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The Egg and The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance

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The Egg and The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance

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As an anthropologist, I am intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world. If this were so, we would be learning about more than the natural world in high school biology class; we would be learning about cultural beliefs and practices as if they were part of nature. 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. 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. Part of my goal in writing this article is to shine a bright light on the gender stereotypes hidden within the scientific language of biology. Exposed in such a light, I hope they will lose much of their power to harm us.

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 1

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 1

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1. menstruation characterized as unproductive and wasteful, described by words like “ceasing,” “dying,” “losing,” “denuding,” and “expelling.” In contrast, male reproductive physiology is characterized as productive, and the “sheer magnitude” of sperm is described, not as wasteful, but as “remarkable” and “amazing.” Females “shed” eggs, males “produce” sperm.

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 2

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 2

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But the texts have an almost dogged insistence on casting female processes in a negative light. The texts celebrate sperm production because it is continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth. This makes the female seem unproductive, but some texts will also insist that it is she who is wasteful.'? In a section heading for Molecular Biology of the Cell, a best-selling text, we are told that "Oogenesis is wasteful." The text goes on to emphasize that of the seven million oogonia, or egg germ cells, in the female embryo, most degenerate in the ovary. Of those that do go on to become oocytes, or eggs, many also degenerate, so that at birth only two million eggs remain in the ovaries. Degeneration continues throughout a woman's life: by puberty 300,000 eggs remain, and only a few are present by menopause. "During the 40 or so years of a woman's reproductive life, only 400 to 500 eggs will have been released," the authors write. "All the rest will have degenerated. It is still a mystery why so many eggs are formed only to die in the ovaries.”’

The real mystery is why the male's vast production of sperm is not seen as wasteful. Assuming that a man "produces" 100 million (108) 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. Assuming that a woman "ripens" one egg per lunar month, or thirteen per year, over the course of her forty-year reproductive life, she would total five hundred eggs in her lifetime. But the word "waste" implies an excess, too much produced. Assuming two or three offspring, for every baby a woman produces, she wastes only around two hundred eggs. For every baby a man produces, he wastes more than one trillion (1012) sperm. How is it that positive images are denied to the bodies of women?

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Snippet from A Review of You Tube 20 Years On

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Snippet from A Review of You Tube 20 Years On

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This study examines popular culture accounts of conception available on YouTube between August 15, 2010 and August 15, 2013. This sample of thirty-two YouTube videos on human fertilization reflects the gendered narratives of conception that Martin found to exist in medical textbooks in 1991. Changing cultural mores and Martin’s work may have impacted medical texts over the past two decades; such a finding is beyond the scope of this study, but the few recent medical textbooks and current research included here take pains to describe fertilization without resorting to cultural stereotypes of gender. Despite this shift in medical literature, popular narratives as represented by these videos demonstrate the enduring vigor of the highly gendered, anthropomorphized, and courtship/rape narrative of fertilization.

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What are the three most important points you learned today?

What important questions remain unanswered for you?

What did you learn specifically from what someone else said that you would not have thought of on your own?

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 3

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Snippets From Emily Martin's Research Part 3

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iAt its extreme, the age-old relationship of the egg and the sperm takes on a royal or religious patina. The egg coat, its protective barrier, is sometimes called its "vestments," a term usually reserved for sacred, religious dress. The egg is said to have a "corona, a crown, and to be accompanied by "attendant cells."28 It is holy, set apart and above, the queen to the sperm's king. The egg is also passive, which means it must depend on sperm for rescue. Gerald Schatten and Helen Schatten liken the egg's role to that of Sleeping Beauty: "a dormant bride awaiting her mate's magic kiss, which instills the spirit that brings her to life."29

Sperm, by contrast, have a "mission,"30 which is to "move through the female genital tract in quest of the ovum."31 One popular account has it that the sperm carry out a "perilous journey" into the "warm darkness," where some fall away "exhausted." "Survivors" "assault" the egg, the successful candidates "surrounding the prize."32 Part of the urgency of this journey, in more scientific terms, is that "once released from the supportive environment of the ovary, an egg will die within hours unless rescued by a sperm."33 The wording stresses the fragility and dependency of the egg, even though the same text acknowledges elsewhere that sperm also live for only a few hours.34