Next entry: Negotimiatin'
Previous entry: NJ: GOP web site - 'Obama loves America like OJ loved Nicole?'
From Hugo, I found this absolutely repugnant post from K-Lo defining the “good girl” and the ideal trajectory through life you need to take to achieve feminine perfection. It’s a sad story, of course, because a woman’s lot is fundamentally sad in the eyes of the patriarchy that defines the “good girl”. It’s the story of Agata Mroz, a volleyball champion (therefore thin, tall, and of course blonde and beautiful---wouldn’t be a tragic story of How You Should Be if the heroine wasn’t blonde and beautiful) who got cancer, but got married and made her husband a baby anyway, dying in the process at the age of 26.
In other words, the ideal woman is young and beautiful, and has the good sense to check out of life before her beauty fades, but of course taking the time to make a man a baby before she goes. Women, like houseguests and fish, don’t last too long without stinking, and really we should all get the hint.
By shaking my fist in fury at the world’s biggest dip, K-Lo, I’m not judging the actual human being Mroz. From her story, I get the impression that Mroz didn’t really think she had a good chance of surviving in any direction and thought that having a baby before she died was something she had to do, probably for the same reasons most people have children---to leave their mark, to say, “I was here.” I will grant someone dying young more right to do this than someone who has a good chance of long life ahead of them, a long life where the dramatic impact of producing a child fades as the child becomes less about her parents being here and a unique person herself. Going out on a high moment has much to recommend it. But K-Lo didn’t single out this story as an instructive story on how to keep on living even when you’re dying.
No, the idea that the best woman, the “good girl”, the ideal woman is someone who dies young is profoundly misogynist. And not just for the obvious reasons. The fantasy is that of women not as human beings, like men are, but as flowers. I’ve talking about this fantasy that lurks behind anti-choice proclamations on feminine purity before. A good woman is not a messy, bleeding, aging, thinking, desiring creature. A good woman is a flower who blooms, then turns to fruit, and then has the good sense to disappear after performing the single function they’ve set aside for women.
Mroz was a real human being, with athletic accomplishments and everything, not a flower that performs a reproductive function and then disappears. I’m sure that she’d have preferred not to be the role model of self-sacrificing, flower-femininity, but would have preferred, as most women do, to have the sun on her face in the mornings rather than be an example of the “good girl”, who molders in her grave after her body bears the requisite fruit. Reading something like this really drives home how the anti-choice philosophy really is about how you can’t win, if you’re a woman. Not if you’re walking around, that is.
Honestly, I’m tapped for useful words on this. Like Hugo says, it’s a dig at women who would dare have an abortion to save their own physical lives, much less those who would swallow a pill or get an early term D&C to save the lives we’ve chosen for ourselves. But more than that, it’s a dig at the very right of women to live our lives as if we were human beings that have purposes other than being young, beautiful, and fertile.
------
Registration is now required! We're still in the process of getting it all squared away, so for the moment don't forget to Login or Register using the links in the upper left menu before starting to write your comment.
Agata indeed gave the best of herself to her husband and every last ounce of herself to her daughter. She learned that there were things more important than herself, and she valued Lilliana’s life more than her own — even before she was conceived.
This really is repugnant. There was a case several years back in Italy where a woman who already had several children was diagnosed with cancer early in her pregnancy, and rather than abort and get chemo, she had the child and then died. And we had a case like that in Arizona last year some time. As you said, I can’t and don’t blame any of these women for the choices they made. It’s not the choice I would have made, especially in the cases where they leave behind already living children, but that’s okay. But to glorify and hold these women up as examples of true womanhood and motherhood (as the Pope did for the woman in Italy) that other women should follow is repulsive.
