Egg and Sperm Stereotypes
Martin’s “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles” begins by pointing out how even in science there are stereotypes that make women out to be less significant than men. Martin goes on to explain how textbooks seem to marvel at the fact them men can produce millions of sperm each day while a women only releases one egg a month. The whole process of menstruation is described in textbooks as a failure of fertilizing the egg. Women are born with the amount of eggs they will have their whole life, they never produce anymore after birth and only about 400 to 500 of the million of eggs one starts with are released. One scientist said this was a waste as if a woman can control the amount of eggs she produces. However men produce millions of sperm a day and that is not seen as wasteful.
The language we use for biological reproduction also plays a part in the stereotype. The egg has terms attached to it like “is transported”, “is swept”, or “drifts” and does not journey like the sperm. The sperm has more positive terms attached to it like “deliver”, “activate the developmental program of the egg” and have high “velocity” of travel. The egg is also referred to as passive and needs to be activated by a sperm. The sperm are always described as being strong having to travel a long journey to the egg.
New research has actually shown that sperm do not swim as strongly as once thought. They can’t penetrate the egg straight on and need to move side to side. The egg actually traps the sperm preventing it from escaping. New research also shows that the egg actually selects which sperm it wants and prepares it for fusion and protects the future offspring from harm. Wassarmen, who made these discoveries, still used terms that favored the sperm even after the results of his experiments.
Even after these findings the egg seems to still have negative terms associated with it. Terms like “aggressive”, “captures the sperm”, and the egg is also compared to a sticky spider web. The egg seems to not be able to escape these negative terms even though research has shown that egg and sperm interact on mutual terms. Martin concludes by pointing out that our use of these terms for sperm and egg are projecting a negative outlook of female reproduction on society.