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Babies Exposed Online! Privacy And The New Mom

May 20, 2013 By 4 Comments

Tearing through the finish line is something you’re supposed to do with triumphant arms in the air, running as fast as you can, but this is me nearing the end of my pregnancy so I’ll take this this brief respite from waddling to the bathroom to blog about the pressure to post photographs of one’s baby online.

Previously, I made a wildly unpopular decision to not post pregnancy photos to Facebook, and to opt out of baby bump and pregnancy mania digital voyeurism in general. Now I anticipate virtually everyone who knows me and wants to see BABY PICTURES SO MANY BABY PICTURES OF A BABY IN A HAT AS SOON AS I GIVE BIRTH AND THEN ALL THE TIME FOREVER is going to look at the screen and scream once more, because I have some pretty negative feelings about the pressure to post baby photographs online.

Here are the issues, as I see them:

Encouraging and respecting individuality, individual expression and free will are some of my highest values, and this extends to my initial thoughts about parenting. As I see it, my baby is going to be her own person and it’s one of my jobs to create as much space as I can to encourage her to be herself. This is especially poignant to me as a feminist expecting a daughter in a world that objectifies women and girls. My contention is not her participation in digital culture itself: I understand that as she gets older she may pose for and post photographs online. However, I tend to feel that in a digital space those are choices for her to make on her own, not choices for me to make for her.

Social networking photographs are forever. It seems we are in an unprecedented time for digital representations of childhood. When I was growing up, there was no permanent search engine trail of photographs in the tub waiting to someday be discovered by a recruiter looking you up before a job interview, or someone trying to hurt you. This doesn’t mean people should hide from having their photos put online, but as a future parent I am concerned about making permanent digital mistakes on behalf of a child I want to be her own person. On a separate, but related note, political hero Krystal Ball famously said the following when racy photographs from Facebook were leaked online during her 2010 run for Congress:

But I realized that photos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, would end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

Granted, baby photos are not sexual, and I don’t plan on trying to restrict my daughter from using social networking sites when she is of age to do so. In fact I agree with Krystal: People have to face up to our pictures and our social lives online, especially women of my age and lower, and a societal inability to do so will lead to negative political consequences. But I draw a strong distinction between someone posting photographs of herself and having a digital trail created for you by someone else without your consent.

And how many people who look at your digital presence online would you invite into your home? During the early days of life, beyond the Internet, new babies are seen by the people closest to you. People you invite in your home. People you make an effort to go see. Social networking has changed this equation, and I’m not sure for the better, especially for someone like me who maintains an Internet presence for political purposes.

This is not an attack on people who post baby photos online, which includes most of my friends with kids. I don’t judge you. Further, this is not an attack on mothers in the style of anti-feminist troll Katie Roiphe, who suggested that moms who put their children’s photos on their Facebook pages are struggling with a toxic loss of identity.

This is concern that intrusions upon my privacy, which I have experienced by the barge load during the process of pregnancy, will soon extend to a baby I want to protect. I know this thinking is very unpopular, and it is probably impossible to have a completely non-digital baby, especially when good people I care about are already begging. In any case others will probably take and tag their own pictures whether I like it or not. And for all I know, perhaps the process of having a baby and parenting will make me want to share photographs online all the time. If there’s one thing I know right now it’s that I don’t know how I am about to experience parenting. I believe preferences and viewpoints can change and that ability is a sign of strength, not weakness. But at this moment as I waddle to the finish line, I can say:

It makes me sad that so much of pregnancy and caring for a newborn — incredibly private moments — seems to have turned into visual digital performance for other people, one that can easily be objectified and made permanent without consent.

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Why I Am Not Posting Pregnancy Photos To Facebook

April 2, 2013 By 2 Comments

I am a pregnant woman. Never in my adult life have I had fewer rights under the law, more intrusive comments and questions from people in the public space. I don’t need to be objectified any more than I already am. This is not a body for you to glance at, scroll down, expand the window, draw your own conclusions about and “Like.”

That is why I am not posting pregnancy photos to Facebook.

