# Pro-choice "art" from Yale student... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 17, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735 "2008-04-17T15:37:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Eben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a8b319/32.png) [@Eben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eben)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/21 "2008-04-17T17:24:20Z")
Looks like a pretty clear-cut case of needing something new and shocking to get an art degree. It’s that category of art that makes me dislike art as a category, even though I know it’s the minority of cases. I often considered doing “art with a message” in the way you can do something poorly but claim it has significance, but I can’t self-delude myself enough for the task. -Eben ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/22 "2008-04-17T17:30:38Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Let’s not throw out the never conceived baby with the aborted fetus’ bathwater, okay? 😉 But in all honesty, we just don’t know. We don’t have modern testing or the funding to do it. [/QUOTE] So here in modern-day America (not to mention Japan, Europe, Australia, etc), we don’t have the money to test such things, but those ancient wise-women did? ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/23 "2008-04-17T17:33:46Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] So here in modern-day America (not to mention Japan, Europe, Australia, etc), we don’t have the money to test such things, but those ancient wise-women did? [/QUOTE] Well, who’s going to spend money on such a test? The pomegranate lobby? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/24 "2008-04-17T17:40:28Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] For this, her parents sent her to Yale? [/QUOTE] Antioch College shut down this year. I agree with **phouka**. She’s not doing anyone or the school a favor. This is one disturbed individual and frankly I’m disappointed in Yale for permitting this. I think the school has an obligation to maintain some standards of decency on behalf of the students. I would be upset if I paid good money to attend Yale and have it associated with such an incident. It begs the question; do you have to be a student to exhibit art at that school? If I dropped a load in the middle of the exhibit (on loan) would it be considered cutting-edge sculpture or do I need to spend $40,000 a year to have it certified? I’ve always felt that I have a lot of art in me waiting to get out. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/25 "2008-04-17T17:43:34Z")
[QUOTE=Eonwe] But it does raise the question, ‘what exactly is (generic) your problem with this?’ What about it makes you uncomfortable? [/QUOTE] To me, it’s as if she indulged herself in bulimic-type gorging and forced vomiting, videotaping herself the while. Or, if you like, drinking repeatedly until she got puking drunk, videotaping ditto. Setting aside the larger abortion issue, it’s simply abusing the body in order to make a point which is nebulous at best. If she had announced that she was protesting McDonalds Supersizing things, or America’s Obesity Epidemic, or Starving Children In The Third World, and gorged and vomited repeatedly on-camera during a period of months, would she still be able to submit it as Art? ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/26 "2008-04-17T17:44:32Z")
When you take the morning after pill, you do so within 72 hours of unprotected sex. There’s no way of knowing if that unprotected sex resulted in a pregnancy. What you expel just a period, no different from any other heavy period. There’s no microscopic baby or babyish blob or tissue or anything. And you feel like you have the flu. She could make the same point by offering up a jar of menstrual fluid and a jar of sperm and calling that a loss of potential life. Of course, she’d’ve missed out on all that fun she had with the turkey baster. Here’s [another link, it seems to be working.](http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzExY2Q0MDNkZWJkMmFmMjEzNGFiZDY5ZGY3OTg2M2E=) ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/27 "2008-04-17T17:48:55Z")
[QUOTE=Eonwe] Well, who’s going to spend money on such a test? The pomegranate lobby? [/QUOTE] Right. Because the only entities in the entire world who have the money to do medical research are for-profit pharmaceutical companies. In the entire modern world, there are no organizations who do medical research, except those who hope to make a profit from it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/28 "2008-04-17T17:49:15Z")
Wait, she didn’t even _paint_ with the blood? Just displayed it? I’m afraid this fails the Stuckist test. Another Hirst/Emin wannabe. At least Marc Quinn sculpted _his_ blood. ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/29 "2008-04-17T17:50:52Z")
[QUOTE=fessie] She could make the same point by offering up a jar of menstrual fluid and a jar of sperm and calling that a loss of potential life. [/QUOTE] oops, missed the edit window She could make the same point **and make the Pope happy** by offering up a jar of menstrual fluid and a jar of sperm and calling that a loss of potential life. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/30 "2008-04-17T17:55:01Z")
Hate to say it, but I suspect she’s serious and thinks this is art. Art, at some fundamental level, is about emotion, and she’s figured out a way to get emotion out of people. And this coming from me, a college student studying theatre who has to hear this pushing-people’s-emotional-buttons-for-no-apparent-reason-with-no-message\*-is-art stuff waaaaay too often. \*Not that she necessarily has no message, but her primary goal seems to be shock, and a message only secondary. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/31 "2008-04-17T18:11:43Z")
[QUOTE=appleciders] Hate to say it, but I suspect she’s serious and thinks this is art. Art, at some fundamental level, is about emotion, and she’s figured out a way to get emotion out of people. [/QUOTE] I wsih these “artists” would some day realize that shock and disgust are the \*easiest \* emotions to provoke. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/32 "2008-04-17T18:14:44Z")
