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One of Those Posts That Makes You Stop Scrolling
I am no fan of comedienne Amy Schumer for all of the reasons I don’t have to explain to a Ricochet audience. It’s not just a difference of politics; that difference comes with an entirely different worldview. This is the kind of stuff she posts on the regular:
Our reproductive health, our immigrant communities, our planet’s survival all hang in the balance. In 2020 we can take the power back and it starts at #WomensMarch2020. Join me! https://t.co/MAINGc1ojA
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) January 10, 2020
But it’s been interesting watching Schumer become a mother, however, and witnessing the transformation every woman has gone through is always fascinating to observe, especially when the person is as open as Schumer is. Especially when someone uses humor as she does to diffuse the tension and the struggle. Which is what made this post from her this morning so out of character, and it made me freeze my scrolling thumb.
That still fresh c-section scar. The desperation to reopen it and bring another life into the world.
It reminded me of this column from the recently deceased Elizabeth Wurtzel from several years ago about the point of life.
As a Jew, I am not much concerned with the Pope. It seems to me that he has a difficult job as the head of a corrupt organization run by men who do not have sex and claim to know God personally. But Pope Francis has charm galore. It is quite something. He wants everybody, including people he does not like, to like him, and he has kind words for gay people and murderers—not that they are comparable.
So it is surprising when the Pope comes out with statements suggesting that Catholics ought to, for Christ’s sake, be Catholic: reprimands are so unlike the Francis we have come to know. They’re somehow too Pope-ish. Just the other day Pope Francis said that people who think having a cat or two and a dog is as good as having kids are missing out. All the benefits of child-free life—the vacations and villas, the barefoot dancing, the sex on the kitchen floor—all that will come to naught. “Have you seen it?” Pope Francis asked. “Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.”
As it happens, I’m with Francis.
When I see married people who don’t have kids, I wonder what’s wrong. Really. Because something is. Of course it is. I mean, if you aren’t going to have children, why bother with the rest? Why bother with the $30,000 bash and the white crinoline dress? And you can say that about everything. What do you think we are doing here, biding our time on this planet with our misspent years, justifying our days with our ridiculous schemes of leisure? Is anyone’s life so meaningful? Really? Really, really, really? Is yours?
The existential nightmare of the everyday is way more than even those of us with enormous egos who love what we do can possibly cope with. We are on this earth to keep on keeping on. We are here to reproduce. We are here to leave something behind that is more meaningful than a tech startup or a masterpiece of literature. Everybody knows this. The biggest idiot in the world who thinks he knows better—even he deep down knows this.
And I say this not as religious person but as someone who believes in science. I took human behavioral biology with the amazing Irv Devore my freshman year of college, and early on he taught us that human beings serve our genes—we are here only as temporary vessels to pass along their permanence. This made immediate sense to me because it explains everything: the desire to reproduce is so extreme, so innate, that even people who cannot (and some who really should not) have children at all cannot be stopped from doing so. Look at the abracadabra we do to create fertility when it fails.
And that is what Schumer is doing. We were pregnant at the same time, her with her first and me with my fourth; she gave birth a few weeks before me. She suffered from extreme morning sickness, and while I didn’t during my most recent pregnancy, I have in the past. The increasing desperation to give birth as the months progressed came across in her Instagram posts, and the misery of pregnancy transcends all political and ideological divides. In a weird way, I felt bonded to her through our shared pregnancies, because I felt that same desperation and misery.
Our babies are well under a year old, and so I was surprised to see Schumer not just trying to get pregnant again so soon, but already at the stage of using invasive and painful medical intervention to do so. But then I remembered this Wurtzel column that came back across my radar with her death. She wrote later in the column,
I am 46 and I don’t have children, which is a bit of a problem, because I believe everything I am saying. I also was not married, but I recently got engaged, so I will be soon—and I hope to have a child. If I don’t, I will figure that out. I am very good at figuring things out. And science is even better at it. (Maybe the Pope should reconsider the Catholic Church’s stance on IVF, though.)
She died this week never having had that child.
It took bravery for her to put out into the world her deep desire to have a child, knowing that it probably wouldn’t happen. It takes bravery for Schumer to do the same. This is a deep biological need for any woman, and in this age of trying to deny biology, it’s comforting to see a candid admission of that fact.
Published in General
Uh, no.
There is something profoundly disturbing about posting that picture. After you have your first child you’re supposed to learn very quickly that whatever needs you thought you had are now secondary to the needs of the new tiny human. And that picture shows Ms. Schumer is fixated more herself.
