"You going to keep it in a box?": Or, why I can't cope with mpreg

[celandineb]

We watched The Life of Brian several days ago and I realized that this is the scene that pops into my head every time I run into an mpreg story.

Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan -- you haven't got a womb. Where's the fetus

Comments

[jelazakazone]

Sorry to hear about the car. I hope you get to yoga. I'm so excited to get to go to yoga tomorrow (provided my fever doesn't disrupt life...)

Sorry to hear about the headache. Wish there was some magic bullet I could tell you about that would help. Is it a migraine? If so, you can try sniffing peppermint oil or extract.

[celandineb]

I have the car back, unfixed. They've ordered the necessary (and, of course, expensive) part and it might be in tomorrow, so that if I can get the car in to them by 4 it would be fixed; otherwise, not till next Tuesday. *sigh*

But at least I will get to yoga tonight. One small good thing today, about the only one.

Not a migraine - I don't get migraines. Just one of the Truly Evil Headaches I seem to get every several months or so. Tylenol and/or Advil helps some, unfortunately not enough.

[a_d_medievalist]

Alleve works better than advil for me, but anything works better with a nice cup of strong, sweet, tea. The caffeine really does help -- excedrin migraine is also pretty good, although it doesn't work for my migraines.

The one mpreg story that worked for me was in a recent Sheri Tepper book -- Maybe "The Visitor?" a couple of years ago. And it was the circumstances that made it work, rather than the physical explanation ...

[celandineb]

Yeah, I get caffeine headaches sometimes too, but it's not helping much this time. :-(

I've read a fair number of Sheri Tepper's books, but not that one. Have to look for it sometime and see if she can convince me. There are fandoms in which it might be workable, I imagine, just none that I read - magic in HP can only go so far and still be believable. There are things that magic can't do, like directly conquer death, for instance, and for me mpreg is definitely one of those things. Just ain't nowhere for that darned fetus to gestate, y'know?

[fungus_files]

lol. that film has the BEST scenes. my fave scene is also the 'romans go home' one. I studied Latin for 2 yrs (yes, all of 2 yrs... ;) ) when I was in high school and was happily following the centurion's declensions.

I also laugh every time I hear someone say "juniper berries", no matter what the context. :)

[celandineb]

I like it better than Holy Grail, myself, even though Brian is out of my time period (if one can refer to such things, given that it is Monty Python...)

[cruisedirector]

MPREG does nothing for me on an emotional or erotic level, so I pretty much never read it. But in fandoms that have warp drive and transporters or Apparition and Avada Kedavra, it just doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

[celandineb]

But even magic has limitations - the Weasleys can't conjure gold out of nothing, Madam Pomfrey has the Skele-Gro and other potions but they don't heal instantly or without pain, and so on. So I still find mpreg unrealistic - there's a reason why female mammals have wombs, to nourish the fetus, and without that I just can't see how it could possibly work. *shrugs* I could conceivably be convinced that an alien race can do it, because they're alien... but not humans.

[cruisedirector]

Magic has the limitations the writer put on it. So there can be ghosts, but Sirius can't come back, without any straightforward explanation of how this works logically, scientifically or spiritually. That said, if humans can take Gillyweed to temporarily grow gills or Polyjuice to temporarily appear to be an exact DNA duplicate of someone else, I just don't find it to be a big deviation for there to be some potion that would create a nine-month womb inside a male body.

Why a writer would WANT to do that is a different question -- it's biologically possible to make certain men lactate now, but very, very few have ever wanted to try it. My problem with most MPREG is the essentialism of gender roles that goes on even in stories where men can get pregnant, not with the men being pregnant in and of itself, which I think can be magically or technologically workable in a lot of the fandoms where I play.

[celandineb]

My problem with most MPREG is the essentialism of gender roles that goes on even in stories where men can get pregnantWell, there's definitely that too. What is the necessity of having (frex) Harry be pregnant? (Ew. *shudders* But for the sake of discussion.) If the writer wants him to be undergoing physical traumas, there are innumerable other types of illness and injury (not that pregnancy is precisely either of those, but you know what I mean). If it's the emotional upheaval, again, many other more reasonable ways to achieve that. If it's having a kid, well, what's wrong with adoption? Mpreg just seems to me to be the silliest and most unlikely way to achieve any of those potential goals in a fic, unless of course one simply likes it as a kink... and I can't deny that people have some pretty weird kinks, and this isn't the only one that squicks me to some extent