In my previous post yesterday, I talked about the first season of American Horror Story and its reliance on two female archetypes – the femme fatale and the overbearing mother – in its construction of the monstrous.

The spoiler warning, again, goes here!

Today, I’m going to talk about reproduction, so if you want to sing that song from Grease 2, you better get it out of your system now. Ready?

Mothers are, in the world of AHS, a danger not only to their children, but also to the others that touch their lives. Pregnancy, with its easy symbolism and suitably melodramatic and gory end bit, lends itself to Horror. But it is not just the obvious that is made an object of fear.

Vivien, the walking womb-ded

As I said in part one, Vivien and Ben are a married couple facing difficulties. She’s had a miscarriage, he’s had an affair, and their relationship is in tatters. I think, I think, that we’re meant to be engaged with this crumbling marriage.

But while Ben is a rounded character – full of hope and regret, sweetness and cruelty, passion and inertia – his wife is driven only by her desire to save her marriage, which in turn is driven by her maternal desire.

Like Nora, the basement abortionist’s wife, Hayden (Ben’s deeply sexual and manipulative mistress), and Constance, the terminally abusive and neglectful mother next door, Vivien simply has uterus, will procreate.¹

Vivien is little more than a vessel, a womb with bouncy hair. She is Shroedinger’s Uterus, forever pregnant or not pregnant, host to a foetus that is alive or not alive, evil or not evil depending on the requirements of the plot in any given episode. Viven’s role as incubator is underlined when she dies in childbirth – her role is complete, so we need nothing more from her.

Vivien’s pregnancy is unusual. Hers is a product of heteropaternal superfecundation – she’s carrying twins with different fathers. One is her husband’s, the other is the result of her rape by a psychopathic ghost.² Let’s not even go into the fact that her husband doesn’t believe she’s been raped – there’s something much worse than that on the horizon.The show’s mythology tells us that a child born of a ghost and a human will be the antichrist, and we all know what that means: apocalypse.

Just in case the implication of that isn’t clear, let me put it in slightly different terms: Vivien’s vagina is the muggletuppin’ Hellmouth.

Here’s where we get into the really juicy feminist theory

Much of what I’ve said so far owes a debt to Barbara Creed’s theory of the monstrous-feminine, and in particular the abject body; the demonisation, defilement and objectification of the female body in Horror.

Vivien’s labour and delivery is presented as particularly sanguinary; a festival of blood and sweat. It’s a burlesque of the natural; a grotesque, pantomimic affair attended entirely by a gorily deceased medical staff provided by the house.

With neither the clinical intervention of the modern birthing experience nor the cleanliness of the body innocent, the birth plays on both classically Freudian and modern germophobic fears. It is, from both perspectives, unclean.

The point of Horror, if there must be one, is to walk the line between desirable and undesirable; to cross or threaten the boundaries that separate stability and chaos. Childbirth, as a triumph of the primal over the civilised and the inner over the outer, is a natural exemplar of this. It’s naturally yukky and generally unstoppable, and that makes it pretty frightening. Here we’re treated to close ups of Vivien’s sweat covered forehead, wide overhead shots that emphasise the claustrophobic urgency of the scene, and heavy blood-loss.

Horror films that depict monstrous births play on the inside/outside distinction in order to point to the inherently monstrous nature of the womb as well as the impossibility of ever completely banishing the abject from the human domain. […] The womb represents the utmost in abjection for it contains a new life form which will pass from inside to outside bringing with it traces of contamination – blood, afterbirth, faeces.

– Barbara Creed, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993)

Childbirth places us on the side of nature, outside of patriarchal order. Flesh is torn, blood is spilled, the sexual organs begin to resemble a wound. The imagery is graphic, base: abject. Vivien’s affinity with uncivilised, feral nature invoked, her threat to patriarchal law is cemented. The birth of Vivien’s twins is a threat fulfilled, a boundary crossed. From the abject comes the ruin of the world.

Vivien is threatened not just by the hell-spawn she’s carrying, but also by three of the ghosts that share her home. Nora and Hayden, who have lost their own children, and Chad, who has never had children, each desire ownership of Vivien’s child and conspire to steal the baby once it is born.

Baby-snatching is a common, well rooted trope in fantasy and horror, which usually points to the degeneracy of a group or being – a sign that they’re beyond redemption, truly inhuman. Infants are stolen for ingestion (as in Torchwood: Children of Earth), as revenge (like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn) or a sacrificial offering (the Buffy episode Band Candy) and occasionally, though rarely, to be raised as the kidnapper’s own. It is this which motivates the childless ghosts of AHS.