Having been through both procedures in that picture, multiple times, I do not believe it shows that she is more fixated on herself. Rather, it says to me, look at what we will put ourselves through—the pain and hormones and disfigurement— because the desire to have a child is so strong.
I see what EJ is saying – millennials, as a group, are lost. “We” are a band of Narcissuses unable to leave the pool. However, that doesn’t mean the occasional moment of clarity doesn’t occur.
It wouldn’t surprise me if motherhood has had some genuine, positive effect on someone even as callow as Schumer. While she is almost-indubitably a spiritual goner, she may have some value to this world. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t shock me if she’s too dense to be capable of articulating it, or modest enough to admit that she couldn’t possibly do so.
I promise though, I’ve grown up around the most rash and foolish millennials you can find – none of you would enjoy the horror stories I’ve got singed into my memory; yet, I am confident there is reason to be hopeful.
If we lose, it’ll be our fault. Not the Frankfurt School, not modern academia, and certainly not Amy Schumer. I may think little of her choices, but as an archetypal fool, she’s simply the product of the culture that has been forming for some time. Hopefully her questionably-newfound appreciation for procreation will be to the benefit of her children. For if we are going to call ourselves “pro-life,” we ought to have some faith in what can come of a new life.
Bethany’s point makes some powerful points, but Schumer’s and Wurtzel’s views are only acceptable in this culture if they come from the left, and have a Planned Parenthood spokesperson riding in the sidecar to reassure everyone that the author isn’t going all anti-choice on everyone. It’s as if feminists are trying to make the widest possible circle back to basic truths so no-one can accuse them of giving up the Cause, however that’s defined.
And they won’t wonder about their own contributions to a cultural movement to disassemble the norms in favor of a future devoid of obligation to anything but the exploration of the self. He said, crankily.
Bethany knows. Motherhood is a condition that changes things. I’m old now, and in my culture, (devout, conservative) you got married to have children.
Like Elizabeth said, “When I see married people who don’t have kids, I wonder what’s wrong. Really. Because something is. Of course it is. I mean, if you aren’t going to have children, why bother with the rest? Why bother with the $30,000 bash and the white crinoline dress? And you can say that about everything. What do you think we are doing here, biding our time on this planet with our misspent years, justifying our days with our ridiculous schemes of leisure? Is anyone’s life so meaningful? Really? Really, really, really? Is yours?”
If one of my peers didn’t have children within a few years of their marriage, it was sad, because it usually meant something wasn’t going according to plan.
Motherhood changes you. It really is the purpose of our being here: multiply and replenish the earth
My husband wasn’t even all that eager to have a kid, until he was smashed into on his motorcycle and hurt some very strategic–ahem–body parts. After that he was worried that he might not be able to make a child with me. (No problem…we had five in eight years.) But our children are truly the most important part of our lives, and made our marriage more important than it had been before we were responsible for them. Now that they’re all grown and on their own, we still look at them the same way. Without them, we wouldn’t have each other, now.
Yes, you’re also right!
Mom and dad had been married 13 years and mom was 45 when I was born after years of trying, and giving birth at that late an age back in the late 1950s was rare but not totally uncommon, even going well before that — dad was the oldest of 11 and his youngest brother (who turns 90 next month) was born when my grandmother was 46, so the maternal instinct and desire to have children remains strong for women in early mid-life, whether you’re trying for your first or already are on No. 10.
Also if you go back about a dozen or so years, Schumer was not a hardcore doctrinaire liberal feminist when she was one of the semi-regulars on “Red Eye” with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News back at the end of Bush’s term and into the early Obama years. She wouldn’t have kept coming back on Fox, even for a show at 3 a.m. EST, if she had been that way. Her shift into the role of woke speaker of Truth for Pop Culture Power may have been as much a strategic business decision as it was a total ideologically pivot — doors for a comedian open easier in the progressive media world if they think you’re part of hive mind, especially if their eyes already are brightening up because you’re related to the senior Senator from New York.
That shows a lot of cynicism and desire to get ahead any way possible (which would also fit with the joke-stealing allegations over the years against Amy), but it would also mean the normal strident anti-matriarchal feelings of your average militant feminist weren’t there, and would explain the sudden lurch into being obsessed with motherhood.
Someone (I think it was Heinlein) once said that a chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg.
I believe the late Mrs. Wurtzel spoke the truth when it came to her experience & what we all believe about the need to have children–striving for immortality.