We, as a culture, live in public. I, as a human being, made a strategic decision to live in public several years ago. I believe that a woman telling her story has the power to change society.

That is why I rely strongly on personal narrative, because I want you to know I’m proud to be pregnant and pro-choice, I’m proud to be pregnant and an eating disorder survivor, and I want you to be proud to be whoever you are and tell your stories without shame — whether you relate to my experiences or not.

So why am I drawing the line at pregnancy photos?

Because I want to share my pregnancy in the way I experience it and choose to share it, not in a way for others to see it and choose to interpret it.

Because carrying a wanted pregnancy is an act of immense love and sacrifice that is, at its core, an astonishing and sacred experience of beauty. For me. This time.

Others’ experiences are, I’m sure, different.

I am fortunate to have, to be able to have, a loving spouse with whom to share doubts, fears, glee, joy and stomach troubles during these most private of times.

I am offended to imagine breaking the spell of our intimacy as a couple and family, and my integrity to sense of self as seen fit to share by posing, anticipating others looking at me and calling it “cute.”

A number of friends have begged for photos. I know you mean well. I know you want to share this time with me. I am happy to “Like” your pregnancy photos if you choose to share them with me. I encourage you to be happy that I am sharing this time in my life on my level.

If you are itching to honor me during this time, or do something quick online to lift my spirits because I’m pregnant and my back hurts, I will point you directly to the Meet the Press website where you can, in solidarity, share your alarm that recently they had one token woman against reproductive rights and four men discussing the new six-week abortion ban in North Dakota, the most restrictive abortion law on the books. By presenting reproductive rights as a matter of public morality, mainly as judged by men, rather than the lived and incredibly visceral experiences of individual women, the mainstream media is colluding in the massive infringement of my civil and human rights.

When the silencing of people like me in mainstream media and public policy is so extreme, it is hard for me to get excited about the voyeurism of cutesy pregnancy mania on social media. It is hard for me to believe the pressure to perform for the camera and the pressure to keep my mouth shut about my human rights are not interconnected.

Maybe if we all get together socially and “Like” one other’s pregnancies it will be okay. But it’s not. One of us might find ourselves pregnant and in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then, in the name of someone else’s abstract notions of morality enforced by the state, one of us might die. Or have a forced C-section. Or be incarcerated or detained because we were pregnant.

I refuse to be a smiling snapshot of this awful era for pregnant women. Opting out is my act of difference. Speaking out is my act of defiance.

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Podcast On Pregnancy, Eating Disorders, Body Image And Feminism

March 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I did a new podcast with Fully Engaged Feminism on pregnancy, eating disorders, body image and feminism.

I first spoke out about my experience with Pregnancy After An Eating Disorder on this blog late last year, and in response the lovely feminist writer Amy Choi interviewed me for Feministing and added her insights.

I’m not done speaking out. I’m not going to shut up. When I first started researching resources for pregnant women who have struggled with eating disorders or body image issues, I found very little. There is a bit of medical management information for those who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and actively have an eating disorder today. But little about pregnancy after an eating disorder, or even negative self-image struggles.

I’m not shutting up because I know there are tons of women out there like me — women who are in recovery, who don’t need medical support to manage the pregnancy, who don’t see much out there on the Internets acknowledging our existence. Some of us want to know how to stop the old Body Image Beelzebubs from coming back. Some of us want to know how to tell them to be quiet. Some of us don’t need a “how-to,” necessarily, but simply want an acknowledgement that body shame is a) real and b) sure becomes a focal point during pregnancy.

Given the lack of information out there, I intend to keep speaking up and sharing my experiences, and encourage others who feel comfortable to do the same. Sometimes we need to create the thing we wish already existed.

Anyway, check out the new podcast. We had a terrific time and I’m so grateful to Laura for having me on. She also made a sick good pan of vegan brownies and taught me how to make a podcast. Gratitude.

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Nobody Told Me L. Ron Hubbard Was Obsessed With Abortion!