There is really something very sick in that column by k lo, but what can you expect. She winds it up that mroz “valued liliana’s life” before she was even conceived. Mormons may believe that the universe is swarming with souls that need to be born, but catholics and other christians actually don’t. Liliana didn’t have a life before she was conceived. But if she did, and it was so important to bring her into existance, can klo explain why she has refrained from getting pregnant and becoming a mother? Surely that job exists and needs to be fulfilled all the more because other women are selfishly or inadvertantly shirking it. Lastly, though I don’t take it on myself to criticize Mroz’s choices, I certainly don’t think they are more laudatory than other choices women make, or are forced to make. She sacrificed her life in the sense that *while she was already dying* she hastened the process by giving birth and abandoning her child and husband. She could have gotten pregnant and given birth earlier, since she presumably reached puberty earlier, but she *selfishly chose* to play vollyball and to get married first. The klo’s of the world wouldn’t hesitate to throw that charge at any woman who was too busy to get pregnant at the time klo thinks the should have gotten pregnant, so why is Mroz immune from the accusation?
Your post is spot on, amanda.
aimai
No, the idea that the best woman, the “good girl”, the ideal woman is someone who dies young is profoundly misogynist.
Very true. Not only that, but sadistic as well.
But somehow I doubt this was K-Lo’s intentent.
I unfortunately have some personal experience with this: while she was pregnant with me, my mother found out that her breast cancer had recurred and she was advised to have an abortion so they could treat the cancer. She refused, I was born, and she died when I was seven.
Am I happy to be here? Well, duh. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s not here, and that left an enormous hole in my life and in my older brother’s life. I appreciate that she made the decision to have me even though she knew it might shorten her own life, but I still miss her every day.
And for K-Lo to sanctimoniously come in and tell me how great it is that my mother is fucking dead makes me want to punch her in the face.
Mnemosyne, sympathies. No kid should have to deal with that stuff at that age…
In our Lit classes, we were told that Poe believed that the death of a beautiful woman is the “most poetic” thing possible. I always felt the need to raise my hand and ask, “TO WHOM?” If it’s about the loss of beauty or some schtick, seems like the death of a handsome man should be “more poetic” to women, right?
But see, none of that common sense stuff matters: Poe said it, my prof believed it, that settled it.
Mnemosyne, sympathies. No kid should have to deal with that stuff at that age…
Thanks, Mike. It only took 7 years of therapy to deal with the resulting clinical depression that those of us who lose a parent early have to deal with. 
Obviously, I’m not saying Agata (or my mother) shouldn’t have made the decision she made. But it drives me absolutely bonkers when people pretend that the decision is consequence-free for the survivors.
Big hugs, mnemosyne…
Isn’t it just a damned shame that some people’s way of putting food on their table is to stir up and create “controversy” out of what should, be a family’s right to live (or in this case) mourn as they wish?
The last thing I would ever want would be my family and/or my choices popped under the microscope of public opinion; why it’s so hard for anyone to get that and apply it mystifies me.
You know, my brother’s daughter died at age 18 a couple of years ago, of complications related to leukemia treatment. The subject of her having kids never came up. It’s great that Mroz was able to live long enough to have a kid if that’s what she really wanted to do. I’m sure that her parents are happy to have a grandchild. Other than that, it seems like not a huge deal. People live, die, get cancer and have kids all the time. It’s of great importance to their families and friends, but shouldn’t be used by vampiric losers like Lopez to advance their political agendas. K-Lo’s dance on Mroz’s corpse isn’t helping anyone. and if she had any sense, she’d stay the fuck out of this family’s private tragedy.
To the best of my knowledge, K-Lo is over 30, unmarried, and without children. I suppose she’s exempt from practicing what she preaches, somehow.
She learned that there were things more important than herself, and she valued Lilliana’s life more than her own — even before she was conceived.
chingona beat me to it but yeah, this really seems like a last kick at those of us who have yet to “learn” to put men and babeez before themselves. Key word there being “learn” and not that it’s “inherent” so that conservatives and choads alike will keep up the fight to drill into women’s heads that we are third no matter what, not even if the kid doesn’t exist yet.
