We Need To Destroy The Trope Of The Bitter Infertile Woman
Our fictional stories translate into real-world attitudes that shape how people live and treat each other. Stories have the power to place us in someone else’s shoes and can function as powerful vehicles to inspire empathy; unfortunately, they can also perpetuate dangerous ideas that harm real lives.
When crafting stories, people often revert to certain plot devices and tropes (essentially, a repeated theme) to frame a character or situation in ways people can recognize. Tropes around infertile and childless women can be harmful - they cement centuries of misconceptions and stigma toward people who cannot have children.
Too often, artists rely on the trope of the “bitter infertile woman”, reflecting the need for our society to overhaul how we portray and discuss infertility and childlessness. This article will discuss how lazy writers use a character's infertile, childless, or childfree status to signify whether a character is good or bad. We will also dive into what that portrayal means for actual infertile people in the non-fiction world.
A note: when discussing infertility, it's important to remember that infertility affects everyone, including cisgender women, cisgender men, and trans and non-binary people. Not everyone who identifies as a woman has a uterus, and not everyone with a uterus identifies as a woman. However, this article will discuss the gendered stereotype of the "bitter infertile woman," so the language here will reflect that.
The Stigma Around Infertility
The archetype of the "infertile villain" stems from society's beliefs about femininity and motherhood. We idealize motherhood as the pinnacle of being a woman, determining her worth based on her ability to raise children. As a result, society treats women who don't want or can't have children as a person to be forgotten or even mistrusted.
Racialized and gender-diverse people face additional challenges related to infertility. While white women often face sympathy for their plight, systemic racism makes it difficult for Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour to even access treatment for infertility. Trans and non-binary people also encounter significant barriers to accessing care for fertility preservation.
Infertility is a sign of evil
The evil infertile villain is a familiar antagonistic character archetype. Often a woman becomes so consumed by resentment and bitterness due to her inability to conceive children that they commit cruel acts in retaliation.
Jemima Kirke's character Hope Haddon on Netflix's Sex Education is a perfect example. When the ruthless headmistress treats her students viciously, she seems motivated by an attempt to find control due to the uncertainty she experienced from infertility.
I also recently watched the new Netflix film "We Have A Ghost" and thoroughly enjoyed the story--—that is, until the big reveal at the end. (Warning: Yes, there will be spoilers here!)
This movie follows a family who moves into a house haunted by a ghost named Ernest, who almost immediately befriends the family’s 16-year-old son Kevin. A video of Ernest that Kevin’s dad, Frank, posts on YouTube goes viral and causes a worldwide uproar. Meanwhile, Kevin and Ernest set out on a mission together to figure out how Ernest died while simultaneously being chased by the CIA.
The film wraps up to reveal that Ernest's infertile sister-in-law murdered him fifty years ago after his wife, her sister, passed away. She decided to work with her husband to kill Ernest so they could take their niece as their own child. After a delightful viewing experience, this ending was a letdown.
Infertile women can't be trusted
The infertile villain trope creatively repackages the age-old concept of hysteria. The ancient Greeks believed that the uterus migrated around the female body, causing hysteria or "hysterical suffocation", leading to various health conditions.
Over the centuries, the term hysteria has shifted in meaning, leading to our modern-day understanding of "hysterical" as a synonym for overly emotional or crazy. The infertile villain trope reinforces the idea of women as irrational and unable to control their emotions.
Similarly to "We Have A Ghost," media representations of infertility go beyond mere cruelty. They are used to signify a genuinely evil character whose grief and desire to have children manifest into violence, rage, manipulation, and vindictiveness.
Though I loved "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," I see this theme running deep in the film. While they don't explicitly depict Wanda Maximoff as infertile, her storyline emphasizes our society’s belief that women desperate for children will do anything to have them. In this film, Wanda wants the children of her dreams so badly that she would kill countless people and even destroy entire universes.
Infertility is a sign of monstrosity
When depicting infertile women as villains in our fictional stories, we also strengthen the idea that a woman who cannot bear children is broken. We see her childlessness as abnormal, undesirable, freakish - even inhuman.
A controversial scene in the film "Avengers: Age of Ultron" depicts Natasha Romanoff saying the following to Bruce Banner when discussing her inability to have children:
"In the Red Room where I was trained...they sterilize you. It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. Makes everything easier. Even killing. You still think you're the only monster on the team?"
By using her sterilization as evidence of her monstrosity, the Avengers movie supports the societal belief that permanent infertility is shameful, making it harder for actual infertile people to receive the support and understanding they often need to cope.
In North American society, we are immersed in a culture infused by white Christian ideology that reinforces the Biblical commandment to "go forth and multiply." As a result, communities treat anyone that doesn't meet that commitment as a sinner, regardless of how secular that community may feel. We see infertile women as defective and expendable, dangerous because they aren’t fulfilling their societal role.
It's time to develop a nuanced portrait of infertility
Reducing infertility to a simplistic and stigmatizing character trope erases the complexity of infertility experiences. Media creators must prioritize moving away from this harmful trope towards portraying infertility more realistically.
Infertility can be devastating - affecting a person's self-esteem, mental health, relationships, and overall quality of life. However, infertility isn't an experience that deserves pity, either. Infertile people aren't weaker or inferior, and our lives are not worthless.
I'm currently grieving my 2022 hysterectomy to treat a debilitating illness called adenomyosis, which along with the endometriosis lesions that devastated my ovaries, affected my ability to become pregnant. Personally, despite the heartbreak of having my expectations for my life uprooted, I'm working on embracing being childfree and building a happy life that doesn't revolve around having my own children.
Though I haven’t yet felt ready to discuss my emotions around infertility in-depth with my friends and family, I’ve noticed a hesitancy to discuss the emotional pain around my permanent sterilization, while at the same time, I must also constantly hear about how meaningless a life without children seems to be.
Simultaneously, I’m told to be grateful that I don’t have the responsibility and that my own experiences aren’t as important as those of a parent. I don’t feel like there is space to allow me to share my pain honestly, nor is there space to reimagine together what a life without children can look like.
A sensitive depiction of infertility can move the needle in enacting tangible real-world change, because when people see infertility accurately, they will be motivated to ensure that infertile people can receive the necessary resources and support they need to feel like valued members of their community.
~Bev Herscovitch @unwellunlimitedly