February 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I recently read L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Like so many of my dear readers, I follow the life progression of Tom Cruise with interest and enjoy, from time to time, reading a good piece on Scientology. So I thought it would be instructive to go to the source and see how this all got started.

Dianetics is the foundation of what became Scientology. The premise is fairly simple: The mind, according to L. Ron Hubbard, is an organ capable of working without error so long as we have “cleared” it of “engrams,” which are imprints from traumatic experiences in our past. Through a process called “auditing” it is possible to “clear” these “engrams” and rock on with a flawless life. Most of this I more or less knew before reading Dianetics.

What I didn’t know before reading is that L. Ron Hubbard was obsessed with abortion and had such strange attitudes about pregnant women. According to Dianetics everyone but “clears” are weighted down with “engrams” that cause them to act and think irrationally — and I estimate based on my reading that L. Ron Hubbard thinks fully a third or more of these damaging “engrams” we’re all carrying around come from the nefarious activities of pregnant women.

The way he tells it, pregnant women of his era sat around and “attempted abortion” by pounding their abdomens, begging to be beaten by their husbands and cursing the fetus throughout pregnancy. This is not a rarity, but positioned as something that pretty much all pregnant women do. Further a woman being miserable during, for example, morning sickness, will cause her child to be messed up throughout adult life unless those “engrams” are cleared. There are recurring pronouncements about sexual encounters during pregnancy, from masturbation to frustrating frigid games with a husband to illicit sex with a lover, messing up a person’s entire life. During childbirth, it is important not to speak so a baby is not further imprinted and damaged.

This is not one line in the book. It is all over the book. L. Ron Hubbard was obsessed with abortion and pregnant women. As a reproductive justice advocate, I’m shocked I didn’t know until now he thought pregnant women were to blame for so many of the problems in the universe. What is most disturbing is how many others — not just science fiction authors like L. Ron Hubbard — people like politicians, religious authorities and community leaders are respected when they say, repeatedly, equally bizarre things about pregnant women today.

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20 Week Abortion Bans Don’t Work (From A 20 Weeks Happily Pregnant Woman)

January 11, 2013 By 1 Comment

In the last two years, nine states have attempted to pass laws banning abortion at 20 weeks. Arizona and Georgia have pending court cases on their constitutionality. Last year the National Right to Life Committee designated a 20 week abortion ban in the District of Columbia as their “top legislative priority.”

This has become incredibly personal to me, as I am now, as of tomorrow, a woman 20 weeks pregnant who lives in the District of Columbia. I’m thrilled to be pregnant. And I’m terrified of what these bans can do.

The overwhelming number of abortions — 98.5 percent — occur before the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Why would someone have a later abortion? Well, every story is going to be different and that’s why these uncompromising bans don’t work.

The joy I found today in looking at my ultrasound is simply not transferrable to every other pregnancy, nor should the law reflect an assumption that is so.

Why would a woman have an abortion after 20 weeks?

Sometimes a woman receiving that 20 week ultrasound is startled to hear: “Something appears to be wrong with the brain,” or “The heart isn’t working,” or another fetal abnormality that is incompatible with a quality of life she believes best to provide for a child of her own. Why should a bureaucrat be given power to second-guess her (or me or you)?

Other times a woman learns that she is struggling with a serious medical condition, such as cancer, and continuing the pregnancy means delaying chemotherapy or other potentially life-extending treatment. In this incredibly personal situation, why should the state provide more guidance to her (or me or you) than her (or my or your) family?

Still other times a woman has already lost or is losing a pregnancy, and abortion will complete the miscarriage. Sometimes this itself will allow that woman to live. This is what could have happened if Savita Hallapanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying in Ireland, had not been denied a life-saving abortion she requested because, as she was told shortly before she died in the hospital, “It’s a Catholic country.” Why should any religion or state express its values in forcing her (or me or you) to give birth or die?

