Welcome to the world of feminism. Where everything and anything that is said or done is analyzed to the point of obnoxious. Things that may not seem sexist can be spun around to be as prejudice as the 1960s. When I come across these feminist spin arounds, I can’t help to wonder whether the situations at hand really are as prejudice as they seem or if the fact is a fictitious run of a crazy feminist’s imagination to make the world hate the male gender.
If any of you have ever taken a woman studies course in your educational pathway, you quickly realize you either absolutely despise it, or you can’t wait to fill your coffee mug up so you can grab the first available front row seat. Whether my approach is to hate it or love it, I can’t help but to respect this one article I read in the class.
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The Egg And The Sperm by Emily Martin demonstrates the secretive language of our everyday text books. Words that have forever been hidden in the biology books that we have been reading since the middle school days are exposed in this intriguing essay about the relationship between the reproductive systems of men and women. This short but sweet article explains how the depiction of the sperm and the egg can illustrate the classic fairy tale stories of the night in shining armor (sperm) courageously rescuing the damsel in distress (egg).
Martin notes how in the most common biology text books of our youth explain how the sperm is an active part of the system who is rescuing the egg by penetrating through it. While the egg is a passive creature, waiting for the process to begin. The mere words in biology books illustrate how the egg is ultimately less important and adventurous as the sperm. The sperm is the main reason for a successful child birth and the egg is just there for the sperm to do its job. Medical Physiology by Vernon Mountcastle even states, “Whereas the female sheds only a single gamete each month, the seminiferous tubules produce hundreds of millions of sperm each day.” Our textbooks throughout the years have been providing us with negative connotations towards the egg and positive ones with sperm without notice from teachers, students, or parents.
Only feminists like Martin recognized these hidden depictions. But as the bigger picture comes into play, we can wonder how many of these hidden descriptions exist. People we blindly trust, because of the number of degrees they hold or signatures on books they carry, could possibly have been placing this sort of persuasive rhetoric to make readers believe certain things for generations. Saying rhetoric is everywhere is an understatement. Rhetoric to convince young minds things through their subconscious is the new form of deception but is undoubtedly still a form of rhetoric.
I've taken a few courses on gender communication, and while not always explicitly feminist, they all had at least a few readings from a feminist perspective. I was struck by how much these depictions of gender saturate our culture. Keeping with the sex theme, we always describe intercourse in terms of penetration (agency is assigned to the male), rather than, say, envelopment (agency would be assigned to the female).
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's the fact that we call some classes "seminars." Bleh.
This is an interesting perception on how gender is described even in the most neutral looking places - textbooks. I take a sociology class and currently learning about the gender expectations in our culture, which is very much females are passive and males are active. I say this is not really something that people meant to do on purpose, but does show how stereotyped people are. Now I think I will doubt on most of what I read from now on.... lol
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