Deck: Shakespeare Tarot
Card: 9 of Swords Ophelia
Answer: When Shakespeare was touring Italy, he got word that his wife was pregnant. He refused to believe it was his child, and court records reveal that his wife consulted with a physician about an abortifacient. Many have speculated that Ophelia was pregnant, which was one of the factors leading to her suicide. The odd surgical instruments on this card, replacing out-&-out swords, could be gynecological. This is all a long-about way of saying that if men were able to get pregnant, abortion - to paraphrase Gloria Steinem - would be a sacrament. Just as Ophelia was admonished against relations with Hamlet by her brother and father, men, if they were capable of becoming pregnant, would suddenly become extraordinarily careful when it came to fornication.
Thinking about the card and question further, I began to consider the paralysis Ophelia was seized by which precipitated her death. She was little more than a pawn of her father, brother, Claudius, and Hamlet alike. The only other female character - Hamlet's mother, Gertrude - was the focus of an almost pathological misanthropy from her son. When Hamlet leaped into Ophelia's grave and fought with her brother Laertes over who loved Ophelia more, the Lacanian "la femme n'existe pas" was palpable. This is all a long-about way of saying that if men could get pregnant, the reproductive function of women would no longer be essential. Not to be lurid, but if men could get pregnant, they would arguably have to have both male and female sexual organs. If this had been the case from the nascence of human existence, everything about us as a species and a society would be different. That being the case, and in light of Ophelia's treatment, it's possible human females, given the parameters of the question, would come to exist down the millennia in an extremely abject and servile function vis-a-vis men within a radical patriarchy. Females could even conceivably become extinct, like Neanderthals vis-a-vis Homosapiens, with those females born being indentured like animals or immediately subjected to infanticide.
Then again, the complete opposite could be true - men could become less like Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Polonius, and more like Ophelia. Due to the experience of carrying a child to term, delivering it, and presumably rearing it in a more hands-on way than men have traditionally, the ability to get pregnant could make men less violent and competitive and more cooperative.
.
