*Spoilers for most popular sci-fi/fantasy tv shows/franchises and comics*
I am a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica. The show has it’s issues, I’m well aware, but it’s one of those shows that causes the viewer to have real, emotional reactions. In this specific instance, I was infuriated. It’s impossible to be a fan of women in nerd culture without noticing this; wombs are the writers’ playthings.
Kara Thrace is kidnapped in Battlestar Galactica and subjected to reproductive surgery and a pelvic exam. She’s told by what appears to be a human doctor that she should have children, that women of a childbearing age are a precious commodity. “I am not a commodity,” she says. “I am a viper pilot.”
But in Science Fiction TV (and often Fantasy), it feels like women are often that: Commodities. They exist to bring a new plot line to the show. X-Files, Star Trek, Torchwood, and Doctor Who all have examples of “Mystical Pregnancies”; when a woman, often regardless of choice, is impregnated with a child who is frequently an angel/devil/anti-Christ/savior. The fantasy show Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin off, has the same character mystically impregnated twice. It’s rarely portrayed as such, but this (in my eyes) is rape, regardless of penetration or magical gold Zeus dust landing in a woman’s womb.
On the flip side, we have the women in fiction who are sterilized against their will. In the newest Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, it’s revealed that Black Widow was sterilized when she was in the Red Room training; when she was a brainwashed child or teen and could not consent to such a surgery. There’s Kara Thrace having one of her ovaries removed by the very creatures she’s battling. The choice to have children or not to have children is a very personal one. If you take that choice from a woman, that’s problematic as hell. Less common but still a problem is women being forced by men to surrender their children and role as mother: Harley Quinn puts a child up for adoption, despite wanting to be a mother, because a child would interfere with Joker’s career- uh, evil plans.
A trope not limited to sci-fi and fantasy is the woman who only exists to give birth. This could be Raven’s mother in the Teen Titans comics, Padme in Star Wars (Broken heart= death), heck, even Cinderella’s mother in the fairy tales. How many motherless children who go on adventures can you think of? Most of the Disney princesses, most Disney characters in general.
My conclusion is the same conclusion I typically reach when discussing women in fiction: WRITE WOMEN BETTER. Do not pigeonhole women. Wombs are more than plot devices, and women are more than wombs. The way one woman responds to motherhood, infertility, adoption, or miscarriages is not the way all women would respond. We are all people with depth and desires. Women across the board don’t all have ovaries or wombs anyways; when you define women by what’s between their legs, you’re disregarding trans-women, intersex woman, and people who identify as women.
I could go the rest of my life without seeing/reading another Mystical Pregnancy or situation where a woman’s autonomy is taken. As a writer, the best I can do is make sure I’m not contributing to the problem.
Comic Book Femme Fatale 