1. As much as your husband/boyfriend/guy pals love you, they don’t want to hear about your period. They don’t understand it. Just let them be. Girlfriends understand and sympathize, and they probably need someone to vent to as much as you do. 
2. We’re not in high school anymore! Or hell, even if you are in high school, it’s well past time we all learn that other women are not our competition. There are more than enough human beings on this planet for everyone to find a match, so quit looking at the fun, cute, smart lady next to you as your enemy and make her your friend! 
3. The simplest form of feminism is friendship among women.
4. Women are gorgeous, and whether you swing that way or not, there’s no harm in admiring the beauty of your friends.
5. Surrounding yourself with women you admire can bring out the best in you. After all, if these ladies are so great, and they’re friends with you, maybe you’re not so bad, either!
6. Motivation! When you have common goals with your girlfriends, it can lead to some healthy competition, but you can also spur each other on toward bigger and better things.
7. The more you love other people, the more you can understand and love yourself. How many old scars have been healed while trading stories with a girlfriend? Well, speaking for myself, quite a few!
8. Celebrating other’s successes is fun. You can have a great time being happy for your girlfriends. Your fabulous BFF has earned her success, and it’s encouraging to see her hard work pay off. Then, when your turn comes, she’ll be there to celebrate with you. There’s plenty joy to go around, so share it freely!
9. Creative energy abounds – you never know what kinds of things can happen when you get two or three (or twenty) inspired women together. Maybe you’ll put on an art show, launch a blog or start a business. There’s no limit to what friends can accomplish together.
10. Fun! Do we remember fun? What is life if you’re not having fun? And what better source of fun than your girlfriends? So, call up a girlfriend or two to meet for coffee, go shopping, take a jog, play poker or just talk trash till your cell phone dies, and remember to have fun!

What is interesting about this story, curiously, is not the actual experience of it. In fact, Kucynski tells the story so glibly and flippantly that it reads as a puff piece in a glossy women’s mag, so there is very little chance to really understand the agony that the infertile experience, or to really feel the proclaimed connection between the mother and the surrogate. There is no medical emergency moment, no moment of self-doubt or doubt in the surrogate. (This is a good thing, of course. I am just trying to point out that the story has no real compelling drama in its own right.)

What comes shining through loud and clear in the article is the class issues surrounding surrogacy and, in particular,  the utter lack of self-awareness Kucynski seems to possess.

Kucynski paid for 11 uninsured rounds of I.V.F. before turning to gestational surrogacy, a sum totaling about $132,000. The average yearly salary for a gestational surrogate is $50,000. The article tells us that they do not accept poor women in this program because it would be too much like coercion.

None were living in poverty. Lawyers and surrogacy advocates will tell you that they don’t accept poor women as surrogates for a number of reasons. Shirley Zager told me that the arrangement might feel coercive for someone living in real poverty. Poor women, she also told me, are less likely to be in stable relationships, in good health and of appropriate weight. Surrogates are often required to have their own health insurance, which usually means the surrogate or her spouse is employed in the kind of secure job that provides such a benefit.

I wonder, though, if a woman was living in poverty but met the criteria, healthwise, and had insurance, why not take one of these women on as a surrogate. Of course, generally members of the lower middle class can use the buffer to create savings or put older children through college, as the surrogate in this piece was using her money for, but why not help the impoverished?

We encountered the wink-nod rule: Surrogates would never say they were motivated to carry a child for another couple just for money; they were all motivated by altruism. This gentle hypocrisy allows surrogacy to take place. Without it, both sides would have to acknowledge the deep cultural revulsion against attaching a dollar figure to the creation of a human life.

Ah, I see. We have to pretend this isn’t about the money. We need to rent the wombs of the moderately desperate, rather than the extremely desperate.

Further, the surrogate, who would grow and nourish the child but not actually contribute any DNA, must have a computer and know how to use it. The wilds of the internet is proof of the fact that computer ownership results in a better class of citizen, right?

When we came across Cathy’s application, we saw that she was by far the most coherent and intelligent of the group. She wrote that she was happily married with three children. Her answers were not handwritten in the tiny allotted spaces; she had downloaded the original questionnaire and typed her responses at thoughtful length. Her attention to detail was heartening. And her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.