And not to be an asshole but where are the stories of fathers who give up their lives for their wives and children? What used to be considered terrible thing (a women dying in childbirth) as far as I know now seems to be romanticized now that most women have the option to not to.
I wonder what the print would be if someone like Michelle Duggar, who’s had 18 kids but is not young, thin blond and pretty, died from her next pregnancy? Would they hold her up as the ultimate example of the dutiful woman?
Would they hold her up as the ultimate example of the dutiful woman?
Yes of course. They already do. That would just be icing on the cake.
I read somewhere that Martin Luther once said “Women were created to bear children and die of it.” This, to me, sums up the evangelical mindset.
Mnemosyne: I’m sorry to hear about your mom and how hard it was for you. A friend of mine lost his mother when he was just barely out of high school and it tore him up. I can’t imagine what that must have been like at such a young age.
Foose:
I read somewhere that Martin Luther once said “Women were created to bear children and die of it.” This, to me, sums up the evangelical mindset.
You must have known some pretty rotten evangelicals. I hope you don’t think we’re all like that.
Didn’t she “intentionally deprive a child of its mother?”
I mean, she knew she was dying but she got pregnant anyway.
So, creating motherless children are actually okay with the fundies as long as gayness isn’t involved.
The woman made a choice, she felt good about it, and that’s the end of it. I don’t see how the poor woman’s death was any of the other blogger’s business, but since bloggers basically seem to gravitate to a) obscure news or b) news that everyone already knows about, I also don’t see why everyone is jumping on the other blogger. He or she has a right to their opinion, just like you all.
His opinion that Agata Mroz did a noble thing is just as valid as your opinion. WTF???
I feel like the guy in the Grinch suit at the Christmas party, but I think it’s hugely irresponsible to have a kid when there is a high probability you won’t be there to care for it. Same rule goes for the fathers too.
Of course, it doesn’t count if you don’t know you’re dying before you get pregnant. Then it’s just tragic.
No Foucault all opinions are not just as “valid.” Some are based on the value of equality and some like KLO’s are based upon the inferiorty of women.
This feels like a disgusting build-up to an argument against abortions to save the life of the mother. I mean, if dying in childbirth is a virtue, then by gum, let’s legislate that virtue!
I read somewhere that Martin Luther once said “Women were created to bear children and die of it.” This, to me, sums up the evangelical mindset.
To be fair, Luther said that when the mortality rate from childbirth was something like 20 or 25 percent, if not higher. Upper-class women would update their wills with every pregnancy. If you didn’t die outright from the birth, you could catch one of the many infections for which there was no cure. In these days of antibiotics, cesarean sections, and fetal monitors, it doesn’t make sense any more than thinking that stepping on a rusty nail is inevitably fatal.
Poe believed that the death of a beautiful woman is the “most poetic” thing possible.
I prefer live women, thanks.
I mean, if dying in childbirth is a virtue, then by gum, let’s legislate that virtue!
Well, this case wouldn’t be relevant, since this woman did NOT die during childbirth. From reading the story, I gathered that her death was several months after the birth of her child. Now it may be true that the pregnancy shortened her life, but the story doesn’t say that. Pretty much, this doesn’t say anything but that some people when confronted with their own mortality make interesting choices.
My brother’s kid (ironically enough, her name was Amanda) spent the last months of her life visiting younger kids in hospitals where she had been treated for cancer and helping them through the health and emotional problems caused by their own chemotherapy. She didn’t have to do that, as she was rather sick herself for much of the time, but she felt that she could use her experience to help others. In a way, this was MORE admirable than Mros’s desire to reproduce, but I’m not belittling the choice that she made. I think even altruistic acts are ultimately selfish, in that the altruistic person does what they do in order to feel good about themselves. This isn’t a bad thing at all.
I’ve seen Luther’s quote rendered:
“Let them bear children until they die of it; that is what they are for.”
