Yale “miscarriage artist” confesses to hoax? Update: I don’t know if I miscarried or not, says “artist”

posted at 7:27 pm on April 17, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Well, who knows. It’s not like anyone’s going to sift through the evidence to make sure.

“Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art,” a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said. “She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.”

Ms. Klasky went on to suggest that Yale would not have permitted a project of the sort described in the student newspaper. “Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.”

Some commenters were skeptical right off the bat this morning, on the theory that it’s hard to generate much “proof” of multiple miscarriages in a school year. To miscarry three or more times in so short a span, you’d have to do it each time at a sufficiently early stage that the result would be hard to distinguish from normal monthly output. Which is what this probably was/is.

I guess she showed the heteronormative patriarchy a thing or two about overreacting to, um, serial abortion as a form of highbrow entertainment.

Update: Sounds like Shvarts didn’t do much sifting through the evidence either. The intent was there, but maybe not the result. Nuance:

Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.”…

Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.

How loathsome is she? Follow the link to see who provided this quote: “This ‘project’ is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage.” The Church, you say? Not quite.

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