GC: Male pregnancy blurs the line between male and female. But do the males of other species really get pregnant? And how come gametes and sex organs are put into categories of male and female?

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Male pregnancy is defined as the incubation of zygotes, embryos or fetuses by a "male". Though in most species, embryos are incubated or carried by a female until birth, in families of fish, Syngnathidae (pipefish, seahorses and the leafy seadragon), males are thought to perform that function: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy

Many articles are written on male pregnancy of seahorses: https://www.labroots.com/trending/videos/11197/regarding-seahorses-it-s-the-male-that-gets-pregnant

https://blog.padi.com/2019/06/13/the-only-male-animals-in-the-world-that-get-pregnant-and-give-birth/

https://animals.mom.com/male-seahorses-give-birth-4198.html

https://magazine.scienceconnected.org/2018/11/seahorses-dad-bod/

https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/qa-curious-case-male-pregnancy-seahorses-and-pipefishes.html

Male pregnancy is a topic covered by both news and fiction. From male pregnancy stories, comics, mangas and animations such as "Fairly Odd Parents" where "male" fairies get pregnant and Cosmo carries Poof, to shows such as Junior 1994 where a "male" gets pregnant: https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/cl6hbs/fairly_odd_parents_lore_is_wild/evu3fz5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/FundieSnarkUncensored/comments/ljdmgi/there_is_a_lot_to_unpack_here/gnc0dul?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_(1994_film)

But do these fictional male characters really get pregnant? Do these fictional male characters have female sex organs? Do they have ovaries, uteruses, etc? Is it really "male pregnancy"?

What really is the definition of "pregnancy"? Is uterus a requirement for the carrying of zygotes to be considered "pregnancy"? If it is a requirement, then male seahorses or males of other species can not be "pregnant" for they have no uterus.

Or do they? Do the males of other species have a uterus? How come sex organs and gametes are put into categories of male and female? A female can have penis, testes, etc. A female can produce sperm.

A male can have uterus, vagina, ovaries, etc. A male can produce eggs.

Even pregnancy is done by males. What was considered to be a strictly female thing to do, can be done by males.

Why then are sperm, testes, penis, etc considered male, while eggs, vaginas, uteruses, ovaries, etc are considered female?

Unless males of other species do not get "pregnant", males can not have female sex organs, and females can not have male sex organs, then male and female are not separate categories and are one and the same.

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[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 7 fun13 insightful - 6 fun14 insightful - 7 fun -  (0 children)

You left out the the seminal work on this topic that Dr Suess wrote in the 1930s and published in 1940: Horton Hatches The Egg. https://youtu.be/WOYKFLn_2Rc

[–]SnowAssMan 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The gametes & sex organs are the reasons the categories of male & female exist in the first place. Asking how can sperm be considered male is like asking how it can be considered sperm. If humans didn't reproduce sexually with male gametes fertilising female gametes then male & female wouldn't exist (in humans).

Stop pretending you can't tell the difference between your mum & dad.

How is any of this relevant though? A transgender person's sex is not a social construct, it's easily determined, their cross-gender self-identification is.

[–]cupidscupidity 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Can you rephrase your question, but instead of "male" and "female" just use "sperm-producer" and "egg-producer" instead? Your terrible application of linguistics is obfuscating your actual point.

Edit: for example, "Why are sperm considered 'sperm-producer' and why are eggs considered 'egg-producer'?" Pretty thought-provoking, don't you think?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Male pregnancy doesn’t blur any lines about human reproduction or the facts of human sex. It’s a fantasy.

Or do they? Do the males of other species have a uterus?

No.

How come sex organs and gametes are put into categories of male and female? A female can have penis, testes, etc. A female can produce sperm.

What other categories do you suggest? They are categorised because we know they exist, what they do, and who has or uses what.

A male can have uterus, vagina, ovaries, etc. A male can produce eggs.

No they can’t. Fiction is fiction. Fairly odd parents is a children’s show, not a commentary on reproductive roles.

Even pregnancy is done by males. What was considered to be a strictly female thing to do, can be done by males.

