most appropriately flesh their concepts, which could live only after they'd died" (20). The aesthetic result is a silent scream at male myopia, official hypocrisy, rank stupidity. As one artist puts it, she "Cursed the man who'd planted and flown. Cursed the government that demanded [she] birth the dead. Cursed the world that, through its poisons, guaranteed [her] baby's death so long as it was bound inside [her]" (216). The fashionable elites (who can afford and obtain both laboratory gestation and abortions if need be, and can thus be said to have some form of agency, control, and choice) have embraced the fetal-art aesthetic as the latest, hippest, avant-garde.'

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

there was a whole thing on wtf_inc about it and links to it everywhere, it happened last year apparently? but i didn't hear about it then.. and they wanted the artist to do it again.. or something..

[flemco.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, even though this waste of oxygen is giving ten-foot erections to every fucking pro-life retard on earth right now, I support her right to do this.

On the other, I do want to roughly smack her upside the back of the head. Just once. Not that it'll change her mind about it, but it would make me feel better.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

God bless the internet.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

This will end well.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

"YOU!"

*whack*

"ARE NOT!"

*whack*

"HELPING!"

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. Yes. That summed up nicely what I was thinking and having a hard time expressing.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

...and people wonder why I have such a hard time taking "artists" seriously.

[takhisis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's currently under debate because the curator of the original museum is claiming that the dog was actually fed and cared for after closing, and it ran away/was released at the end and they simply announced it had died. He is likely just trying to cover his own ass, but who knows.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

She has no obligation to help, nor does she need anyone's approval to do whatever she wants with her body when it does not infringe on anyone else's rights.

[botia.livejournal.com]

I agree. I really don't see why anyone pro-choice would disagree with what she is doing. Either abortion is okay, or it's not--circumstances don't make one abortion more right or wrong than another abortion. A fetus is a fetus, and I don't see a problem with terminating a fetus under any circumstances. They aren't sentient.

[botia.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the people who tell vegetarians, "Well, I'm going to eat twice as much to make up for the animals you aren't killing", in a way.

I've long toyed with the idea of telling anti-abortion activists that I am going to get deliberately pregnant just to get an abortion, because they are so goddamned obnoxious.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Indeed she doesn't. That doesn't invalidate my feeling of frustration.

She has every right to do this; I simply wish she wouldn't.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Why?

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Correction Police. While you're running around telling people exactly how things are, and the reasons why, thereby upholding the stereotype that all left wingers are humorless shits who feel the need to preach, you might be interested to know that someone over there just laughed at a misogynistic joke. Right over there! Look closely, you'll see them, and ignore the fact that I'm drawing my hand back in a manner that looks like my preparation to smack you upside the back of the fucking head.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

You are a constant inspiration to my activism, thank you.

[jerril]

I agree. I really don't see why anyone pro-choice would disagree with what she is doing. Either abortion is okay, or it's not--circumstances don't make one abortion more right or wrong than another abortion. A fetus is a fetus, and I don't see a problem with terminating a fetus under any circumstances. They aren't sentient.

I can be pro-choice and pro-individual rights and still express that I think what you (or anyone else) does to their body is a little silly. I'm not saying she shouldn't do it or that the laws should be changed to make it illegal. However. The same way other people get to tell me I'm nuts if I go out and get some kind of extreme body piercing done (free speech after all), us in the peanut gallery get to comment that we think this is a little outre.

Ignore that it's a fetus. That's basically irrelevant to my reaction here. She's basically voluntarily inducing the growth of a tumour in her own flesh, and then it's violent rejection by her body. For art. Yes, it's a pretty safe tumour, as far as unwanted cellular masses go. That doesn't make what she's doing any less risky.

I also, for the record, reserve the right to call people who skydive, free-climb, and drive on race tracks silly and/or crazy, and I wish they wouldn't do it because of the risk of injury to themselves. At the same time, I fully support their right to do these things.

When I say sky divers are nuts, nobody gets all "OMG HYPOCRITIC" at me. But if someone who's openly Pro Choice says anything about this woman, they're automatically a hypocrite.

THAT is stupid.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

I would ask if you're really so stupid that you honestly felt that there was a real need to defend this woman's life choices to some anonymous stranger on the internet who made a joke, but the answer is already there.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Because by and large, people are driven by their emotions, and something like this has the capacity to play on the emotions of people who have negative emotions toward abortion yet are pro-choice.

I fear that such people will go "ew!" be driven toward a pro-life position.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Not at all.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the people who tell vegetarians, "Well, I'm going to eat twice as much to make up for the animals you aren't killing", in a way.

Mmmmmmmmmmmneh. It would be cool if that analogy held, though.

"I'm going to eat lots of meat since you won't" isn't quite parallel to "I'm going to repeatedly put my body through medium-size trauma just so I can play with dead flesh because you're trying to pass fascist laws that infringe upon my right to choose."

Damn it, now I'm hungry.