Male and female, even today in society are argued almost to be as an inferior and superior sex. Even before being conceived, men are treated as the dominant sex with having more positive attributes. This is seen in the article where it is looked down upon for a woman to go through menstruation and it being considered a failure and a shedding of lining resulting in blood from a non-fertilized egg only occurring once per month. Women’s organs are also seen as old and wiped out, and eventually are deemed useless by them dying out. Men’s reproduction capabilities are seen as a tremendous capability of strength and power, because they are able to produce millions of sperm each day. When describing the reproduction process, the egg and sperm are already associated with words and qualities stereotyped as feminine and masculine, such as “the egg doesn’t move or journey, but is transported along the fallopian tube” and the sperm as mentioned “can burrow through the egg coat and penetrate it”, aggressive phrasing to prove the masculinity. These stereotypes of the egg and sperm would later be deemed to just be a myth and aren’t actually in fact the real way in which the organs act, but rather contradict the truth, in which the sperm is seen to be weak. Because of this research and study of the egg and sperm, rather than referring to these reproductive organs as aggressors and weaklings, they are just known to be different. Humans being given stereotypes shouldn’t force them to become who they are and fit into a certain mold and criteria. Humans should be free and natural to become other than what society makes them out to be before and after birth.

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.

After reading the article, “The Egg and the Sperm” written by Emily Martin provides an excellent view on a lot of the stereotypical female and males roles dictated by society. She discusses about how often times the sperm is valued higher than the female egg. Martin argues that although both men and women go through biological processes for reproduction and these processes should be seen as homologous they often are not, as one is usually portrayed as the stronger. Another excellent point that Martin makes in the article is that the egg is described as being passive while the sperm is described as being aggressive, which leads to certain stereotypes that a man is rescuing a female. Throughout the article, Martin describes many situations in which the egg is seen as inferior to the sperm not only in society but through many science textbooks. 

As I have previously mentioned, I agree with many of the points that Martin made throughout the article, and I have found this an excellent opportunity to discuss about inequalities women face in the United States and throughout the world. Growing up, I had huge amounts of respect for my mother and the lessons my parents taught me have carried on to treat women fairly and equally. I also happen to be a Muslim, and in Islam there is an extreme amount of respect for women. Prophet Muhammad says “Paradise lies at the feet of your mother”(Musnad Ahmad, Sunan An-Nasâ’i, Sunan Ibn Mâjah). As one can clearly see, Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam encouraged treating women fairly and equally, the same way you would treat another man and many of the portrayals of Islam today are often depicted in mainstream media as extremists.  This is what I found so intriguing about this article, it depicted the unjust treatment of women in this country, even down to the gametes.  

In the article, The Egg and the Sperm, author Emily Martin argues that scientific theory believes that women are less worthy than men. Martin thinks that the scientific accounts rely on stereotypes and imply that female biological processes are less worthy than the male counterparts. On page 488, Martin speaks of how female processes are shown in more of a negative light than the male production. The article explains how sperm production is “continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth.” To argue her point further, Martin states how a woman wastes around two hundred eggs for every baby produced. Whereas a man wastes more than one trillion sperm for every baby he produces.

What Martin really wants is a less stereotypical view of the egg and the sperm. I support and agree with her argument. I feel that the egg and sperm both play important roles and one should not be shown as more worthy than the other. The article compares the egg and sperm to a lock and key, making the egg the lock and sperm the key. This is saying that the egg is the one that basically sits there and lets the sperm do all the work. Meaning, the egg is the lock and the key is the sperm that has to do the work of opening the lock. I also agree with Martin that the sperm is mostly given the more active role than the egg. The process still needs the work of both the egg and sperm so it shouldn’t be stated as the sperm is more worthy and does more work than the egg.

The Egg And The Sperm

The roles of men and women in our society have always been a topic of controversy. Men are seen as powerful and dominant while females are seen as the passive house wives. This is not only part of our regular sociocultural life, but its also perceived the same way in the human reproductive system according to Emily Martin’s article, “The Egg and The Sperm”. She focuses on exposing the gender stereotypes behind the “scientific language of biology”. Martin also emphasize on her research, the functions and  characteristics of both the egg and the sperm.

