“Woman Series: Model 3 / Thee Incubator” ⏲🤰🏻Digital collage using photos sourced from various magazines / digital illustration / @sareytales 2021)
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Continuing my “Woman” Series is piece #3 titled “Thee Incubator”, inspired by messages from a man on plenty of fish (swipe to read the full convo).
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Men who consider women incubators instead of humans who grow new humans see women as objects, as their property. And as a woman-object, our function is to procreate, and if we chose not to do that, if we cannot do that, or if we no longer are able to perform, our value diminishes. I see a direct through-line from men claiming woman as property to the anti-abortion stance and reproductive rights. How can property have rights? How can you ask consent from something that cannot give it?
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The guy in this convo, Michael, also refers to men as “sperm donors”, which you might think makes his creepy euphemisms not sexist, but I would argue that a sperm donor is still an autonomous entity, a human, with the agency to donate his sperm or not, whereas an incubator is comparing a woman to an inanimate apparatus that exists only to provide an environment to help hatch or grow an organism, even if it is against her will.