"But Ladies’ Man: The Careless Heart of John F Kennedy is far more interesting than its tacky title suggests."

"(Sloppy subtitle too: Kennedy’s heart was not exactly the organ he was putting about back then.) Leamer has become known for telling the stories of the people around a famous person: Capote’s Women, Hitchcock’s Blondes, Warhol’s Muses — you get the picture. He goes through the stories of some of Kennedy’s mistresses here and includes first-hand interviews with the few still surviving, such as the posh Radcliffe student Diana de Vegh, whom Kennedy eventually installed as a researcher in the White House so he could have quickies with her in the Lincoln Bedroom. 'It was chit and chat and then some sex and then go home,' de Vegh tells Leamer, making Kennedy’s seduction methods sound on a par with a teenage boy’s...."

From "Why did JFK risk everything for casual sex?/In Ladies’ Man, Laurence Leamer asks what drove President Kennedy to conduct affairs with everyone from his secretary to an alleged Nazi spy" (London Times). 

"Leamer’s main argument is that Kennedy’s compulsive sex life was driven by his poor health.... He also had repeated painful STDs due to his refusal to wear condoms.... If I had to pick Kennedy’s lowest point in this book

"The surrogate mother’s rights over the fetus she is carrying are greatly curtailed and she loses all rights to the baby she delivers."

Wrote Gloria Steinem, quoted by Kathryn Jean Lopez in "Gloria Steinem, a Voice Against Commercial Surrogacy" (National Review).

In 2019, when Andrew Cuomo sought to legalize commercial surrogacy, Steinem wrote:

A state that medicalizes and rents out female bodies — with third party profit as a motive and little or no regulation of risk to the women egg donors and surrogate wombs — jeopardizes a woman’s fundamental right to health and freedom and puts profit ahead of the long-term welfare of the fetus.

The use of the word "medicalizes" made me wonder what Steinem thought about hormone and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria.

Grok pointed me to her 1977 essay, "If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot," where she expressed dismay that some people "surgically mutilate their own bodies" when what we need to change our ideas about sex roles.

"Women in rural Devon are being coached on how to give birth in the back of a car after their local hospital shut its maternity service."

That's in the London Times.

Catherine Mchomvu, an antenatal class teacher at the Devon Antenatal Family Centre, said it was important that women and their partners had supplies, including towels, blankets and water in the car....  “It’s about trying to create the birth environment that you would normally have in the hospital or at home, in your car.

And here's an article from 12 days ago: "'Maternity deserts' leave women with two-hour journey to give birth/Mothers-to-be fear delivering their babies on the roadside as NHS staffing shortages and closures leave swathes of England without nearby maternity care."

"If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity..."

"... then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts. Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement. 'It almost feels like a memo went out,' said Jill Filipovic, the host of the 'Week in Women' podcast. 'They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, "I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do," and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.' If in doubt, simply consider posts on X and Instagram last month from [Katie] Miller, who was then some nine months pregnant. 'In honor of Mother’s Day,' she wrote, 'a reminder that peak feminism is having babies. The most radical thing a woman can do is embrace her biological destiny.' Along with her words came a portrait taken from the side, in which Miller is shown wearing low-slung, unbuttoned jeans and a black sports bra, her dark hair cascading in waves down her back. Like the stretchy and black knit Milly dress with a tulip on the front worn by Usha Vance for a military mothers celebration at the White House, and the form-fitting gowns worn by Leavitt and Miller to the White House Correspondents’ dinner in April, the photograph placed Miller’s rounded stomach front and center, enshrining her pregnancy for all to see...."

The NYT fashion writer Vanessa Friedman inspects the fecund right-wing bodies in "The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image/Usha Vance, along with Katie Miller and Karoline Leavitt, shows how much is said by an expectant silhouette, without anyone saying a word" (NYT).

Here's how Katie induced Vanessa to propagate adjectives:

"Over oysters and soft cheeses — things she wouldn’t be able to eat while pregnant — she raised a glass to her 'tribe' and the awesome strength of women."

I'm reading "They Started I.V.F., Then Split. Now Who Gets Custody of the Embryos? For 47-year-old Erin Millender, this will likely be her last chance to become a mother. Her husband no longer wants to have a child with her" (NYT).

That's a gift link, because you've got to read the details. I had a strong opinion based on the headline, but then my sympathy shifted, more than once, as I read the article. The story — the details about this particular woman and man — gets really complicated. 

"G IS FOR PREGNANCY/A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man…"

"... it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship."

Wrote Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Everything (and Everyone) Brigitte Bardot Scorned" (NYT).

She had one child. See "All About Brigitte Bardot's Estranged Son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier" (People):

"I'm not made to be a mother," Bardot wrote in her memoir.... "I'm not adult enough — I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child."... 

"I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid,” she wrote....