Finally, the smug “look what I got away with” tone at the end of the post is nausea-inducing, to say the least. Kucynski frames these quotes with a “my, my, look what other people said to me” pretense, but it comes across as completely self-congratulatory.

One announced to a table of people at a dinner party: “My God, Alex. You’ve really gotten away with some stuff in your life. But this takes the cake!” It was as if I had performed some slimy trick and was still able to have my ticket stamped “Mother.” Not only Mother, but Biological Mother.

Did these women have such terrible pregnancies? Did they all resent their big babies? Was not birthing a baby but still having a biological child really “taking the cake”?

What really takes the cake is the pictures accompanying the article.

Audrey Hepburn meets Jane Six-pack? Also be sure to check out the other photos with the article–the surrogate, barefoot and pregnant, and the author at home on her perfect lawn with her baby nurse. I liked what Nina Shen Rastogi said about this piece on Slate. The title says it all: She Rented a Woman’s Womb and Then Was Rude to the Landlady.

(Posted by SJ)

In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship — the theme of “Pinocchio” — would once have been unimaginable here.

But this country’s harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom’s most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.

If you are curious about what they sound like, they have a myspace up, of course. They kind of remind me of Heart.

I applaud the group’s bravery and I hope they stay safe. I guess “staying safe” and “breaking barriers” don’t really go hand-in-hand, do they?

So as much as I am a feminist, I have to speak up against sexism and discrimination, and in this case what I see is an extremely sexist campaign aimed at making money, rather than at providing safe space for women, or promoting equality or any of the things some real-world separatist events and movements try to do.

CafeMom describes itself, when it is talking seriously, as a parenting site, in fact, the “leading parenting site on the internet”. (Last time I checked, parents came in two genders, male and female.) Almost as if the male owners of the site, Andrew Shue and Michael Sanchez want it to be taken seriously as a money-making web enterprise. It’s clearly making money; they openly boast about securing $12 million in funding because of its potential “to be the preferred online partner for the best brands in the world”. This is not just some mom and pop operation. (Especially not the “pop” part.)

However, the front page itself has rather different language: “CafeMom is a place for moms and moms-to-be to connect with one another.” Not so serious and businessy. Rather than going for a “come in and experience our finely honed advertising environment” vibe, the emphasis here is on female membership and community. Some (including the advertisers, obviously) might argue, fair enough, since the majority of participants on parenting sites probably are women. That said, at no point does the site actually state in its TOS that you have to be female to join, nor does it ask a gender question in the registration process. So there isn’t really any serious effort being made even to give more than lip service to the idea that this is female space. In fact, primarily, it is commercial space, but again, making that too upfront would be a turn-off.

Obviously, there is no actual way to guarantee that online space is female space anyway. My point is, CafeMom is not even forcing guys who join to lie about their gender. There’s not even an equivalent of the weak, “You must be over 18 to view this material; click this button to say you are” button that appears on sites that have “rules” about who is allowed to view adult content. To join the site, I do not need to certify that I am female.

However, if you choose an obviously male name, and someone notices, you will get banned. Suburbandaddy got an email cancelling his account because, clearly, he had some kind of “dude” vibe. The comments he got from CafeMom members on his initial post and the follow-up display an astonishing breadth of ignorance and vitriol, from the milder “We don’t want you on our site!” to the hilarious “making people pretend to be female protects us from pedophiles”. Actually, this latter one isn’t all that funny, but you have to laugh or cry, so I choose to laugh.

Look, there’s an argument to be made for safe space for women on the internets, and we here at Uppity are all for that. We’re doing something active about it. And there’s an argument for women’s only events in meatspace, especially in contexts or environments where women might not otherwise feel free or safe. I’m hip to that; I get it. But trying to ban men from a parenting site is not a bold step forward for feminism. It’s actually reinforcing a sexist stereotype that childrearing is a job for women that men have no business being a part of. How is that feminist, or even helpful?

