a man is pregnant and your first thought is all the fascinating grammatical issues this raises in various languages (enceint? embarazado?).
Another interesting point is that all the laws/policies related to maternity leave that I've ever read have been written specifically in the feminine. I don't think this was specifically intended to be exclusionary, I just think it's because it's easier to write in the third person singular if you can use gendered pronouns. I wonder if at some point he's going to be (or someone is going to argue that he is) not entitled to something that pregnant women are entitled to because the rules were written in the feminine?
Conversely, I wonder if somewhere in the world he can legally get an abortion but women can't because the rules are written in the feminine?
And on a less lingusitic note, I wonder if he's going to lactate?
2 comments:
Geez, she can't lactate, can she? Could hormones have done that? (Which would mean biological males have mammary glands but they are not normally stimulated to produce milk?) Or do bio males not have mammary glands in the first place? But then how do men get breast cancer?
It's an amazing thing. I think it's awesome, really.
embarazado
Estoy embarazado! WOW! Words that have never been uttered in seriousness.
I thought lactation might be a possibility because he was born with a uterus (or do I say she was born with a uterus because he was a she then? Oooh, this would be fun in Polish because it has gender-based past tense conjugations!) so I thought he was probably also born with mammary glands. It says he had chest reconstruction surgery, but doesn't specify whether the mammary glands were removed. And I don't know if the hormones that trigger lactation are more ovary-based like most estrogeny stuff or whether they result strictly from the fact that a fetus is gestating in your uterus.
For that matter, I wonder if he's going to have normal labour where hormones trigger the cervix to dialate etc., or if they're just going to have to do a c-section when the baby's done.
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