Perhaps this is the best part of the Internet: you write a post and someone bounces off of it, and then you read their post and bounce back off of it, exchanging ideas in these chain-linked posts which circle back into thoughts through various paths of words until we come — perhaps — to the heart of the matter.  And perhaps what women owe one another has always been the heart of the matter.

What do we owe one another as women?  We explore this idea time and time again.  While we may have come to expect men to range from holding us back to marginally supporting women’s rights (“I mean, if it matters to you, it matters to me.”  Which can also mean, “if it didn’t matter to you, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind.”), we expect women to give each other a boost, to have each other’s backs, keeping in mind that we’re all individuals as well as members of this collective sorority.

I expect a female gynecologist to understand what I’m saying more than a male gynecologist by virtue of the fact that if she has a healthy reproductive system, she will understand the ins and outs of menstruation due to experience vs. solely due to a text book.  And to take it a step further, I expect that female gynecologist to understand my anxiety about my reproductive health more than I expect a male gynecologist to do the same.  And that is why I left my female gynecologist when I found her demeanour dismissive, and why I just roll my eyes when my male gynecologist tells me not to worry.  I expect more from women, and they usually don’t let me down.  The behaviour of my first (and only female) gynecologist was surprising and hurtful (oh, and she was flat-out wrong); the behaviour of my male gynecologists is usually exactly what I expect: competent, caring, but also very far removed from understanding the emotional landscape.*

I have to admit that I’m floored when women support or create policy that limit the lives of other women. I expect it from men, just as I expect any outsider to not really fathom the far-reaching effects for an insider whether that be words, policy, etc. Just think of how many times an outsider to an experience has said a bone-head thing just because they don’t know any better. Because with their limited knowledge, they think it’s an appropriate thing to say. And I believe the same thing happens with policy. That outsiders to a group create policy that affects insiders to a group, as keeps happening within women’s health.

I don’t think it’s an accident that both rape and reproductive policy affect the same orifice.  I think in both cases, it is about violence and control; overpowering.  Overpowering — that is how I feel every time I hear another quote this week about rape, about reproductive rights, about personhood bills.  It’s my body, and yet others are aiming to control it, to assert their power over it.  My kidneys are mine, my brain is mine, my stomach is mine, and my femurs are mine.  But my uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix, vagina, and vulva could all belong to the government if certain lawmakers have their way.  After all, they are aiming to extend laws that affect my uterus regardless of whether or not I make the choice to procreate.  Or, rather, I should say, my reproductive organs are my own until the moment I or someone else chooses to affect them, and then the government’s hold on them springs to life.

I expect men not to get it.  And I don’t blame them for not getting it.  They haven’t lived with a woman’s reproductive organs, hearing the lessons women are imparted from childhood on in regards to their genitalia.  In the same way that I will never know the emotional landscape of the average man, I don’t expect them to be privy to mine.  So when a man creates a bill that states that a woman cannot have an abortion even in the case of rape, I am upset, but I know that he’s approaching my reproductive organs as an outsider.  And like an outsider, he’s usually not going to get it like an insider, and he’ll make gaffe after gaffe (though gaffe seems too gentle a term in this case) because he doesn’t get it.

I don’t expect women to support policy that limits the rights of other women.  Even procedures I would never directly partake in myself because they go against my personal beliefs for what is best for myself and my family I fully support because I believe other women should have the right to control their reproductive organs.  Because I want people to have choices.  Because I believe that your kidneys, brain, stomach, femurs, AND uterus all are under your domain and no one else’s regardless of the fact that the uterus has the potential to hold another life.

I can wrap my mind around a woman supporting Republican economic policies.  I can wrap my mind around a woman being pro-gun.  I can wrap my mind around a woman believing abortion is morally wrong and would not partake in it herself even if raped.  But I can’t really wrap my mind around a woman taking it a step further and saying, “Because I believe that life begins at conception, I want to force all other women to think as I do about my reproductive organs.”  Because I can’t believe any of us sit around and think to ourselves, “I’d be totally okay if someone else foisted their beliefs on me.”

It all comes down to this: I don’t know what goes on in your world as well as you do because I am an outsider to your life.  And I don’t want to inflict my beliefs on you because I have no idea how those beliefs will have a ripple effect on the rest of your world.  For instance, I believe that keeping kosher is the most humane way to eat, and the best practice for healthy digestion and nutrition.  But it would be insane for me to create a bill aimed at controlling your stomach just because I believe it’s the most healthy way to eat and I have your well-being at the forefront of my mind.  Even if I tell you that it’s my duty to protect you since you are practically defenseless as you shovel milk and meat into your body at the same time; for the love, you are leading yourself to an early death!  Just as you wouldn’t want to live under the rules of Judaism, I don’t want to live under the rules of another religion (and beyond that, we don’t have a national religion, so religious beliefs should never come into play in terms of policy), though I am happy to have you lead your individual life and make individual choices based on your religion.

