Real or Fake? : Male pregnancy

 By Kana

(This post has nothing to do with our topic, gender identity. It is my summary and opinion on a class assignment on distinguishing good and bad web content.)

As part of our class, my partner Ryo and I were assigned an article and we had to read it to figure out if it was legitimate or false.

Our article was about male pregnancy and it said that a man named Lee Mingwey was the first pregnant man in history. At first, it had us fooled for a while because it showed the process of how men get pregnant in so much detail that it looked to us like something that could really happen, also there was a video interview where Mr. Lee talked about how he felt about being the first man ever to have gotten pregnant, which also looked really real.

After we spent a little more time reading the article, we realized this was a hoax, because when we clicked on the title, it went to some strange Vietnamese betting page, and also the hospital that had supposedly published this article didn't actually exist.

So, we knew that this was totally fake but what we couldn't figure out was why they made this. Our first guesses were that they did it to merely confuse people or that Mr. Lee, who is an artist, wanted to be famous and get people's attention by introducing something so bizarre. However, either of them didn't seem to be reasons that were good enough for someone to have gone through the trouble of creating such a complicated web page and a video. 

When we knew we couldn't get any more information from the article, we went and did some extra research and found out that this was part of an art project by Mr. Lee. We also found his interview, where he explained to the reporter how when his sister became pregnant, he got so jealous of her having a baby and experiencing something so significant that he could never be able to experience. Although he stayed very vague when asked about the reasons for his project, from reading the interview, we assumed that the main purpose was twofold.

First, he might have just wanted to see what it is like to be a woman and carry a baby, and by doing this project, he wanted to feel empathetic towards women.

Second, maybe he wanted to see how people would react to a man being pregnant and if they would accept him as a pregnant man. I am not proud when I say this, but when I first saw a picture on the web page of him with a big bump on his stomach, I thought it was weird and a little disgusting and I felt really uncomfortable by it. I think most of us can't help but feel this way when we see a pregnant male because we are too used to the idea that it is women's job to carry a baby. But it may be the time for us to break free from the conventional gender norms and try to be a little more understanding and open-minded. Maybe, he wanted to let people see how important it is to be respectful and accepting of something that is not considered "Normal" in our society. And that may have been the message that he wanted to convey through his art. 

By doing this assignment, we learned that when you look at any web page, you have to take a moment to see if it is based on the true facts and is trustworthy and do some research on your own, instead of just instantly believing that everything written there is legitimate. Also, we could learn the significance of art and how it is not just something beautiful that people can enjoy, but it has the power to impart such a strong and meaningful message to people.