Sharon
asked
Penelope Peters:
I just completed the Country Omega and posted my review for Goodreads DBML. There is something I don't understand. Why are male Omegas addressed as mother? Is there no consequence for abusive & presumptive behavior such as Alan's with Ethan & Henry? I appreciate not being bogged down with the minute details, but, that this Alpha's social, physical & sexual acts could go unchecked and even feared is disturbing.
Penelope Peters
Hi, Sharon, thanks for your question (and your review, I'm glad you enjoyed the story overall and hope you enjoy the rest of the series).
The choice to have male omegas use the term "mother" (and female alphas use the term "father") isn't one I've seen often in A/B/O stories, but it's one I've enjoyed playing with here. My thought is that "mother" refers to whichever birth parent carries the unborn baby, while "father" refers to the birth parent who sires that baby, regardless of whether or not the parent is male or female. In my stories, male omegas give birth - and therefore, they're the child's mother. Likewise, female alphas sire a baby - and it's that act that makes them the child's father.
Obviously, this is different from the real world, where mother and father are purely gender-specific. Thing is, in a world where some men can give birth and some women can impregnate someone else... gender roles get a little bit murky. My aim in referring to male omegas as "mom" and female alphas as "father" was to remind the reader that gender roles aren't exactly the same in this world as they are in ours. Whether or not I was successful is a whole other question, and probably not one I can answer!
Your other questions, about the consequences Alan Clark might have faced if Ethan's parents had tried to bring his abusive behavior to light... that's harder to answer. The world they live in is a lot like ours - but it's also a lot different. It's not too unlike our own society even as little as a hundred years ago, when the laws surrounding rape were more sympathetic not to the woman, but to the man on trial. Even now, a lot of times rape victims have to deal with the overall idea that what happened was their fault. ("What were you wearing? How much did you drink? How often do you drink? Did you know him? How many men have you dated before?" And so on.) Is it such a stretch to think that Ethan, who allowed Alan to engage in ongoing physical contact for several years, wouldn't be faced with the same scrutiny when he claimed - years after the fact, and when he was well past the age of consent in his world - that he'd been seduced by an older man?
In retrospect, I probably put too much social commentary into what I suspect a lot of readers expect in a romance. But then, I've never been very good at splitting up my genres. I do apologize if you got more than you bargained for - but I have to thank you for the chance to answer the questions, and I hope I answered them to your satisfaction. Thank you again for reading!
The choice to have male omegas use the term "mother" (and female alphas use the term "father") isn't one I've seen often in A/B/O stories, but it's one I've enjoyed playing with here. My thought is that "mother" refers to whichever birth parent carries the unborn baby, while "father" refers to the birth parent who sires that baby, regardless of whether or not the parent is male or female. In my stories, male omegas give birth - and therefore, they're the child's mother. Likewise, female alphas sire a baby - and it's that act that makes them the child's father.
Obviously, this is different from the real world, where mother and father are purely gender-specific. Thing is, in a world where some men can give birth and some women can impregnate someone else... gender roles get a little bit murky. My aim in referring to male omegas as "mom" and female alphas as "father" was to remind the reader that gender roles aren't exactly the same in this world as they are in ours. Whether or not I was successful is a whole other question, and probably not one I can answer!
Your other questions, about the consequences Alan Clark might have faced if Ethan's parents had tried to bring his abusive behavior to light... that's harder to answer. The world they live in is a lot like ours - but it's also a lot different. It's not too unlike our own society even as little as a hundred years ago, when the laws surrounding rape were more sympathetic not to the woman, but to the man on trial. Even now, a lot of times rape victims have to deal with the overall idea that what happened was their fault. ("What were you wearing? How much did you drink? How often do you drink? Did you know him? How many men have you dated before?" And so on.) Is it such a stretch to think that Ethan, who allowed Alan to engage in ongoing physical contact for several years, wouldn't be faced with the same scrutiny when he claimed - years after the fact, and when he was well past the age of consent in his world - that he'd been seduced by an older man?
In retrospect, I probably put too much social commentary into what I suspect a lot of readers expect in a romance. But then, I've never been very good at splitting up my genres. I do apologize if you got more than you bargained for - but I have to thank you for the chance to answer the questions, and I hope I answered them to your satisfaction. Thank you again for reading!
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