All posts tagged "Nadya Suleman"

LOS ANGELES — A California fertility doctor who infamously helped a woman give birth to octuplets lost a legal bid Thursday to win back his medical license, stripped from him due to "gross negligence."

The hits keep on coming with octuplet mother Nadya Suleman, who published photos of her disturbingly distended pregnant belly, provoking another round of ill-placed outrage and half-hearted feminist defenses like this one. It is indeed fascinating how people are stuck in moral outrage mode over Suleman, when it seems to me the proper response is compassion for her not even remotely hidden mental health issues that her poor family can't cope with. But it does draw up something I've thought about a lot, which is how our moral responses are conflated with feelings of disgust, and indeed many people have a lot of trouble telling the difference from feeling disgusted with something and feeling morally outraged about it.

[rebelmouse-image 24748557 original_size="160x120" expand=1]Confession time: I think that show "The Soup" is fucking hilarious and I'm trying to watch it regularly now. Their reaction to the "scandal" over Jessica Simpson's weight is worth the price of admission alone. It's the only place I'd ever see clips from "Jon & Kate Plus 8", which is how I came across a clip, apparently typical, of Kate screaming at Jon because he forgot to use a coupon for some item. At this point in time, I had the stunning realization that the octuplets mom, who is being lambasted from every corner of the planet, might be on the sane side of over-fertile. She has certainly exposed how the pro-patriarchal arguments about the glories of unemployed, fertile femininity and the embracing of human life were all 100% empty---in the end, it's all about having a man, and that was the difference between hero and villain. But maybe Nadya Suleman saw "Jon & Kate" and realized that you can have a litter of small children or a happy, peaceful marriage, but you can't have both. (I guess the Duggars achieved it by removing Michelle Duggar's personality and will from the equation.)