Emily Martin argues that both the eggs and the sperm have an important role in the fertilization process, but it is not seen  in such way even after all the research done by biologists. The egg is described to behave “femininely”(489) and the sperm behaves “masculinely” (489). The given characteristics of the egg is large, calm, and inferior, who is waiting to be trapped or “rescued” (490) by the sperm, while the sperm is described as being small, powerful and energetic giving the sperm stronger traits through out the whole process. However, the egg is criticized and consider wasteful and less worthy than sperm due to the nature of women analogy. Women are born with all the germ cells she would ever need. The fact that “the egg slowly sit on the shelf, slowly degenerating and aging like overstock inventory” (487) creates a wasteful image of the egg. On the other hand, millions of new sperm cells are produced  each day, once again, giving the sperm a better role. This is another form of representing what i stated in my introduction, the stereotypes between genders.

Through out her research, Emily Martin states a newer discovery on the topic. The sperm is not the one who now penetrates the egg since its not as powerful as they once though. It comes to show that the eggs outer shell (the zona)  is designed to trap the sperm forcing it past its surface. Even after this discovery, the egg is still seen as an “aggressive sperm catcher” (493). In reality, neither the egg nor the sperm can do their labor without the help of the other. It is unfair that the egg is seen as a waste, since the sperm cant really do much without the function of the egg, but i also believe that this shouldn’t be compared to our sociocultural problems. Emily Martin wants to grow awareness on the metaphors such as “the aggressive sperm catcher” used in science and the wrong imagery they create.

This article by Emily Martin really fascinated me. I don’t really have much of an interest in biology, but if I did, I do not think I would have noticed this apparent stereotype towards the male and female reproductive systems. It connects closely with Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. The words used when referring to the egg, or to the sperm, although at the surface, are just words, create an image, and thereby a mindset, in which to consider the actual egg and sperm. I found the strongest example of this to be that women are considered “wasteful” for the amount of eggs produced considering the potential amount, while men, whose sperm potential is far greater than that of a woman’s egg potential, is not considered wasteful.

However, I differ in opinion in that I do not think that this is connected to the stereotypes of men and women in general. While I do believe that Martin’s argument about the way we view the reproductive processes of women in a negative light, and that of men in a much more positive light, I do not think that these stereotypes lend into the stereotypes of men and women in general. It’s undeniable that such stereotypes are present, but I think that that has another source. If anything, the stereotype of men and women in general has affected and impacted the stereotypes of their reproductive systems, not vice versa.

I thought that Martin’s ending about the “sleeping metaphors” was brilliant. She makes a point that these metaphors are not dead, but sleeping, and we have the power to wake them up. And while I agree that we have that power, and it may impact humanity’s views of the reproductive system, I do not think that it will impact the stereotypes that our society has of men and women in general.

Societal effects are so far outreaching; they can even distort our image of facts. In “The Egg and the Sperm,” by Emily Martin, the argument goes that the reproductive cycle of a woman is portrayed in a dark ages light; incapable, passive and wasteful. In all respects, I find her argument to be valid. When humans first developed these capabilities of researching science, and more specifically the human body, the people partaking in this research were almost exclusively men. During that era, men were the bread makers and women were the child bearers. That is just how it was, and so it had a tremendous effect on really all aspects of life, and especially played a bias in researching the female human body. When it came to the reproductive cycle of the female, the male researchers attempted to explain their findings in the only channel they knew how to and believed to be true. However, I do not think the author found this to be an issue as much now as the views of females in our society have rapidly changed. Rather, Emily Martin was more concerned with how the textbooks that are in use now, and especially those with recent updates, have not reflected these changes in our society into their language.

If I were a woman in this day and age, I would probably be furious as well, as some of the diction used continues to not even accurately reflect data we know to be true. For example, numerous textbooks refer to the female egg as passive, having to wait for the male sperm to bring it meaning, and create an embryo. The sperm is all trumped up as this savior, while in reality we know it can barely move and is actually caught by the egg. Not only that, the author found cases where the sperm was laid out to be aggressive, and that they penetrate the outer shell and dig deep to the nucleus, where it is really the nucleus swooping up the sperm.

Swift advancements have been made recently towards eliminating sexism from our world. Change will only come if we have more naysayers like Ms. Emily Martin in our society, who raise flags in instances that need resolution and clarity. Slow and steady wins the race.

Biology has always fascinated me, and though I am considering majoring in the Zicklin School of Business here at Baruch, I have still decided to take the Biology 2010 class (the course for majors). I’ve taken Biology freshman year in High School, and then again during my senior year. I have never thought about the way gender roles are represented in biology textbooks when it comes to the reproductive systems. While reading, Emily Martin’s article, titled “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”, I was really surprised to see that “eggs” are described and depicted with feminine descriptions and with female stereotypes, and “sperms” are described and depicted by male stereotypes. I have always thought that Biology textbooks try their best in publishing objective material to the best of their abilities—but this article shed some light… Have Biology textbooks abided to some cultural and stereotypical classifications of females and males when representing their respective reproductive parts, the egg and the sperm?

