(#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?