The museum was fortunate to host an audience with Australia’s first pregnant man during the Ultimo Science Festival recently. Adam Jones spent time being interviewed by Museum science educator Derek Williamson, and answering questions from audience members.
Adam explained the thinking behind the decision for he and his wife to start there family in this cutting edge way, the science and technology that went into the fertility process, the wide ranging public responses to this new science and the complications encountered and associated with the delivery.
While at the museum Adam explored our collection and came up with his favourite gadget, an early 20th century electro-therapeutic device. These were common in Sydney homes until about 1930, used to relieve all manner of pains, disturbances and hysteria. They used electric fields to create small vibrations to massage away the symptom.
“Australia’s first pregnant man, Adam Jones, engages with an electro-therapeutic device from the Powerhouse collection.”
Adam was a character played by actor James Lugton, with a script first developed by Spectrum Theatre for the Science Museum in London, but the discussion was real. The Museum decided to run this program as a way of allowing our audience to discuss the ethical and moral issues around breaking science in a safe and easy forum.
Here at the Museum we believe science proceeds at a fabulous rate with new announcements everyday of the discoveries and improvements that advances are going to deliver into our lives. Quite often this rate of change is much faster than society’s ability to discuss and think about the progress and its implications. Museums try to be places for open and accurate presentation of facts, but here at the Powerhouse we also try to be a venue to allow safe discussion of developments and ideas which will have implications for not just our life styles but also societies cultural and moral stand points.
Two outcomes that quite surprised me about our audience with Adam Jones were, firstly, that the response was generally of fascination and intrigue, with very little of the reactionary questioning I had expected, and secondly, how prepared people were to go on this theatrical journey with us, to ask questions of Adam that took us deeper into the character than we had anticipated.
People asked what and how would the “birth” be explained to the child as it grew? What possibility or intention to breast feed? What of the long-term effects of the hormone treatment?
The question that came up in each forum, and one we had really not expected, was is it real? Science has raised people’s expectations of what can be possible that people were really uncertain about the extent to which this was possible. This raises two fascinating questions for me, where does the ability for people to suspend their disbelief come from? Is it important for people to be able to draw the line between science fiction and science fact?
And in our Museum context exactly how clear do we need to be about the line between theatre and reality?
Related links
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/
http://www.malepregnancy.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2346476
ok i have like a real question that i would like answered asap! is this man like really pregnant?……………..is this just a man with a sex change?…………if this is an actual man that is actually pregnant……..then how did it happen?
No such thing and its alla joke. There’s no way a man a man can become pregnant and hava a baby, that would only be a weird fenomenon if it were to happened but this is just to make poeple get ther attention just like the the so call first pregnant man that was on as the guess on the Ophra Winfrey show but that’s actauly a woman who is a lesbian and probably got male hormone shots to convert herself to be a man and grow facial hair. You can change someones look form the outside but in the inside you can’t.
This was an actor playing a role to provoke discussion about how people feel when science enables us to do things before society has decided if it is ok.
its not real you can see his stomache its not shape like a pregnant belly. man have taken so much from us woman so this is something we can say you men cant have. Leave haveing baby’s to the real experts and you men go do something useful like help out with the baby when there born
malepregnancy.com/science/
And now we have a topic renewal.
ok this is possible but very complicated! and if you read the article they say that the man in the picture is an actor playing as the real pregnant man. you need to check out the movie Junior it is very funny and is kind of the same thing as this. although it is fictional it also shows how it is possible
uuuh this make me shock :lol:
(In response to “Nervous Gender”) I’m a transman and I must say that most transguys do not consider themselves lesbians… lesbians typically enjoy being “female-bodied/gendered/sexed”, whereas transmen do not. Being transgendered, whether you were born male, female or intersexed, is a real feeling/state of being, not a whim or “phase”. Knowing that your body is out-of-whack with your internal identity is a very serious matter (that can lead to anxiety, depression and isolation). Our culture and political system needs to offer support and validation to transfolks so that we can take the steps needed (hormones or surgery) to become healthy, productive members of society. Doesn’t everyone deserve to find some happiness?
HOW THE HELL DID HE GET PREGNANT??? he doesn’t have a vagina or watever (hopefully…). Who’s the father (or mother…..)????
this is sooooooo not reall!his stomach is totally not shaped like bieng in prgnancy!im pretty sure this is fake but who knows!
p.s.- i also wonder how it happened if its reall!!
please see the post above, this is an actor playiong a part to stimulate discussion about the rapid advances of science
this is a bloody lie. if a man try to give birth he will die