scholarly journals "Let's get those Winchesters pregnant": Male pregnancy in Supernatural fan fiction

Author(s):  
Berit Åström

This article investigates mpreg slash fiction—same-sex relationships featuring male pregnancy—based on the television series Supernatural, looking at issues of gender and genre. It has been argued that slash writing is a highly subversive and resisting activity, appropriating someone else's characters and rewriting the romance script to suit different tastes than those prescribed by patriarchy. Yet fan fic texts are very diverse and it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any general conclusions from them. The theme of male pregnancy has the potential to produce narratives that challenge our notions of gender, identity, sexual and social practices, as well as parenthood. Although the fan fiction I have analyzed all deals with these notions in various ways, the focus lies elsewhere. The authors of the texts focus more on exploring Sam and Dean as fathers and homemakers, on writing about family life, with all its traditional trappings. When the authors bring pregnancy into the equation, they draw on narrative and social conventions that follow this experience, resulting in conventional stories set in a very unconventional universe.

2021 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 277-462

277Human rights — Gender identity — Rights of same-sex couples — State obligations concerning recognition of gender identity and rights of same-sex couples — American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 — Right to equality and non-discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons — Article 1(1) of American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 — Whether sexual orientation and gender identity protected categories under Article 1(1) — Right to gender identity — Right to a name — Whether States under obligation to facilitate name change based on gender identity — Whether failure to establish administrative procedures for name change violating American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 — Whether name change procedure under Article 54 of Civil Code of Costa Rica complying with American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 — Right to equality and non-discrimination — Right to protection of private and family life — Right to family — Whether States obliged to recognize patrimonial rights arising from a same-sex relationship — Whether States required to establish legal institution to regulate same-sex relationshipsInternational tribunals — Jurisdiction — Inter-American Court of Human Rights — Advisory jurisdiction — Whether advisory jurisdiction restricted by related petitions before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — Admissibility — Whether request meeting formal and substantive requirements — Whether Court having jurisdiction


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Molly Ludlam

For over fifty years the concept of the “internal couple”, as a composite internal object co-constructed in intimate relationships, has been fundamental to a psycho-analytic understanding of couple relationships and their contribution to family dynamics. Considerable societal change, however, necessitates review of how effectively and ethically the concept meets practitioners’ and couples’ current needs. Does the concept of an internal couple help psychotherapists to describe and consider all contemporary adult couples, whether same-sex or heterosexual, monogamous, or polyamorous? How does it accommodate online dating, relating via avatars, and use of pornography? Is it sufficiently inclusive of those experimenting in terms of sexual and gender identity, or in partnerships that challenge family arrangement norms? Can it usefully support thinking about families in which parents choose to parent alone, or are absent at their children’s conception thanks to surrogacy, adoption, and IVF? These and other questions prompt re-examination of this central concept’s nature and value.


Author(s):  
Michele Dillon

This chapter provides a case analysis of the Catholic Church’s Synod on the Family, an assembly of bishops convened in Rome in October 2014 and October 2015, to address the changing nature of Catholics’ lived experiences of marriage and family life. The chapter argues that the Synod can be considered a postsecular event owing to its deft negotiation of the mutual relevance of doctrinal ideas and Catholic secular realities. It shows how its extensive pre-Synod empirical surveys of Catholics worldwide, its language-group dialogical structure, and the content and outcomes of its deliberations, by and large, met postsecular expectations, despite impediments posed by clericalism and doctrinal politics. The chapter traces the Synod’s deliberations, and shows how it managed to forge a more inclusive understanding of divorced and remarried Catholics, even as it reaffirmed Church teaching on marriage and also set aside a more inclusive recognition of same-sex relationships.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-978
Author(s):  
Steven D. Jamar ◽  
Christen B’anca Glenn

Fan fiction is amateur writing that imaginatively reinvents a work in pop culture while maintaining the identifiable aspects of the preexisting work. Fans of various books, films, and television series write their own versions of the stories and post them online in fan fiction communities. Fan fiction as practiced today is a way for fans to creatively express themselves and become integrated into the story and world they love. The stories range from highly derivative works, where relatively few plot points are changed, to entirely new plot lines using the same world and characters of the original, underlying work. Some provide backstories about existing characters, and some are more in the nature of sequels. Some are quite original works more in the nature of “inspired by” than “derived from.”


Author(s):  
Claire Fenton-Glynn

This chapter examines the interpretation of ‘family life’ under Article 8 and the way that this has evolved throughout the Court’s history. It contrasts the approach of the Court to ‘family life’ between children and mothers, with ‘family life’ between fathers and children, noting the focus of the Court on function over form. It then turns to the establishment of parenthood, both in terms of maternity and paternity, as well as the right of the child to establish information concerning their origins. Finally, the chapter examines the changing face of the family, considering new family forms, including same-sex couples and transgender parents, as well as new methods of reproduction, such as artificial reproductive techniques and surrogacy.


2019 ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Karen Stohr

This chapter defends social pretense as an essential element of moral stagecraft and of good moral neighborhoods more generally. It argues that social pretense plays several important roles in social interactions. Pretense functions as a tool for setting the boundaries of the normative space in which social interactions take place. Social practices of interpersonal notice involve many social conventions that require pretending not to notice people and what they are doing. Such practices enable communication about the terms of social interaction or the narrative that is being enacted. Mutual pretense is useful for constructing the normative space of good moral neighborhoods and helping participants remain within that space. It enables people to act as their fictive moral selves in circumstances where they are falling short. When motivated and guided by a commitment to aspirational moral identities, the practice of social pretense can be supportive of those identities.


Author(s):  
Janet C. Wesselius

The feminist philosopher Susan Bordo suggests that the dilemma of twentieth-century feminism is the tension between a gender identity that both mobilizes a liberatory politics on behalf of women and that results in gender prescriptions which excludes many women. This tension seems especially acute in feminist debates about essentialism/deconstructionism. Concentrating on the shared sex of women may run the risk of embracing an essentialism that ignores the differences among women, whereas emphasizing the constructed natures of sex and gender categories seems to threaten the very project of a feminist politics. I will analyze the possibility of dismantling gender prescriptions while retaining a gender identity that can be the beginning for an emancipatory politics. Perhaps feminists need not rely on a reified essentialism that elides the differences of race, class, etc., if we begin with our social practices of classification rather than with a priori generalizations about the nature of women.


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