Bardot also wrote that she had two abortions before the pregnancy she carried to term, one of which was almost fatal.... she also revealed that she attempted suicide.... "I wanted to free myself — in every sense of the word...."

"This is what it means to be a disruptor. They will try to discredit you. They will lie about you. They will attempt to silence what they don’t understand."

Writes Emilee Saldaya of The Free Birth Society, quoted by The Guardian in "Five key findings from our investigation into the Free Birth Society."

The Guardian tells us: "The Free Birth Society (FBS) is a business run from North Carolina that promotes the idea of women giving birth without midwives or doctors present. It is led by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark, ex-doulas turned social media influences...."

Here's the rest of the FBS statement, on Instagram. Highlights:

When you challenge the status quo, it pushes back. 

Peddling propaganda on mainstream news channels is nothing new....
The [Free Birth Society] message is simple:

• We make our own decisions.
• Birth is a normal biological process.
• We have the right to enact our own biology, even in a culture that shames it.
• Freebirth is ours to choose or not choose....

This moment is not a battle; it’s a mirror. A collective reckoning about birth, power, and spirituality.

The eternal dance of darkness and light continues in infinite forms.

I am not afraid of the shadows.
They reveal what needs to be seen.

And so, we continue
because the work is meaningful.
Because it is needed.
Because women deserve better than the narrative they’ve inherited....

"On bad days, Ms. Martinez said, the pain is 'unbearable.' So she was confused and upset on Monday when President Trump encouraged pregnant women to 'tough it out'..."

"... without Tylenol. He claimed that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, could be a cause of autism, even though doctors say it is safe in moderation. Ms. Martinez immediately contacted her doctor, asking whether she should continue taking pain medication. After hearing that it was OK, she still called her mother in tears, overwhelmed by the fear of being blamed for whatever might go wrong.... In interviews with pregnant women and doctors, they described how Mr. Trump’s announcement added a new wrinkle of worry. As it is, pregnant women do not need to look very far for advice and admonishment; it comes from all directions, even from strangers on the street...."

From "A President’s ‘Surreal’ Advice Worries Pregnant Women/The administration’s guidance to avoid Tylenol and 'tough it out' prompted anxiety, especially for expectant women who face pain" (NYT).

One reason to avoid having children is the fear that you'll do something wrong or — like that mother in tears — the fear that other people will think you did something wrong. Why complicate your life with such things? The babies themselves may grow up into beings who tell you you've done it wrong. Thank God some women dare to have children. But what are the rest of us to do — we who feel called to protect children? Only Ms. Martinez knows how bad her pain is and how much Tylenol might help. Who but she should decide if it's worth the risk to take Tylenol after the President has cast aspersions upon it?

By the way, here's an interesting episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast: "Why Population Collapse is Closer Than You Think."

Does Tylenol cause autism? There's an obvious and now unavoidable experiment that will answer the question.

Now, absolutely no one should take acetaminophen during pregnancy. Who would?

Later, take note of whether the rate of autism declines.

I'm seeing: "Scientists have reacted with dismay at the announcement [linking acetaminophen to autism], warning that the 'fearmongering' will prevent women from accessing pain relief during pregnancy" (in "Taking Tylenol in pregnancy linked to autism, Trump to claim/The president promises ‘one of the biggest medical announcements in US history’, claiming a discovery as to why the disorder developed and treatment" (London Times)).

What's the opposite of "fearmongering"? False reassurance? I don't think this is fearmongering but a wise balance of factors. Who would take acetaminophen while pregnant if it might cause autism? I suspect that what these "scientists" are "dismayed" about is not about the future but the past. It's not that women are going to be afraid. Going forward, they'll just refrain from using acetaminophen. It's easy to use an abundance of caution with respect to something so specific. What's dismaying is the burden of guilt to be laid on women who have already used acetaminophen during pregnancy.

"Brigitte Macron to submit photographs to court proving she is a woman."

The London Times reports.

“It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward,” the lawyer said. “It is a process that she will have to subject herself to in a very public way. But she’s willing to do it. She is firmly resolved to do what it takes to set the record straight,” he told the BBC. The court in Delaware would hear expert testimony that will be “scientific in nature.” Photographs would show Mrs Macron pregnant and with her three children, he added.

So... these are not nude pictures, just photographs in maternity clothing. Macron brought the lawsuit and is seeking damages, so she's responsible for her own predicament. I'm unsympathetic because she's a public figure. Object to the lies (and the truths) told against you and move on. 

At the bottom of the page:

"Le Slapgate" — I hadn't seen that expression before. Didn't know the "-gate" suffix — the all-purpose designation of scandal — had reached Europe, and it's funny to see it with "Le" — the all-purpose designation that we've got something French... French and masculine. 

"By the time she was a teenager, she had anorexia and worried she would 'never be skinny enough to love,' she said."