No it’s not. Even in the case of sea horses, they carry eggs they receive from the female in a pouch. They do not supply the eggs with nutrients. They simply carry them. When I carry my cat, I am not pregnant with a cat. A seahorse is not pregnant.

Why then are sperm, testes, penis, etc considered male, while eggs, vaginas, uteruses, ovaries, etc are considered female?

What else would they be? Does what happens on fairly odd parents or weird tumblr fanfics written by preteens really have any relevancy to an observable fact?

Unless males of other species do not get "pregnant", males can not have female sex organs, and females can not have male sex organs, then male and female are not separate categories and are one and the same.

Lol what? Males can’t have female sex organs, females can’t have male sex organs, and the categories are extremely obviously seperate.

[–]MezozoicGaygay male 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

No it’s not. Even in the case of sea horses, they carry eggs they receive from the female in a pouch. They do not supply the eggs with nutrients. They simply carry them. When I carry my cat, I am not pregnant with a cat. A seahorse is not pregnant.

On my current job we have two fathers who took extended parental leave, because their wifes have better jobs with bigger income.

So it is the same thing, male Seahorses are just taking extended parental leave to take care about kids until they can swim on their own.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Love it

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Sheesh, another case of men appropriating the language of motherhood. Bet these guys took parental leave or paternity leave, not maternity leave. Maternity leave is not only about caring for the infant as paternity leave is - it's about allowing a mother time to recover from labor and childbirth before returning to her paid job. Since men don't go through labor and give birth, they don't need to recover as many women do.

Also, you make it sound as though these men took maternity leave in place of their partners who gave birth, but I suspect that the mothers in these cases did take some maternity leave coz it's very unusual, and inadvisable, for a woman to go back to work immediately after giving birth without taking any days off work. Sounds like these couples decided the men would take extended parental leave whereas the women would take minimal maternity leave.

BTW, it doesn't have to be an either/or: the law in most jurisdictions allows both parents to take leave of equal lengths of time to care for a newborn, or newly adopted child. In the US, this leave is not necessarily paid for either sex, but equal time off work is usually an option for both sexes.

[–]MezozoicGaygay male 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I had no idea how it called in English, sorry. I only saw it called as "maternity leave" in the internet, regardless of who was taking the leave, and those were used by parenting organizaions. I afraid I saw newspeak of gender ideologists then.

For me it is somewhat hard to operate in English - as in my language there no word "parent" or "mother" or "fater" used at all in it, it is called something like "Leave to take care about newborn and growing up child" (but obviously much shorter with word conjunctions, which are not possible in English) and it lasts 3 years, first 6 months are fully paid, rest are paid with some lower percent, and work place is held for the person when they return. There is "afterbirth vacation" for mother, which lasts up to 3 months (most often just 1-2 months), and is fully paid (with average monthly income of her) as well. Goverment is covering majority of expenses and if needed providing specialist or money to teach new specialist if needed to replace parent taking long leave for the time of their abscense, and this time is counted as "work time" to Pension Fond and as quailification experience. Both parents can take leave, but goverment will protect work spot and pay for only one of parents.

How should I call it instead? Just "extended parental leave", as you said?

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Sorry, Mez, I didn't mean to jump on you! I usually respond to what's said in the comment, not to the poster - in fact, I often don't look at the user name. Which is my bad. Coz I should look. If I had in this case, it would have occurred to me that perhaps a translation issue was involved. Again, sorry for being so quick to kvetch.

That said, I'm quite sensitive about this topic of late because there's been so much in the news about the push to remove words like maternity, mother and breastfeeding from convos, literature and health care centered on pregnancy and childbirth and to call women such dehumanizing terms as gestators, carriers, birthing parents and birthing bodies. Just last week, a law about minister's maternity leave in the UK was proposed that spoke only of "pregnant people," not pregnant women - and an NHS trust came out with a new policy that changed the name of health care for pregnant women and new mothers from the commonly understood "maternity services" to the vague "perinatal services."