Each conspirator represents a different level of threat. Deceased interior designer Chad, constantly arguing with his (also dead) partner Patrick, is no threat at all. More concerned as he is with decorating than mending his broken relationship, he seems to think the baby will simply be handed to him. Nora, left to her own devices, is an unlikely threat – she’s narcissistic enough but ethereal and clueless.

But with Hayden, the picture is quite different. Hayden is wicked, determined and operating without fear of consequence – she’s dead, after all – and that’s precisely why she’s so dangerous.

The feminine is only established, however, if the wish for a penis is replaced by one for a baby.

– Freud, “Femininity”, New Introductory Lectures in Psycho-Analysis (1933)

The problem here is one of motivation. Now, I’m not saying there’s something wrong with wanting children. But there’s something wrong with wanting children to the exclusion of everything else. Hayden is a formidable woman brimming with agency and audacity, and, in a stunning display of the roles women play in our diverse society, she’s pregnant too.

When she dies, she’s contributing all her energy to winning Ben back, and then, bam! One blunt-force trauma later, her whole reason for being has changed. Now, I get that dying is the sort of thing that might emotionally scar a person, but COME ON. The child in her belly, previously presented only as a tool of emotional blackmail, will never appear, so she’s obsessed with replacing it.

And that’s the key to understanding both Hayden and Nora. They both want to replace children they’ve lost. It is a narcissistic craving; a desire merely to possess. The possibility of motherhood has stripped them of rationality, maybe even sanity, and turned them into objects of dread. Here motherhood truly is ‘the most powerful feminine wish’ (Freud again, in 1933), and it is dangerous.

In the eyes of AHS, women are to be feared. Female sexuality is aberrant if not abhorrent, and represented by crude Freudian symbolism (if you aren’t yet convinced, check out the suckling infant literally devouring his mother’s breast).

I’m with Simone de Beauvoir when it comes to Freud, but not so Messrs. Murphy and Falchuck; it’s like they’ve tried to dramatise Introduction to Psychoanalysis.

The second season of American Horror Story recently began its run on UK television (on FX, new episodes Tuesday evening). So far it’s really pushing the boat out to hate women in a variety of new and exciting ways under the guise of a critical look at the pathologising of sexuality and historic attitudes to poor mental health.

It’s terrible. You’re going to love it.

• Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN, the UK’s only 100% bisexual publication. Her latest project, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature. Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

1. In a worrying conflation of hetero femininity and queer masculinity, one half of the gay couple who also haunt the house is also constantly yapping about having a child.
2. Who, by the way, IS WEARING A LATEX FETISH SUIT because that isn’t sex negative, kink-shaming douchery AT ALL.

This is the sort of Found Feminsim I might like the best.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in your whole life?

The series is all about being able to showcase positive change in our society, to highlight all the good work that is being done to make the universe a better place for everyone by bringing down all the shitty, stupid barriers and obstacles that mean if we present as a certain gender we can/can’t/must/must not/do/do not delete-as-appropriate bullshit where we all feel we have to behave in a particular way.

We don’t. We shouldn’t have to. Feminism is all about not falling for this nonsense.

My ovaries do not compel me to buy pink products. If I wear a skirt on Tuesday I am not inherently more “female” than when I was wearing trousers on Monday.

And dear, sweet reader: just because a person has the capacity to get pregnant and give birth does not mean that they are then automatically and by crushing biological imperative the only person capable of looking after that child.

So I give to you this offering. A sign in Holland Park that lifted my heart, coming as it does from the heartland of nice, yummy mummy middle class London. A space where Dads can go and do the stuff that babies need. Y’know. The wiping, cleaning, icky stuff that they don’t put on the tube adverts for IVF. The real stuff. The day-to-day stuff. The stuff you really need someone to do if you are little and can’t go to the bathroom for yourself. Caring stuff. Because Dads should be given every and all opportunity and support in public places to be as caring and nurturing as Mums. That’s one of the things that feminism is all about.

I am not really a baby person. I am, however, fully in favour of the idea that if we (as a society) are going to have them, then we should make sure they are properly looked after. Which means giving men as much as women the opportunity to be amazing parents.

And to change the nappies. Which I hear is important.

I found out that I was expecting a baby back in February, and since then my life has changed quite dramatically. Apart from feeling very slightly psychic (and a little bit smug) when I called early on that it was going to be a boy, I’ve become aware of lots of stories and ideas in the media that I had never really taken any notice of before.