In the Yale _Daily News_ article, I see a HUGE unsupported assumption: that she was pregnant every time she experienced presumably painful menstrual flow in her bathtub with the video camera rolling. > [@](#): > > Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages > [@](#): > > She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. > [@](#): > > did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages. > [@](#): > > lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages > [@](#): > > These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub Frankly, I’m disappointed–but somehow not surprised–that staff writer and presumed Yale student Martine Powers didn’t have the journalistic skepticism to ask the #1 question (“how did you know you were pregnant every time, or did you just assume that you were?”), but instead merely breathlessly reported the story as she was spoon-fed it. > [@](#): > > **Your search - Aliza Shvarts pregnancy test - did not match any documents.** Uh huh. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/33 "2008-04-17T18:20:38Z")
And for some reason I’m now remembering the gal who taped an electronics breadboard to her chest last year, called it “art”, and strolled into an airport wearing it, causing a full-tilt-boogie security alert and nearly getting herself shot by hyped-up security guys. Can’t something be done about Artsy Fartsy College Kids? Maybe lock them up somewhere until they’re thirty? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/34 "2008-04-17T18:25:30Z")
[My First Period by Aliza Shvartz](http://my1stperiod.com/2064/2106.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val) > [@](#): > > Back in the days of middle school, at least at my middle school, getting one’s period was akin to a competitive sport. Everyone knew who had theirs already; everyone couldn’t wait to join their ranks in womanhood. My best friend at the time who I had known since preschool had gotten hers a couple months earlier, and I remember sitting jealously in my living room as my mother congratulated her and explained to her womanhood, what it meant to grow up, and the finer points of the tampon vs. pad debate. > > I was very excited, lying there in the carpet, at the notion that now it might be my turn. I ended up sticking it out for the whole film, which I still feel is quite an accomplishment—it was a very long movie, there is a lot that happened in 14th century China. After a trip to the girls’ bathroom and a harrowing experience with the pad dispenser, I got on the school bus to go home, excited to tell my mother the news. I expected a lot from that talk. I expected secrets to be revealed, meanings to be exposed, and to emerge somehow closer to my mother and her adult world. I remember beaming as she sat me down on her bed with a package of pads and launched into a similar version of the talk she had given my friend. But about five or ten minutes into it, her then-boyfriend got home from work and walked into the bedroom. She looked at me, handed me the package, and nothing more was said. My first period remained an event shared only by the Mings and me. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/35 "2008-04-17T18:26:04Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] The joke will be on her when she’s infertile and develops some nasty dysfunctions. [/QUOTE] And you are basing these assumptions on…WHAT? The well known beliefs of the anti-abortion community that all women who have abortions become infertile (so no women would ever need more than one) and dysfunctions (including the ones who, instead of become teenage mothers, go on to finished high school and college, have careers and familes, which is obviously a myth since they all are “infertile and develop some nasty dysfunctions”). Some anti-abortion people are crazy multiple murderers and set clinics…whoops, abortion mills on fire. Do all anti-abortion people develop such nasty dysfunctions? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/36 "2008-04-17T18:29:29Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] And you are basing these assumptions on…WHAT? The well known beliefs of the anti-abortion community that all women who have abortions become infertile (so no women would ever need more than one) and dysfunctions (including the ones who, instead of become teenage mothers, go on to finished high school and college, have careers and familes, which is obviously a myth since they all are “infertile and develop some nasty dysfunctions”). Some anti-abortion people are crazy multiple murderers and set clinics…whoops, abortion mills on fire. Do all anti-abortion people develop such nasty dysfunctions? [/QUOTE] Miscarriages have physical consequences for health. Comparing that to murdering someone that is not biologically connected to you is facile. Everyone I know who has had a miscarriage was affected by it. Serial miscarriages are going to affect one’s reproductive health. Having an abortion isn’t costless to your system. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/37 "2008-04-17T18:30:46Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] The joke will be on her when she’s infertile and develops some nasty dysfunctions. [/QUOTE] Hopefully she’ll log some time in an institution before she tries to adopt. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/38 "2008-04-17T18:35:34Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] And you are basing these assumptions on…WHAT? QUOTE] He probably basis it on her claim to be a premeditated multiple-self-abortionist. If her claim is true, I would say the dynsfunctional ship has already sailed. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/39 "2008-04-17T18:46:09Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Right. Because the only entities in the entire world who have the money to do medical research are for-profit pharmaceutical companies. In the entire modern world, there are no organizations who do medical research, except those who hope to make a profit from it. [/QUOTE] I admit I was being a little tongue-in-cheek just so I could use the term “pomegranate lobby.” Still, I suppose what my point really was was just that when there is a pretty well proven and safe method of contraception, who has interest in finding another. Particularly when even the anecdotal evidence (based on **WhyNot** ’s post) is that they only work for a sub-set of women (thin and fit)? Plus, I think that tolerance for failure is lower in the modern world that it might have been in the past. “Fairly effective” contraception is not something I’d ever want to rely on with anyone except my (hypothetical) wife, and then only under certain circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735/40 "2008-04-17T19:01:04Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] [My First Period by Aliza Shvartz](http://my1stperiod.com/2064/2106.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val) [/QUOTE] I don’t care about her art project, why would I care about her class schedule? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-choice-art-from-yale-student/445735.md?page=3)