(#1: sorry this is so late.)

After reading Maureen Larkin's article on health and healthy policies of third world countries, I had a question regarding policy development.  I figure (perhaps wrongly), that since the 70s -- as feminism resurfaced and eventually pushed itself onto the global forum -- issues of women's health/health disparities and discrimination faced by women have taken on a much more important role as well as occupied a much larger space (in the realm of gender discourse).  Yet Larkin stated that women's movements have had to instill "a gender awareness into the policies and practices of agencies in the fields of development and health at both international and local levels" (126).  Is there a reason why the international healthcare sector still needs to be advised on gender awareness?  Is the sector ignoring gender awareness based on class/race/location?  Why hasn't considering gender issues become inherent to making policies?

The pattern of this week's readings point to a theme that may best be characterized as "the imposing help." All three readings discuss certain organizational apparatus who have the intention of helping women, but seem to be misguided and ignorant of specific histories. The Grewal reading hearkened back to the "What is Feminist Politics Now?" conference and the discussion centering on the helping or harming role of international political organizations. And in the Briggs article, scathing criticism is presented of "mainstream feminism" and their role in framing (and polarizing) the sterilization debate, as well as leaving Puerto Rican feminists out of the debate altogether. And the Martin article, though in a different tone, suggests that biologists, whose fundamental job description is designed to be that of a helping agent, are in fact semantic sculptors of stereotype. Firstly, how are we to approach the modification of such systems that are supposed to be helpful? How are organizations and modes of thinking supposed to change? The question of "who" comes up here. "Who" is supposed to lead the battle for global health? Is global health a flawed term to begin with?

And in thinking about terms, I think the readings' overwhelming focus on semantics and terms and metaphors begs the question, yet again, about the valuation we place on our terms. But how can we perceive of a revision of the feminist lexicon if feminism is really feminisms? Should we strive to engage in war over terms and metaphors? In the end, won't modified terms simply end up offending someone else?

Although I found Emily Martin's article interesting, from personal experience--with biology teachers, class, textbooks, etc.--I feel as though this idea of pushing the stereotypes purposely into the discussion and language of the egg and sperm is going a bit far.  Although Martin argues that one textbook "sees menstruation as failed production" yet "employs a sort of breathless prose when it describes the maturation of sperm," I had a teacher and textbook that called the production of sperm a "matter of quantity, not quality" and the production of the egg all about quality (486).  Was this textbook implying that because sperm often lack quality that men do as well?  I don't think so.

Emily Martin presents a clear example of the ways in which language and culture are intertwined in powerful ways. She illuminates the place of metaphor in scientific discourse, particularly in the construction of the 'story' of the sperm and the egg. While making a clear case for the stereotyping of gender in scientific explanations, she asserts that culture affects science. I wonder how closed this reading is- is it possible that it is more reciprocal than this? Isn't scientific discourse a fundamental part of culture in modernity? What does it mean for us to essentialize 'science' and 'culture' in this way- as being separate from each other and influencing each other across a discursive space? I am wary of this. The relationship is much more reciprocal I think, with scientific discourse affecting culture as much as this essentialized 'culture' affects science. How might this affect her reading? Does it make the possibilities for dismantling the discourse more bleak?

In her article, "The Egg and the Sperm", Emily Martin argues that "culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world," specifically in studies about reproductive systems. She proceeds to cite specific examples of how the language and descriptions of such processes in textbooks and medical journals project gendered personalities on the cells involved, thus perpetuating such stereotypes. While I found her discussion very interesting, I couldn't help but wonder if she was taking the idea too far-- is this "manipulation" of language and description really intentional? Is it, in fact, untruthful or misleading? I just had a general sense that she was splitting hairs in her argument or maybe overanalyzing some aspects of reproductive science.

Like everyone else, I thought that parts of the Martin article were far-fetched and ridiculous. She contradicts herself by first comparing an image of an active egg to a "femme fatale" and then, shortly after, voicing criticism towards the practice of"endowing cellular entities with personhood." The following excerpts especially caught my eye as places where we should critique her argument: "Although this description gives the egg an active role, that role is drawn in stereotypically feminine terms. The egg selects an appropriate mate, prepares him for fusion, and then protects the resulting offspring from harm. This is courtship and mating behavior as seen through the eyes of a sociobiologist: woman as the hard-to-get prize, who, following union with the chosen one, becomes woman as servant and mother." And the other one, "By extolling the female cycle as a productive enterprise menstruation must necessarily be viewed as a failure. Medical texts describe menstruation as the "debris" of the uterine lining...[they] imply that a system has gone awry, making products of no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap." In the first passage she takes on the role of the sociobiologist, whatever that is, and creates a metaphor that doesn't even fit in with the biological "fact" she has just stated. The other quote is an interesting thought. If she said more to back up the claim that medical textbooks say menstruation is failure and implies a "system gone awry," could she convince us, or is she just reading too much into the word "waste"? (What about pooping? Would she say that's a "failure" of the digestive system since it too is "waste"?) And, if menstruation isn't waste, then what is it? Could the drawbacks of her article be a result of her trying to write outside of her field of expertise? If she didn't exaggerate and nit-pick so much, would be there be some validity in her argument or not?

