August 6, 2022

"Pop culture has long been obsessed with the prospect of male pregnancy, though it has mostly been used as a comedic gambit, as in the dismal 1978 farce 'Rabbit Test'...."

"[In] 'Rabbit Test,' Joan Rivers’s misanthropic comedy in which the aimless bachelor Lionel (Billy Crystal, in his first movie) miraculously conceives after a one-night stand with some pushy broad. Released at the tail end of the second-wave feminist movement, 'Rabbit Test' is a movie about the scrambling of gender roles that only reinforces how rigid they still are. Its 'first pregnant man' conceit is just a setup for a carnival of broadly racist and sexist scenarios that evinces little interest in the reality of pregnancy itself. Lionel hardly looks pregnant, he hardly feels pregnant, and as his due date approaches, he is not concerned about how he is going to become un-pregnant. 'Rabbit Test' is so incurious about women’s experiences that it doesn’t even bother exploiting them. It’s just a movie about a guy with a pillow under his shirt."

It was 1978. It was Joan Rivers. Shouldn't one try to gestate some viable reverence for our revered comedy foremother? 

Here, I found the whole thing on YouTube. Check it out. Is it really so bad? What if you had to appreciate it? Care for it. Nurture it:

26 comments:

Temujin said...

From "Pregnant Men Were a Movie Punchline. Now They’re Horror Villains. The idea of the pregnant man has long been mined for Hollywood comedy. This summer, he becomes a menace" by Amanda Hess (NYT).

Once it was considered comedy. Today the left considers it real. And more, they demand that we consider it real as well. Hence the move from laughter to derision.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

I'm waiting for the first penile birth.
Because if men can get pregnant, and they are actually still men - where would the baby gestate?
Where is the birth canal?

If a man has a vagina and a womb - then is he still a he? (No) oh I mean - Yes (woke answer) if you have a vagina and a womb - you're a woman. (oops - mind crime!)

RideSpaceMountain said...

In can't wrap my head around modern women's horror and disgust surrounding pregnancy. You wanna talk girrrrl power? You'd never find a more powerful and convincing vehicle. For millenia women giving and dying in childbirth was right up there honorifically with a man's death in battle. Some cultures (the Dayaks of se Asia and others) put it even higher.

All of those configurations are in the past. But not the physics or the reality of the capacity much less the imperative, however forcefully sublimated.

There is nothing, absolute nothing, more feminine than carrying and giving birth to a child. Maybe people find that funny. I laughed at the birth if my son like an idiot mostly because I didn't know what to do (comedy when I can manage it is my default).

Like many things in life, it's so serious, how can you not laugh?

rcocean said...

Answer: 70s movies, Joan Rivers, Billy crystal
Question: WHat are the three most unfunny things ever?

rhhardin said...

'Rabbit Test' is a movie about the scrambling of gender roles that only reinforces how rigid they still are.

That sounds like a penis reference.

Ambrose said...

Ha - I saw that in a theater when it first came out opening weekend. It disappeared from theaters in a matter of days. It wasn't terrific but it's real sin was an irreverence that got up the wrong peoples' noses (like the latter day review).

gilbar said...

"Pregnant Men Were a Movie Punchline. Now They’re Horror Villains
umm, no!
Now They're mentally disturbed WOMEN (womb people!), that Pretend that they are men.

Serious Question.
If, you're on Hormone Therapy.. To say NOTHING of chemical castration (puberty blockers)..
HOW the HELL did you become Pregnant girl?

Was she pregnant before she 'became' a man? Seriously, is she on hormones? isn't that BAD for the kid?

IF, "he" hasn't had bottom surgery, and ISN'T on Hormone Replacement Therapy.. And is letting sperm into "his" womb... Isn't "he" BY DEFINITION a womb person??
I mean, Come ON! What is it; that makes this womb person a "man"? Self delusion?? Anything else?

gilbar said...

Meanwhile, while you were All distracted by chix with dicks, and bearded ladies...
Indiana becomes first state in nation to approve near-total abortion ban post Roe

So much for girls from Ohio going to Indiana to abort their babies
(while, not quite: The new law bans the procedure except in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life and physical health of the mother. The rape and incest exceptions only apply in the first 10 weeks post-fertilization. Victims would not be required to sign a notarized affidavit attesting to an attack, which had previously been proposed.)

Jupiter said...

At least it's sexist and racist.

Lilly, a dog said...

Why skip over Alien? John Hurt was impregnated through mouth rape and memorably gave birth in that movie.

takirks said...

Consider these definitions of the term "insanity":

>A severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder.


>Unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility.

>Extreme folly or unreasonableness. Examples: The insanity of violence. || His comments were pure insanity .

>Something utterly foolish or unreasonable. Example: The insanities of modern life.

>The condition of being abnormal or unhealthy in mind.

What number of these definitions might be assigned to any and all aspects of this entire class of gender- and sex-related maladaptions?

Fact one: Sex is a biological fact.

Fact two: Humans are sexually dimorphic.

Fact three: You cannot change that set of facts.

Observation: If you are in denial that this set of facts exists, you are demonstrating insanity. Women are not men; men are not women. In broad terms, this is immutable. You cannot change the underlying biology, and if you somehow did, then the resultant entity would genetically be a totally different organism.

Much of this crap is coming from people who are fundamentally at odds with reality, and unable to process this crap rationally. So what if you'd rather be a girl? Look down: Is there a penis and testicles between your legs? You're a boy. Deal with it. Likewise, with women.

