Omega males, women, and narrative dread

[resonant]

I was thinking about the omega male thing in slash stories -- have you seen this? Where a male character will be written as having an estrus cycle, having a self-lubricating orifice, and being able to get pregnant? I've never seen it anywhere but Inception fandom, but for all I know, it's all over the place.

And the first time I saw it, I thought, "Hey, why not just make Arthur a woman? Or write a story about Ariadne?"

And then I thought, "There are stories about always-female Arthur, and stories about Ariadne. I don't read either of them. On the other hand, I'm not completely nuts about the omega-male thing, but I am reading this."

So there's something in particular about writing a story that is basically about the female sexual response, but writing it using the body of a male character. And I have a theory.

See, bonding with female characters is hard.

Seriously, when I watch something with a woman in it, I watch it with a bit of dread. (Even a movie, where there isn't a lot of time for dread.) I still spend the whole time with an underlying dread about what's going to be done to the woman. Not what the other characters are going to do to her -- what the creators are going to do to her.

Maybe they'll fridge her. Or someone will rape her. Or maybe it will be less violent -- they'll give her a new boyfriend or a new baby and she'll completely lose her agency, if not her entire sense of self. Or they'll decide she needs to be absorbed in her looks to the exclusion of everything else (this is often done via a makeover scene).

If she's not a major enough character to merit this sort of reduction -- if she's mostly in the background -- then maybe all that will happen is that the show will cruelly mock her for being attractive, or for being unattractive, or for having sex, or for not having sex.

Now, I like women. And I find them sexy. And so you'd think I could overcome all this to enjoy reading stories about women having sex, right? At least if they're written in fandom, where I can trust the writers?

But you know that thing where women do worse on standardized tests when they're reminded that they're women? To be honest, after all these years of consuming mass-produced entertainment, I feel this sense of narrative dread even when I'm reading original characters written by writers I trust. It's Pavlovian. I feel fear for her as soon as I'm reminded that she's a woman.

So if I have the vague erotic desire to read about the female sexual response, but I don't want it contaminated by that dread? Maybe it's not surprising to find myself reading about men who have sex like women.






[edited to add: maybe I ought to tell y'all what I was reading that got me thinking about this? It was this not-very-dom-subby Inception story by Recrudescence, and it's not my kink but I enjoyed it just the same.]

Comments

[nestra]

I was thinking about the omega male thing in slash stories -- have you seen this? Where a male character will be written as having an estrus cycle, having a self-lubricating orifice, and being able to get pregnant?

Smallville fandom used to do this to both Clark and Lex (not in the same story). And then they'd get married.

I have not seen it in Inception, so huh.

[laurajv]

I've also seen it in Harry Potter. (And I *think* there were a couple of Sentinel stories, back in the day, and some X-Files.)

[out_there]

But you know that thing where women do worse on standardized tests when they're reminded that they're women?

I did not know that thing (but it was very interesting, thanks for the link) but I share your concerns about stories about female characters. I very, very rarely read het or cis-gender-switch stories, and yet gender-switched slash pairings I will read and enjoy (apparently, I trust girl/girl but girl/guy fannish stories make me wary).

I'm thinking about it now because it's not that I avoid reading/watching stories with female characters in media -- but... yes. There's always that part of me ready to forgive/rationalise/defend a female character because I like her despite how terribly the creators have decided to treat her now.

[wintercreek]

It's HUGE in Glee fandom, at least on the kink memes, as "boy pussy." Some of the male characters written this way can not only get pregnant but also develop breasts that can lactate.

Also huge is "girl peen," about otherwise anatomically female characters who have a penis in place of a clitoris (or a were penis, which only comes out under certain circumstances) and can sometimes impregnate other female characters.

[resonant]

Wow. I'm not widely read in Smallville, but I would have thought I'd have run into that.

> And then they'd get married.

In Inception it seems to go along with a pheremone-based pair-bonding type thing, often with knotting.

(Initially I typed 'pain-bonding,' which is reasonably accurate as well.)

I love fandom.

[resonant]

There are people who can pick up a female character from regular sources and run with her -- give Hermione Granger a rich inner life and an active post-school career that doesn't involve popping out babies at nineteen -- and more power to them, but I just feel safer with the men.

[resonant]

Yeah, I've seen lactation in Inception, too.

> were penis

This is hilarious.

Is it freaky that it's also kind of hot?

[isweedan]

Huh, I though it came from SPN!

[sara]

...I now want a story where the characters genderswap when the moon's full.

Because c'mon, that would be awesome.

[out_there]

*nods*

And the thing is... well, I read enough slash to know that it's not all well-written. But hitting back and giving up on the boys doesn't bother me the way it does when it's a female character. (And end of the day, fandom is fun and big enough for everyone to enjoy their comfort zones.)

[merrily]

Ooo, interesting. I'm glad you wrote this post! And certainly I agree: watching canon texts, particularly popular canon texts, is nearly always an exercise, for me, in trying to turn off the part of my brain that's wondering if the thing I'm consuming is going to result in me feeling wounded on behalf of the female characters, or if the thing I'm watching/reading is going to get anywhere close to meeting the Bechdel test. I nearly never get so far as to worry if it's going to offer a satisfying female character story arc.

However, I am not really worried about fanartists doing the same thing. I mean, working with what we work with means that we might be reflecting the male primacy of the source, but generally I feel like the people making fanwork, if they're featuring women prominently, aren't going to do anything bad to them.

I just want more. More Molly/Sherlock, more Sherlock/John/Mary, more Hermione/Remus, more Hermione/Luna, more Astrid/Olivia.

