The XX Factor: What women really think.

She Rented a Woman's Womb and Then Was Rude to the Landlady

Here's a post from Slate contributor Nina Shen Rastogi, who's having technical difficulties:

Susannah,

I think the galling thing about Kuczynski's Times piece wasn't her decision to have a child via gestational surrogacy—I think lots of people can relate to the intense desire to have a baby that's genetically related to you. (As Shakespeare noted ominously: "Die single"—i.e., childless—"and thine image dies with thee.") What was upsetting about the piece was her sheer tone-deafness. Take the following passage, for example:

When we came across Cathy's application, we saw that she was by far the most coherent and intelligent of the group. She wrote that she was happily married with three children. Her answers were not handwritten in the tiny allotted spaces; she had downloaded the original questionnaire and typed her responses at thoughtful length. Her attention to detail was heartening. And her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.

A lower-income person who's "coherent" and knows how to type—gee, that's just like finding a mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy! Kuczynski just ends up seeming patronizingly elitist and sort of oblivious throughout the piece. I found myself wanting something deeper, more insightful—some real, felt evidence that the experience had actually taught her something. I would have also been happy with a nice middle-finger retort to anyone who would question her choices—but her faux-genteel, halfway-apologetic stance didn't fly with me. (Though I will say, I did really like this line on Page 8: "She could be seen as the fertile, glowing mother-to-be as well as the hemorrhoidal, flatulent, lumpen pregnant woman. I could be the erotic, perennially sensual nullipara, the childbirth virgin, and yet I was also the dried-up crone with a uterus full of twigs.")

But honestly, Kuczynski didn't have a chance in hell of winning my sympathy once I saw the accompanying photos. There's Cathy, the birth mother, literally barefoot and pregnant on a dirty porch. And then there's Kuczynski, looking regal in her neat separates, on the lawn of her sprawling Southampton home, while a black "baby nurse"—seriously, that's what the caption says—stands smartly at attention (but without pulling focus). Even the cover is a doozy—couldn't someone have ironed Cathy's khakis? Or at least told her to close her mouth?