In response to Mei’s suggestion in looking at the maternal body and technology, I couldn’t help but find a plethora of on-line pregnancy tests. Basically, you type in your name, and the test (through the magic workings of your home computer) analyses your body composition in detecting pregnancy…an interesting idea that goes along with much of Sobchack’s and Haraway’s readings for tomorrow (the website makes sure to let you know that it’s all a joke, naturally). In this language of “accuracy” embedded around pregnancy, I am curious as to how the physicality (or indexicality) of pregnancy and the maternal body will be further reduced? What will become the new “accurate” way of detecting pregnancy? The website also offers a disclaimer:
Our results are 100% guaranteed. Please note we only guarantee that you'll get a result, not that the results will be accurate. http://www.thepregnancytester.com/
In this site’s obvious self-awareness at online scams and hyper-obsessive rhetoric surrounding the indexicality and “validity” of pregnancy- the language of “results” returns to this discussion of the “real” and the culture surrounding the internal conditions of performing results through the “magic” of the computer. Again, how do we understand this idea of “result” in relation to the maternal and pre-maternal body? How do we also understand the maternal body within the framework of the at-home test (vs. the office/hospital test)?
There are also a number of online games- one involving a condom deflecting incoming sperm. Again, in this sort of online hetero-normative “joke” culture, the female parts become wrapped up in a red egg (upon losing the game, it is the woman’s voice that you hear cry out in finding out that she is pregnant- bodiless, of course). I am curious about the “popularity” of this game and “who” plays them (mainly males?), as well as the “effect” of reducing the body into parts and the physical process involved in the viewer’s “clicking” of the condom to “block” the sperm. The game never rises above the level (or awareness) of treating the consequences of unprotected sex much like an “actual” game, in which the “heterosexual” male is let “off the hook.” It revels in its obvious offensiveness (in which you can read a number of user comments).
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