At first, I felt immediately challenged almost to (respectively) disprove Martin, as I found it truly hard to believe that most textbooks speak in those feminine and masculine tones. But when Martin stated an example in western civilization where she found that sperm was depicted as “weak” and “timid”, she said that it was “the only such representation in western civilization, so far as I know” (491), which made me think that she must have done her research. Obviously, I do not know the scope of her research, but I trust (and hope) that she is publishing this information honestly.

It was pretty shocking to see how subtle the gender stereotypes are represented, for example, when she quotes a Medical Physiology Text, “Whereas the female sheds only a single gamete each month, the seminiferous tubules produce hundreds of millions of sperm each day.” The word choice greatly hints to these gender roles, which I don’t think should exist in “objective” biology textbooks. While I don’t think it is a crime to anyone, I do still think that, since society has matured to the point where equality (gender, color, race, etc) is being achieved, biology textbooks should try their bests to refrain from such wording. At the end of the day, both the sperm and the egg have equal weight in reproduction, so neither could or should be classified as more powerful than the other!

“The Egg and the Sperm,” a powerful publication on the impact of human culture on scientific research and studies, written by Emily Martin, reveals what she believes to be the inescapable influence of gender stereotypes of women and men on, literally, a microscopic level. Martin makes many strong points outwarding the extent to which gender “norms” can be seen in all aspects of our society and our personal lives, even down to the bare cells that create us. Despite popular belief, “The Egg and the Sperm” shows readers how even science, something apparently so deeply rooted in cold hard fact and evidence, can be affected by the way that women and men are considered and depicted as separate and definite beings or personalities.

At first glance, one may consider Martin’s statements to be “hyper-sensitive;” how can anyone go as far as to say that we use stereotypes, not only on people, but their CELLS, too? I will admit, I was a bit skeptical going into this reading. But the strangeness of the issue is what kept me interested as I was going: I wanted to see what Emily Martin had to say, and was I impressed!

Martin immediately describes what drove her to further investigate this issue of gender stereotypes in science, saying, “in the course of my research I realized that the picture of egg and sperm drawn in popular as well as scientific accounts of reproductive biology relies on stereotypes central to our cultural definitions of male and female.” She then goes into detail on specific cases, in the many reports and publications of prominent scientists of this field including Gerald Schatten and Helen Schatten, and how they are written in ways in which the sex cells of each gender follow their given stereotype. It is intellectual; stimulating, each paragraph is well-titled (as can be seen in the clever headings such as “Egg and Sperm: A scientific fairy tale”), and she has ample examples to back up her claims. Even if one doesn’t agree with her findings, they must admit she presents them well.

In an overall statement against sexism, Emily Martin makes her final concluding statement a strong one: “waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of their implications, will rob them of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender.” I think Martin sparked a political conversation and hopeful movement towards equality between women and men, starting from even the smallest levels of generalizations. At the very least, she reminded us how prevalent these gender issues still are and will be until people make the conscious decision to work against them. 

Emily Weiss

02.09.2016

In “The Egg and the Sperm,” Emily Martin argues that our ideas about biological reproductive processes are influenced and constructed by cultural ideas and stereotypes.  In other words, the female egg cell is seen as the inefficient and passive receptor of the quick, dominant, and penetrative male sperm cell.  Martin shows that these ideas have little basis in reality and are a reflection not of the objective biological processes but of our cultural ideas about gender.

Martin’s primary argument is that these ideas are so deeply embedded into our collective consciousness that they are very difficult to completely get rid of.  For example, recent discoveries have shown that the egg-sperm relationship is more fluid than the terminology popularly used would suggest.

I share Martin’s concerns about the gendered language we use to talk about concepts that really should be quite detached from ideas about gender.  I don’t, however, share her glim outlook regarding the ability of our culture to overcome these ideas.  While these ideas are deeply embedded in our culture, they are not inborn in us.  They are a result of the way we raise our children and the way we talk about these ideas in our common life.  It’s not something we can’t change.  Certainly it will be difficult to change these dynamics, but it’s certainly something we can accomplish over time.

