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Laura Crossett's avatar

Also my favorite book of all time! No wonder we get along. (I was not that sick, but I spent my whole pregnancy only feeling good in water, which is inconvenient when one has other things to do, such as work.)

You undboutedly know about Shulamith Firestone's artificial womb thing, but I'll mention it on the unlikely chance you don't.

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Margaret Schwartz's avatar

I do know about Firestone! So glad you share my love of the D'Aulaires. xo

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Andrea Dooley's avatar

Kant is so irritating.

I think of the gestating womb as the opposite of unobtrusive. Mine made itself known to me and then others in such assertive ways, including jutting out so far as to look precarious.

I also think that to treat the womb as a distinct vessel from the woman herself is to give credence to the idea that it can be independently legislated. Most women might prefer less focus on our wombs; that might allow us more holistic participation in our cultural life.

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Margaret Schwartz's avatar

I came to love Kant by reading Adorno's take on him, which is so generous as to make him a radical.

To me it's not so much the distinctness as it is the passivity of the gestator that seems to facilitate her sidelining in the question of (ugh) fetal personhood. As if she were doing nothing at all but holding the baby.

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