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chasingtides Sep. 18th, 2009 03:33 pm)
chasingtides Sep. 18th, 2009 03:33 pm)So, I'm writing a story and I'm unsure of how to label it. Because I came up with this idea in church, I'm going to call it divinely inspired, but I'm mostly exploring boundaries in fiction that I am curious about in real life. And the purpose of exploring these boundaries, is, in part, exploring them as a dialogue, so I will be doing it through fanfiction and, of course, this post.
I've been intrigued by the character of Jack Harkness for a while. I'm also interested in what he could represent and how he defines himself by lack of definition, rather than by definition itself. (While most characters and people would, for example, say, "I am straight," or, "I am gay," or, "I am bisexual," Jack says, "Those are nice categories.")
Ever since the end of the second season of Torchwood, I have wanted to write a threesome fic (Jack/Ianto/Gwen), exploring the codependency/independency issues presented in the show as well as relationship dynamics. After watching Children of Earth, I wanted to look at preconceptions of Torchwood running up against preconceptions of the rest of the world.
I took a prompt off of a community, "Jack/Ianto/Gwen, family, heatwave, night in." It was the family that got me - I've never done it before, but writing a pregnancy fic would be really cool. And Jack said, in the first episode of the series, that he had been pregnant before. Wouldn't it be cool to do a pregnant Jack story? What would it be like for his girlfriend to have a pregnant male lover? How is Ianto going to deal with the fact that it's his male lover who is pregnant, not his female lover? That'd be awesome!
It also gives me a chance to write out an idea I've been toying with for ages now. My friends and I have tossed around the idea of Jack's pregnancy a lot. I've gotten strange looks in the supermarket because, when I'm picking out the milk and on the phone, I might dive into a lengthy discussion about Jack and his gender identity and his biology and, really, it's possibly not the most normal phone conversation.
But the theory boils down to - Jack presents as male, but has, in the past been pregnant. Additionally, the Doctor pointed out that by Jack's time, humans had interbred with aliens. And who says that alien sexes remotely resemble human ones? So Jack's somewhere in between male and female - or entirely outside it, depending on your perspective. But if he's a time traveler who is traveling, judging by his habits and Captain John's clothes, pre-women's lib eras, it's probably in his best interest to present as male, whatever his actual gender status (particularly if his gender is outside male-female dichotomy).
It's okay if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I plan to be playing it out in my fic.
But I don't know how to label it, particularly as I start to look for betas.
Jack uses a male pronoun in English and presents as male in appearance, so it could be mpreg. But, to me at least, that conjures up images of assbabies and feats of science and magic I'd rather not think about and general unnatural processes. As Jack doesn't plan his pregnancy and does have a functional uterus and ovaries, it could, by some definitions, be just preg-fic. But Jack most certainly isn't female.
I'm struck, suddenly, by a sharp gender dichotomy - even in a world fans have created, where men can become pregnant and sex pollen exists, there appear to simply be two genders - male and female. I, and I try to be aware of this sort of thing, have no idea how to label this or explain it without a bit of fumbling and back story.
How do I label it? Do I not label it? I'm pretty sure that as soon as they read the, "Jack gets pregnant," bit, most people will label it mpreg themselves. I feel like, "A non-binary gendered Jack gets pregnant," is really clumsy. Thoughts? Ideas? Raging insults about how Jack Harkness is so totally a man-man-man-man-man?
ETA: I'm not suggesting that Jack be transgender here (though, admittedly, that is a very interesting line of thought). I am suggesting that Jack could be a non-binary sex and gender, a third or fourth sex and gender, outside of what we typically think of. (Okay, we being me - Irish-Catholic raised in Massachusetts.)
I've been intrigued by the character of Jack Harkness for a while. I'm also interested in what he could represent and how he defines himself by lack of definition, rather than by definition itself. (While most characters and people would, for example, say, "I am straight," or, "I am gay," or, "I am bisexual," Jack says, "Those are nice categories.")
Ever since the end of the second season of Torchwood, I have wanted to write a threesome fic (Jack/Ianto/Gwen), exploring the codependency/independency issues presented in the show as well as relationship dynamics. After watching Children of Earth, I wanted to look at preconceptions of Torchwood running up against preconceptions of the rest of the world.