11/13

Larkin's piece concludes that health policies that have devastating effects on the populations in developing countries are now in the hands of supranational institutions such as the IMF, UN, and World Bank. I think that this piece is interesting to consider with Tuesday's lecture in which Professor Kessler-Harris stated that health issues, in particular reproduction, is one that is a struggle between the control of the state and the control of the individual. In thinking about the article and class, why are health policies moving farther away from the individuals that deal with such decisions, and into the hands of more removed, less representative institutions? What is the trajectory that we are on in terms of policy making and in the framework of individual rights? Especially from a Western context in which human rights standards are valued and advocated the most aggressively, why does this hypocrisy exist and what greater purpose does it serve?

Thoughts on Martin

In reading Martin's article, I was fascinated as I became aware of the manner in which stereotypes about male and female nature so strongly influence the way we view science. I agree with her main thesis in that I understand the importance of becoming attuned to these biases even within the realm of science, which we often perceive as being immune to bias. However, I wonder if the reason for which sperm are viewed as more active than eggs is because sperm actively move toward the egg while the egg is stationery in the initial stage of reproduction. However, I am aware that this can be contested by the fact that eggs also move through the fallopian tubes at a different stage. Still, is it possible that sperm is objectively more active during the "main" part of reproduction? Or have I simply fallen victim to the influence of the language and manner in which we discuss the process?

I understood Emily Martin's idea about how "endowing egg and sperm with intentional action... lays the foundation for the point of viability being pushed back to the moment of fertilization" (500), but aside from point I fail to see the purpose of the article as a whole. It makes sense that she is angry that scientists continue to use intentional language in describing the reproductive process, because cells are not beings with intent or choice. However, I do not understand why she feels the need to argue so vehemently about one- or two-word choices in specific descriptions by scientists. Her criticisms of, for example, the semantics of how the sperm move along the fallopian tubes (489) seem nitpicky and counterproductive. Her points about intentional action are valid, but because she uses this as only one aspect of the greater critical whole, it is lost in a whiny-sounding discussion of the words "drift" versus "deliver". This is not likely to get the greater (patriarchal?) scientific audience to agree with her ideas, and may only annoy and alienate them.

Regarding Laura Briggs' article about sterilization in Puerto Rico, I find that the way they determine whether or not sterilization is "justified" is inherently flawed in that they do not factor in the social and economic distinctions of different classes. There was one mention that wealthier women tend to favor hospital sterilization (156). Of course one might say wealthier women will express such sentiment in such a study; they have the means to acquire it with little risk to the financial situation of their families... A poorer woman on the other hand might have to determine whether potentially having a child even at the risk of her own health and happiness would be better for the family economically (another helping hand, or $25 saved from operation procedure, or simply the will of her husband), or whether she should put her own well-being and desires at the forefront. Judging people's reactions to one question, in this case "is sterilization good or bad?", does not take into account the variety of life experiences of the subjects. Which simply highlights the fact that reproduction is and has always been a personal issue that should not be placed on a distant and impersonal public platform for government dis/approval.


I also laughed heartily at Martin's article. I study the aging of stem cells in fruit fly testes and I have remarked occasionally how very interesting they are. But this is not because I value males over females, but rather because their testes are approximately 1/3 the size of their body which goes to show where all of their prerogatives lie. If one were to compare fruit fly ovaries with testes, there would be no "derogatory" terms used for females, for their eggs mature much the same as sperm mature, and there is no preset egg cache in the body waiting to deposit over the individual's lifespan. When Martin rails about comparisons of "wastefulness," then, her characterization of females being conservative and sparing are not entirely correct. In fact to focus an entire argument on human anatomy without considering the biological systems of other gendered organisms is sort of silly, because animals are classically studied in far more detail and were dissected centuries earlier than humans due to moral squeamishness against dissecting human beings. Also, I can't imagine a Martin-esque feminist's description of the fertilization process. Maybe it would go something like "The egg sailed valiantly down the fallopian tube, while some blindly flailing tadpoles swam in the opposite direction; eventually the feebly groping sperm collided with the egg and a baby was conceived..."