So I’m going to leave you to take care of your organs as you see fit.

Woman to woman.

* I once was talking to a reproductive endocrinologist at an event, and he told me that to get into the minds of his patients, he had lay with his feet in the stirrups.  He said this to me with the air of someone waiting for accolades.  So I asked him if he had spent the night before worrying that he’d never become a parent, and he looked at me completely confused and said “no.”  And then I asked him if he shoved anything inside himself, in an orifice that in and of itself carries a huge emotional weight, while lying in a position of vulnerability.  And when he said, “no” again, I explained that he didn’t really get it.  Because it wasn’t about the physical discomfort most of the time.  It’s about allowing someone to manipulate a part of our body that we have been told that we need to protect, to cherish, to honour.  We need to douche it and keep it clean!  We need to never let a boy touch our no-no spot!  It is a sacred vessel through which our children will emerge!  And now we’re lying on our backs, our hearts in our throats, hoping nothing wrong will be found.  That women get waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many conflicting messages about our reproductive organs for a man to be able to replicate what goes through her head and heart while she’s lying with her feet in the stirrups.

We had an encounter with a spider this week on par with the cricket-in-my-hair incident.  Tuesday morning, we were about to leave the house, and I picked up my purse.  It was taking the kids forever to put on their socks and shoes, so I decided now would be a fine time to dispose of a few pieces of paper that I had been carrying around in my purse.  You know, neaten things up.

As I picked up my gargantuan purse, something jumped out at me and landed on the kitchen floor, and I took my purse — the gargantuan one that happened to be holding an iPad at the moment — and threw it across the room in reflexive surprise.  On the floor, a few inches from my bare foot, was a spider that was larger than Queens, New York; a brown recluse spider (p.s. don’t click the link if you don’t want to see a Wikipedia picture).

The body itself was a bit smaller than a dime, but the span of the legs took the spider to about four centimeters.  Meaning; it was too big to hit with a shoe, my normal method for killing spiders in the house.  Oh, and I should mention at this point that I was screaming this long, continuous shriek interspersed with a high-pitched “oh my G-d oh my G-d oh my G-d” and then more screams while the kids — who were totally confused — stood on the steps holding the shoes they were supposed to be putting on.

I grabbed the Dyson and sucked the spider into it, and once I knew it was safely inside the clear canister, I turned off the vacuum and said in a calm voice, “got it.”  At which point the ChickieNob burst into tears because (1) I had freaked her out with my Lily-Potter-facing-Voldemort-like screams and (2) she really hates spiders.

After I calmed her down, the reality of the situation kicked in: I had been carrying an enormous, brown recluse spider in my purse for G-d knows how long.  I told the kids that I was certain that it had climbed inside when I left my purse open outside while I was talking to a friend the day before, but the more likely scenario is that it jumped in while we were at the beach.  Which means I’ve been carrying around a brown recluse spider for days.  FOR DAYS.

I reassured the ChickieNob by pointing out how quickly I had dealt with the situation.  Sure, I dealt with it loudly, but I dealt with it and the spider was gone.  But for the rest of the day, I felt invisible spiders crawling on me.  I felt like I was covered in spider bites.  Though you’ll be happy to know that the Apple snap cover actually works.  Beyond protecting the iPad when I dropped a flashlight on it earlier this year (while the flashlight took a chunk out of the cover, the iPad underneath was unaffected), it also kept the tablet in one piece when I threw it across the room and stomped on it in an effort to get around the spider so I could get to the Dyson.  Can’t recommend that snap cover enough if you’re a flashlight dropper or purse thrower.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Plumbing” (Stupid Stork)
• “Coming to Terms and Honey Lavender Ice Cream” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Home” (Return to Go)
• “On Friendship and Infertility” (Hapa Hopes)
• “Stop! I Want to Get Off” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Do We Really Choose” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Blog Agony” (Womb for Improvement)
• “Memories” ((In)fertility Unexplained)
• “What They Say” (Glow in the Woods)
• “Too Fertile” (Follow Every Rainbow)
• “TL;DR Part One” (The Yellow Blanket)
• “Tradeoffs” (Serenity Now!)
• “Sometimes People Do Change” (Dragondreamer’s Lair)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Three is a Magic Number has a beautiful sign-off post ending her blog, bringing in the concept of trail markers.  Because isn’t that what we’re also doing sometimes for one another; leaving clues for the people who end up walking this same path which not only lets them know that others have been here but gives them small bits of information to follow as they chart their own journey emotionally, physically, and financially.  And I love this: “The end of trail sign, as I learned it in Girl Scouts, is a ring of rocks surrounding a solitary rock in the center. Which is fitting, really, because that’s exactly how this community has felt to me over these last three years: A seemingly solitary gal encompassed in an endless circle of really strong, really tenacious, really lustrous ladies.”  Please read the whole post.

