#i know some fics do invent biology to justify it

[whitesheepwrites]

I have told my sister, who somehow despite reading fanfiction for years never learned about it, about the existence of mpreg. Initially she was like "oh like with trans characters? That's cool" and when I said no, she got confused and asked "intersex characters?" and when I again said no, she jokingly asked "what they have cis guys shitting out the baby?" and initially thought my laughter was me joining in the joke

The flip to horror when I told her was beautiful

[watermelinoe]

1/2 Sorry for dumping this here, I’m currently crypto. As a gender crit fandom goer, I love fanfic but ao3’s genderland is depressing. I used to morbidly dip into reading ABO when I was younger, and it took a while for me to see that it’s just reinventing heterosexuality and sexism. What bothers me most is how it’s a sign that women DO want to talk about reproductive rights and issues surrounding pregnancy and raising children, but they’re so steeped in shame that they can’t even do that AS women. Instead, they have to invent an entire universe where men can be pregnant in order to justify it, even though genderbending the male protagonist to be female would be much simpler. They do not see female characters as fully human, or maybe it’s just too painful to confront the reality of female oppression without cloaking it in something else. The crazy thing is, if you asked any one of these women why male omegas are oppressed, they’d be able to tell you it’s because of the omega’s ability to give birth. And yet they can’t make the connection that real women are oppressed for the same reason. It’s so crazy that all their trans logic completely vanishes in ABO fic. Omegas aren’t told they’re bigots for being afraid of alphas and wanting to avoid them and have omega-only spaces, because omegas get raped and harassed by alphas all the time, and it’s recognized as a pattern. I’ve read fics where omegas take scent-blockers in order to pass as a beta or an alpha, and they NEVER do it because they internally identify as beta or alpha, they do it because they know that they’d be mistreated and stereotyped if anyone knew their true identity as an omega. Alphas hold all the wealth and power in society and are known to turn into violent, mindless beasts due to their sexual urges. You never see ABO fic in which alphas try to transition into omegas and claim oppression. I wonder why? Is it because their biology is immutable and such a thing would be fucked up and wrong? Change alpha to man and omega to woman and most ABO becomes basic TERF rhetoric. I wonder sometimes if mpreg fic is the only way to get through to these people. The ironic part is how most of the women who write mpreg and ABO are gendies. The same women who mock all the straight girls writing hetfic on ffnet, while touting ao3 as some kind of “queer haven”. But almost never do you see fic about alpha/alpha or omega/omega love stories. Overwhelmingly, it’s all alpha/omega with the omega as the self-insert. Hetfic with extra steps. It’s insane to witness. The unashamed straight girls who happily write pure hetfic or genderbend hetfic are braver than any gendie could hope to be, and the scorn they receive from TIFs is pure projection. Homosexuality isn’t some kind of curio. Gays can be both interesting and boring just like straights can be both interesting and boring. I think the main problem is that TIFs are ashamed of being straight women, and they use fic to fulfill their attraction to men while also escaping from how disappointing real men are. Don’t get me wrong, I think turning to writing as an escape from disappointment is a fairly healthy coping mechanism. But problems start when their writing becomes all porn and zero literature, and they become unable to maintain boundaries between fantasy and reality. But it also frustrates me when some radfems see this phenomenon and say that all fic is toxic and needs to go. Because I still believe that fic, even bad fic, is one of the purest distillations of female passion and creativity there is. There exists no male equivalent.

2/2 When most men like a show, they usually finish it and then move on to consume the next, or make one brief reddit post about it, or retweet some pornified fanart of a female character. The few REALLY passionate men might make one monetized youtube video praising the show, or create the pornified fanart themselves. But NEVER do you see men flocking together to post daily essays examining the psyche of a single character, or writing novel-length stories about someone else’s fictional characters and sharing them for free. Women OWN passion, because they consume stories in order to create more, and create stories without reward. Men just consume, and create only when reward is guaranteed. I get radfems being anti porn on camera because it exploits real women who are forced into sex for men’s profit, but I personally don’t think written porn about fictional characters is exploitive. No money is made with fic, no real person is raped; fic porn is made by women for women, and women depict men in fic far better than men deserve. I trust women to create weird gore/smut fic and art and still be decent people, or at least non-violent. Japanese women make some insanely kinky fanart, but I know they’re not out there raping anyone or being creepy in public. If fandom were truly grounds for exploitation, if you could reliably use fic to trick people into changing their morals, men would be getting in on the action too, but they’re not. Fandom is still a female-majority space and most men want nothing to do with it. I’ve certainly read fic that I thought was disturbing and disgusting, but I have the ability to click away, so I’d never argue that fic that bothers me personally shouldn’t have the right to exist. Because the moment I try to censor what someone else is allowed to write, they gain the right to censor me too. There is no single authority who can be trusted to decide what can and can’t be said without important voices getting silenced in the process, because everyone has personal biases. The whole “words are violence” narrative and censorship of gender critical voices is how trans ideology continues to reign. You can’t wake people up if you aren’t even allowed to speak. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that any attempt to censor language will always escalate and come back to silence you someday, so I’d much rather everyone have the right to write whatever disgusting drivel they want as long as I get to say my piece too. No tyrannical regime has ever gotten off the ground without first silencing the opposition. Truth can only be found when everyone is allowed to speak freely, even the people you disagree with, so that everyone can make informed choices. Censoring people doesn’t change their internal beliefs, it only makes them lie about their beliefs in order to be liked. And I’d much rather people be open about their beliefs than me hazard a guess and feel betrayed later when their real beliefs come out. At the end of the day, I care most about material harm to real people and free speech. As long as fans mind their own business and don’t force their opinions or fantasies on anyone else, let them create what they want. Blacklist, block, disengage, put up the boundaries you need. Fandom was much more fun when most of us agreed upon these rules and being gender crit was the norm, but no one has self-possession anymore.