I believe, however, that when she said she was good at figuring things out she was deluding herself or perhaps lying in order to delude her audience. I don’t mean this as an accusation, since it may have been the prudent thing to say to liberal women. Maybe, most college educated people, who cannot face their own desperation.
Consider: Even a person of modest intelligence, unless deceived by that very desire for immortality, would notice that evolutionary theory is the death of humanity. Genes are not permanent–nothing is, in modern cosmology. But what’s worse, genes are not human. Evolutionary theory holds that genes wish to reproduce themselves–life strives to live–but no individual being & no species has any permanence. Only genes do, but genes of course themselves change.
Modern science therefore is not only incapable of grounding the individual experience this woman was trying to make sense of, in her cocky, deluded way. It cannot even ground experience at the level of species. You just get a silly pantheism about all living things. Cat video theology. Every animal is your support animal! Well, screw that…
So we must turn from science to comedy if we’re going to acquire any wisdom. It’s no accident that comic Amy Schumer shows the ugliness of the body where Mrs. Wurtzel wanted to show beautiful ideas. Comedy is more about the body, or looking at soul through the body, or looking at the high through the low. Comedy can deal with the ugly without simply explaining it away. Comedy is tied up with shame, whereas our science tries to destroy shame in order to destroy religion. Comedy therefore is far likelier to explain to us our experience without telling these very stupid lies to do with belief in science. Mrs. Wurtzel opposes religion to science, when it comes to believe, but she’s not very smart. Consider: At least the believer who believes in miracles knows that miracles are somehow anti-nature, & does not lie that it’s all perfectly everyday… The believer in God is therefore likelier to listen to the comic than the believer in science–the way in which revelation is astounding is not, of course, the same as the way in which comedy is astounding, but they are similar.
Comedy has to be about something, about a misunderstanding–oh, what’s so funny!–but not just the misunderstanding I’ve shown in the case of the believer in science. It wouldn’t suffice to show how smug & mindless belief in science is, how self-deluded & self-annihilating. One would have to go deeper to explain why it even happens & why it especially deludes the intelligent or over-educated. They’re human, too, beneath the smugness… The problem of comedy is the misunderstanding at the core of all tragedy–we wish for impossible things not despite of what we are, but because of what we are.
Birth & mortality are fundamentally connected. You gotta accept you’re gonna die & prepare your own replacement; if you’re a woman, you risk your life in the bargain; if you’re a man, you have to deal with a certain helplessness to act. That speaks to the human desire to revolt against the necessity of death which is at the core of our fantasies, of tragedy, & therefore the problem comedy has to deal with. Taking the pain & dealing with the fear is a necessary humbling, but it’s much easier dealt with in comedy; &, for the rest, in private. Like it or not, there’s shame & there’s piety involved in it, since it means saying, being human is good & holy. While also admitting that your life is your problem in a way it’s not anyone else’s. We really aren’t connected to others, except in a kind of piety… When our comics themselves turn to sentimental & kinda tragic, it’s a really bad sign that our natural fears of our natural situation are getting out of hand.
Amy Schumer is not funny.
reproductive rights? give me a break… use the pill or keep condoms in your purse
immigrant communities? I’m the son of immigrants… what is disturbing nowadays is immigrants especially those who are illegal hate american and have no desire to assimilate
our planet hangs in the balance? planet earth is resilient. Progressives are not.
man did not create planet earth and man will not destroy planet earth.
it is utter hubris to think we can destroy the planet.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Well, that ruined my day. I don’t think I’ll be eating breakfast. Not only because I had to look at another hideous photograph of Amy Schumer, but because I learned that she reproduced. That can’t be good for the world.
That’s a strange thought. It’s easy to destroy things. For something so large as the earth it would take quite some effort but it’s certainly possible.
You would have to really work at it. Normally destroying things is easy, but destroying the earth would take a lot of planning and hard work. And if you have the discipline to put that much effort into something you are going to find it more rewarding to build something instead.
Missus Guru and I tried for a pretty long time and just as we were about to pull the ripcord and make peace with rocking the DINK life, it happened.
my exact words upon being informed was “its a good thing I am baking a cake then.”
It’s good to see some of these leftists drop their liberal armor and reveal aspects of themselves that are wholly human. Perhaps if they tried being human all the time, their viewpoints would shift to the right . . .
Fixed it for you.
Did you take pictures and post them? Sorry. You do that and it becomes all about you, not the kid.
