User:Freedom4U/Future articles/Mpreg

In fan fiction and fan art, mpreg is a trope and genre that depicts cisgender men becoming pregnant, usually as a result of sex with other men. Mpreg is a subgenre of slash fiction, a genre of fan works that focus on same-sex relationships, and works in the genre range from domestic romance to BDSM and body horror. Explanations for male pregnancy in mpreg fics vary and often do not exist, but many fics incorporate elements from the omegaverse, a fan fiction genre involving a sexual hierarchy of dominant alphas that impregnate submissive omegas. Depictions of childbirth are rare in mpreg and typically involve delivery by cesarean section.

The trope first gained popularity alongside fan engagement with the Supernatural (2005–2020) television series and the subsequent boom in omegaverse fan fiction. Works of mpreg fan fiction are abundant in many fandoms.

Scholars of fan studies are mixed on whether mpreg is normative or non-normative: some scholars have praised the genre for challenging traditional conceptions of gender and masculinity, while others have criticized it for relying on heteronormative tropes like the nuclear family and stereotypical gender roles. While domestic mpreg fan works often depart from traditional depictions of male pregnancy in media, erotic mpreg fan works.... Sentence about transgender experiences.

Characteristics
Mpreg (an abbreviation of male pregnancy) is a trope and genre within fan fiction and fan art that depicts cisgender men becoming pregnant. Depictions of mpreg in fan fiction generally reflect real-life pregnancy, with pregnancy being the result of insemination during sex. Mpreg is a subgenre of slash fiction, a genre of fan fiction focusing on the romantic and sexual relationships between characters of the same sex. In some fics, mpreg may only happen to tertiary character

mention mpreg as something that could happen.

Mpreg fics tend to focus primarily on the emotional, interrelational and sometimes erotic consequences of male pregnancy, rather than the specifics of male pregnancy.

Mpreg can be present in both erotic and non-erotic fics, and stories in the genre can range from domestic romance to BDSM and body horror. Erotic mpreg fics draw their eroticism from breaking taboos around pregnancy and BDSM practices; these fics sexualize the pain of the pregnant belly and the relative submission of the pregnant partner. Non-erotic mpreg can intersect with domestic fic, a genre of fan fiction concentrated on depicting mundane aspects of everyday life. Common narrative devices in these fics include first-time homeownership, preparing to raise the baby and choosing a baby name. Some mpreg stories develop speculative worlds that contextualize male pregnancy with alternate gender hierarchies and discrimination.

Pregnancy and childbirth
Explanations for male pregnancy in mpreg fics vary and often do not exist. A majority of mpreg fics draw upon dynamics from the omegaverse—a related fan fiction genre that involves a "biologically determined" hierarchy of sexually dominant alphas that impregnate sexually submissive omegas. In addition to male pregnancy, omegaverse fics frequently employ animal terminology like heat cycles, bonding and knotting. Other popular tropes to justify male pregnancy in mpreg fics include "angelic intervention, demonic rape, or curses".

Works of mpreg fan fiction often omit the process of childbirth or depict it with little detail. Mpreg fan fiction rarely describe men giving birth through a birth canal, which many authors view as "feminizing"; instead, most works describe childbirth via cesarean section. In a small number of stories, childbirths occur through "anal delivery", which is disparagingly described by the term "ass baby". In other works, childbirth is explained through the growth of a temporary "pseudo-uterus" or through other birthing technologies like potions or apparition, a fictional form of teleportation from the Harry Potter series.

Community
Although mpreg fan fiction can be dated as far back as the 1980s, fan scholars generally believe that the popularity of mpreg can be attributed to online fan engagement with the Supernatural (2005–2020) television series and the boom of the omegaverse genre. These online fan communities are mostly female

Gender



Mpreg fan fiction is increasingly abundant in many different fandoms, but the genre is especially popular in fandoms for series with supernatural or magical elements. By December 2022, more than 70,000 works of fan fiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3) had been tagged as mpreg.

Mpreg fan communities vary across different publication platforms Tumblr, AO3, LiveJournal).

In fan fiction culture, the primary mode of interaction between readers and writers of fics is the process of reviewing, in which fans praise and promote what they mutually believe to be "good mpreg".

Scholarship
Scholarship on mpreg and mpreg fan communities is limited, in part due to the genre's stigmatized nature. Pop culture scholar Constance Penley was the first scholar to discuss male pregnancy in the 1990s, though her remarks on the subject were brief. Observing the role of mpreg in Kirk/Spock fan fiction, Penley described what she believed to be significant subversive potential in mpreg fan fics.

