For starters, I am in no way a sexist or against female equality. If a male or female can do something as good, equal or just as any counterpart regardless of gender, race or religion, then they shall be treated and respected just as equally. (This portion was added prior to publishing this article but after rereading what was typed. I write this response in an objective light, through a male persona.)

As I read “The Egg and the Sperm” by Emily Martin, I starting to get the feeling that this article was not just written to show how stereotypes are portrayed and reflected onto the reproductive process but also for a feminist writer to inflate the ideas to a larger population.  When writing an article like this, it appears as if her information given is not proper contextually and is more there to enforce the stereotypical persona. She writes, when referring to the egg, “Only a few, perhaps 400, …. remain by the time she reaches menopause at approximately 50 years of age.” (487) Later in the reading, when comparing how many egg are produced versus how many sperm, she states (referring to the egg), “During the 40 or so years of a woman’s reproductive life, only 400 to 500 eggs will have been released,” (488). So why when she writes focusing on the female reproductive lifespan does she refer to 50 years but when comparing it to the male reproductive lifespan she shortens the lifespan range to 40 years? This would be somewhat acceptable if she were to use the same figure for calculating the male’s lifespan. Rather, when speaking of the male, she writes, “Assuming that a man ‘produces’ 100 million (10^8) sperm per day ( a conservative estimate) during an average reproductive life of sixty years, he would produce well over two trillion sperm in his lifetime” (488-489). So my first question here is based on the first word that I italicized, assuming. Why do we assume with the male but there seems to be concrete evidence when speaking of the female? Secondly, numberwise, why do we calculate 40 years for the female and 60 years for the male? Is it just to help over inflate the numbers? After consulting a website called The Open University (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/nature-environment/natural-history/sperm-counts), I learned that males produce anywhere from 20 – 300 million sperm, but it is not daily rather it is based on ejaculation. So if the number of 2 trillion is only accurate if men produce 100 million sperm (on average per ejaculation), men start producing from birth instead of puberty, men ejaculate daily for 60 years (creepy) and we calculate based on the 60 years versus the female 40 years. I understand that even with conservative numbers we still probably get a number in the billions. I am not trying to belittle the number of billions, but there is a different perception people give between millions, billions and trillions.

If you don’t agree with me think of this scenario that happened not so long ago. The magnitude of $40 million in the Powerball lottery game is very low since every time someone wins the jackpot it resets to that number. But try remembering the buzz that was created when the jackpot rose to $200 million or even more so when it rose to $500 million and $900 million. At the time, Those jackpots were enormous in magnitude, but when no one won and the jack pot rose to $1.5 billion the magnitude rose that much greater and the previous jackpots only weeks or days earlier seem so insignificant in comparison. So now imagine the magnitude your brain creates when you hear the term trillions.

I do believe stereotype does play a big role in this conversation but for me it got deflated when the facts seemed misconstrued. When speaking of pleasure, we can easily state that females only use one egg monthly and can achieve unlimited pleasure while the males have to waste millions of sperm in order to achieve pleasure. Another thought is that we can explain the female egg to be smart and intelligent by trapping its mate (using the sticky membrane) while the male sperm is stupid, dumb, and unmethodical, whilst being projected aimlessly by the millions so that in hopes one can properly fertilize the egg. I don’t agree with the approach that Emily took in writing this article and that her point could have been easily achieved without inflating the provided concepts.