I took a prompt off of a community, "Jack/Ianto/Gwen, family, heatwave, night in." It was the family that got me - I've never done it before, but writing a pregnancy fic would be really cool. And Jack said, in the first episode of the series, that he had been pregnant before. Wouldn't it be cool to do a pregnant Jack story? What would it be like for his girlfriend to have a pregnant male lover? How is Ianto going to deal with the fact that it's his male lover who is pregnant, not his female lover? That'd be awesome!
It also gives me a chance to write out an idea I've been toying with for ages now. My friends and I have tossed around the idea of Jack's pregnancy a lot. I've gotten strange looks in the supermarket because, when I'm picking out the milk and on the phone, I might dive into a lengthy discussion about Jack and his gender identity and his biology and, really, it's possibly not the most normal phone conversation.
But the theory boils down to - Jack presents as male, but has, in the past been pregnant. Additionally, the Doctor pointed out that by Jack's time, humans had interbred with aliens. And who says that alien sexes remotely resemble human ones? So Jack's somewhere in between male and female - or entirely outside it, depending on your perspective. But if he's a time traveler who is traveling, judging by his habits and Captain John's clothes, pre-women's lib eras, it's probably in his best interest to present as male, whatever his actual gender status (particularly if his gender is outside male-female dichotomy).
It's okay if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I plan to be playing it out in my fic.
But I don't know how to label it, particularly as I start to look for betas.
Jack uses a male pronoun in English and presents as male in appearance, so it could be mpreg. But, to me at least, that conjures up images of assbabies and feats of science and magic I'd rather not think about and general unnatural processes. As Jack doesn't plan his pregnancy and does have a functional uterus and ovaries, it could, by some definitions, be just preg-fic. But Jack most certainly isn't female.
I'm struck, suddenly, by a sharp gender dichotomy - even in a world fans have created, where men can become pregnant and sex pollen exists, there appear to simply be two genders - male and female. I, and I try to be aware of this sort of thing, have no idea how to label this or explain it without a bit of fumbling and back story.
How do I label it? Do I not label it? I'm pretty sure that as soon as they read the, "Jack gets pregnant," bit, most people will label it mpreg themselves. I feel like, "A non-binary gendered Jack gets pregnant," is really clumsy. Thoughts? Ideas? Raging insults about how Jack Harkness is so totally a man-man-man-man-man?
ETA: I'm not suggesting that Jack be transgender here (though, admittedly, that is a very interesting line of thought). I am suggesting that Jack could be a non-binary sex and gender, a third or fourth sex and gender, outside of what we typically think of. (Okay, we being me - Irish-Catholic raised in Massachusetts.)
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I our culture, sex and gender are often treated as the same, and fixed by (percived) biology. In the sort of idealized concept of Jack's world/time, it's easily possible that sex and gender are recognized as not neccesarily linked or fixed - and certianly not a binary, which is false even in our time and place.
Part of the issue is that intersex or hermaphrodites are absent in most people's conception of sex/gender and the human world so the idea that Jack's sex is different from ours isn't really thought of much. Plus, of course, starting to think of the idea that he may concive of himself as a completely different gender and sex than we understand ... well, how do we talk about something that isn't part of our culture at all except as negatives: not-male, not-female etc (which can start seeming to be negative=wrong).
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If I recall correctly (and god, I might not because it's been so long since I've watched all of the Torchwood episodes), the pregnancy comment isn't the only... non-binary-type comment he's made on the show, for lack of a better term. More accurately, he's expressed himself as more flexible than that
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The only referents to his 'flexibility' are in his sexual partners and sexual behavior - I don't recall him ever saying or implying that he considers himself other than male. Though, again, that can simply be because we don't have the concept for the gender he is at this time and place.
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(Or, you know, something else entirely, because who the hell knows what the 51st century is like, especially if we've integrated into alien cultures? It's not like all of Earth is stuck on this idea of two genders and two sexes.)
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Granted, I don't follow Torchwood, but I'd say "A non-binary gendered Jack gets pregnant" is a good start despite the awkwardness of the construction. Or perhaps the "MPREG on the surface level, but explores gender binaries"?
Whatever the case, I think as far as advertising it for betas, you should specify that you want a beta who likes dealing with genderbending stuff, and over the course of writing the fic maybe you'll find a good way to advertise it. And... yeah. If I think of anything more, I'll let you know.
