Politics and Gender Politics
Pregnancy and control of human reproduction have often been used as proxies for treating gender issues or broader themes of social control; works dealing with pregnancy and human reproduction have also been used to closely explore gender politics. For instance, "male pregnancy" has been used to comedic effect in mainstream literature and films such as Junior (1994 film, dir. Ivan Reitman), and has developed a following in fan fiction — the "m-preg" genre.
The genre of feminist science fiction has explored single-sex reproduction in depth, particularly parthenogenesis, as well as gendered control over the ability and right to reproduce. See also numerous dystopian stories about state-controlled reproduction, abortion, and birth control, such as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or her short story, "Freeforall". These works have often been analyzed as explorations of contemporary political debates about reproduction and pregnancy.
Read more about this topic: Reproduction And Pregnancy In Speculative Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words politics and/or gender:
“The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)