I’ve talked about this a lot but something that I think makes it painfully obvious that men see how horrific both rape and forced impregnation and birth are is the movie Alien (1979). Alien came right behind Roe v Wade, of the Hyde act, serious discussions on pregnancy discrimination, and Commonwealth v Pitchford, where a woman who gave herself an “illegal abortion” with knitting needles was put on trial for manslaughter. All this touches back on the fact that horror is very much tied to public fears and broader societal conversations.
In the making of Alien, H.R. Giger wanted the face hugger to be hermaphrodictic in appearance, but him and dir Ridley Scott both wanted the first victim of the alien to be a man because they knew a man being orally raped and impregnated then murdered by the ‘birth’ of that thing would be more shocking than if it was a woman. They know how horrifying it is. Which somehow makes it more sinister that when it’s women actually experiencing it that isn’t not seen as torture. A man being forcibly impregnated (yes with a monster but it’s a horror movie and that argument goes out the window when they specifically wanted a man as the victim to be more horrific) and killed by it is what made what is widely recognized as one of the best scifi horror films in existence.
They know how horrific it is, they just don’t care because it doesn’t happen to them and because they don’t see women as humans.
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