PROOF

Alicia: "You did great today, Caitlin! Really great."
Caitlin: "You don't have to be nice. I'm fine."
Alicia: "Wow, I really fucked up. Gosh. I don't even know what to say."
Caitlin: "I'm just doing wedding invitations. That's the secret stuff I was hiding from you before. It wasn't Rita Wilson's business card or a list of David Lee's enemies or anything like that."

Alicia: "Listen, I was an asshole to you earlier..."
Caitlin: "Rosy glow in my rear window, sweetie. I actually really like you. Don't stress."
Alicia: "No I mean like I was awful. I just... Being here, at this law firm, at this particular time, without any friends whatsoever except Diane who like barely likes me, finding out I was a Caitlin, questioning everything I'm about... I just lost track. I was one of the barfing, fucking rat people for a second. I thought the thought you don't think."
Caitlin: "Seriously, don't worry about it. You're great!"

Alicia: "Well, I am also here to question your choices."
Caitlin: "Lay it on me, babe."

And the thing is, the Mommy Wars conversation has to change shape too, because it doesn't even make sense anymore. Like Diane said, we've all changed shape. And yes, I guess it's a little ouch to see somebody throwing away the thing that you bled and bleed for, I guess that's a sharp pain at privilege that doesn't go away. But what's always struck me about the Mommy Wars conversation is that it's built on the faulty premise that people don't get pregnant -- women do. And I mean, that's obviously what the whole contraceptive-rights bullshit pretend argument this winter has been about, just like gay marriage made me your political football two years ago, but it's still pretty fascinating to think about that:

About a world where Family Leave isn't just this Title IX concession, and it's not that you hire Marthas over Caitlins because of the ROI, and people leave work to have babies and come back to work when they feel like it. Where you don't ever have to look at the unfair cold equations of hiring a man over a woman because never once in history has a man pulled this shit, because pregnancy and parenting are things that happen to everybody, instead of just people who don't count. Imagine that world, where pregnancy and parenthood are a thing that happens. A regular, normal, everyday thing that happens. To people.