Tom Piatak

May 03, 2008

According to Charles Lane’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Aliza Shvarts has refused to acknowledge in writing that her “art” project was all a lie, and hence it was not displayed by Yale.  In fact, she insisted that she had inseminated herself and sought to induce miscarriages, but admitted that she did not know if she was ever pregnant.  Shvarts’ intent, apparently, was to subvert Aristotle and Aquinas.  She wanted to “assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form.  It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are ‘meant’ to do from their physical capability.”  Shvarts claims that “it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are ‘meant’ to birth a child.”

One is not too surprised hearing this from a Yale art major; this is the sort of nonsense they are taught.  What is surprising is Yale’s squeamishness about Shvarts’ “art.”  If a woman really does have an absolute “right to choose,” what is wrong with a female art student repeatedly inseminating herself with donated sperm, inducing miscarriages, and turning the whole thing into her senior art project?  After all, it is her body to do with as she pleases, isn’t it?