“Male” is a film that immerses itself in gender polarization rather than challenging it. Harper’s ill-fated escape is filled with harrowing shots of fertility idols and ominous biblical references. She devours an apple picked from someone else’s tree before being threatened by a mob of pathetic and violent men. Garland, the film director Said By “fiddling” with ancient masculine and feminine symbols, he arrived at the image of “a man with a vagina on his chest.” When that vagina spawns a series of bad guys, making them all struggling parents and meowing babies, it reads as a sort of misanthropic final judgment.
On the other hand, the image of “Resurrection” comes out of nowhere. There is no mythical precedent for David sneaking beer bowels like a womb. He doesn’t need padding or prosthetics. He just claims there’s a baby out there, and he does it with such psychological intensity that Maggie begins to believe him. Breaking free from the reality of my body, I won a little bit. David’s claim is ridiculous, but so is pregnancy. Of course, I am aware of the biological process by which babies are created, but when I was told that devouring a live baby would conceive, it feels so supernatural that I might believe it.
After a leisurely walk through decades of pregnant male tropes, ‘Seahorse’ — followed British journalist and transgender Freddie McConnell as she conceived, conceived, and gave birth to her first child The 2019 documentary — came as a welcome relief. As McConnell endures the physical and mental toll of pregnancy, she also has to deal with intense social pressures. He feels alienated from other men, patronized by women, neglected by medical care, and alienated from his own identity.
The backlash against gender-neutral terms like “pregnant” and the claim that it somehow “erases” women does not make sense to me. It is the coding of pregnancy as the most important expression of likeness. Although the gendered concept of pregnancy works differently in McConnell’s body than mine, I identified closely with him. He describes pregnancy as a process, which makes it clear. It’s not an extension of my personality. It’s the wildest thing I’ve ever done.
For me, the most disturbing image in the history of maternity movies was at the end of “Men.” It’s not the birth scene, it’s the scene after that. Throughout the weekend of terror, Harper kept in touch with his friend Riley. If for a woman it means to give the opposite signal.