Motives
Mpreg fics raise different questions than

Mary Ingram-Waters argues that mpreg can be understood as a "thought experiment about gender, sexuality, and the male body". Busse suggests that female fans use male pregnancy to interrogate pregnancy and themes of reproduction from an emotional distance.

Osborne argues that mpreg is used, not as an end in itself, but as a tool to further increase intimacy.

Masculinity and cisheteronormativity
Mpreg has been both praised as non-normative and criticized as normative. Critics of mpreg highlight the genre's reliance on heteronormative tropes like the nuclear family and stereotypical gender roles, while proponents highlight the potential for mpreg to subvert traditional conceptions of gender and masculinity.

Critics


 * Åström concludes that while mpreg fan fiction has the potential to produce narratives that challenge social norms, these stories can also end up reinforcing normative structures, writing that "what may at first seem like resistance may in the end reinforce heteronormative structures".


 * Ingram-Waters argues that by having men participate in the stereotypically feminine behaviors of pregnancy, mpreg fics both broaden understandings of masculinity, but maintain it. According to Ingram-Waters, while the mpreg genre redefines cisgender masculinity to include pregnancy, the genre's insistence on maintaining cisgender masculinity ultimately ends up erasing transgender identity.

Others have suggested that mpreg may serve as a means of rendering male–male relationships so that they stay consistent with heteronormative. Kyra Hunting similarly argues that while mpreg can be subversive, it ends up assimilating queer relationships into the heteronormative reproductive goals of sex.

Suzuki warns that mpreg stories end up excluding the female body from pregnancy and leaves the unequal.

Supporters

Other fan scholars have noted the potential for mpreg to...


 * J.T. Weisser, writing in Cultivate, argues that pregnancy in mpreg has the potential to resonate with transgender and intersex experiences with pregnancy. Andrea Wood, writing in the book Imagining "We" in the Age of "I", similarly suggests that, when written well, mpreg can provide nuanced and diverse treatments of gender that can appeal to trans and genderqueer readers.

Jesse Ashman

Ingram-Waters points out that fans are often cautious of reproducing heteronormative tropes in mpreg and avoid feminizing the pregnant partner.

Depiction of pregnancy
In early mainstream depictions of male pregnancy, pregnancy and its feminine connotations were posed as a "monstrous" threat to the male character's masculinity. In her study of Supernatural fan fiction, Åström argues that domestic mpreg departs from this characterization by depicting male pregnancy as a natural process that do not challenge the character's masculinity. As Western culture typically codes pregnancy as wholesome and devoid of eroticism except as sexual fetish, mpreg can also be employed as a means to desexualize homosexual relationships and depict "life-affirming experiences resulting in the joy of fatherhood".

Conversely, Jesse Ashman argues that in erotic mpreg, male pregnancy is sexualized and thus subject to the sexual fetishism ordinarily imposed on pregnant women. In his study of erotic Merlin (2008–2012) and Sherlock (2010–2017) mpreg fan fiction, Ashman contends that erotic mpreg maintains the "monstrosity" of male pregnancy through its detailed and sexualized description of male pregnancy. As pregnant male bodies lack breasts, pornographic mpreg fics often turn to eroticizing the restriction, feminization and pain of pregnancy and childbirth. Ashman writes that mpreg can thus be used to queer narratives of the virgin pregnant body.

Stigmatization
Although mpreg is a small genre, its works are highly visible and stigmatized. Penley has suggested that popular averse reactions to mpreg are because such depictions present "the most extreme retooling of the male body". Within mpreg fan communities, stigmas are attached to stories involving vaginal delivery and breastfeeding, which fans view as "feminizing", as well as anal delivery. Ingram-Waters, discussing her field research interviewing mpreg authors while visibly pregnant, reported that authors of mpreg fan fiction are highly attentive of this stigma and try "reaffirm their legitimacy" by trying to write male pregnancy "convincingly and accurately".

Much like in anglophone fandoms, the use of mpreg is controversial in Japanese yaoi and Chinese danmei fandoms. Japanese yaoi fandoms often snub stories that seriously grapple with mpreg, though comedy doujinshi manga have sometimes featured mpreg. Surveys of fans support that mpreg enjoys niche popularity and has relatively greater popularity in sinophone fandoms than in anglophone fandoms.