I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling. All writers need editing, so given that this essay is significantly below par with respect to style, syntax and grammar, I'm assuming that they didn't give her the same calibre of edit they normally give. (You, my dear, are the racist if…

How much of this might be due to ambivalence? One thing that's surprised me is the number of people I know (including dozens working at a women's clinic) who said that part of them thought it might be kind of nice to have a baby, even if a) the guy was not at all interested, b) they were in absolutely no position to…

Yup. After fertility problems related to endometriosis with #1, we subsequently got pregnant on the VERY FIRST possible moment, with the rest. One of which was despite two methods of birth control.

The thing I found so alarming about that book is the idea that most of our cognitive energy goes not into making good decisions but rationalizing the decisions our gut (for lack of a better term) made. You can make a case that intuitive decisions are based on things you're not consciously aware of, ie not all gut…

Well clearly more education is always good. But this reminds me of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - as humans, we're far less rational than we'd like to think. That's not something that can be corrected by education, at least not in the sense of "exposure to good information." Extensive, rigorous and prolonged training in…

Yes. It is primarily an abuse of the enslaved, of course; but it distorts, poisons, coarsens and harms the entire society.

It is very frustrating to see an essay with very important things to say that is so dreadfully written. Jezebel, if you're really trying to deal with your POC problem, then providing guest authors of colour with excellent editing would be a good place to start.

Fair enough - I should distinguish between "asexual" and "presenting, while performing, as asexual or with very subdued sexuality."

Well of course they wrote equally condemnatory things listing all the women slutty Keith Richards and whorish Sinatra slept with. Right?

Interesting. I wouldn't know. But he seems to be confining his remarks to their performative, rather than personal, lives.

You're not wrong, IMO, but Joni Mitchell is almost asexual. To me it reads not so much as "black sexuality bad, white sexuality good" but more "please don't show any sexuality at all."

Eh. Maybe she's 4'11. It was a rhetorical point, I really don't think she was trying to define the upper bounds of acceptability universally.

We're casual acquaintances with a woman who's an OB, who had elective C-sections with all of hers, and has said "I don't know why anybody would make any other choice."

Agreed. And honestly, after having children, I don't feel that uncomfortable being unclothed in front of doctors or nurses, of either gender. When I was 17, though, it did feel less scary having a woman doctor for that reason.

Here's the other thing: even if you are a hard core pro-lifer who believes that the baby is equally human and deserving of legal protection as the mother ... THIS APPROACH DOESN'T WORK. FFS, being jailed is not a good indicator of birth outcomes. What does work (if you have an actual pregnant addict, which this woman…

Somewhat to my own surprise, the real asshole doctors I've had encounters with have all been women.

Something else that I've seen, in my days working at a women's clinic as a volunteer, and then working in health policy: be very careful to whom you disclose if you were abused as a child, assaulted as an adult, or a victim of DV. I saw virtually no victim blaming related to this, but there are other ways it can haunt…

Unless you're being asked for a job with the kind of security classification where they polygraph you, don't tell them. Just don't. Unless you are seeking medical help with something where they really need to know, there is no way it can help you to have that in your file, and oh so many ways it can come back to haunt…

Or not to seek out medical care in the first place, if you're afraid of being treated that way. Which will lead to awesome healthy babies and moms too, right?

GARY OLDMAN!