The Bickerstaff Blog has a great birthday post that I am positive that I’ll remember each year on my birthday.  She explains the title of the post, which ties in a Sandra Cisneros short story, “So today, I am 29, but I am also 28 and 24 and 23 and 21 and 19 and all ages in between.  My 29 self wouldn’t be who she is if it weren’t for my 28th year, or my 23rd year when I got married.”  And I loved loved loved her family’s birthday cake tradition.

Non Sequitur Chica has a post about trying to fill the unfillable hole left by infertility.  It’s about all the other bits of life that happen that sidetrack your plans to tackle infertility, and how you need to let yourself get sidetracked so that infertility isn’t your whole world.  I know she says that the post ends in a bitter place, but I saw the post ending in a really good place; of a life lived rather than waited for, with sights set on the future while also focused on the present.

Lastly, one of the most beautiful posts I read this week was A Half Baked Life’s “What You Need: A Recliner, Chocolate Cake, Perspective.”  I don’t know if it was the story itself, the way she told it, the fact that she still has the chair from the story… Reading this made me feel sad and comforted and joyous and quiet all at the same time.

The roundup to the Roundup: I survived attack of the brown recluse spider.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 24th and August 31st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Updated at the Bottom

Mayim Bialik was in a car accident.  I learned this when she wrote on Kveller, “In case you live under a rock, I was in a significant car accident last week.”  I personally do not live under a rock, though I was unaware of her accident until Keiko sent me a link to the post.  My lack of knowledge is not due to any dearth of concern for Mayim Bialik whom I’ve heard from people who have met her is a pretty rockin’ woman.  Beyond the fact that I like her as an actress, we hold her up to our American kids as a famous-person-who-also-cannot-find-their-Israeli-names-on-keychains-at-gift-shops example.  As in, “do you think Mayim Bialik cries that there are no glitter keychains spelling out ‘Mayim?’  I bet she’s thrilled to have such a kickass name in a world full of commonplace names.”)

I didn’t know about it mostly due to the fact that we live in a fast-paced world where information is shooting at us at breakneck speed, and I can barely keep up with the sites I frequent daily much less the news happening in other corners of the Web.  And I’ll admit it: there’s a hierarchy of people whose life events I’m following.  The twins, Josh, family, and friends come long before politicians, musicians, and actresses (and tucked in the middle of the list are other bloggers, old friends via Facebook, and neighbours).

So we’ve established that I care about Mayim Bialik but because she’s not a friend, I miss out on things happening in her life until they hit People magazine (and if it’s in there, I apologize.  I’m always a few weeks behind).  I’m not saying this to mock her; I’m writing about that opening because it factors into what comes below.

Later in the post, she writes an observation about women:

At the scene of the accident, I’m certain there were women standing around. For whatever reason, not judging, no woman came up to me to comfort me or console me at the accident site. As a modest woman and a feminist woman, I craved a woman to hold. Just as in labor, I believe women can give women special support and I missed out on that.

Those lines resonated with me because I can think of dozens of times in life when I wanted to be helped by a woman, when I expected comfort to come from a woman, and it either didn’t come at all or came from a random man.  Which is not to say that men cannot be just as comforting or just as helpful, and perhaps this is cultural, but there are times when I want women and only women.

There are two sides to the same thought, both revealed in Mayim’s choice of words:

• We expect people to know things about us.  We expect them to be able to read what we need without spelling it out for them.  And we get frustrated with people when they don’t know things we expect them to know about us.  And this applies to both strangers AND loved ones.