Emily Martin’s primary argument in her academic paper, The Egg and The Sperm Cell:How Science Has Constructed A Romance Based On Stereotypical Male-Female Roles, was that the way biologists portrayed the fertilization process of an ovum was influenced by gender stereotypes. She believed that the cultural stereotypes of “macho men” and “women in distress” had seeped their way into biology. Martin brought up specific scenarios where the sperm were being described as warriors; who fought their way through the vaginal canal to complete their quest, fertilizing the egg. Some biologists reinforced this view of sperm by using certain terminology-strong, burrow, deliver, propel, velocity, etc. Some research papers even stated sperm cells “harpooned” onto the egg cell and upon contact began to “penetrate” the egg cell. This terminology and portrayal of sperm does seem to derive from the cultural stereotypes of men being heroes, warriors, and even saviors of women.

In addition to the way sperm were described, Martin also went out of her way to describe the injustices toward egg cells. In most biology textbooks and research papers on the female gamete, ova are described as being “passive” and not contributing much to the fertilization process. Even when research contradicts that, showing that the reproductive cells are mutual “partners” and both active in the process, biologist still find a way to discredit the egg cells. Martin also believes that the ovum’s lack of credit isn’t the only problem, she mentions how many scientists tend to view the ovaries as a “deteriorating and wasteful” organ. Some scientists don’t understand why women are born with a million egg cells and only use around 500, seeing this as “wasteful.”

All of these examples boil down to one common factor, that gender stereotypes have a strong grasp over the way biologists portray the human reproductive system. In my opinion, as long as these unjustified views and “terminology” don’t cause any harm or misinterpret information/data it isn’t such a major problem. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for gender equality and getting rid of gender stereotypes, but women face bigger problems than the way their egg cells are portrayed in biology textbooks.

In The Egg And The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance Based On Stereotypical Male-Female Roles, Emily Martin argues that language, particularly scientific language, reflects our cultural stereotypes of our definitions of male and female; furthermore, by uncovering the “sleeping” metaphors in our studies we will enable ourselves to understand when we are projecting our cultural views and understand biological practices in a more neutral and factual way (485, 501). I found this article to be very captivating as it is written very eloquently and addresses any possible counter-arguments, “One could argue that menstruation and spermatogenesis are not analogous processes… (487),”as well as offer a solution to the problem she states, by “substituting more egalitarian, interactive metaphors to describe the activities of egg and sperm… (501).

This piece ties in a notion that Lakoff and Johnson brought up in that we use metaphors in our basic language without realization. Although scientific textbooks don’t necessarily use basic language, their metaphors of gender stereotypes may be overlooked and gone unnoticed. Martin also furthers the thought that culture affects the language we use. Due to our association of women being passive and weak and expecting to be saved by their strong and active male counterpart, biological texts use language that reflects the feminine eggs as being useless and passive, as well as the masculine sperm being fast and on a conquest to penetrate the egg. In my earlier post regarding the book, Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson, I spoke about gender perception and metaphors in our every day language when we tell people they “run like a girl,” or that men can’t cry and they need to “man up.” Truthfully, this article was eye-opening on the same metaphors, as I had never considered factual texts about biology to be poetic and incorporating these kinds of metaphors.

In Emily Martin’s article, titled “The Egg and the Sperm”, she argues that scientific accounts tend to portray reproductive biology using stereotypes. Frankly, I have never read a biology textbook and considered it gender-biased, but as I read Martin’s explanation my well-hidden feminist side took over. “Why do women shed a single gamete each month, but men produce hundreds of millions of sperm?” I began to ask myself (486). Every part of the menstruation as well as reproductive process of women was phrased in a negative and inferior way. As I continued to read the article I understood the point that Martin was making: even something as small as learning about the reproductive process can be biased to “justify the social order of that time”, subconsciously creating gender roles in our minds (500).

Although it may sound ludicrous to some, I completely support Martin’s argument. Scientific evidence should not be influenced by “cultural ideas”, especially if these beliefs favor one gender over another (500). Women are depicted as passive and helpless, while men are seen as strong and heroic. Regardless of the unfair portrayal of women, the actual information has been proven to be incorrect. The sperm, once seen as a “forceful penetrator”, is actually extremely weak (492). The sperm and the egg are mutually active partners, and both have equally important roles.

The further I thought about the metaphor Martin analyzed in her article, the more I understood the metaphors hidden in our language as well as in our culture. The sexist ideas concealed in scientific research still exist today, and it is up to us to uncover the truth. Without questioning and analyzing things, growth cannot take place.

