I have something to say about "The Octuplet Lady."
When I first encountered Nadya Suleman's story, the eight live births, I remembered the Dionne Quints. A Guinness Book of Records trophy is an exploitation-meister's dream.
I imagined, at first, that this Octuplet Mom must be a desperate older woman with difficulty carrying pregnancies to term— who'd been afraid this would be her last chance.
The next day, I saw Nadya's youthful photo and read the news that she had six other children. OMG! Like everyone, I doubted her sanity and felt even sorrier for her kids. I shelved the story into my "Sad Circus Act" drawer.
But it wouldn't go away. The media's freakish infatuation with Suleman has taken me in a new direction— a fury over the celebrity morality tale that's been scripted for the American public, starring this obviously-addled Mother of 14.
Nadya's pregnancy obsession and physical triumph is a freak occurrence and everyone knows it.
Yet the heavy mantle now placed upon Ms. Suleman, of "welfare mom" and "slut who must be punished" is— not so new— and it bears a little extra witness in this case.
It's gotten ugly. Searching Google for one minute, I found an anonymous CraigsList post: "This Iraqi woman needs to be held down and forcibly sterilized to keep her from ever having children again."
If she were rich or fair, she's be spared such abuse, of course. Aristocrats are lauded for large broods, the mother's womanhood is not impeached, nor are her tubes tied.
But this woman is a nobody; she doesn't live in gated community. It's a public debacle.
The web chat rooms are screaming about photos of Suleman's pregnant belly, even though those critics have clearly never been... A woman's belly looks gnarly at nine months even when she's only got one in the oven. The squeamish displays of the know-nothings are a sad commentary.
News Flash: You, too, were once next to a giant placenta that stretched a woman's body to its breaking point!
Meanwhile, there are an untold number of men, ordinary men, who have fathered thousands of children they have never supported. I've met, known— and yes, loved— men all my life who had children they don't know, never raised, never acknowledged.
Sure, I know how complicated it is. These fellows are often the sons of men who did the same to them. The new generation, in turn, leaves their pregnant lovers holding the bag, which in essence, requires the government to supply the financial support they can't, or won't provide. It raises bigger policy questions than "which parent" is to blame.
(Of course, there's the single dad who's raising kids the mother abandoned. It's just as awful. But let's stick with the big picture, shall we?)
These Active-Sperm-Machers are sometimes caught— more often not— and are regarded by everyone as well within the range of normal. No one thinks they're crazy. Even if we chide their bad acts, we wink at their virility.
How proud they must be to have fathered so many children! God looks over all the little ones, I'm sure. They are real men; you have to give them that. What kind of lunatic would ever suggest they be sterilized?— they obviously have balls of gold! They don't need mental health treatment; they're just cads, at worst. They're hardly the evil sinkhole that's draining America with their insatiable needs.
Is my sarcasm clear? I am not Ms. Suleman's champion, case worker, or psychiatrist. I hope someone gets involved in her kids' lives who's not in it for fame and dubious fortune.
There's bigger issues here. I don't like talk about sterilizing women because someone else thinks they're too egg-alicious. I don't like the rampant conversation about untold numbers of women who "go too far" — when most women never achieve their potential, maternal or otherwise. Women are second-class citizens in too many respects. To carry on the charade that chicks are holding the world by the balls is the height of chauvinist conceit.
Here's the sexist facts: Men's erections and virility are treated like the highest state priority... Viagra, anyone?... but women's sexuality is treated like a dirty little scourge that needs to be kept in a cage.
What is prized about a woman's life? Even today, the universal goals that every little girl understands is that we put stock in her virginity, her ability to bear a male heir, to be a trophy wife, to have exactly as many children as her father or husband determines, to remain as beautiful or plain as her marital status requires, to take on the burden of childcare and domesticity, to make less than her male peers in any given work she takes on. —Most of all, to OPEN her legs and then SHUT her legs on the command of whatever patriarch's voice is shouting the loudest at the moment.
What's the first thing to be thrown overboard when the White House compromises on a spending bill? Not just this White House, but every White House? Birth control. Reproductive rights. Anything to do with sex or family. It's a half-penny bargaining chip.
Where is the political leadership today that would speak out on the gender-discrimination issues that face all parents and children? Nowhere!
I don't have eight children; I have one. When I got pregnant, I was unmarried and was excoriated for it in public. Even some friends doubted I could be a good mother without a husband.
My mother was one of five, and her father abandoned the family during the Depression. Grandmother never recovered from her last birth, and died in my 12-year-old mother's arms, with four other children crying for food in the same room. The kids were lined up for an orphanage... except that my Great Aunt quit her job as a nanny for a wealthy family and came back to "keep the kids together." She worked as a phone company operator and raised them all.
And none of my female history is exceptional at all.
Here's an idea: I want the Talk Show Hosts who've paraded Suleman around in her dunce cap, to go out for a walk in the three-block vicinity of their shooting studio.
I want them to nab every man they can find and grill him on TV about how many children he's sired, how many children his father sired, and who ended up paying the bills.
If men got pregnant and had to feed their children with their own breasts, here's what would happen TOMORROW: universal health care, free birth control and abortion, superb public education, safe housing and good food for all — these would be considered sacred public institutions. The Mexico Mayor would be handing out diapers and foot-rubs. Everyone would get Plan B mailed to their home, gratis.
But America isn't ready for that. The best The Today Show could do, if they kidnapped some subjects—per my daydream— is to ask their surprised male guests to get on their knees before the television public and beg for forgiveness before they're taken away to the knife and the pills.
Photo & Henna design: Joan Kovatch, Artisan Henna