All of which is a lead up to my other objection to this whole “moms only” campaign being touted as feminist, which is that CafeMom’s advertising is actually horribly sexist. Check out this ad, which SJ was so kind as to bring to my attention:

CafeMom Advertisement

The cartoon mom is your typical stereotype of female beauty, isn’t she? The only sign of her pregnancy is that round bulge she is gently cradling in her arms. Otherwise, she is skinny, beautifully coiffed, made-up, dressed and accessorised. The fact that she is a cartoon, rather than a real woman, creates and enhances a kind of infantilisation, which of course, is the way pregnant women are often portrayed.

The copy perpetuates the infantilisation, too, with its suggestion of clubhouses with “No boys allowed” or “Boys are icky” on the door. Pregnant women, who by definition are adults, are displayed here as being around about age 8, mentally. The fact that men were clearly involved at some point in the conception of the child currently in picture is completely denied and erased. If you are a guy, and you want to be involved in your partner’s pregnancy, this ad is saying, “Get over yourself. This is none of your business.”

Then there’s the name. “CafeMom” and it’s a place for moms. Not for women, not for whole people who may be parents but have other ideas, interests and abilities, but for moms, whose identities are defined wholly and soley by their children. Don’t tell me that’s feminist space. That’s patriarchal space - let’s put the moms in here, in this playpen, where we can make sure that they are spending all their mommy dollars on products made by our advertising partners.

Amy Taylor, 28, whose online alter ego is named Laura Skye, said that her husband’s virtual infidelity exacted a pain that cut as deep as any extramarital liaison. “It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much,” she said. “His was the ultimate betrayal. He had been lying to me.”

Second Life is one of those places online where you can be someone totally different, if you choose. You determine your appearance, and as if often the case with online communities, you can adopt a different persona. Pictures originally published by The Daily Mail show a vast discrepancy between their appearances and lives.

But it sounds like one thing remained the same, which is that Pollard seems to enjoy getting it on with ladies online. In the aftermath, Taylor said that “David had made vows to me when we married and promised to be faithful to me always. So even cheating online meant that he was breaking his vows.”

I think it’s impossible to say who’s at fault in a case like this, where the media and blogosphere is screaming at us to behold the next freakshow. And it does all read rather like he-said, she-said. Pollard claims Taylor had drifted away and was absorbed with her life in World of Warcraft. Taylor claims that she suspected something was up when her husband’s avatar was “wearing tighter and tighter trousers, with his shirts more and more unbuttoned” as well as being surrounded increasingly by babealicious avatars. But this case raises a few questions for me.

What is fidelity? The obvious answer is, “it depends.” Some people take a hard line on monogamy, meaning that anything beyond polite, casual interactions with others could quickly turn into broken vows. Others draw the line at print/video pornography, or online porn, which often has opportunities for more interactive components and in some cases, emotional engagement. Still others, and this is oversimplifying it, believe in a polyamorous approach, where you can love more than one person at the same time, as long as the involved parties practice good communication and attempt to be honest with one another. I believe that fidelity can exist in all of these situations with open communication.

In the case of the Second Life marriage and divorce, it sounds like both parties were unclear about what their expectations were. Apparently, Taylor expected singular emotional fidelity from Pollard. Pollard countered with “I only ever cheated on her once in Second Life - it was the first time, and I was caught. But when I tried to point out that it was only a game, she went absolutely bonkers.” It’s interesting to me that Pollard both acknowledges that it was cheating, and hedges with the fact that Second Life is “only a game.” This “game” is the same thing that he and Taylor bonded over, as well as where he met his mistress, a 55-year-old woman from Arkansas to whom Pollard is currently engaged.

The mistress online:

In real life:

Would it occur to you to discuss boundaries in virtual worlds with your partners? That was never something that really occurred to me before this case. Perhaps it would be a different case if worlds like these were more my bailiwick. I like chatrooms, but the boring old text kind. I love gaming, but mostly offline ones that I can play at my own pace. I have found it possible to form close relationships with people I’ve met online, but I would not want to conduct an international romantic relationship with little hope of being consummated in this way. Obviously, others disagree. Pollard calls his new fiancee, whom he has not yet met offline, his soulmate.

So what do you think? Is this part of your boundaries conversation with your partners? Is digital humping cheating for you? Do you think more open communication could have saved this marriage?