Another reason for seeking a later abortion: How about being flat broke? A grueling patchwork of federal and state abortion restrictions including mandatory waiting periods, regulations designed to close local clinics, sex discrimination in the form of denying private and/or state insurance coverage for reproductive health care, parental notification laws and much more have made it harder for a woman without much power who wishes to terminate her pregnancy to have the same constitutional rights as everyone else. Why should any legislator punish her (or me or you) for finally being able to sell her (or my or your) car to pay for the abortion desired weeks before, only to say, we’re not following the law of the land as laid out by the United States Supreme Court, we’re just going to say its too late for you?

The bottom line is that we simply do not know.

We have no standing to demand an answer.

We have an obligation to ensure that antiquated sexism, with men making the laws and women paying the price, doesn’t force pregnant women to die.

The bottom line is the ethical bankruptcy — and physical danger — of forcing beliefs on women that violate their fundamental right to self determination.

As a woman who is 20 weeks pregnant as of tomorrow, I’m pretty sure I got this covered. I do not see the National Right to Life Committee or Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who introduced the failed DC 20 Week Abortion Ban last session, or the greater “pro-life” [forced birth] community as a source of support during my pregnancy. In fact I look to them with fear of what they might force upon me, and other women like me, or you.

For what it’s worth, I found out in my ultrasound today that I will have a daughter. Let’s just say that I have never felt more fiercely determined to stop the misguided thinking that leads others to constrain her future (or mine or yours).

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Pregnancy After An Eating Disorder

December 13, 2012 By 4 Comments

Get pregnant, gain weight, give birth.

Maybe this is easy for you. Maybe you like it. Maybe you are fortunate enough to have no experience with an eating disorder, or its aspirational cousin, negative self-image.

Not me. A summary of my situation is as follows: Near-death experience with anorexia, full recovery changed my progressive activism into feminist activism, now I’m pregnant.

I want to situate my first story about the intersection of my pregnancy with my history of having an eating disorder in a broader context, because I was in Arizona in October, and nobody knew I was pregnant, and a woman shared her story with me and it was not just any old day. Here is what I had posted on Facebook:

The 10th anniversary of Senator Wellstone’s death is emotional for me, and more so because I have spent the past two days on a community college campus talking with thirteen classes and passers-by at outdoor events about body image, self-esteem, cultural representations of women and how truly radical it is to love and accept yourself as you are, whether you are a man or a woman. I have talked about how loving yourself is a key within the broader political struggle for women’s rights and human rights, to recognize the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. I have spoken with countless students who have come to me in tears, accepted an opportunity to get help for the first time in their lives, told me they were going to work for the basic right to respect and justice for all, smiled through sunglasses saying they had tried to commit suicide but backed out and were so glad they had. I have hugged so many strangers, beautiful and strong, sometimes hurting, men and women, in the past 48 hours and if that’s not professional – who cares. Paul Wellstone said he emphasized “self-esteem, self confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a test of organization.” He also told us to “Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.” Before I could vote, before I was a feminist, before my life taught me how important and political and essential it is to have compassion for yourself and not just for others, I was a progressive and I was an organizer. Paul Wellstone was responsible for that.

One of the women who walked up to me asked if I had done any work on body image after having kids. With pain on her face, this woman explained that she had given birth to four children and was so ashamed of the skin on her stomach that she had stopped wearing bikinis. Perhaps this sounds innocuous if you don’t know she had a pool at home. She wanted to wear a bikini but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her body image was stopping her from enjoying herself when no one else was looking.

I thanked her for her honesty with me. I told her that sounded like a horrible feeling. I meant it.

People dismiss eating disorders and negative self-image as shallow, trivial, pathological all the time. They say it’s vanity or fluff. It’s as if people who feel bad and admit they feel bad are then supposed to feel bad about feeling bad.

This you-better-do-it-but-don’t-speak-up logic makes sense when it is gender roles too limiting to encourage all we have to offer that are being expressed and enforced.

Body image has everything to do with gender roles, and oppressive expectations and painful lived experiences with our bodies often vary widely based on not just gender, but race, disability, sexual orientation and size.

I accept that my experience with overcoming anorexia is not relatable to some women who have struggled more with their hair, or men who have struggled more with their muscles, or activists who are in a difficult and righteous struggle to end fat discrimination. But while experiences are different and should by no means be declared the same, I also believe we are fighting a common monster among many.

