Requiem for Equal Rights: The Pregnancy Rant

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Title:	Requiem for Equal Rights: The Pregnancy Rant ("Rites" in the list of essays, "Rights" on the essay itself)
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	June 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:	Pregnancy
External Links:	Requiem for Equal Rights - Fialka, Archived version
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Requiem for Equal Rights: The Pregnancy Rant is by Fialka.

It was part of a series. The author comments that: "Many of these essays first appeared as discussions on OBSSE, Scullyfic and/or ATXA."

Author's notes: "This rant-- er, essay originally appeared on the OBSSE mailing list. Many thanks to Nina Shishkoff, whose post sparked the discussion, and others who shared their opinions. As time has not tempered my opinion, it appears here essentially unchanged."

The essay was first posted to The Annotated X-Files Study Guide and is at Fialka's Candybox.

Later, it was reposted:

Sadly, when the old NBCI server went the way of so many really cool, free things on the net, I never could find another free site with enough space to house the whole Study Guide, and it didn't get enough traffic to warrant paying for 250mb on a server somewhere. Not to mention, I no longer have as much time on my hands as I did back then, so like the UFOs...well, it is another UFO. Some of it still appears to be here, if you can wade your way through all the advertising on FortuneCity. I sure won't be insulted if you don't. These essays are from the original site, and appear here unchanged. Unlinked titles got abducted by aliens somewhere along the way. If you find them wandering dazed by the side of the road, could you be so kind as to send them home?

Excerpts

Okay, it's now been several days. My throat has healed from the Banshee Scream of Outrage that issued forth directly after the fateful phrase. I have caught up on my sleep and purged the alcohol from my bloodstream. I am sane. I am sober. It is only TV. But...but....but... I am still pissed off. REALLY pissed off. (Please remember that what follows, while ranty as hell, is only my opinion and the rant is directed at 1013, not at anyone on this list who may have expressed a different opinion. We're all entitled to think what we like. This is what I think. Bail now, ye faint of heart.) First, just to state my position on the ultimate question: They've done it at least once. When is your call. Scully is sure Mulder's the daddy. That's just MHO, but I can't see her being so happy merely because conception took place. If I found myself pregnant and I hadn't slept with a man in seven years but had Scully's recent history I'd be freaking out ten ways from Tuesday. And now I guess Carter will go surfing, get whacked on the head with the board and come up with some baby-as-Christchild scenario for next year. Great. I don't have a problem per se with Scully having a baby. If she were a real person I'd be thrilled. My problem is this is a narrative format, so where is 1013 planning to go with this? Any way you look at it it comes up f**ked. It's bad enough that her pregnancy became an excuse for Carter to drag out StayAtHome!Scully in Requiem, forcing her to do the swoony-thing instead of jumping on a plane and running after Mulder, and something wonderfully dramatice ensuing (oh, I don't know, how about having the forcefield throw her back while it lets him pass? If they needed only Skinner to see it, fine, she can be unconscious then, okay boys?) But let her freaking have tried to stop him instead of doing the little woman thing and sitting home while daddy goes off to war. That is not our Scully, and I fear we've just seen the future. I fear that the moment we have Mama!Scully, we will have this as a permanent trend.

But do you know what really pissed me off about the whole baby thing (apart from its evident cheap sentimentality)? After seven years of the TouchMe/Don't tango, after all the depression and misgivings and soul-searching of Seasons 6 & 7, Scully finally sits on a couch beside the man she finally admits that she loves and finally dares to say that she's happy with her life and this is what she gets. She's happy with her weird pseudo-marriage that will never include anything like white dresses and baby showers, she's happy with her dangerous, goin-nowhere career, she's happy with herself and her self-absorbed yet somehow eternally devoted man. And what does 1013 do with that wonderful, wonderful statement? They freaking knock her up in the very next ep. What was wrong with a career woman being happy with the childless life she had? If she had been fertile all along would she have made other choices? Are we to assume she stayed with Mulder and the job because, being sterile, there was no other life for her? Or may we - thank you! - assume that she chose to stay with him and the work because she thought it was important enough to sacrifice certain personal elements, or even - gasp! - that certain elements like marriage and babies were always second to her career goals.

Whatever they're planning to do with it now, we're stuck with the idea and all I can say is if they've gone this far then that kid had better be Mulder's and whatever happened to Scully's ova to allow it, that kid better have been conceived by the time-honoured method. For seven years they've denied Scully's sexuality, they've denied her attraction to Mulder, they've denied the procreative capacity of her body. They've raped her medically in both literal and metaphorical senses (the insertion of a man-made controlling device without which she will presumably die, anyone?). They have removed or tampered with her control over her body in every single way, right down to the fact that MEN can command her body to kill itself. If you tell me now that 1013 is so afraid of Scully's female body and female sexuality that they can't even let her get pregnant by the man she loves by making love I am going to fly to LA and implant a controlling device in Chris Carter's neck and I won't even begin to tell you what I would make him do with it. Why? Because Nina is right: television sends messages to society and the message this is sending to me is that men are still terrified of women, still desperate to control our reproduction, and - failing to control it - will manipulate women's sensibilities through mother guilt. It is telling me that Scully has to be a mother because if she's not, she's missing something essential. And frankly, on behalf of myself and every fertile woman who has CHOSEN not to bear children, they can shove that sentiment up their collective whahoos. Once again, management would like to state that all Rampant Pissiness contained herein is directed at 1013, not individual members of this community, whatever opinion they may previously or subsequently express.