"At 17, she weighed 88 pounds, and a doctor told her that if she lost any more weight, she could die. She recalls thinking that death 'sounded quiet, it sounded calm,' she writes. 'I knew that if I died, I could stop trying.' Thinness felt safe, she writes, but it was actually the opposite: 'I was dancing with death and getting date-raped and drinking to excess and popping pills like Tic Tacs and exposing myself to all kinds of delicious abuse just to feel something.' She has been in remission from her eating disorder for many years, she said... She writes about an exploratory visit with a fertility expert... [T]he specialist, who treats other celebrities, brought up weight gain: She could 'get away' with putting on only about 20 pounds during pregnancy, including the weight of the baby. That would mean a smaller child, the doctor added, but if she wanted her kid to be taller later on, there was always human growth hormone."

From "At Least Zosia Mamet Can Laugh About It/In her new book, the actress turns her acid wit to Hollywood’s darker side and her own personal struggles" (NYT).

"After becoming pregnant with their son, St. Clair and Musk’s relationship progressed.... In November, Musk responded to a selfie she texted him saying: 'I want to knock you up again.'"

"While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.... She complied with the request to not name Musk on the birth certificate. Not long after the birth, [Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared] Birchall pushed St. Clair to sign documents keeping the father of the baby and details regarding her relationship with Musk secret in return for financial support. The offer was a one-time fee of $15 million for a home and living expenses, plus an additional $100,000 a month until the baby turned 21. Musk told her by text it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby, describing himself as the '#2 after Trump for assassination.' He added that 'only the paranoid survive.' But she didn’t sign...."

From "The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers/The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump. He recently took a paternity test in a battle with one woman over money and privacy" (Wall Street Journal).

The life of a one-man genius sperm bank is not easy.

"If you cannot get married and start a family within three quarters, the company will terminate your labor contract...."

"Not responding to the call of the country, not marrying and having children, is disloyal."

Said the memo to unmarried employees of Shandong Shuntian Chemical Group, quoted in "Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out/As China’s government worries about the falling birthrate, some private employers have ordered workers to do their part, or else" (NYT). 

The notice from the chemical company, which began circulating online last month, was directed at unmarried employees between the ages of 28 and 58, including divorced workers. As online ridicule grew, the company quickly backtracked. Reached by phone, a woman at its headquarters said the notice had been retracted, and that the local government had ordered the company to undergo “rectification.”...

Years ago, when the Chinese authorities wanted to limit births, they resorted to coercive measures like forced abortions and sterilizations. (The city where the chemical company is based, Linyi, was particularly notorious for such tactics.) Now that Beijing is trying to do the opposite, it is taking a softer approach, perhaps to avoid setting off large-scale resistance.

"... Miri Sakai, 24, a graduate student in sociology, testified that she had no interest in either sexual or romantic relationships or in having children."

"Although women have made some progress in the workplace in Japan, cultural expectations for their family duties are much as they have always been. 'The lifestyle of not getting married or having children is still rejected in society,' Ms. Sakai said. 'Is it natural to have children for the sake of the country?' she asked. 'Are women who do not give birth to children themselves unnecessary for society?'... Kazane Kajiya, 27, testified last week that her desire not to have children was 'a part of my innate values.' 'It is precisely because these feelings cannot be changed that I just want to live, easing as much of the discomfort and psychological distress I feel about my body as possible,' she said.... At one point, Ms. Kajiya, who is married, considered whether she was actually a transgender man. But she decided that she was 'totally fine with being a woman, and I love it. I just don’t like having the fertility that enables me to have babies with men.'"

From "In Japan, These Women Want to Opt Out of Motherhood More Easily/A lawsuit challenges the onerous requirements for getting sterilized, calling the regulations paternalistic and a violation of women’s constitutional rights" (NYT).

I wonder how common it is for a young woman to mistake her desire not to have a baby for transgenderism. Imagine going to the extreme of transitioning when all you really wanted was sterilization. 

"Evelyn, half-Native American and half-Black, with curly, sandy brown hair, felt internally broken as the weight of unmet expectations..."

"... and the fear of the unknown seemed to overtake her when she accidentally became pregnant. While Evelyn struggled academically, Whiteman had degrees, a community of friends, and a supportive, boisterous Grenadian family. But after struggling to find a Black sperm donor, she would stand in the entryway of the empty guest bedroom in her newly constructed home, praying and longing for a baby. Now Evelyn and Whiteman were bound together, by a child...."

From "After abortion attempts, two women now bound by child" (WaPo)(free-access link, so you can discern the abortion and racial politics for yourself).

Background: "America has a Black sperm donor shortage. Black women are paying the price. Black men account for fewer than 2 percent of sperm donors at cryobanks. Their vials are gone in minutes."

"Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory."

