Why Do We Write Jonathan in a Dress Stories?
by Athena and Uris

Many people write squirk stories: incest, crossdressing, male pregnancy, fisting to name a few. We (the writing team of Athena and Uris) cant speak for others, but we wrote our Jamie series in response to a discussion on why people read male pregnancy stories when they claim to hate them. We never wrote a "Jonathan in a dress" story, but we plead guilty to writing a Jim Ellison (The Sentinel) in a dress story. Our first Jamie story (now called Having Your Baby) was written as an anti-male pregnancy story. We wrote it because it addressed the issues we felt other male pregnancy stories didnt address. It contains the issues of crossdressing, gender identity (Am I a mother or a father?), and abortion, sometimes in the same paragraph.

An author or writing team writes because the muse tells them the story must be written. In our case, the muse tells one of us that it must be written, and Athena and Uris delete and rewrite each others paragraphs until we have a story a completed story or a blank Word document. Uris wrote Blair's line, Just because I'm the byproduct of an unwanted pregnancy doesn't mean I have to be pro-life.for shock value. We have written male pregnancy, transgender stories, and bestiality. However, we wrote these stories because we had something to say. If people wrote merely to shock, there would be a hundred "Jonathan in a dress" stories and we've yet to see one.

When we originally wrote Having Your Baby, our beta reader asked why was Jim doing the things he was doing. Jim's deliberate guy so he had to have had a reason (Blair is a spontaneous kind of guy and can do things for no reason what so ever.). The scary part was, when we rewrote the story, Jim told us his reasons. Due to his reasons, we have been accused of writing an educational story when our intention was to get Jim into a dress and a poor fitting wig so our audience could laugh.

Since we laughed constantly while writing this story and every time we proofread it, we assume that people write shock stories to amuse or horrify themselves and want to share their wild emotional states with the rest of the world. Our work in progress, An Innocent Man, is another male pregnancy story, although we promised ourselves that we would never commit this vile act a second time. Uris's intent was to write a courtship story because she loved The Courtship of Martha's Son by Cheryl Forbes and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, in chapter 6, Clark insisted on getting pregnant. We could have rewrote it and Clark is a nice boy and would have said "Yes, Ma'am" to Athena and went back to reading his John Grey book (see Crush). However, a good story must contain physical and emotional obstacles to overcoming to reach a goal, hopefully, teaching the character a moral lesson.

If Clark was a good boy and listened to Athena and went back to his loft, there wouldn't be much of a story. In closing, we write "Jonathan in a dress" stories because we feel we're the only ones that can commit this heinous act properly.