Off-topic, but Poe knew from whence he spoke. In his own life, every woman he cared about died of some disease or other. Most of them TB, I believe. His mother, his wife, and a few others I can’t recall off the top of my head. It’s certainly what inspired much of his poetry.
I don’t agree with him, but he had reason to say it with regards to his own sad, short life (and of course the short lives of the women around him). Though the fact that he married his wife when she was in her early teens is pretty creepy. And that she was his first cousin.
On-topic, cancer is why my wife and I are having two children sooner rather than later. My wife had cancer as a young adult, and due to that plus the treatment there is some uncertainty as to when she’ll go through menopause. Could be next week, for all we know. Financially and socially, this is stupid to be doing now. Medically, it’s an unknown. She’s clear of cancer and should suffer no particular complications from the current (second and hopefully last) pregnancy, but I can understand the decision to go ahead despite risks.
To capitalize on it to push a political agenda, not so much. Seems pretty ghoulish to me.
In the case of this particular woman, as Amanda pointed out, she may very well have felt that she was likely to die anyway and that this was a way to do something that would create a lasting impact or would leave a piece of her with her family after she was gone. In that sense, I see it as similar to a couple that tries to get pregnant before the man goes off to war, precisely because he might die. That is not an unusual situation, and I think I can understand/sympathize with the thinking involved there. It also reminds me of an essay I read several years ago by a woman whose husband had died very unexpectedly in a car accident. They had recently started trying for a child, and when she got her period a week after his death, she started sobbing, even though in that week nothing had been further from her mind than whether she might be pregnant or not. Again, I can imagine why she would feel that loss of the child they might have had but now never would as a deep and additional loss to the loss of her husband.
I don’t think there is anything wrong or immoral about what this woman did. Indeed, I felt a surge of emotion when I read that she never got to even hold her child. But it is repulsive for a right-wing hack to hold up what this woman did as the best and most correct course of action for a woman in her situation - that a woman’s life is less valuable than a child who is not even conceived yet is beyond messed up. And I think Faye is exactly right that this line of thinking leads to no exemption for the life of the mother in abortion law - because a real mother would sacrifice herself for her children.
“No Foucault all opinions are not just as “valid.” Some are based on the value of equality and some like KLO’s are based upon the inferiorty of women.”
I don’t imagine that you have any firsthand knowledge of K-Lo on which to base this asshat statement? You just read Amanda’s reactionary article and decided to be a mindless sheep, concluding that this other blogger (whose name is obviously too challenging for you to type out longhand) believes women are inferior because she praised *this* woman.
I read oin Wikipedia that the Polish President tried to award the dead woman’s husband with some posthumous title for his wife’s excellence. The husband declined, saying he did not want to politicize her death or her decision to have a baby. He said the award should go to the doctors who tried to save her.
In short, I think you all should honor the dead woman’s husband’s wishes and not dissect her lifework. She wanted a baby, she had it, and now that child will have a chance to live with a father who loves her. You’re as bad as K-Lo if you think that frothing at the mouth about a woman’s right to abort is of any relevance to this story. It isn’t. It’s not about abortion; it’s about a woman who wanted to live but decided to let someone else have a life when it became clear that she would not sustain her own.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is a syndicated columnist whose work occasionally appears in my local newspaper and who writes regularly at National Review’s blog. Being somewhat familiar with her work, I saw nothing reactionary at all about Amanda’s post.
“The daughter of basketball and volleyball coaches, Agata became a superstar in her home country when she led the Polish national volleyball team to European championships in 2003 and 2005. When she wasn’t competing in international competition, she was leading her Polish-league team to championships in 2003, 2004 and 2006 and guiding a Spanish-based team to victory in 2007. Once nicknamed the “great wall of China” for her excellence as a blocker, she had a knack for turning what seemed to be opponents’ advantages into points for her side.”