The article broke down the disparity between men and women down to the fundamentals of sperm and egg. It goes into depth of how sperm and egg are socially constructed supporting stereotypes, which is her primary argument. In most textbooks and writings, the sperm is often described as the active one which seeks to “penetrate” into the egg. While the egg is seen as passive, as “damsel in distress”. I find that these sort of texts can influence the minds of young children but not the minds of adults. In this way, gender is a social construction and learned at a very young age. Women are taught to be passive and men to be aggressive. I find it quite appalling the lengths people go in order to make negative connotations about women. Is discrimination at work enough? No, apparently some still feed the need to portray women in more negative light.

Let’s not always assume that the sperm is all-powerful. When the sperm fertilizes with an egg, the egg is the one to “protect the resulting embryo”. In addition, sperm would be lost without the egg. The egg emits chemotactic signals which attracts the sperm. Without the chemical signals, then the sperm would be lost. It is not always the case that the egg relies on the sperm, but that the sperm relies on the egg. When the egg acts as the aggressor, it is viewed through negative metaphors. “the egg ends up as the female aggressor who “captures and tethers” the sperm with her sticky zona, rather like a spider lying in wait in her web” (498). Why is the sperm not viewed as being an obscene creature raring to attack? Just like Martin said the concept of egg and sperm serve to support stereotypes today. I would praise Martin for clearing the sexism found at the cellular level, between the egg and sperm.

According to “The Egg and the Sperm” by Emily Martin, the female reproductive system is not spoken of in the same way as the male reproductive system. The egg is not regarded in the same way that the sperm is, many of the instances and cases mentioned by Martin point towards the significance and importance of the sperm and the fascination with the male reproductive system.

The female reproductive system on the other hand, mainly the egg is viewed in certain instances as a failure and a rapidly deteriorating system that does not have the same longevity and production abilities as that of the sperm. With men producing millions of sperm on a daily basis and women already being born with a certain amount of eggs and have no way of increasing the amount of eggs that they already have.

Rather women lose eggs as they begin to menstruate and ovulate which has a large effect on women’s ovaries which are mentioned as looking like a “scarred and battered organ”(487). Even young and healthy women have this so called scarred and battered organ. While men are glorified for their reproductive parts, women’s parts are still judged on their appearance and not their ability to perform necessary bodily functions.  “The stereotypes imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts but also that women are less worthy than men”(486).

Martin’s primary argument is how in many different pieces on the reproductive system, the female system is seen as a failure and the male system is glorified for doing what it was naturally meant to do just as the female system is doing.  Martin continues to explain how women receive no appreciation for the female process.

Martin believes that the inclusion of such widely known gender stereotypes when included in the explanation of the reproductive systems of both genders can cause the belief of gender roles to be seen as natural occurrences. Such writing in science can lead the reader to assume and subconsciously believe that gender roles have been put into place since before birth, since the fertilization of an egg happens.

The author of this article, Emily Martin had a lot to say about the gender stereotypes and the definition of male and female. She showed these stereotypes in the “language of biology.” She pointed out that, “female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterparts” (486). She first began to explain that that the Western culture saw women as failures. Martin used the example of what an egg and sperm do. She in many cases repeatedly mentioned that women were no use after a process was done.  For instance, she stated that once menstruation was over, it was viewed as a failure. Oppose to males having an “amazing characteristics of spermatogenesis” (487). What this means is that it was more amazing to see males manufacture several hundred million sperms per day than to see a women shed only a single gamete each month. I do think people are more amazed that men can reproduce sperm than to tell someone a female loses one single gamete each month. Its more interesting to hear just the words, millions per day.

Martin continues to explain that women get no appreciation for any female process. She gives examples from different articles that women processes are shown in negative light. At one point, one of the articles she uses said that females are unproductive and are seen as wasteful. With the examples she gives I did start to realize she was making a point. When it comes to the reproductive system, women are shown that they hold the sperm, give birth and the rest of the eggs die in the ovaries. But men are still able to produce sperm as much as 100 million a day. But later into the text, it was explained that female organs are interdependent but the male organs are independent.  Towards the end of Martins article, it was stated that as new research comes into play, these stereotypes that eggs are seen as weak and sperm is seen as “forceful penetrators” (493) could be wrong. The egg and sperm both equally need each other. No other is more useful. I agree with this. Emily Martin ends her article by telling the reader that women shouldn’t be seen as aggressive sperm catchers and once they are done with the process they are finished or in the process of the reproductive system; women automatically become servant and are no later useful. I agree with Emily’s last arguments that, “biologists use to describe their data can have importance social effects” (500). The types of words or comparisons people use to describe the reproductive system can have an impact on our society, especially for women.