i know this took me forever to answer but there's really a lot here!! and i wanna divide your thoughts into three main big ideas to respond to, the first being, in your words: "they do not see female characters as fully human, or maybe it’s just too painful to confront the reality of female oppression without cloaking it in something else."

this is exactly it. i was in fandom spaces for a long time, i've been reading fanfic since i was in middle school, i've checked out a/b/o stuff and some of it, believe it or not, is actually well-written and surprisingly insightful about sex classes - the issue being that the authors substitute male characters. although not all a/b/o fic also has mpreg, i guess it would be called a/b/o-lite? i personally didn't read mpreg, i thought it was off-putting even during a time when i was trying despite my reservations to be open-minded and accepting of whatever someone wanted to write, but the appeal of a/b/o is basically as you said. whether they acknowledge it openly or not, women and girls are very aware of sex-based oppression.

m/m is already appealing to women, of all sexualities, for various reasons. it can be fetishistic of ssa men, absolutely. but, on the other hand, male characters are allowed to be fully human. m/m lets women explore relationships where both parties are allowed to be complete human beings. the cloak you mentioned can be worn in different ways by different women. for a time, without getting too into details, i couldn't read erotica with any women involved because it was too real to me; i didn't want to think of myself in a sexual context at all. so i liked m/m because i could disassociate from my own body. but tbh there's lots of reasons why women would want to see themselves in male characters. it's also a way to explore a same-sex relationship without misogyny. any woman who likes femslash can tell you... it is slim pickings out there. hope you like two feminine women and no real plotline. and bc anime men are basically women anyway, m/m is like, a poor woman's f/f.

a/b/o goes a step further, and what it shows us is that women do want to talk about sex-based oppression... in a vacuum. we don't want it to be happening to us, but wouldn't it be fucked up if there was a hierarchy of sex classes where men could be oppressed? and, with mpreg, what if men could be exploited for their reproduction? because men are fully human, and women want to be fully human, therefore we want to see ourselves in men. it's actually fascinating. i just wish women were self-aware about it, because it's this accidentally brilliant analogy of sex-based oppression and gender roles, and instead they're up to their noses in genderist bullshit :(

moving on to your second main idea: "because I still believe that fic, even bad fic, is one of the purest distillations of female passion and creativity there is. there is no male equivalent."

it's maybe not as popular of an opinion on radblr, but i completely agree. i am a staunch fanfic defender. i've seen women take these mainstream, impotent and unsatisfying male narratives (cough soul eater, rurouni kenshin) and write some of the most compelling character pieces i've ever read. women understand characters and storylines better than the original creators. it used to be believed that women lacked the capacity for artistic creation - at best, women could do portraiture and still life, but lacked the greater imagination required for high, inventive art. i would argue that the opposite is true. as you said, men only consume.

as for the last main takeaway, i don't think i can completely agree with you about censorship, but i don't think it's a black-and-white topic either. i really don't have a problem with women writing erotica for other women, i would not compare it to porn, there are no real people being exploited. i also think women fall into kink for different reasons than men, and don't have the same relationship to it that men do. i believe women can be trusted much more with disturbing content, whereas men lack the capacity to separate fiction from reality. they just don't process it as deeply.

but i think fiction can still cause harm, and that we have a responsibility to mitigate that harm. i just don't know what the exact answer is. jaws is one of my favorite movies, and it also caused a public panic that led to sharks being culled en masse, even though nothing in the movie indicated that sharks in real life are a real danger to people and need to be exterminated. are the movie creators responsible for how people responded to the film? i can't agree with that. just like i don't think nabokov is responsible for what pedophiles did to lolita. just because something is depicted in fiction doesn't mean it's endorsed by the author. but authors can still be irresponsible and create harmful content, some of it to the extent that it really shouldn't have been published, from a moral standpoint. but what do we do about it?

i agree that there's currently a problem with censorship based on moral grounds, because who decides morality? gender critical women are deplatformed for "hate speech" as decided by male supremacists and their handmaidens. it can be called hate speech to criticize your oppressors if your oppressors are the authority figures. you're right that there's no single authority that could ever be trusted to decide what we should be allowed to say and create. but on an individual scale, women are capable of making harmful and irresponsible content, and my problem with that isn't so much that she made it, but that it's so accessible and readily perpetuates itself, and maybe she made it "to cope" or whatever but then it should've stayed on her hard drive. but what kind of hard policy do you implement that doesn't stifle other creative women? i don't have a good answer. because i want women to keep creating, even if it's cringe, even if it's bad.