Wrote Chief Justice Tom Parker, in a concurring opinion, quoted in "Alabama Rules Frozen Embryos Are Children, Raising Questions About Fertility Care/The ruling raises worrisome legal issues for would-be parents far beyond Alabama whose hopes for children may depend on in vitro fertilization" (NYT).

It has become standard medical protocol during in vitro fertilization to extract as many eggs as possible from a woman, then to fertilize them to create embryos before freezing them. Generally, only one embryo is transferred at a time into the uterus in order to maximize the chances of successful implantation and a full-term pregnancy.

“But what if we can’t freeze them?” [asked the head of a group that represents the interests of infertility patients]. “Will we hold people criminally liable because you can’t freeze a ‘person’? This opens up so many questions.”...

I'm seeing the idea that the economics of the infertility treatment business have been radically transformed (at least in Alabama). 

"I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs."

Said Pope Francis, quoted in "Francis Urges Ban on Surrogacy, Calling It 'Despicable'/The pope said that an unborn child must not be 'turned into an object of trafficking,' expanding his condemnation of a practice already illegal in Italy and some other European countries" (NYT).

Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy and compensated surrogacy is also illegal or restricted in much of Europe.... Surrogate mothers in the United States and Canada are often hired by Europeans, including same-sex couples, seeking to have children, though some American states have outlawed the practice. 

Francis, a constant critic of consumerism’s corrosive effects on humanity, is deeply wary that a profit motive will warp the traditional creation of life.... 

"No, it’s not ethical. It’s actually kinda repulsive. You’re treating kids like a commodity..."

"... and the mom like a vending machine. You don’t even know what it’s like to raise one kid, and you’re already optimizing the process to save money. This isn’t BOGOF. It’s a human being. Sheesh."

Says the top-rated comment on a letter to the NYT ethics adviser, in "Is It OK to Hire a Surrogate to Bear Twins? The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on the financial realities of family planning."

BOGOF = buy one get one free.

The advice seeker and his husband want 2 children, and the idea was to save money by contracting for twins. 

"Generally speaking, innovation is what weaker individuals do in order to overcome their relative disadvantage."

"From a scientific perspective, female primates have more to gain—and more to lose. Most are smaller and more vulnerable than the males. Given that their bodies are the ones that have to build, birth, and nurse children, females also have more urgent food and safety needs than males. So if our female ancestors were also good problem solvers—as higher primates are—then it makes sense for them to have been inventors who adapted around their limitations.... Gynecology is absolutely essential for our species’ evolutionary fitness.... To invent gynecology, protohumans needed to be able to trust one another enough to be around one another at those crucial moments of vulnerability: labor, birth, and early nursing. That’s why the arrival of midwives is one of those moments in hominin history for which we can truly say, 'This is when we started to become human.' It would have required a profoundly cooperative female society and a social structure that rewarded helpful behaviors...."

Writes Cat Bohannon, in "The Greatest Invention in the History of Humanity/The very reason we’ve managed to succeed as a species is gynecology" (The Atlantic). 

That article was adapted from Bohannon's book, "Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution."

"Noting that forty-five per cent of British women cannot find the vagina on an unmarked diagram, while fifty-nine per cent of American women cannot find the uterus..."

"... a shocking fact that Nuttall blames in part on the hard-to-remember Latinate words—she laments the loss of terms such as 'wings,' 'gates,' and 'ports' that once described female anatomy. She dislikes 'period' as a word for menstruation: much better is 'the fluidity' of the long-lost 'overflownis.' In place of the Latinate 'deliver,' which to Nuttall sounds 'as if the baby’s just handed to us out of the tinfoiled crib of a takeaway food courier,' she suggests the sturdy Middle English of 'barnish' or 'bearn.' As a word campaigner, Nuttall is blithely decisive when it doesn’t matter, and cagey when it does. She is happy to advocate for words that have no chance of taking off, or to judge a word for a history that is no longer expressed in its meaning. But on subjects that she has identified as politically contentious—exactly where etymological expertise, wisely or not, is most sought—she is anxiously neutral. 'Queer,' she writes, has been reclaimed 'by some'; 'for others,' it 'remains an irredeemable slur.' Phrases like 'pregnant people' and 'people with a uterus' are 'for some,' helpful, precise, and inclusive; 'for others,' this language 'obscures social reality' or is 'dehumanising.'... 'Taking into account patriarchy’s habit of urging women to be quiet and of caricaturing those women who do speak up or out as gossipy, frivolous, hysterical, dull or bitchy, it seems regressive to stifle women’s words, however progressive the motivation. Each woman must have the terms of her own choosing.'"

From "How Much Do Words Matter? A scholar of medieval literature believes that words used in the past can empower women in the present" (The New Yorker), discussing the book "Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words," by Jenni Nuttall. My excerpt leans toward quoting Nuttall. The article itself is by S.C. Cornell, and this is this author's first New Yorker article.