#...but now we're back to conflating definitions with the ethics of representation. which is sticky

[livefromtheelephantsfoot]

as a person with zero desire to ever be pregnant, the fact that it is possible--through assault, miscalculation, bad luck or some combination thereof--for my body to abruptly change in painful, sometimes permanent ways i have little control over; that depending on where i live i could not only be denied access to medications that would stop it but also find the informed consent that underlies my current treatment plans crumbling; that my body could become no longer mine not only due to the being growing inside me i did not ask for, but societal norms that normalize strangers touching my body without asking and controlling what i eat; that's pretty frightening to think about.

does this impact how i view or treat other people who are pregnant? nope. and i would not consider a straightforward depiction of pregnancy inherently disturbing, or expect other people to find it so. but a work of horror that took that seed of fear and focused in on it, either with a literal depiction of pregnancy viewed from the eyes of someone who doesn't want to be pregnant or a fantastical depiction where the unwanted fetus is a monster or the pregnancy affects the person's body in ways that extend beyond the real world experience? that could be really disturbing, and the fact that pregnancy is not unnatural and many people choose it happily would not disqualify it as "body horror."

I think that there's a very meaningful criticism to be made wrt body horror and how it often can handle disability or disfigurement in an extremely reactionary and prejudiced fashion but I feel like you've lost the plot if you can sincerely say shit like "cancer isn't body horror" like I dont know I think its pretty scary to have cancer. I dont feel like we need to defend the role of cancer as a natural process of the body. Like that's not comparable to people acting like a cleft lip or a guy in a wheelchair are spooky. Pregnancy is pretty scary too like even before the question of forced birth and other such social violence surrounding it are involved. I think you're sort of dancing around the fact that the human body does frightening things to us all the time and the question of what is "natural" should in of itself be actively questioned because sometimes "natural" things are... bad!