Take, for example, the increasing need of some of the media to fan the flames of the so-called ‘Mommy Wars’, in which parents are pitched against each other in a tone that is almost ‘fight-to-the death’ in its urgency. It demands that mothers (only ever mothers- fathers are never a presence in these debates, or very rarely) pick sides: are you pro-breastfeeding or anti-breastfeeding? If you plan to breastfeed, how long for? Not long enough and you’re a failure. Too long? You’re a bit of a sicko, aren’t you? But no one ever really mentions those women who would dearly love to breastfeed, but can’t. At the end of the day, surely it’s better to have a baby who is fed and happy (perhaps on formula), than a mother and baby who are upset, wretched and hungry?

This problem was perfectly encapsulated by the issue of Time magazine that came out in May – a beautiful woman was pictured breastfeeding her toddler son with the headline “Are You Mom Enough?” Cue clutching of pearls and vicious fighting in the comments of websites that wrote about the feature. Actually, the ‘Mom’ in question, Jamie Lynne Grumet, is pretty sensible. She was quoted as saying “There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting, and that’s
what I want to avoid. I want everyone to be encouraging. We’re not on opposing teams. We all need to be encouraging to each other, and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job at that.” She acknowledges that attachment parenting, which she practices, is not for everyone.

As a feminist, these kind of arguments deflate me. It seems that some of us, in the clamour to declare our way of parenting is (or is going to be) the right one, decide that anything else is just not feminism. Cherie Booth caused an outcry when she denounced ‘yummy mummies’ who stayed at home instead of working. Again, outcry ensued across the blogosphere. But I say simply: feminism is about choice. It’s because of the work that our mothers and grandmothers put in that we can choose to go to work or stay at home, if we wish, although very often that choice is replaced by financial necessity.

I don’t know what kind of a parent I’ll be. I’m not making any hard and fast rules about what I’ll do when the baby arrives. I know, though, that I will try hard not to judge other parents’ decisions. Quite simply put, it’s none of my business. The majority of parents will choose to raise their children in the best way they know, and as long as the child isn’t being hurt or neglected, who am I to question the way someone is bringing up their baby?

• Stephanie is a teacher by day, and a writer/crafter/blogger by night. She’s a young old lady who lives by the sea, reads voraciously and drinks a heck of a lot of tea. Her website is here. Her latest project, Ladies In Monochrome, is an online archive of ‘lost’ or forgotten vintage photographs of women sourced from flea markets and antique shops.

U

UTERUS

There are some letters in the dictionary that are more Latinate than others. In consequence, u, v and, to an extent, o are largely dominated by medical terminology (because doctors, bless ’em, love a bit of Caecilius est in horto).

In Utero

Sexy tudors. Henry VIII, after Holbein.

Uterus derives from a Latin homonym meaning ‘womb’ or ‘belly’, with reference to the proto-Indo European udero (= ‘abdomen’), and, possibly, a Slavic usage, vedro, meaning ‘bucket’. Much like the ‘bucket’ (and indeed the shape of the letter u with which the word commences), the first sense of uterus is as a vessel – ‘the organ in which the young are conceived, developed and protected till birth; the female organ of gestation; the womb’.

Much has been made of this ‘protective’ element – it has been frequently observed that the ‘fetal’ position babies adopt to fill the uterus endures into adulthood as a comforting or even instinctual reaction to anxiety, pain, distress or cold – a kind of retrospective communion with the mother’s body. This sort of thing, it seems, is not above a bit of marketing, and the uterus is often invoked as a place of calm, darkness and peace.

Opposed to this, we have the sort of ambiguity nowhere better demonstrated than through tanks. (yes, tanks). The Mark I tank, the world’s first combat tank, was renamed from ‘Big Willie’ to ‘Mother’ (…), and its successors were colloquially dubbed ‘Mother’ throughout both world wars. The reasons are obvious: the inside of a tank is small, hot and protective. Childlike, a crew could be forgiven for considering themselves invincible within it – yet once the fuel tank is hit, the men inside suffer a hideous, incestuous death, incinerated by their own machine. This sort of thing runs right the way through conceptions of the mother’s body, particularly in psychoanalysis, which is never tired of exposing the deeply conflictual nature of many mother-child relationships, and with mapping those onto the cisgendered female body – we might think particularly of Melanie Klein’s famous ‘good breast’ and ‘bad breast’. If we’re going there.

