This is definitely a rant. It is most certainly cranky, but not directed at anyone in particular. Feel free to take it personally only to the extent that it might give you a little something to think about. Please do not take it personally to the point that it offends you or hurts your feelings.
< grumpy >
Mpreg. This rant isn't really about mpreg at all, but that's where we are going to start. I love that someone came up with the idea of magical male pregnancies, because they make a marvelous plot device. Sometimes I write mpreg, sometimes I ignore the concept of offspring completely, and once I actually had Draco make fun of Harry for thinking it was a possibility.
My novel
Appearances absolutely required the possibility of mpreg, because the novel started with Lucius making overtures toward Harry for his son. Lucius wouldn't have thought of Harry as a long term way to "fix" the Malfoy name and reputation if Harry couldn't make children with Draco that were genetically from both of them.
But in other stories, such as
Have I Kept You Waiting Long? I chose not to allow for the possibility of mpreg, because I wanted Harry and Draco to have to overcome homophobia to be together. (And I do believe that here in the Muggle world some homophobia and heterosexism does arise from the way humans traditionally get pregnant.)
So to me mpreg is a building block of the fic world, to add or remove as it suits my purposes. Of course, that’s not really the issue at all.
The issue behind this rant is that more than once now I have seen comments from someone who feels that anyone with a functional womb in their body must, by definition, now be female. That if I have Harry get Draco pregnant that I have turned Draco into a woman. And that pisses me right the hell off.
Sometimes it truly astonishes me that fandom, a place populated almost exclusively by women with some gay men thrown in, a place so modern as to take place pretty much exclusively on the internet, can be so old-fashioned, conservative and small-minded.
Womanhood does not equal womb. Or motherhood, for that matter. So it
really pisses me off when someone tells me that I’ve turned Draco into a woman by getting him pregnant with Harry’s baby. A woman who has had a hysterectomy is still a woman. A woman whose breasts have been removed is still a woman. A girl to whom the universe gave a cock at birth (sometimes the universe has the worst freaking sense of humour) but has known always that she's a girl/woman is still a woman. A woman who can't seem to get pregnant is still a woman. A woman who does not
want to get pregnant is still a woman. A woman who births her babies via medical and/or surgical intervention is still a woman. A woman who wants to have sex with other women is still a woman.
And a man, even if I give him a womb, is
not a woman.
Physiology does not determine behavior, desire, or the entire inner self.
Biology does not equal destiny.
Question gender.
So there.
< / grumpy >
