As a science fiction fan from youngest days, I long dreamed of the marvellous future the books and movies promised. Flying cars. Magnificent space stations soaring in orbit. Ceremoniously disturbing the cosmic sand.
None of it has come to pass. Two decades past 2001 and there’s no permanent base on the Moon, much less the prospect of astronauts gliding out to Jupiter and Saturn.
No, instead we’ve got…
A “pregnant man” emoji and “pregnant person” emoji are coming to Apple iPhones.
In the novel of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke describes the motivations of the builders of the mysterious, iconic monoliths: Because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere… sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.
Pack up the monoliths, fellas, and get the cosmic glyphosate ready: this planet’s a bust.
The push to include everyone in pregnancy has erupted in controversy, with some cultural commentators arguing that the effort to make the biologically specific phenomenon all-inclusive erases factors that make women distinctive from men and even dehumanizes women.
Emojipedia faced some criticism when it first announced the pregnant man and pregnant person emoji in September of last year. The company said in a blog post that the new figures “may be used for representation by trans men, non-binary people, or women with short hair—though, of course, use of these emoji is not limited to these groups.”
“Representation”, as rapper and YouTube commenter Eric July says, “is for losers”. If you desperately need an iPhone emoji to represent your weirdo fetish, you need to take a long, hard look at your life.
Both new pregnant emoji also come in five different skin tones. When selecting an emoji, users can hold their finger on the icon until it shows different skin tone options.
Despite my resolute Caucasianity, I never bother using anything except the bog-standard yellow emojis. Oh no, wait! Does this mean I’m trans-racial? Where’s Godfrey Elfwick when we really need him?
According to health website Healthline.com, people who were born biologically female but identify as men are transgender men who can give birth because they have the reproductive organs necessary to do so — especially those who do not take or have stopped taking testosterone. The same goes for those who identify as non-binary.
To quote J. K. Rowling, we already have a word for people who can give birth. “Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
It is unclear how many men have gotten pregnant or delivered babies in the United States. At least 22 men in Australia gave birth in 2018.
Fox Business
No, 22 men did not give birth in Australia. Men never have and, barring the sort of SF wonder-technology that reality has denied us, they never will.
What they really mean is that 22 women labouring (no pun intended) under the delusion that they’re “men” gave birth. No doubt the pain was the same: almost as bad as being kicked in the balls.
Which is something they’ll never know.
The dispassionately weeding alien gardeners can’t nuke us soon enough.