I am citing the above ******* of Mroz’s athletic accomplishments from Lopez’s article. Lopez spends the first half of her article chronicling Mroz’s athletic prowess and her positive influence on the people around her, how she inspired her teammates and her coach to be better people. Only toward the mid-point of her article does she discuss Mroz’s desire to have a baby because it made her feel good about herself, knowing that she would have a chance to experience what it’s like to be a mother, and to “give her husband something good of herself.”
To me, Amanda’s reaction to what I perceived as a very sweet and respectful tribute on Lopez’s part is sort of incredible. I can understand that people *themselves* might not value motherhood, but why slam a blogger who obviously thinks that Mroz is a hero for far more reasons than her decision to have a child? If Lopez had ignore Mroz’s life outside of marriage and motherhood, or if she had actually called Mroz a “flower” or a “fruit,” then I could understand the outrage. But all she did was sort of single out someone who seems especially singular. Honest to god!
I can understand that people *themselves* might not value motherhood, but why slam a blogger who obviously thinks that Mroz is a hero for far more reasons than her decision to have a child?
And when Karl Rove appears on Fox News as a political analyst, he’s giving completely objective opinions about the Democrats. Got it.
It seems like as a culture we worship children and admire anyone who martyrs themselves for the sake of the children. This includes people who give up careers to stay home with a child or the pregnant college student, or high school student for that matter, who drops out so that they can have a sacred child.
Child worship seems to create a lot of messed up priorities and maybe it is time to look after ourselves not the next generation.
“Agata Mroz learned the lessons of sports and applied them in life. Accustomed to giving all she had on the court, Agata indeed gave the best of herself to her husband and every last ounce of herself to her daughter. She learned that there were things more important than herself, and she valued Lilliana’s life more than her own — even before she was conceived.”
Well okay, the final paragraphs of her article are in fact deeply political and nauseating, but I think there is an element of sincerity in the rest of this piece. I guess my larger thought is that people sometimes write things for more than one reason because their feelings and motives are complex. I don’t read this other blogger, so i don’t know her track record on women’s rights, but this article in isolation was very moving and I thought it was nice to hear about a non-American heroic female for once.
Foucault, Amanda was commenting on the extremely creepy subtext of Lopez’s post. It’s the same ugly undercurrent I perceive in the Catholic Church’s fetishization of “virgin martyrs.”
As for Poe, he believed a lot of weird shit that made him a unique writer but a screwed-up human being.
But the moral of Lopez’s story is not that she was a lovely person or a gifted athlete but that she “learned” that there were things more important than herself, to put her child’s life above her own even before she was pregnant, and THAT is what makes her a “role model.”
Final paragraphs are usually conclusory, wrap-ups, last knockout punches, if you will. And this is Lopez’s final paragraph:
Agata Mroz learned the lessons of sports and applied them in life. Accustomed to giving all she had on the court, Agata indeed gave the best of herself to her husband and every last ounce of herself to her daughter. She learned that there were things more important than herself, and she valued Lilliana’s life more than her own — even before she was conceived.
A few words about sports, but a lot more about Mroz’s self-sacrificing ways. In fact, the description of her death takes up a large chunk of the blog post. A post honouring her sweet personality and athletic prowess might have given it a paragraph. This is about something else.
Mroz sounds like a perfectly lovely person, but I refuse to regard her as a “role model” in death. I refuse to “learn” to value the lives of children I haven’t conceived yet more than I value my own.
Yes okay, I see that now. But I do think it is worthwhile to acknowledge both the woman and her husband as cool people who did what they wanted to do without trying to make a dog-and-virgin-pony show out of it.
I feel like the guy in the Grinch suit at the Christmas party, but I think it’s hugely irresponsible to have a kid when there is a high probability you won’t be there to care for it. Same rule goes for the fathers too.
Absolutely! My father died when I was 11. He had had rheumatic fever twice as a kid, and wasn’t expected to live to be 18...he died the day after his 44th birthday, on his then 7 year old’s birthday. Knowing he would not live long he and my mother *still* made the choice to have three kids on top of the one she already had...and as she was a high school dropout, the chances of being able to support us well on her own were pretty damned slim even then. Because of his health, he couldnt get life insurance.
