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?