Yes, I'd call what these men are taking "extended parental leave" or "extended paternity leave."

BTW, the term you've translated as "afterbirth vacation" comes off as unintentionally humorous coz "afterbirth" in English means "the placenta and fetal membranes discharged from the uterus after the birth of offspring." Whilst expelling the placenta is not a pleasant experience, that one particular part of childbirth would not be the reason for a woman who's just given birth to take time off work, LOL, coz expelling the placenta is a breeze compared to going through labor and pushing a baby out of your body. And "vacation" in this context would likely cause offense. Coz as any new mother, and new father, can tell you, the period after the birth of a newborn is no vacation. It's a time of constantly being at the beck and call of the newborn baby - it's hard work, and a time of total exhaustion. A better translation would probably be "maternity leave." I'd go with that rather than something like "post-childbirth leave" coz rules around maternity leave usually allow the woman to take leave from work prior to the birth as well.

Again, sorry I was so quick to kvetch about the lingo.

[–]MezozoicGaygay male 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

About afterbirth - I textually translated our word, but I think it would sounds like "Aftergivingbirth" if to be very precise. We don't differentiate between leaves and vacations, there only one word for them all, so they are all just vacations to me, and it can be hard to understand the difference because of unspoken connotations sticked to words (there is word "leave" but it means the very last vacation, either before changing job or death). Many our words are just combined few words together, so sometimens it is hard to translate. Especially when translating words about female biology or what were typically female actions before - as nowadays there is such a mess even in online-dictionaries because of this post-modernistic ideology and women-related words erasure.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Vacation in English usually means time off work, school or life's ordinary routines for leisure, recreation and enjoyment. Whereas leave means time away from paid work or military service with permission. So for example, someone who needs to time off work due to extended illness or medical treatment, to serve on a jury for a lengthy trial, or to take care of a newborn, or a loved one who is seriously ill or dying will take leave. But the built-in annual breaks from work or school to allow people to do as they wish for rest, relaxation and pleasure are vacations.

I see how all the changes to words pertaining to sex and female biology would be very confounding! All these newfangled attempts to make the English language "more inclusive" actually just make English harder for people from other language traditions to understand.

[–]Taln_Reich 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reproductive biology of sea horses has very little bearing on human reproductive biology, fictional examples have none. I've been pretty much put into the QT-camp here, but this argument is just an emberassment.

[–]worried19 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I remain confused as to why the denial of biological sex is the hill some QT people want to die on.

We're not seahorses. We're not clownfish. We're human beings. Human reproduction is basic stuff. It's not controversial. Trans people can exist and still be valid (however you're defining that) without denying reality here.

[–]BiologyIsReal 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

We're not seahorses. We're a completely different species and one of the many differences between us and seahorses is that male humans can't get pregnat. Only female humans can. Why QT keep bringing up different species to "prove" how human sex is really a spectrum. Would you say humans can fly without the help of technology just because birds have wings and can fly?

Certain organs are associated with a given sex because those organs have a specific purpose in sexual reproduction. We're an anisogamic species, which means we reproduce through the production of specialized cells with half the DNA (gametes) of different size. Male individuals are the ones who produce small gametes (spermatozoon) and females are the ones who produce large gametes (ovum). Then, a spermatozoon and a ovum fuse to form the zygoto, restoring this way the normal amount of DNA. There are several genes involved in sex determination in humans, but the golden star is the SRY gen. Basically, if this gen is present the embryo will develope as male, if not it will develop as female. As this gen is located in the Y chromosome, XX individuals are females and XY individuals are males. There are some people who have a disorder of sexual development (DSD), but they are rare and they are still either male or female, i.e. they don't produce a third type of gamete.

Another thing, seahorses don't have a uterus. According to your links, the organ where fertilized eggs are carried in male seahorses is called a brood pouch. And we know they are males because they are the ones who produce sperm. Females seahorses produce eggs and later deposite them in the male's pouch.

[–]kwallio 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Even in other organisms sex isn't a spectrum - in every multicellular organism (animals, plants, and fungi!) that has sex there are only two sexes.