Dont get me wrong, I adored my dad, and I still have moments when I miss him, 38 years later. But goddamn, what a stupid, selfish decision my parents made to bring all of us into the world in those circumstances.
Yes, Foucault, I think that was exactly the point of the post - they were cool people, they made the best decision for themselves, and that decision deserves respect. Admiration, perhaps. But to be held as an example for all other women? No.
It’s also not the first time that K-Lo has decided to highlight a story about a woman with cancer giving birth rather than getting cancer treatment. It’s kind of a specialty of hers.
“Foucault, you may never have heard of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, but I guarantee you that’s who Lopez was thinking of when she wrote this article.”
Alright, well some people are a little on the stunted end of the spectrum when it comes to science. I don’t understand it: the Catholic Church is totally against suicide. Why would they canonize a woman who pretty much knowingly took her own life by opting not to listen to medical advice?
That’s like St. Terry Schiavo, for Pete’s sake!
Yes, and if K-Lo and her fellow conservatives have their way, every woman in that situation will get to be a selfless martyr. Whether she wants to or not. (Unless the new anti-abortion laws come with one of those wussy “life of the mother” exceptions.)
It’s the patronizing air of “learned” that pisses me right off. Agata Mroz didn’t learn what was important from getting pregnant and dying of cancer, she decided what was important. To her.
(And of course, if her cancer had been treatable, her decision would not only have been to leave an infant motherless and a husband and father bereft, but also to foreclose the lives of any other children they might have raised. And to give up being a living role model for her community. All of which would make a wingnut proud.)
Compare and contrast with “To an Athlete Dying Young”.
But goddamn, what a stupid, selfish decision my parents made to bring all of us into the world in those circumstances.
The very act of having children at all, under any circumstances, is stupid and selfish. The future is, by definition, unpredictable, and children will always face hardship and pain, no matter how priveleged and well-prepared the parents may be. But it’s a very human choice. So it the choice not to have children.
K-Lo in this article is almost playing a tribute to Margaret Atwood. The mom’s value is totally related to her child, and her other considerable accomplishments are devalued. It’s kind of sad, when you think of it.
The very act of having children at all, under any circumstances, is stupid and selfish.
Responding to my own post ...
Which is not to say, that it wasn’t a choice I wouldn’t have made myself. But when I was younger, my wife and I decided to put off having kids. Later, when we divorced, it seemed to be a wise decision. However, I’m not going to say that I’m never going to father a child. At my age, (ancient), it may be a selfish decision, but if I got together with the right woman, I would do it in a minute. Well, it takes a bit longer than that ...
There is a mistake being made here. The only words of K-Lo that are correctly attributed to her are “good girl”. All the other words that are being quoted by Hugo and the commenters here are from a sermon that K-lo was quoting.
I made this point in a comment on Hugo’s blog. But by all means, don’t let this interrupt the satisfying hate fest…
“The only words of K-Lo that are correctly attributed to her are “good girl”. All the other words that are being quoted by Hugo and the commenters here are from a sermon that K-lo was quoting.”
...which of course somehow means that K-Lo actually DISAPPROVES of the sermon, and the misogynist philosophy underlying it, and was only quoting it extensively to prove just how much she disagreed. Right?
Or, as any normal reader - and even Republicans - would gather, she greatly approves of the thinking behind those words that-are-not-her-own. So whether she literally strung them together or merely pasted them into the blog she edits — it pretty much ends up conveying the same message…
“...which of course somehow means that K-Lo actually DISAPPROVES “
No - it is just evidence of a frantic rush to find new meat for the hungry commenters, and resultant sloppiness in attribution. I’m shocked, shocked...!
Sweating Through Fog, so do you believe it was inappropriate for Amanda to highlight Ms. Lopez’s post?