Yes, but it can be done. Human ingenuity has no bounds. I’m not saying we’re going to do it, it would be madness. But if we had a good reason, we could find a way.
In my generation, abortion became legal. The rally she is cheering for, like last year’s with the “pink hats”, is not about life, it’s about men, conservatives, a thumb in the eye, and ultimately liberal politics. Some people are not cut out to be parents, nor want to. Some are born to be parents, and if they don’t marry, or have kids, they adopt, and are good parents. I know plenty of both. The bottom line is family and being involved.
An old friend that is married – two of his kids had children out of wedlock, almost at the same time. One child moved back home and they welcomed the new grandson with open arms. They have a Catholic background – an extended Italian family – that’s the Pope’s message and any pope. Family. God’s gift. It is the means to get us through this world, physically and spiritually – it’s messy, happy, sad, but it is the pillar by which He gave us to navigate this world. My friend’s kids did not choose abortion – the easy choice. They’re young, and they could have done that. The love and joy that is expressed with these two little ones in their lives says it all. The other sibling, not married and without kids is a happy aunt.
Another friend, who is not married, adopted a brother and sister, out of the country. They opened up a whole new happy world within her family. It’s a sacrifice. Her brother and sister, very successful are married and no kids. It’s their choice, but they love their adopted niece and nephew. We must support families, and encourage these new generations – teaching them what marriage is about, and to be outward focused.
There’s a book in that, dude. Just sayin’.
Some of us were just trying to get laid, and our brains got stuck like this.
We separate sex from procreation (preferred term to reproduction) with contraception and abortion.
We separate procreation from marriage with single parenting and SSM.
We separate marriage from family formation with divorce.
We separate procreation from sex with IVF.
And feminism strangles Feminine in her crib.
And then we wonder why everyone’s so unhappy in a time of tremendous prosperity and unprecedented ability to alleviate suffering. But we #BelieveInScience, which is like saying “I believe in this hammer.”
Science is a tool for attempting to explain the material world, and that’s all it is. To say you “believe” in something is to say you trust it. I trust science when used properly (and only to provide the best explanation to date) the way I trust a hammer to drive a nail. Science has little to say (and nothing profound) about what it means to be human, which is both a physical and a metaphysical reality.
I disagree with @titustechera that we’re seeking permanence through procreation. I think we’re seeking meaning — to be connected with our full humanity. We don’t seek to have children to ease our struggles with death. We seek them sensing it’s the most meaningful thing we’ll ever do with our lives — to participate in God’s creative enterprise.
Hey, I like using needless words!
Man, I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that.
I can’t say I’m moved by the desire for children that prompts a woman to freeze three or five children so she can birth a couple and dump the rest. They say they “believe in science” but Science apparently can’t show them the inherent value of human life.
I “believe” in art. That doesn’t mean art must answer every question and guide every decision.
Distinguishing the essential qualities that make an embryonic human being morally equal to or different from a born baby is a process informed by “science” (confirmed data) but not determined by it. Science provides knowledge. Wisdom is accurate interpretation and ordering of knowledge.
Religion/philosophy is the practice of wisdom. Small wonder that those who hate formal religion lack its benefits and blindly wreak devastation on their own children.
@titustechera,
Have you ever thought about doing an episode on Todd Solondz’s movies. Admittedly, it might be a tough sell to conservatives, but I can’t think of another director who’s managed to identify the vacuity you describe.
Way to go Cow Husband.
I agree with you Skyler but you should still eat breakfast. Even if you aren’t hungry right now you will need the energy later. Even if you aren’t pregnant.
I guess I’m one of those biggest idiots. Penicillin, Calculus and Universal Manumission are more important than an individual child. To take one example, if John D. Rockefeller didn’t start his Standard Oil start up, at least a dozen more children would have died from oil fires from inferior oil. It would be better that he do that than focus on his children or have more children. Children dying from oil fires is still a problem in third world countries.
To be fair, careers are different for dudes. It’s alot easier to work 12 hours a day when you aren’t creating a human from your own flesh.
There are a good deal of humans who are either genetically on the psychopathic spectrum, suffer form severe depression and other mental illnesses and/or are so maltreated as children that it probably would have been better if they had not been born. I cannot in good conscience be pro-life all the time.
That being said I greatly Mr. Lilek’s commentary that,
Human beings are meant to be connected to each other and while individual rights are sacrosanct, self-love is not the end all be all of human existence. That message makes people incredibly unhappy and it is probably part of the reason why the suicide rate is escalating.