For more than a decade I have been free of pills, treatment, I am able to eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full, I don’t binge, I don’t diet. I have over the years felt a little rebel yell when my stomach gets a little bit more of a roll to it. It has come to feel sexy to me when that happens – it’s not just body business. It’s sexy and radical and transgressive to take up space you’re able to fill.

But at the same time, I won’t lie that being pregnant has forced me to confront what I have long thought was my full recovery in a new way. You see, my post-recovery weight has gone up and down over the years like any normal human being, but it has distributed evenly. I’ve never started growing a stomach that sticks out like a bumper on an old Saab. I’ve never anticipated, much less experienced, such a drastic change in my body.

Recently I had an epiphany in, of all places, a dressing room at Old Navy. I was there trying on maternity clothes for the first time in my life. As an eating disorder survivor there is no question I’ve had some Lifetime Shitty Moments in dressing rooms.  When I was recovering from anorexia, if a negative thought cropped up I talked back to it: “Shut up, you’re trying to kill me.” Ultimately after professional intervention (please, if you have an eating disorder and are reading this, contact a professional and don’t try to self-help your way out), it became those seven words to myself, over and over, that built my life back.

But those magic words were not helpful in Old Navy. This was totally new. I had to simply feel uncomfortable, and think some more about feeling uncomfortable. This is my body. I need to accept my body and myself for who I am. Not who I was. Not for what I might become. This is now. It is what I have.

The collision of my eating disordered past and my pregnancy today is a confrontation of the profane and the sacred.

While many of these confrontations happen in a year, much less a lifetime, this is not one I will be able to ignore. It is the expectation of a harsh lens upon a human being, whether viewed by self or others, versus the actuality that is a human experience with its own rhythms, rules and swerves. To smile considering the times you have acknowledged, as they are, the unworthy stereotypes in your life.

I can accept: Get pregnant, gain weight, give birth. In fact I thought I could accept it going in. It took me two laundry cycles after the Old Navy trip to accept buying low-slung yoga pants that almost (do they really?) make me look a little bit pregnant.

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I’m Pregnant!

December 7, 2012 By 12 Comments

Pregnant. Pro-choice! Knocked up. Fired up. Expecting a baby.

Stork-a-doodle-dooo000 …

Before I was pregnant, before this transformation that makes me want to eat popsicles at all times, I advocated every day for women’s human rights, most notably around reproductive justice – the right to bear children, the right to not bear children, and the right to adequate health care and social support for all families.

What follows is a commentary that is both intensely personal and political.

Let’s start with the gentleman driving down the street with the “CHOOSE LIFE” license plates.

I see your opinions. I see you can afford to drive a Mercedes. I see clear as the obliviousness on your face that you have NO IDEA.

NO IDEA what it is like to be pregnant.

NO IDEA how warm piss can turn a ten dollar piece of plastic into the most expensive thing at Tiffany that you just broke.

NO IDEA how painful your suggestion can be for a woman who couldn’t complete a wanted pregnancy.

It is so offensive to me that you think you have the right to speak to me, your target audience, a pregnant woman not visibly so, about my reproductive health and decision-making whenever you want. You don’t know me. I haven’t even told all my friends and family I’m having a baby.

Messages like yours, that personal pregnancy is properly positioned as public property, make we want to puke. Your message makes me want to let loose my hot tomato-flavored morning sickness all over your flawless black paint job and glistening silver hood ornament. It is harassment of women who walk and drive and breathe in public.

There is no “choosing life” in the movement represented on license plates like yours from 27 states, with proceeds funneled into unregulated crisis pregnancy centers filled with non-medical poseurs willing to lie to me until some teeth fall out: Telling me abortion will make me go to hell. Telling me abortion will make me commit suicide. Telling me abortion will give me breast cancer.

I’ll tell you what the “pro-life” cause to shame and ban abortion does: It kills women. It kills women just like me.