You are aware this is a generally feminist blog, right?…
Mike,
It turns out that the number of words Amanda used in the title as the “Shorter K-Lo” were more than the number of words that K-Lo actually wrote on Mroz. I posted a comment on Hugo’s post that the words were not K-Lo’s, and this comment went up within an hour of his post. Because of Hugo’s note - in the post - about the quality of comments he was getting I expect anyone who read the post would naturally read the comments.
Amanda pointed the mob at K-Lo without quoting any K-Lo passages at length. This is unusual for her - most of Amanda’s posts quote a paragraph or two.
Yes, I know this is a feminist site. I come here quite often. So I’m just astonished to find a situation like this in a place that is so well known for its meticulous attribution standards.
I quoted the last few sentences directly from Lopez’s post. I went over and read her post and based my comments not on Amanda’s post but on Lopez’s original post. There are sections of it that, taken on their own, are not offensive, but the concluding points are deeply offensive to many people.
“So I’m just astonished to find a situation like this in a place that is so well known for its meticulous attribution standards.”
Wow! An actual attempt at snark! With a nice helping of nasty on the side! (...as well as a continuation of the derailment...)
Since you didn’t actually answer my question, care to give it another shot?…
chingona ,
It’s an easy mistake to make. Lopez precedes the quote with the women’s name: Agata Mroz. The name is a link to this sermon, which has what you, and K-Lo quoted.
Foucalt, I don’t know what’s “reactionary” about my post. My point was precisely that this woman’s decision was personal and that K-Lo is a ghoul to politicize it. And I do know where she’s coming from---she’s an anti-choice, anti-feminist hack who only knows about this story because Catholic priests have made it a regular in the rotation to guilt trip women in their clergy who have the gall not only to be alive, but to be using contraception to make those lives more worth living. I know *exactly* where K-Lo is coming from, and it’s not sympathy to Mroz or her family. In fact, if she were sympathetic, she wouldn’t see Mroz’s death as anything but a tragedy. Instead, she sees it as a joyous chance to remind women we don’t count as lives that are precious.
Mike,
I’d answer, but it would show a lack of respect for the author to further derail the thread from its intended target.
Shorter Sweating: Look! Over here!
Yeah, K-Lo just fucking stumbles shit and blogs it. She wasn’t exercising editorial judgment or trying to make a state---
I can’t even finish the sarcasm, it’s so stupid. Sweating, if you actually believe your own bullshit, you’re something I didn’t think was possible---stupider than K-Lo. Look, grown-ups know what she’s doing here. You can either grow up and quit pretending that you don’t know what she’s doing by extensively quoting a sermon (aka, approving it and signing off on it with the “good girl” crap), or continue to make disingenuous attempts to derail. And for what? Why are you scared of women critically examining messages about how we owe it to the world to make one baby and die young?
Thanks Amanda,
I came to see the light after I carefully read Lopez’s last two paragraphs. At first, I thought you were being a little too hard on her because she really does spend the better part of the article celebrating Mroz’s life and accomplishments outside of the wedding nest. But then things quickly went downhill at the end.
Still, I have to suspect after perusing the *other* articles that Lopez has authored on women who died after (or while) giving birth that this is something of a personal fantasy for her. Or perhaps she wishes she could be selfless enough to hatch and then expire? I don’t know. Anyhow, it’s a terribly sad story although a lot more upbeat than the Polish abortion horror that someone recently published here. 
Amanda,
Sometimes you trigger a tirade so perfect you want to let it stand unanswered, because it speaks so well for itself.
Can one actually sweat *through* fog? I know I sometimes sweat *in* fog, or rather in smog, but how do you perspire your way through it? That sounds awfully drippy…
To the best of my knowledge, K-Lo is over 30, unmarried, and without children.
There are Catholics and then there are CATHOLICS. Most guys are not looking for women who think like Ms. Lopez does (each baby is a gift from god, so let’s collect all the gifts we can. We’ll let them bunk four to a room, and feed them a diet of peanut butter and jelly. For a fun evening out, there’s always Perpetual Adoration.) That’s one reason pious women became nuns, but I think even the nuns want someone more worldly and levelheaded. I wonder if Opus Dei holds any speeddating events.
