Ladyparts by Deborah Copaken ****

Ladyparts is Deborah Copaken’s memoir (a 435-page opus) of her challenges as a female journalist and single parent. Her experiences are horrific. At one point she lists over a dozen violent incidents starting at age thirteen which include sexual harassment, rape, and muggings. She was involved with #MeToo only to see her high-profile harasser pardoned by our 45^th president. Her indictment of the U.S. medical system is two-pronged. First is the difficulty of getting healthcare in the U.S. and the second is the ignorance of female medical conditions everywhere. Her first-hand experiences include a dozen operations, including some you might not have heard of: trachelectomy and vaginal cuff dehiscence repair. Other societal issues which receive her scorn are predatory employers, failing schools, divorce, childcare, post-internet journalism, drug companies, at-will employment, middle-age dating, American capitalism, privilege (white, male, rich), and politicians.

This book is an indictment of the treatment of women with a focus on the structural problems specific to the U.S.

She tried to end on an upbeat note but didn’t. The final line reported that her slumlord would evict her from her rent-control apartment. In two months, we will receive written notice from our landlord’s lawyer, saying our two-year lease will not be renewed.

My youngest has informed me he will not be celebrating the Fourth of July this year because the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves; and Blacks in this country are still not free; and women are still paid less than men; and Indigenous people were murdered so that we could take over their land; and there’s a fascist in the White House holding unmasked rallies and keeping immigrant children in Covid-infected cages; so what, exactly, is there to celebrate?

Her alphabetical list of operations:

I’ve actually had to jot down all of my surgeries in alphabetical order in the notes section of my iPhone, otherwise I can never remember them all: adenoidectomy (1972), appendectomy (2006), D&C #1 (1983), D&C #2 (2000), frenectomy (1988), hysterectomy (2012), inguinal hernia repair (1997), meniscectomy (2018), Morton’s neuroma repair #1 (1995), Morton’s neuroma repair #2 (2020), trachelectomy (2017), vaginal cuff dehiscence repair (2017).

A summary of violence:

I’ve also endured: the policeman in Mexico who grabbed my prepubescent breast while I was asking him for directions (1979); the older teenage boy who placed my young hand down his pants (1980); the large stranger who broke into my college dorm while I was in it typing a paper and threatened to rape me (1985); the combat boot kicked into the left side of my skull from an unseen assailant on my way home from the library (1986); the two classmates in my documentary film class who mistook my enthusiasm for our film for consent to have both of their hands under my clothing (1986); the first thief who robbed me at gunpoint (1987, probably crack-related); the second thief who robbed me at gunpoint (also 1987, also probably crack-related); the group of drunk college boys who collectively assaulted my body outside the video store near my dorm before I beat one with the hard plastic shell of A Clockwork Orange—homework for a seminar on men and violence—and escaped (also 1987, when I was twenty-one, a bad year to be in my body); the fellow student who raped me on the night before our college graduation (1988); the white-bearded rabbi in Israel who stuck his tongue down my throat and placed his hands on my breasts when I was interviewing him (1988); the Frenchman who took advantage of a Métro strike in Paris to fondle my ass (1988); the businessman, in an angry rush, who pushed me down the subway stairs when I was seven months pregnant (1997); the countless frotteurs I’ve had the not-so-unique displeasure of witnessing (1985–present day); and the creepy older dude from Tinder who followed me home on the subway and felt it was his tongue’s right to enter my mouth without asking (2015). Women, maybe you know what I’m talking about when I lay it all out like that.

Her indictment of capitalism:

laws and policies favoring landlords over tenants; a deliberately inflated housing market; the 2008 recession; a 40 percent rent hike; the for-profit divorce racket; a for-profit health insurance industry; the outrageous cost of an American college education; the gig economy; private equity takeovers, which stomp on workers like so many underfoot ants; historic levels of income inequality; and a government too corrupt, incompetent, and mired in partisan acrimony to keep dog from eating dog.

Privilege:

White privilege and male privilege no doubt, but also sheer monetary privilege which, as the divide between rich and poor grows ever wider, becomes increasingly crucial. The summer after my sophomore year at college, I applied for and got accepted to an internship at NBC that I ended up having to turn down, not having realized it was unpaid.

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