“Why does infertility have to be such a big deal?”
In the show that is constantly framing childbirth as traumatic? In the show where you make a whole new person to carry your burdens through getting your skull penetrated with a drill and fertilized with a patented chip? The show that presents pregnancy being a huge commitment that needs work not to be made into a personal therapy for the parents? In the show where is one bourgeois family’s bloodline valued enough to feed on everyone else’s right to their lives and bodies? The show where the founder of the company and patriarch of said bloodline made up a fake twin that died a violent death because he masturbated instead of having reproductive-oriented sex? The show where the company heir feels so entitled to her metaphorical child’s life that she has sex with her lover (both of whom are employees for the company she’s set to inherit) and rapes them both in the process? The show that had this woman explicitly declaring to that same metaphorical child, in the episode about the things that make the innies’ their own people, that she wasn’t a person? In the show where the office building and parking lot shaped like a uterus? The show where old and gay people get fired for not being productive, whether it’s because they are not hitting their quarterly quota or can’t bear children? The show where they emphasize the “labor” part in “reproductive labor” so much that people getting severed to give birth is the first introduction to severance outside of the usual work-life balance metaphor? That show?
Why does infertility have to be such a big deal? Why is a miscarriage traumatic? Why does Mark get obsessed with having kids? Why does Gemma want to stop trying and focus on recovery? Why does Mark get severed when Gemma dies in a show where severance is literally always and unequivocally compared to giving birth to a person? Why is Gemma subjected to violations of her body through reluctant IVF shots that always end in natural abortions? Why is Gemma subjected to the same violations on the testing floor through the severing of dozens of innies that successfully serve the goals of someone else’s family? Why do all the innies keep asking why they were brought into the world? Why do the outies consistently feel entitled to the innies’ bodies and lives?
Golly, I wonder.