I believe her primary argument is that the egg and the sperm has a mutual relationship. It is not that the sperm is superior to the egg or vice-versa. Without the sperm, a woman cannot produce a baby. Without the egg, a man will not have a child. Therefore, there should not be a fight about who does the more “active” part because they are equally as important. Overall, I enjoyed the reading. It was straightforward and easy to understand. It reminds me of when a couple argues about who has a bigger part in making the baby. Just because “the normal human male may manufacture several hundred million sperm per day”, it does not mean that the female is weak, with “only a single gamete each month” (486).

It is true that the male can produce fresh germs cells and the female degenerates; however, that does not mean that the sperm is more powerful than the egg. Gerald Schatten stated, “an egg will die within hours unless rescued by the sperm” (490). Does that go the same for the sperm, if not rescued by the egg? The reading even depicts the sperm as a heroic warrior. On the other hand, researchers at John Hopkins reveal that the egg actually traps the sperm. In this case, it shows that the egg is the “active” party. I like the analogy that the sperm is like the “key” and the egg is like the “lock” (496). I also like how the author questions that it can be reversed.

Overall, this reading opened my mind up. I usually just think of sex as the sperm and egg, and then a baby, but apparently it is a debate. Although the reading was interesting, I did not understand why eggs have only pictures, and not portraits.

Side note: A infant’s gender depends on the father’s genes. So the husband should not blame his wife for having a daughter or son.

Based on the name, I assume Emily Martin is a female. Before even reading the content, the title says it all–an article based on the reflection of stereotypical male-female roles on science. Martin criticizes the fact that scientists/researchers, the people that should remain objective, choose certain dictions with cultural innuendos to describe a biological process that has nothing to do with culture. Martin highlights the gender inequality where the egg is seen as a passive biological part whereas the sperm is seen as an aggressive biological part. Even more so, the diction used for the female process of menstruation is seen as “stockpiled germ cells by birth and is faced with their degeneration” (487) compared to the celebration of continuous production of sperm in the male body. Martin points out further contradictions: the female eggs are considered wasteful, but the definition of “‘waste’ implies and excess, too much produced” (489). In that sense, sperm should be considered wasteful as the excess production of sperm is unnecessary.

However, this is not the main point of Martin’s argument. By calling attention to the way scientists/researchers choose to describe certain biological process, the cultural background of the scientists/researchers become an interference to the research produced. In an old belief, sperm is described as an aggressor with a powerful, forward thrust. Yet, new research indicates that the “forward thrust of the sperm is extremely weak” (492). A better reflection of the fertilization process would be that the sperm is constantly on the run from the powerful egg. Even so, the researchers continue to imply that the sperm is a powerful aggressor when in reality, it is not. Martin strongly criticizes the fact that the scientists/researchers are applying different kinds of personalities on biological processes that have no personality. Martin hopes to persuade the reader of the article to become aware of the metaphors being used. In doing so, it will improve the ability to fully understand and research the biological processes.

Article is created by a woman who’s trying to show to the public equality of sperm and egg. Author of this book wasn’t very concern about the people how’s not very familiar with biological definitions and used a lot of them. While I was reading I make a notes where I was able to find metaphors and how accurate author using them. “It is remarkable how “femininely” the egg behaves and how “masculinely” the sperm.” – We can see that author is trying to show from the science prospective of past how people thought that Sperm is much more important. Old world denied all attempts of acceptations. Time passing by and the level of science is growing and we can see a slight step to equity between those two. “Differences between egg and sperm are emphasized, and the parallels between cultural stereotypes of male and female behavior and the character of egg and sperm all point to this conclusion.” – At this period of time some people already agree that the old view may be old and unprofessional. Even thou a lot of scientists such as Like Schatten and Johns Hopkins were trying to show to the people that sperm and egg are equal the final step when some people accept the equality between happened not long time ago in 1987. After this year and officially proved and recorder that egg is doing same amount of work in sex, humanity became more open minded and ready to for a new opinion. I didn’t enjoyed reading of this book and I think that it is many definitions in it and the person without basic biology knowledge’s will be lost, but overall it was interesting to read how author is showing us a fight for the equal rights of the sperm and the egg.