abortion art/AJ gives props pt 2

OK so there seems to be some dispute about whether the Shvarts senior project (see previous post) is a hoax or no. Yale claims it is; Shvarts maintains it was "real." Here is a link to today's Yale Daily News column by the artist, discussing her work, although AJ doesn't really believe that the point of art has very much to do with what the artist thinks. 

OK BRACE YOURSELVES FOR EARNEST COMMENTARY (snore):

I'd wager it's mainly beside the point, actually, whether the whole thing is a hoax or not, since (what I assume is) the desired effect has already been accomplished. At this moment, we're running 44 comments on the Feministing post on this story, and 95 on Feministe (which posted on it earlier yesterday)--and I'm not even going to wager a guess as to what chaos has broken out in the larger blogosphere and MSM on this subject.

ANYWAY. The mindgrapes of pro-choicers continue to boggle my mindgrapes. We are eager to defend the right to reproductive choice as an absolute right (because we are like serious fans of "rights," right?), and then backpedal madly when someone does something unexpected... you know, like be a man and choose to have a kid (whereupon we invoke weirdo wingnut rhetoric about the dude's psychological well being), or be a woman and choose to have an abortion just for the hell of it (whereupon we flip out). What's more, we are wont to cast ourselves as brave eradicators of the social stigma of abortion but then cringe when someone expresses the least regard for that stigma imaginable. We make t-shirts that say "I had an abortion" but when a student tells the whole world she had several, we accuse her of trivializing the emotional realities of those women for whom the choice was difficult. But didn't we think that emotional pain was there in the first place because of like, patriarchy or something? I forget. I thought we were pretty much ok with women feeling pain over their abortions but we also worked to minimize that pain insofar as it was the product of an anti-"choice" mentality.

It's also pretty striking how feminists have decried the piece for creating fodder for pro-lifers, as Feministing commented:

"but rather than spark a discussion... this really just propped up a lot of ridiculous anti-choice talking points, like women have abortions just for the heck of it, because they're bored on a Saturday night or something."

Which ok, a) hasn't it already sparked a discussion (see above)? and b) ok see above again.

AJ is going to engage in a POLITICAL FAUX PAS and introduce an analogy to a separate social issue, by which I mean, teh gay. We are pretty much not OK with a politics of respectability when it  comes to queer folks, right? Similarly, it strikes me as incongruous that feminists, who presumably want choice as a categorical reproductive right, are anxious about some women's flagrant abortions making all those respectable abortions look bad! Wtf! 

Also I thought we all thought the idea that life begins at conception was PRETTY DUMB, so how is this possibly immoral? Srsly, is an embryo/fetus a person or no? Make up your minds!

And finally, how greatly our feelings of scandal have impeded our capacity to function as art critics! The feminist blogosphere has been very quick to denounce the piece as "bad art," which is precisely what all those right-wingers say every time someone wants to put some elephant dung on Jesus or take a picture of some dude with a hard on. Boring. It's also an interesting proclamation since none of us have even actually SEEN the art yet. Folks have also been quick to demand to know what the artist's intentions were, amidst eager speculations (as Feministing has posted) that "there is likely more mush than thought" in Shvarts' head... which again, doesn't really seem like a very interesting way of appraising art, really.

ANYWAY wtf! You people are crazy!