Writing the pregnant man

Authors

  • Mary Ingram-Waters Arizona State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0651

Keywords:

Fandom, Male pregnancy, Masculinity, Online community, Sexuality

Abstract

This article explores how an online community of female fans of Harry Potter creates and maintains scientific and medical knowledge of a novel reproductive technology, male pregnancy. In an effort to illuminate the mechanisms of fandom, I show how fandom participants collectively work to ensure the maintenance of standards for fan products and in doing so also selectively reinforce particular tropes about how male pregnancy is portrayed. Fans' validation of some male pregnancy variations over others results in a fascinating yet recognizable set of fictional reproductive technologies that both queer and accommodate normative gender and sexuality roles.

Author Biography

Mary Ingram-Waters, Arizona State University

Honors Faculty Fellow, Barrett the Honors College, Arizona State University
series of icons illustrating Letters, Conventions, Zines, Vids, Usenet, The Web, Blogs, Mobile - Transformative Works and Cultures Volume 20 (2015)

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Published

2015-09-15

Issue

Vol. 20 (2015)

Section

Praxis

License

TWC Nos. 25 onward are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC by 4.0). For an explanation of the journal's reasoning, see the TWC editorial Copyright and Open Access. TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, with TWC, not the author, retaining copyright.

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