HOWEVER. BACK TO THE RENAISSANCE. In its early incarnations in English this ‘womb’ is rarely so clearly gendered (as you may remember, King Lear thinks he has one), and, true to its ambiguous etymology, early modern minds frequently considered the uterus to be a generic bodily pouch. Thus it was often conflated with the gender-neutral belly (ah, Isidore of Seville), and in this form it was thought to be proof of the body’s retentive faculties. So even when considered as a specifically reproductive organ, the thinking went, the uterus still resembles the digestive system in how long it takes to do its business, since it creates infants over a leisurely period of nine months. While I doubt it takes quite that long for your morning Alpen, digestion is certainly something of a gradual process – consider, if you will, the hangover.

Horn of Plenty

If you remember the Alphabet post on ovary (to which this is in many ways a companion), you may also remember that until the seventeenth century sex organs were considered to have analogues across the genders (penis = vagina, labia = foreskin and uterus = scrotum). Along with its reproductive and sack-like qualities – I am reminded of the beautifully named ‘Mermaid’s Purses‘ – in this model the uterus also matches the scrotum in its creative properties. After all, reproduction is six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

But this was not just something tossed around in the Renaissance lab and subsequently ignored: the scrotum-uterus comparison actually spread into what we might consider a bizarre arena – fashion. I am, of course, talking about the codpiece, ‘a bagged appendage to the front of the breeches; often conspicuous’. This was a sartorial fave of Henry VIII (above, right), who clearly took his outfits very seriously – but I note that sexy Jonathan Rhys Meyers has avoided the sexy codpiece throughout the BBC’s Sexy Tudors. Too sexy?

Originally a modesty device to get round the, ahem, ‘shortcomings’ of the hose, this strange appendage quickly grew to a size that redefined it as a disturbing kind of hyper-masculine power-dressing. Yet the word derives from the Old English codd (+ piece), which came to mean ‘testicles’ in early Medieval times (quite possibly because of exactly this phenomenon) but originally meant simply ‘a bag, pouch or husk’. Indeed, the codpiece was frequently dubbed a belly, and, through fun with synonyms, the womb could become a cod: my good friend Thomas Laqueur highlights the Pardoner’s exclamation ‘O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod!’, in the Canterbury Tales, and also points out that the codpiece quickly started to resemble…(I like this bit)… ‘a finely embroidered and bejewelled horn of plenty’.

Horn.

So it seems that, while Henry VII might not thank you for it, we could observe that this most macho of garments is in fact drawing attention to the womb-like, generative, and retentive properties of what lurks within (which, of course, it also helped protect – gender-ambiguous Russian dolls, anyone?). Indeed, glancing at a couple of examples in portraiture, a lot of these men look rather like they have an artificially constructed uterus poised over their genitalia (love how he’s pointing, just in case we miss it). Less Blackadder, more… actually, I don’t know what that is.

Bag for Life

But, of course, eventually someone had to seize on anatomical differences to posit a definition of gender, and thus it that (around 1615) the uterus started to be considered something exclusively female – as regular readers will be aware, this was a chain that began with independent naming of the organ in question and eventually reached the pitches of hysteria in the nineteenth century. There is also a strange quasi-legal term, uterine, apparently first spotted in the seventeenth century but not dictionary-cited until 1816, meaning ‘related through the mother’. Thus, ‘the property devolves to his brothers or uterine uncles’, with the body of the mother here serving a dynastic link, since all these uncles can be proved to have shared a uterus. They could even be half-brothers, since an alternative meaning for uterine is ‘having the same mother, but not the same father’. Working on a similar premise, if you are particularly toolish, and your sister has a son, you would (in pre-paternity test times) have been best off leaving your money to your nephew: his link to you is purely uterine, unlike your link to your son, who could be anyone’s spawn.

As we draw near the end of the Alphabet series, threads begin to resolve themselves. Uterus has been the final word of three (hysteria and ovary were the other two) all of which address the issue of mapping the cisgendered female body. Following the three, we have seen a model of sex and gender that does not conform with what many experience as the current status quo. Conversely, the distinction between genders does not seem to have been primarily based on the body until the nineteenth century (or even later). Thus, we have seen women turning into men with comparatively little contemporary comment, the female orgasm (and in some cases her entire sexual appetite) vanish from the everyday realities of heterosexual sex, and now, and perhaps most bizarrely, an epidemic of hyper-masculine men apparently walking around with giant uteri affixed over their genitalia. (Yes, I did just say ‘uteri’). Perhaps this is worth thinking about…

NEXT WEEK: V is for Vitriol