I am fourteen weeks pregnant, my due date is June 2, my start date is August 26 – that’s Women’s Equality Day (the epoch has not yet been reached).

I am three weeks less pregnant than Savita Halappanavar was when she died in Ireland after a dangerous miscarriage could not be completed with an abortion she begged for because – “This is a Catholic country.”

There is a woman who didn’t die the same hospital death in Arizona recently, and the price was paid with the excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride. Sister Margaret McBride’s alleged crime was saving that 27-year-old woman’s life. In doing that, Sister Margaret McBride angered the “No Girls Allowed” club up top in Rome.

I couldn’t go to my hometown candlelight vigil for Savita. I couldn’t go because I wasn’t ready to tell others I’m pregnant, and every time I seriously considered that case I would start to cry. I’m crying now.

You can work so hard for people’s inherent equality, you can work so hard for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice, but when it comes down to it, pregnant women are still so vulnerable. Yesterday. Today. And still, tomorrow.

The equation is too simple: If you are pregnant and in the wrong place at the wrong time, you die. Not because you had to. Not because the medicine isn’t available yet. Because people, often laws they create, won’t trust you with your power.

I am thrilled to have a baby but the expectation to have a baby, even a dead baby, at any cost, even a dead woman, even me, fuels the wetness on my cheeks.

Let’s leave the Mercedes driver behind and talk about some other expectations.

If you think I’m going to have “a new focus,” or less passion or ambition about my career and the causes I are about, I ask that you kindly ask yourself if you have the same expectation of my husband. Now why does that sound ridiculous? As the authority on myself, it sounds equally ridiculous for me.

I am so proud to show my little girl or boy what it’s like to have a mother who does not slow down, who provides that example that you can have love and devotion to your family and love and devotion to the broader world.

I am not trying to “have it all” or achieve “work-life balance.” I have never seen that referenced as a recipe for personal success alongside the extraordinarily successful men on the covers of magazines – all 96% of those Fortune 500 CEOs, 83% of those members of Congress, 100% of those presidents in history.

I know you can’t self-help your way out of societal discrimination, for which “having it all” and “work-life balance” are guilt-ridden code words. I know you have to work to change the system. That is my work and I will continue that work to the best of my ability, as I always have.

A wise mentor of mine told me that activism is being willing to live your life as an example of what should be, even when it comes with personal cost. And that is why I’m coming out now. You see, I’m in exactly a position to lose right now: I’ve gone on some interviews for jobs, and I’m pregnant. I know that discrimination against openly pregnant women is real. The New York Times recently ran a piece on this. It was called Why Women Hide Their Pregnancies.

I know why women hide their pregnancies. I know why I’ve kept this information longer than I probably would have if I weren’t in transition. I’m afraid people will discriminate against me, make assumptions about me and my career decisions past, present and future, downgrade me or dismiss me simply because I’m having a baby. I know the law is behind where we need to be as a modern workforce. And I’m telling you openly, as a pregnant woman who is taking her career to the next level whether that’s intuitively acceptable for you or not, that this must change for everyone. I am real, other women like me are real, and we are not going away.

This is the first time I’ve been pregnant. I was quite surprised to find I was pregnant two weeks after resigning from my job, without future paychecks in place. At other points in my life, with those facts and without the current support structure I have, I probably would have had an abortion. I’m thrilled to be pregnant today and I don’t feel at all guilty to know this truth. We are not guilty for having sex, for having children, for having abortions. We are human.

So much more to say. For now I will leave you with my strongest Pregnant Pro-Choice Lady wish to end a world where lesbians, gays, single women, single men, young people and undocumented immigrants are not congratulated, supported and welcomed as future parents in the way my husband and I so warmly have been; where low-wage workers need to express breastmilk in a filthy bathroom stall but their wealthier counterparts get leather couches, privacy and respect; and, without question or hesitation, to end a world where accessible, affordable contraception and abortion care is shrouded in shame and dangerous bans that kill pregnant women in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than celebrated as one of the greatest public health advances in our history.

We should be so proud to stand for reproductive justice.

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