Encouraging people to behave as though this stuff was all up to someone's choice is the actual insanity. Swapping out sexual organs that are expressions of inherent genetic characteristics ain't helping anyone--The doctors, if they were truly following the Hippocratic Oath they all supposedly took, would be working to ease people's issues with what the genetic lottery gave them. You wanna be a girl, have babies? Tough titties; it's like a guy with the genetic heritage of an African Pygmy wanting to be an NBA basketball player. It ain't happening. Deal with it.

Encouraging unhealthy "solutions" to what are, in the end, mental aberrations? That is not good medicine, or any sort of sane policy.

I have to question anyone's sanity that is so fixated and revolved around their sex lives that they have go to these extremes. It isn't really all that big a deal; sex and reproduction are not things your life should be defined by. An unhealthy obsession with this aspect of life is indicative of imbalance and inability to deal with reality.

Ficta said...

Wow. I still vividly remember the newspaper ad campaign, which I thought was very amusing at the time, where recent movie posters were redone as "rabbit movies": Paws, Hare Wars.... Here's a scan. They're a bit cheesy from this vantage point, but still probably funnier than the movie.

hombre said...

That we are talking about pregnant men as anything other than comic relief illustrates how effete (as in weak and decadent) we have become.

effinayright said...

Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
I'm waiting for the first penile birth.
Because if men can get pregnant, and they are actually still men - where would the baby gestate?
Where is the birth canal?
************

Long time ago, Bill Cosby did a "dream" skit where he was lying in a hospital bed, somehow pregnant and awaiting delivery.

A nurse appears to prep him. She mentions what a miracle giving birth is, since a baby emerges from "that little opening".

Cosby ponders that last statement, then wakes up screaming.

gilbar said...

How come YOU get to decide, what pronouns *i* use?
My pronouns are the ones *i* use
Your pronouns are the ones *you* use
QUIT trying tell me which pronouns *i* get to use

Use whatever YOU want, when YOU talk.. And I'LL use the ones *i* want, when *i* talk
because they are MY pronouns

gilbar said...

a woman is Anyone that SAYS that they are a woman.. Right?

So, if gilbar SAYS that he is now a woman.. Then "she" IS........... Right?
Because, it is just a matter of what someone says................... Right?

So, if gilbar SAYS that people with wombs are women.. Then they ARE..Right?
Because, it is just a matter of what someone says................... Right?

Joe Smith said...

Men know the agony and pain of child birth.

The waiting room chair cushions were dirty and too soft.

The coffee was lukewarm and stale.

And my Snickers bar got caught in the machine.

It was hell...

Fred Drinkwater said...

"Pop culture has long been obsessed..."

Objection. Asserts facts not in evidence.

Yet another essay that takes as a premise a very weakly supported statement. Tiresome.

n.n said...

impregnated through mouth rape and memorably gave birth

Oral "sex". There was another movie where an alien baby was conceived, evolved, and birthed in the rectum. 50 shades of a plausible, but improbable human culture. Here's to social progress.

mikee said...

Herbert's novel, White Plague, also covered the idea of male pregnancy but only after a bioweapon killed off almost every woman on earth.

Is that a sexist concept for a sci-fi novel, or am I getting woke?

takirks said...

I think that the mere fact we have fantasies with huge followings depicting one-sex worlds is something we ought to find disturbing.

Why are things like "Y: The Last Man" and "The White Plague" popular? What on Earth leads people to fantasize about and identify with the people that would do these things?

Likewise, what mental defect/illness leads to things like the Indian and Chinese popular choices to abort female babies, in favor of males? WTF were the parents thinking, that they would be the only idiots doing that? Where did they presume that the wives for their sons would be coming from? How do you not look around yourself and see the probable consequence of your actions?

Most people are oblivious self-centered idiots, when it comes to evaluating courses of action and extrapolating where they will go if they take them. They also fail to work out the likelihoods of public policies doing unexpected things, things that any cretin should be able to work out from first principles and observations.

I'm coming around to the idea that most human beings go through life in a state of utter blindness-to-consequence, and can't work out why bad things are happening to them. It's a societal-scale "Hey, hold my beer..." moment, with all this crap. We make mock of people who "win the Darwin Award", but are utterly oblivious to the fact that we ourselves are doing Darwin Award-worthy things on a vast scale, across society. All while piously saying we're not, and mocking those who say otherwise.

Swear to God, the next idjit that tells me humans are rational is getting punched in the mouth.

Rollo said...

Amanda Hess watches a movie about a woman being set upon by a whole town of depraved men, and the thing she chooses to write about is one of the men being pregnant? It sounds like she missed the real story.

Joan Rivers was hilarious. Billy Crystal had his moments. And he looked mahvelous.

n.n said...

Trans/neo-male, perhaps. Trans/quasi-, trans/pseudo-male, too. Trans/social female, clearly. Trans/homo, trans/bi, male or female, no.

effinayright said...

Rollo said...


Joan Rivers was hilarious. Billy Crystal had his moments. And he looked mahvelous.

****************

I've always taken Billy's advice as I've gone through life:

"Remember: it's not how you feel...it's how you look."

Deep.

farmgirl said...

One of my kids posted a trans couple- all still intact- married and w/pregnancy pics(“he’s the one carrying)& baby pics, too. Creepy, yeah. At least they're adults. Not sure how much damage will be done to the beautiful baby, though…

Christopher B said...

... the scrambling of gender roles that only reinforces how rigid they still are.

Anything deeper than a surface glance at the current trans-mania shows that could have been written yesterday.