• We instinctively know what we’d want if the situation were reversed (eg. comfort), and yet as women, we don’t offer it.  We know we want others to have our back, yet we don’t reach out and have the backs of other women.  We don’t want to be ridiculed, yet we belittle other women.  We don’t want our bodies picked apart, yet we pick apart other women.  I just read two posts on the same site: one talked about how detrimental it was to a woman’s self-esteem that our features are constantly being ridiculed by the media (we’re too fat, too thin, too tall, too short) and the other expressed glee over LeAnn Rimes checking into a treatment center and insinuated that she had an eating disorder because she could “hide behind a drinking straw.”

Women have the potential of being each other’s biggest comfort, but we equally have a history of not coming to each other’s aid.  Is that because we aren’t mind-readers even if other women expect us to be?  If that’s the case, is the problem with women not speaking up and saying what they need?  It’s one thing if Mayim had locked eyes with a woman and implored her to come over and had been rejected.  But are those women who were at the scene of the accident failing if they didn’t know she wanted them to step forward?  Does the problem stem from women not being clear about our needs?  Because we’re accustomed to putting our needs last?

Or is the problem that women don’t step forward enough?  That we second-guess our helpfulness?  That we think that it’s not our place to jump into someone else’s life and lend comfort to a stranger? How many times have you not left a comment on someone’s post thinking, “their long-time readers or good friends will be there for them.  It would just be weird if I wrote a comment now if she doesn’t even know me.”  If we want women to succeed, to feel as if there is a benefit to being in a community of women, we need to do more to hold each other up.  And the reality is that sometimes that will mean getting messy: jumping into someone else’s emotional world and offering our support and keeping perspective if our efforts are rejected (since we’re all individuals and have unique wants about comfort) and still trying again with the next woman.

Apologies to Mayim Bialik for using your car accident as an example.  But I think you raise some really interesting questions about the role women could play in the lives of other women.

Do you jump in and offer comfort when you see a woman you believe to be in need of comfort, why or why not?  Would it have occurred to you to go forward and comfort someone who hasn’t asked yet, or do you wait until a need is stated or at least clearly implied?

Update:

I put this in the comment section below but thought to move this question up into the body of the post.

Mudhut Mama’s comment triggered this thought: do you think we don’t offer help sometimes because we think it makes a statement about the other woman being weak? That we’re in the position of power: we have the means to help, to comfort, to fulfill needs. And what we’re saying when we offer that help to the other person is “you need help.” Not everyone feels comfortable pointing out that fact, even though it may be clear as day to everyone in the situation that help is needed.

I think that would tie in with how women often mask their talents, their capabilities. A “math is hard”-type thing where, for some, math really is hard, and for others, we say math is hard because we don’t want to be seen as boasting or too smart or state that we’re capable and be called to task or make anyone else around us feel badly because we have this ability and they do not.

Just a thought I’m unpacking.

I would have called this “caught my eye,” but that sounds a little too surface.  You know how sometimes a post or article catches your brain, seeps into your skin and you think about it all day?  I bookmark a lot of things, but I think I’ll unload them from time to time much like the Friday Blog Roundup, except at irregular intervals based on what is in my bookmarked folder, not necessarily about ALI subjects, and sometimes from personal blogs and sometimes from larger sites.

The first was the story of Karl Kesel, a comic book writer and inker (who created Superboy, a character I collect for the twins right now), who is selling off his comic book collection to pay for the bills associated with the adoption of his child and his child’s medical bills.  I don’t know why I was so drawn to this story: because he wrote the infamous Thing storyline where he came out as Jewish (which was meaningful to me)?  Because I am so touched by the idea of a person wanting to be a father so much that he’d be willing to trade his most valuable tangible things for a chance to be in the life of this other person.  Because this is the manifestation of love?  My G-d, if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.  But I was drawn to this post and kept returning to it.  And I hope the “Save Karl’s Comics” campaign takes off because it would confirm my idea that people are ultimately good at heart despite how they behave in comment sections.

The next is a post called “I Don’t Want My Kids to Be Addicted to Technology.”  Take out “kids” and replace it with “loved ones” because this feeling doesn’t just extend to the twins.  I worry about all of us addicted to technology.  I worry about us taking cues from each other about what is appropriate socially and all of us leaping off the technology-usage cliff like lemmings.  We see our friend checking her phone in our presence, so we start checking our phone in her presence and then checking our phone in other people’s presence… you can see where this leads.  Phone peeking frightens me more than mindfully sitting down at a screen and immersing yourself in screen time.  I’m trying to peek less — both for myself and for the example I set for others around me.  And at the same time, I know that peeking is a stress-reliever for others.  That if someone took my books away from me and told me I had a book addiction, I would be more than just a little annoyed.  I do have a book addiction; taking my books away from me would be the way you’d get me tweaking.  But I think it’s interesting that — as adults — we’d never admonish a person for being addicted to books (though I was definitely mocked by my peers in grade school) though we assign a judgment for being addicted to technology.  Why is that?  Especially when we apply it to technology that divides (ear buds and an iPod) AND technology that draws people together (FaceTime)?