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I've been thinking over some of my own thoughts and some of
I might just go with that. I just wish there was a cleverer way of saying it. Can't wait for your meta.
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I really, really like the idea of presenting as male as part of a sort of... survival tactic, thing. I mean, since Jack can pass for male in the early 21st century, it only makes sense to stay male. But at the same time, as not-exactly-male but passing for it, it should give him insight into modern gender dynamics that folks within 21st century humanity wouldn't exactly have.
It's also interesting to think about in terms of historical examples of a similar phenomenon. For instance, one of the Emperor Nero's eunuch courtiers, called Sporus, bore such a strong resemblance to Nero's late wife that he was dressed as her and called Sabina. Even after Nero's death, he went on living as "Sabina"--you get the sense it's because he has more power as the ghost of an imperial woman than he has as a castrated dude, if that makes sense. Or you have stories of women who dress as men to join the army/avoid marriage/whatever. I think you could definitely play off Jack as presenting as male in a similar light, if not exactly the same.
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Maybe? Damn it. I need to open boxes or something.
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That's actually what gave me the idea. Don't ask about my brain. I can only say I was in church and genderbending Son of God who breastfeeds is way more interesting than whatever the homily was about.
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...I now have an image of this painting in my head while heavy metal plays in the background. WTF, brain?
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I kinda love your brain.
That's all. :D
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I like this plan. Excuse me while I go track down an appropriate outfit.
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If Jack's got alien ancestors, then perhaps he could have ancestors where there are more than two genders involved in the reproductive act. That way you can avoid the transgender issue, and just have it being a natural part of who Jack is.
I'll give you an example (and hope like hell it makes sense):
I'm writing a Star Trek fic with Andorians, and I'm developing my own theory behind the one liner 'Andorians have marriages of four' which was never explained canonically. Fanon has suggested the Andorians have four genders, which were called thaan, chan, shen and zhen. Now, I considered how this could work, -with little more than a basic understanding of biology mind- but I could imagine that each gender contributes a quarter of the genes required for conception, and that each one has a specific function in the reproduction cycle, as in you can't substitute one for another. Each is a totally seperate gender.
But when Andorians encountered other species and found a large majority had two genders only, they decided to catagorise their own genders to help simplify translation. Thus thaans and chans are considered male, and shens and zhens are female. This isn't actually true, but it was to facilitate communication, and as such, thaans and chans would both be referred to as 'he' and shens and zhens 'she' in other languages, -although I know other alien languages probably have their own pronoun rules and whatnot, but you get what I mean. To the Andorians, it didn't change the fact that each was a seperate gender amongst themselves, but it helped in the translations.
Going on from that, if Jack had, say a 'grandfather' who was an alien, that alien was identified as male to faciliate communication, but was in fact a gender that didn't have a human classification, and that 'grandfather's' gender included the ability to concieve and carry offspring -even if it's only for a portion of the pregnancy- then Jack could have the necessary organs and still be considered male. So you could still use the male pronouns without issue.
Or, you could do as Futurama did and call him 'schlee' and 'schlur', or make up your own pronoun.
I hope that long rambling helped in someway, and feel free to ask for clarification if you need it. :D
Ginger
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(I can also only imagine what Victorian Torchwood would put him through if they knew he could carry a child/wasn't male or female. Considering how they tortured him, I'm imagining something like forced pregnancies and then torturing the babies after taking them from him.)
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Sorry if I was incoherant enough to sound like I was disagreeing with you - mostly I was trying to do a resounding yes while looking at traditional representations of alternate sexes/genders.
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Trans, like transitory, is a state of change. Transgender is someone who, for example, is born male, but identifies as female and seeks to change their body to match their perception (with variants of stopping at certain points along the way - only having top surgery, having no surgery but wearing female-perceived clothing, etc).
The usual word used for this context is intersexed. Inter, meaning, between. (Though there are problems with this as well - I was reading an article the other day on intersexuality and one commenter noted that they didn't like the term because it sounds like homosexuality/heterosexuality and intersexuality has nothing to do with sexuality. But at least everyone understands what it means, mostly.)
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Which is a tangent, but I'd say almostinstinct's suggestion was alright with: "not exactly mpreg" as it acknowledges that it's more complicated than that.