Mroz had MDS that progressed to AML. She was scrod, no matter what she did. Frankly, the chances of a cure even with the absolute best treatment available anywhere to anyone would still be pretty low. (Bizarre thing for so young a woman to have, MDS. I wonder if she grew up in an area that got serious radiation from Chernobyl.) If she wanted to have a child and her husband was willing to take responsibility for that child by himself, well, that’s their decision. Holding that decision up as an example of a wonderful one is just twisted, though.
JHR: It seems like as a culture we worship children and admire anyone who martyrs themselves for the sake of the children.
Except, of course, that the children, or at least the female ones, are denied the right to look forward to anything but martyrdom. No better future for them.
Tell yourself that, Sweating. I’m also cute when I’m angry, shrill, and a feminazi. Or whatever word that means, “As a man who has greater social power than you, I will render my damn judgment without having to back it up with an argument. Dammit, and you will respect it, even though this is a feminist blog, where you reject the right of men to make judgments on women without being question....”
Just trot along now, Sweating. The automatic respect you’ve gotten in life from being an asshole with an opinion and a penis has atrophied your brain. The funniest part is it didn’t have to. Many, many men reject that automatic male privilege and learn to think and be intellectually honest anyway. Thank god for science, huh? No wonder you’re drawn to defending sentimental religious woo. Religion coddles the male privilege to be stupid and called smart anyway.
To be fair, our culture has historically been full of the glorification of young male death, too, usually in war.
I understand Mroz’s choice. I, too, would have felt a desperate need to have a child if I’d discovered I was dying. This is not a noble thing (nor is it an ignoble thing—it just is.) Mroz valued Liliana’s life more than her own precisely because her own life was ending, and Liliana was her only shot at living on beyond death. *Most* people who are faced with a choice that is more of a choice—have a baby and die, or abort/do not conceive the baby and live—choose not to have the baby. But if having the baby *might* have a bad effect on your health, or it might not, you may choose to gamble, as above posters have mentioned their parents did, and if your death is certain either way you may choose to have the baby. If you want a child, if it’s one of the things you profoundly want to do with your existence, you won’t choose to end your existence *for* the sake of a child, but you may choose to risk death in order to have a child.
And you know, if that’s what you want and you know the risks and you *choose*, I am totally okay with that. The thing that infuriates me about the right wing is the notion that not only is that what you *should* choose, but in fact your choices should be taken away and you should be forced to do it. Mroz’s daughter will forever know that her mother loved her and chose to have her in the face of death… but if Mroz lives in Poland, where abortion is mostly illegal, then there are other girls Mroz’s daughter may meet in class who know just as surely that it is their fault their mother died, because their mother became pregnant with them and was given no choice but to continue the pregnancy until it killed them. That is a *horrible* thing to do to a child, and it’s what the right wing wants.
The thing that infuriates me about the right wing is the notion that not only is that what you *should* choose, but in fact your choices should be taken away and you should be forced to do it.
Yep. As I’ve said before, it was sufficiently guilt-inducing knowing that my mother made the affirmative decision to have me even though it might end up costing her her own life (which it did). The guilt would have been a hundred times worse if she hadn’t been allowed to make that decision for herself but had been forced into it by strangers.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
This really is repugnant. There was a case several years back in Italy where a woman who already had several children was diagnosed with cancer early in her pregnancy, and rather than abort and get chemo, she had the child and then died. And we had a case like that in Arizona last year some time. As you said, I can’t and don’t blame any of these women for the choices they made. It’s not the choice I would have made, especially in the cases where they leave behind already living children, but that’s okay. But to glorify and hold these women up as examples of true womanhood and motherhood (as the Pope did for the woman in Italy) that other women should follow is repulsive.