The last post is a two-parter.  I’ve been thinking about Mat Honan’s hacking story for a few weeks now, as well as his follow-up post about how he got his digital life back.  It made everything seem fragile online, as if there were no systems that were air-tight, impenetrable.  I mean, there aren’t.  But stories like this remind you of how much human error factors into our relationship with machines.  It also confirmed my suspicion that for every piece of technology that we celebrate for convenience sake (cloud computing!) is also the very same technology that works against us (cloud computing!), that creates those soft, muddy holes for worming in.  I don’t know — I think I’m just highlighting it as a PSA even though it sounds as if Amazon and Apple are working to change their policies based on this story.

So that’s what caught my brain recently.

I’m trusting that we can all have a civilized discussion here on this tête-à-tête pu-pu platter. (I was just attempting to use as many hyphens as possible in a single sentence.)  I’m crossing my fingers.  Pretty please.

*******

I ended up with three browser windows open at once yesterday, my attention grabbed simultaneously by three controversial headlines, though I kept looping back to the same thoughts for all three posts.

The first window held a post by a father who had posted a picture of his child online and was now discussing the backlash that ensued.  The picture is of a father sitting on a porch swing, holding a beer.  His toddler-aged child is naked yet diapered beside him.  The comments he received on the photo insinuated that (1) sitting with your toddler while said toddler is naked except for a diaper makes you a pervert, (2) that he made poor judgment as a parent to post a picture of his child sans clothing because the pedophiles would all be getting off on the photo, and (3) that civilized people wear clothes.

I don’t post picture of my kids online, so I may not the best person to cogitate on this article, but I wondered how a toddler in a diaper was any different from a toddler in a swim suit.  Same amount of skin showing.  After all, what is a bikini — let’s say — except a set of underwear constructed out of lycra? (Is that what swimsuits are made out of?)  In other words, is it different?  If the toddler had been in a swim suit next to her father, would anyone have said anything?

But it also called up the question of where is this invisible line between okay and not okay when it comes to nudity and kids online.  I’m defining “okay” as “posting without the child being cognizant of the decision being made on their behalf” since I actually think it’s totally fine if people choose to post nude pictures of themselves online.  If you want to post a picture of yourself, and you’re making the decision knowing full well the possible repercussions of posting a nude photo of yourself online, go for it.  So I am solely looking at this from the angle of posting pictures of others.

At what age should kids be dressed?  Would a five-year-old sitting on the front steps in just a pair of Superman underpants be okay?  Preschooler?  Two-year-old?  Newborn?  Never?  At what age does your eye stop passing over the photo and suddenly you look twice and raise your eyebrow?  And if there is no agreement on what age raises eyebrows, should we ever comment on another person’s choice to post the picture?  I mean, obviously he thought it was okay.  If we don’t think it’s okay, is it our place to point out how we think it’s not okay, or should we just click away?  In other words, were the people who left those comments on the photo the ones who were out-of-line or was it the dad?  Or neither?  Or both?

*******

The second window contained the new AAP guidelines for circumcision.  As someone Jewish, it probably doesn’t surprise you that I fully support circumcision.  Which is not to say that all Jews everywhere in the world support circumcision.  Just as there are Jews who don’t keep kosher and others who do, or who have a mezuzah on their door frames and others do not, you could find Jews who do not support circumcision.  I have yet to meet one in my life, but I’ve read their arguments against it online so I know they’re out there.

So I read the article.  My thoughts aren’t really about the article but instead the comments.  Almost 2000 of them.  And it ties into the questions above because the comments were so rabid, but the reality is that the decision whether or not to circumcise only affects the circumcisee (what would one call the boy receiving the circumcision?) and perhaps the parents.  Arguing about whether insurance should cover circumcisions, whether they should be mandatory, whether they should only be performed in a hospital — these are all discussions that make sense to have because the outcome could possibly affect your life.  But whether or not your child gets circumcised doesn’t affect me except in the most roundabout sense of health care costs.

