Gynophobia: The Movie

Women across the country are, the Trump administration must assume, eagerly awaiting their promised rewards for having more children. These would include, under a the plan he floated last month, a 5K bonus check for each child brought to term and priority (if the applicant is married) for government-sponsored grants (assuming these would still exist).  Much has been said by critics of the plan about the insufficiency of the hypothetical check, given the cost of raising children and the government cuts to programs that support them post birth. Like the promised/imagined/fantasized rebate check reflecting the promised/imagined/fantasized trillion-dollar cuts by DOGE, and the more recently promised/imagined/fantasized rebate to seniors, this check occupies a space more rhetorical than economic.

I cannot stop thinking, though, about one feature of Trump’s multi-pronged proposal, flung out as one of the president’s “beautiful” ideas. It goes beyond the mere monetary, stepping--perhaps uneasily for right-wing politicians--into the quicksand of sex education. Trump has proposed educating women about the relationship between menstrual cycles and pregnancy, going so far as to imagine a video on the subject presumably to be distributed to all women or accessed on shrinking/disappearing government websites. Women will learn through the film that ovulation in humans is not like those of other mammals, in that it happens in the middle of a monthly cycle—something that, by the way, we’ve known for almost 100 years.

As a distraction, no doubt from other, more horrible pro-natalist interventions (give states with higher birthrates more money for roads!), I have spent perhaps too much of my time imagining what this educational film might look like. Sometimes, late at night, I unspool it in my head, trying to picture something that may be more real to me than to anyone in the government that tossed it out as an idea. Bear with me—I suppose this is a pun-- as I think it through.

First, let’s think about the graphics. I imagine sanitized diagrams of the female reproductive system, sans vagina, whose absence could result in what Freud might call a “projection up,” with the uterus centered, just as the U.S is disproportionately large on a world map based on the Mercator Projection. The uterus (perhaps labelled as the “womb”) would be assailed, as if by sea, by swift and adorable sperm with masculine pseudo chins and determined expressions, depicted at ten times their usual size as in a Woody Allen movie. That womb--the destination of all things good and worthy--would be a glowing gold, reminiscent perhaps in hue and shape of Trump’s famous gilt toilets (although not the ones near which he kept his classified documents). Although (surely) there would be some representation of the ovaries, these might be deemphasized as they might hint at the possibility of ectopic pregnancies, which in 2019 Republican legislators in Ohio suggested could be fixed by “reimplantation” in the proper place. (See my last post on agnology, or the purposeful cultivation of ignorance. Let’s call the bill, and a lot of other Republican statements about women’s bodies gyno-agnology.)

 Back to the film. More crucial even than the visuals, would be the voiceover. Who would Trump pick to do this crucial work of repopulating the country? Perhaps he would choose J.D. Vance, who has been so vocal in his scorn for “bitter” childless woman, suggesting that these unnatural creatures should never work in teaching or childcare. Could this finally be a role for Melania, whose maternal affections have endured undimmed in kind as well as intensity, through her son’s college career?

Both these choices, however, might be problematic. Each would, in a different way, remind the viewer of what the Trump administration wants us to avoid noticing: that these babies once conceived and brought to term might have needs that linger beyond birth—say a life above the poverty line, food, shelter, medical care, freedom from family separation or deportation? After all, Vance has gone on record talking about the need for childcare, albeit it of the intrafamilial sort.  (Step up grandmothers and aunts! Step up otherwise useless postmenopausal women everywhere!) Melania’s extended ecstatic mothering perhaps also draws attention to children as living breathing, needy beings, whose need for mothering persists into, say, college. We might be reminded of Trump’s unfortunate remarks about children’s unhinged desires for dolls and pencils. It might also be embarrassing that Melania very visibly stopped reproducing after having one, (albeit golden) child.

There are, fortunately, other options. Ex-U.S. Representative, Todd Akin, whose views on female anatomy (children cannot be conceived during a legitimate rape) has, alas passed on.  Surely, he would have been trusted to point to all the right organs, and to explain their functions. How, you might say, can we forget about Elon Musk, he of 14 children with ten different women? He must know all there is to know (or perhaps nothing at all) about ovulation. As a technological genius he might lend an air of scientific authority to the proceedings.  While Musk may not be immediately available, having at least in theory moved on from his government to preside over the rebirth (or is it reimplantation?)  of the company he has destroyed—surely this would be a low-prep event that would not even, assuming we would not see his pale face on screen, mean having to exchange his cap and t-shirt for a white coat?

It is possible, of course, that this intimate lesson would require a woman’s touch. Marjorie Taylor Greene has only three children but, as her website tells us, “Marjorie believes the best part of her life is being a mother and spending time with her family.” For those of you who think that the best part of MT life is hounding transwomen from congressional bathrooms, you are clearly wrong. But, really, only three?

Although not always one for protocol—or expertise of any kind--Trump might choose to stick to those cabinet members with official positions having to do with health. There is always Casie Means, the wellness influencer who replaced Janette Nesheiwat as Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General after right-wing critics found the latter too soft on vaccines. Means is a self-styled fertility expert, who consistently bemoans falling sperm counts, and what she claims are increasing numbers of miscarriages. Like her friend and patron, Robert Kennedy Jr., she might just sail too close to environmental critique for the purposes of this uplifting video. Here is what she says, in CAPS about the current fertility crisis: TO ME, THE INFERTILITY CRISIS IS THE MOST OVERT, DRAMATIC SIGNAL THAT OUR MODERN ENVIRONMENT IS NOT WORKING TO MEET OUR CELLS’ NEEDS. THE RESULT? OUR CELLS SAYING THE FOLLOWING, VERY, VERY CLEARLY: “IT IS NOT SAFE TO PRODUCE MORE HUMANS. THE ENVIRONMENT IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO FURTHER LIFE.” Whatever she means by “environment” –and I personally don’t have a clue--the word itself might be too toxic for a government-sponsored video.

Which leaves, I guess, RFK himself. Perhaps this gig will finally lay to rest his problematic previous support of abortion rights. Although there is no indication that he knows much about anatomy, his voice feels just gratingly right for the job of rebuking women for their choices. His recent warning that people should not take medical advice from him, is, of course a drawback, but not necessarily a dealbreaker. As part of the extensive Kennedy clan, we know that he believes in big families, even when many of those family members do not believe in him. His strongest qualification for the job of narrator/education, though, might be his association with an acronym. While MAHA is not quite as powerful as MAGA, it can easily be used as a brand for what might turn out to be a film series. I stop short at imagining the first sequel.