In my opinion Emily Martin's piece "the Egg and the Sperm" brought more laughter than knowledge. Martin's parallels of sexism to biology are ridiculous. To say that scientific facts are in some way gender stereotyping is to argue conclusive and definite research. Biology textbooks are not being sexist when they describe the difference between sperm and eggs. They are not being sexist when they describe the process of giving birth. Perhaps I am being naive but I think it is rather far fetched to discredit the scientific world because of the language that is chosen to explain natural bodily functions. What do you think??

Emily Martin's essay provides some part of an explanation for the stereotype of women as passive, dependent creatures. If something as "exact" as biology present female's in this light, doesn't it make sense that cultural norms would assume this same notion of women? Both Larkin and Briggs show how this stereotype actually plays out in a cultural context. On the issue of reproduction, women (like the passive, dependent egg) sit around waiting to be controlled and manipulated by outside forces. Martin attributes this control to large international organizations, and Briggs questions whether this is the case on the issue of sterilization in Puerto Rico. Were big US policy-making organizations really to blame for the forced sterilization? Or, as Briggs argues, it is equally valid to claim that women actually ask for the ability to control their ability to reproduce (or not)? My question is, why does it have to be one or the other? Why is it always a matter of "victims" being forced to do something when sometimes, people are actually lobbying to make that happen? It all comes down to choice: if some people want to reproduce a whole bunch, let them! And if some people don't want to at all, why not? This seems to be the core problem with most political issues: gay marriage, abortion etc. How do we begin to create a government in which choice is the ultimate agenda?

I found The Egg and the Sperm to be a very interesting article. However, there are some questions I have with Emily Martin's implications and proposals. On page 495, she mentions, "It has been more than a century since Hermann....peered into his microscope and became the first person to see a sperm penetrate an egg, fertilize it and form the first cell of a new embryo." Surrounding this fact, she discusses how this scientific language, puts the male sperm into the active state and the female egg as the "damsile in distress", also compared to as sleeping beauty. I feel like her bringing up this fact implies that because a man first discovered or saw this biological event, that that is the reason why the male's sperm is considered as the active, aggressive, dominant part of the fertilization process. My question is, what if a woman first discovered this? If this was the case, I doubt she'd describe the egg as active. She wouldn't think about the possible sexist implications but rather just would describe the process as she saw it.
My other questions deals with the last sentence. Emily says that by "waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of their implications" we will "improve our ability to investigate and understand nature" and thus "rob them( the metaphors) of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender". However, she earlier gets upset when the egg was described as active because it was too active that it was aggressive and spider-like. [Which I couldn't help but compare to H. Clinton in that when she became active she was considered butch and aggressive] This quotation implies that is we change scientific writing to the egg being more active but less aggressive then it will change our stereotypes that are now social concentions that females are passive and males active. Would there then be arguments made by the men? More importantly, is this possible?

Local or Global Action?

In "Global Aspects of Health...," Larkin identifies the problem that local initiatives face; she writes that "it is more difficult to assess their impact... where a variety of officially sanctioned initatives and informal women's projects are to be found," and that "many of the more formally based programmes have been criticised for being no more than add-on initiatives to existing programmes." Are these "formally based programs" wrongly criticised? Do they serve to help or to dilute the force of a unified and broader initiative? I think that working on a local level is more effective; this way, needs that are visible only to those with an "epistemological privilege" can be addressed. However, at the same time, this way also suffers from its single-ness (by which I mean it is less accessible to the most amount of people). So, what is your opinion, which is better--or rather, if you had to choose one, which and why--action at a local or global level? Where does the balance between the two rest, how much should local initiatives rely on global initiatives, and vice versa?

11/13 discussion

Laura Briggs offers us yet another example of anticolonialist feminist activism that "inadvertently recaptiulated the terms of a US colonialist narrative" (144). Briggs calls it "the problem of speaking on behalf of the subaltern" (145). It does not matter whether one argues for or against colonialism, but rather if one "claims to "know" the desires and subjectivities" of the subaltern. For, as Briggs states, "there is no such subaltern subject" (160). The mainland feminist activists who portrayed the rise in sterilization as the result of a government policy and a mechanism of social control--the "women were forced" argument--ignored the role of Puerto Rican women both in making decisions and advocating for birth control, removing the possibility of agency altogether. 

A more complex and comprehensive history is clearly called for. But I was most interested by the response of Margarita Ostolaza Bey, who argues that "the anticolonialist discourse is also hispanophilic, antifeminist, and reactionary because it is based on the idea that the past--any past--was better" (160). Is anticolonialist discourse ultimately as problematic as colonialist discourse, because it follows the dichotomy established by the latter and results in the erasure of the actions and ultimately the agency of the colonized peoples themselves? Is it possible to conceive of an anticolonialist discourse that does not fall into this trap, or do we need to look for another kind of discourse altogether?