If a person has made it clear that they’re going to get their child circumcised — for instance, writing a post about the bris they’re planning — isn’t it the social equivalent of walking into a person’s house and crapping on their carpet to leave an impassioned comment telling them they’re going to hell for circumcising their child?  And equally, if someone says they’re not going to circumcise their child, isn’t it the social equivalent of walking into a person’s house and crapping on their carpet if you leave a comment telling them that you hope their child gets a horrific infection since their parents obviously don’t care about them if they’re not going to remove a bit of foreskin?

Let me try to explain this better.  There is a big difference between talking with your friends and telling them how you don’t like mashed potatoes, and it’s quite another thing to be served mashed potatoes at a dinner party and loudly announce to the hostess, “mashed potatoes are the nastiest thing in the world!”  Social rules dictate that we politely push the mashed potatoes around on our plate for a bit and pretend that we’re eating them.  If the hostess asks what we think of them, it’s also within the confines of social norms to calmly tell her that mashed potatoes sort of aren’t our thing, but we think the steak is divine.

So it would make sense that the same would hold for blogging.  It’s one thing to write a post on your own blog about why you don’t like mashed potatoes.  It’s your space and you should be free to express your viewpoint.  And it’s okay if someone else writes a long ode to mashed potatoes and asked you what you think of the mighty spud and you write a politely worded comment admitting that you personally don’t like mashed potatoes but it rocks that they’re so into them that they write a whole blog post about them.  But it’s quite another thing to have someone write a blog post about how they love mashed potatoes and for another person to come along and write in all caps: YOU’RE SO STUPID, I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU ACTUALLY LIKE MASHED POTATOES!  I HOPE SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENS TO YOU BECAUSE YOU LIKE MASHED POTATOES, YOU STUPID STUPID WOMAN.

While circumcision is not exactly mashed potatoes, it’s a common practice that has the support of the AAP.  So while you may or may not want your child to partake, and you may or may not want to write your thoughts on your own blog, is it really appropriate to write an all-caps-like response in another person’s comment section if they are expressing their viewpoint on circumcision?

Do you see the blog writer as the host of their blogging space and the comment box as the dinner party table?  If blog comment spaces aren’t going to follow the social rules of the face-to-face world, what rules will they use?  Or is the comment box just the wild west where anything goes?

*******

Lastly, I had open a post on the infamous Ryan comment that happened last week while he was being interviewed in Tennessee:

REPORTER: …but specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and when it comes to the issue of should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she’s raped.

RYAN: I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that—the position that—the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life. But let’s remember; I’m joining the Romney-Ryan ticket. And the President makes policy. And the President—in this case—the future President Mitt Romney, has exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, which is a vast improvement of where we are right now.

Method of conception, you know, like intercourse, IVF, and… rape!  I know his point is that he believes that regardless of how a baby is created, that baby is still a person and should be subjected to all the same rules that he wants to place on all pregnancies.

But as we fight so hard to normalize alternative methods of conception such as IVF, IUI, and donor gametes (not to mention paths to parenthood such as surrogacy or adoption), to have someone tack rape onto the list makes my brain start hurting.  I mean, it’s Paul Ryan, so I’m not shocked by his comment, but as an infertile woman, I want politicians held accountable for all the various ways they set back public perception of fertility treatments from the support of personhood bills which would severely limit IVF to making rape a method of conception.

But again, I was distracted by the 3,500+ comments.  I almost never go into the comments, but I ended up going into the comments because the first post I read was specifically about comments which means I paid attention to the comments on the second post I read and that spilled over to the third post I read.  And while there were plenty of emphatic but politely worded comments discussing the quote, there were also exactly what you expect; mostly name calling and insults.  Just to be clear, I am fine with disagreement.  Tell me that you feel differently about the man’s photo, circumcision, or Ryan’s quote.  Just do so without devolving into name calling or insults.

This has been such an ugly election on both sides.  And it’s only August.

*******

I actually had a fourth window open: Jerry Nelson died.  He was a puppeteer for Sesame Street and the Muppets, and was specifically the puppeteer for the Count, who was one of my favourite Sesame Street characters.  What none of the articles said was that he also had a daughter, Christine, who died in young adulthood from cystic fibrosis.  I always wondered how that was for him; working amongst children day in and day out, having lost his only child.  It was this odd fact I picked up when I was in middle school — definitely too young to be thinking about parenthood — but it stuck in my mind, especially when I was a teacher, dealing with infertility.  And it just made my heart go out to him, to know how hard the world can be to navigate when you’re missing someone or they never arrived.

And luckily, the comments (at least the ones I saw) managed to be respectful and kindhearted.