I'm okay with (and read a lot of) the knotting thing, but it makes me sad that there's no such collection of het or femslash impregnation fic to match it. They're shades of the same kink, and I would read all three flavours.

[niqaeli]

I am given to understand that the omega trope is huge on the Sherlock kinkmeme.

This is an interesting analysis of its potential appeal. I had so far been fairly baffled as to what made it so popular but, huh.

[muccamukk]

I remember that one from The Sentinel fandom in the '90s. Also the characters turned into giant cats. It was an odd fandom. It's huge in SPN RPF right now, or so I gather.

I get what you're saying about it being more personal. I was talking to someone about a recent run on Heroes for Hire, where the lead character, a black woman, was captured, brainwashed and experimented on. I was like, hey, it's comics: everybody gets captured, brainwashed and experimented on, and it was set up for her kicking everyone's ass while tide to an IV drip, so I was down with it.

But the woman I was talking to felt really bothered by the sexual overtones of that sequence, like there was this whole history of that being done to women, both in fiction and RL that she couldn't de-contextualise from the story. For her, it was a different story because it was happening to a black woman.

I get that too sometimes, I'm mostly a h/c and adventure writer, and I have trouble absolutely nailing a woman character (especially a queer one) with that level of angst it feels too much like I'm doing it to me.

I'm trying to get over this, because I feel like there really ought to be more h/c femslash.

[jamjar]

I think some of the omega type fic is because if you wrote it as a woman, it would be amazingly offensive.

She goes into heat and has to get pregnant by an alpha male and her hormones, the fact that she can get pregnant, means she's going to be submissive, even when she doesn't want to be, to an alpha male.

And YMMV - I read a Supernatural RPS take on this where it basically said that Alphas were the discriminated class because a lot of the things that made them Alphas (protective instincts, competitive, recognising and being massive attracted to a omega by scent alone, etc.) were dangerous or potentially damaging in modern society. I've read some decent takes on it, but a lot of it does conflate ability-to-gestate with a whole bunch of things that would squick you the fuck out if they were written in a woman.

[torch]

Bingo. At least, this is my theory also -- that this doesn't get written about women because it's not really about the way women's sexuality works, and if you wrote it about women, people would have fits. I've seen quite a bit of it in both SPN and SPN RPS and it seems to be spreading in a kink wave across several contemporary fandoms, and the emphasis appears to be on Mating and being In Heat (or rather, being in heat and then mating because of that *g*).

[mad_maudlin]

It surely is--one poor pathetic anon prompted it over and over on the kink meme, and when it finally got a fill the meme just exploded. It's even developed sub-memes, like Destined!Alpha/Omega pairings, Family!Alphas and Omegaverse/D/s-AU fusions.

[jcalanthe]

That would be very cool!

[sara]

It'd be fun to write teenaged angst about that, wouldn't it? "He likes me, but little does he know that once a month, I'm...a girl!" Dun dun daaaah!

[jcalanthe]

This is the most interesting explanation I've seen thusfar. I'm sure this informs my reading/watching habits as well. I know there are some shows I wish would just not bother trying to have female characters/characters of color because ZOMG it is painful to watch the attempts (and sometimes it's easier to watch an all-white-male show because I know going in that it's offensive for being that, and I don't have to brace myself for what you describe like I do in more diverse shows).

Which makes me kind of despair of things changing, you know? I mean of course, fandom is supposed to be enjoyable! But I'm also someone who wants women & people of color in my TV & other media, and the only way that happens if if we watch it & engage with it. Which I do, and I know you do, I just wish it didn't feel like we have to pay a unexpectedly variable penalty to do so.

[anatsuno]

I can relate to this, yes. I mostly read women written by writers I particularly trust either to treat them well or, precisely, to treat them badly - ie give me the porn and satisfaction I'm looking for. (which might involve stuff that omg could be incredibly offensive to others. so.) :)

[anatsuno]

I would totally read that w/ het pairings in the hands of writers I trust but I do believe, yes, that it's a risky proposition and many prefer to avoid it. In the same way that plenty of people I know would write more BDSM fic with submissive women and dominant men, but they're worried they'll be accused of sexism or kink-shamed for it. :(

[sapote]

Yeah, I've mostly seen it in SPN-adjacent fandoms where it seems to have started from knotting and grown a universe around it, and I feel like what I've seen there it's mostly a way of letting people roll around in gender baggage without having to assert that men or women are actually like that.

Like, say, Heinlein or John Ringo does when they write... very similar dynamics.

I read a lot of it. I love a good gender dystopia, so long as it knows it's a gender dystopia.

[kass]

I haven't encountered the Omega male idea, but reading this post, I find myself thinking that on some level it applies to slash fandom writ large.

I have the vague erotic desire to read about the female sexual response, but I don't want it contaminated by that dread? Maybe it's not surprising to find myself reading about men who have sex like women.

I mean -- this makes me think of cesperanza's old slogan "like men, only better," you know?

[resonant]

I've read that! Where have I read that?

No, no, wait, it's coming back to me -- it wasn't full moon; it was every time they had an orgasm.

I liked it, I remember that, but I don't even remember what fandom it was in, just that one of the characters was emotionally evasive and tended to run away when things got intense. So, in other words ... it was a fandom.

[resonant]

roll around in gender baggage

I love that!

I have definitely seen the trope combined with dom/sub power stuff -- but not inevitably, so I wasn't thinking of that as an inherent part of it.

Estrus is also sometimes used just as another form of sex pollen.