I haven't listened yet, and let it be known that's only because I'm psyching myself up. I can already tell this episode is going to ride the line between Perfect, Vindicating Reactions From Sane People and Weird Shit Gets Too Real for me, because for a long time I thought this shit made some kind of twisted psychological sense. I only thought that because I'd only ever heard of it, not read it, but hear me out.
See, I can't make a baby in my belly. I don't date/plan to marry anyone who can make baby in their belly. This on its own, as a purely personal thing, is fine. It's convenient, even. Cock rubbin' and deliveries to the tradesman's entrance carry their risks, but the spontaneous generation of life generally isn't one of them. But if I do want to settle and have a family, the channels I'd have to pursue are kinda devalued. Getting knocked up don't need PR efforts. Generally speaking, the model of family we're taught to value and expect is two parents, Mommy and Daddy, who make their own damn kids. Adoption, IVF, surrogacy, these are all good and sound options but they don't carry the emotional weight within society that Mommy + Daddy = Baby does. So while I don't envy the process, sometimes when I was younger I'd occasionally see men and women together, clearly expecting, and... I'd get a little sad. Not even because I wanted it, but because I knew it was important, I knew I couldn't have it, and I knew anything I could have wouldn't be considered as good. It was pure irrational insecurity, but it felt very real.
So in an abstract sense, having never read one of these stories, "I want to write about two men in love, but I also want them to have a fulfilling family life, and as a bounded human being working within the parameters society's set up in my brain I can't imagine doing that without making one of them pregnant," kinda seemed like a weird but valid cognitive leap to make. It seemed stupid and ignorant, but in my understanding it came from a place of existential dissonance that I understood. Imagine my horror, imagine my disgust, discovering years after basically forgetting about it that it's this horrifying, gross fetish.
Screw these weirdos.