People are sexist. Society is sexist. We know.
While women have, quite vocally, broken the silence that accepted sexism a cultural norm, there are more subtle, staggeringly effective forms of sexism hidden within our textbooks. The sperm and the egg encompass a very illustrative example of the quiet sexism lurking in the corners of our educational system, hiding within what we learn as true, undeniable fact. What I, and at the very least the rest of my high school biology class, learned is that one sperm cell beats out all the others in a competition to fertilize the egg, just waiting for this opportunity in the depths of the vagina. I jotted down this note and accepted it as fact. Throughout my years in high school and two years as a science major in college, I did not learn one thing to contradict this solid fact.
Then, my suite-mate knocked on my door and introduced me to a University of Chicago article by Emily Martin which she needed to read for anthropology. As it happens, the manly sperm does not do all the heavy lifting of sexual intercourse—a fact hidden beneath the masculine language coating any scientific description of sexual reproduction. In fact, the language traditionally used to describe the male and female reproductive systems are polar opposites. This has less to do with their functions and more to do with asserting claims that femininity and masculinity are biological phenomena.
I know a handful of women that view their reproductive organs as a curse from Hell, forcing them into bed, curled up in pain for one week every month. Why must we shed an internal organ when guys get all the good stuff during puberty? Perpetuating this view would be the great and powerful branch of academia we call science. It’s so wasteful to have evolved an organ such as the uterus, which sheds itself each menstrual cycle, counting down a women’s reproductive window.
This grim view actually parallels the reality of its male counterpart, although no scientific literature would tell you that. While quite industrious, producing sperm daily, the male reproductive system is actually more wasteful than the female one if you look at the number of sperm that are wasted per month compared to egg cells, as Martin points out. It’s this discrimination in the language of biology that casts the role of the female as wasteful, and less useful, even though this is not in fact the case. It is just another instance of sexism, well hidden and readily ingrained into our minds as scientific proof.
Aside from undermining our ovaries, science promotes the dominance of men in its apparently universal descriptions of fertilization. If you learned it as I did, you’ll know the sperm launches itself at the egg and fertilizes it. Biologists have known that this description is incorrect, and they’ve known it since the 1980s. Fertilization is actually a mutual effort. The sperm are propelled forward towards the egg, yes—but it’s the chemoattractants and proteins on the surface of egg that draw the sperm towards itself. The egg plays an equally active role in the process. The sperm does not fertilize the egg; rather, the sperm and egg combine to result in fertilization. This description, correct though it may be, is atypical. Scientifically proven, but still disguised by language. Martin provides some illustrative examples, highlighting how the sperm and egg are cast in male and female roles, respectively, even in literature as recent as the 1990s.
To me, this is horrifying. We are learning about science, biology, through a subjective, sexist lens. Not only are the facts we’re learning colored by language, but they are variations of what is the real truth. It’s metaphors like that of the sperm hunting and catching the prey egg which reinforce the idea that girls act girly and boys act boyishly because of their biology, because of their very cells. This hides the real facts as well as promotes cultural stereotypes from a shaded spot in the corner, invisible to most.
The reality is that sexism, and discrimination of any kind, could easily exert its force over our education without anyone realizing the truth. We could be learning jaded information that goes completely unnoticed, swallowed as unconditional fact. I don’t know the true extent of this problem, but I do know that if it goes unnoticed, feminism, and any other anti-discrimination movements, will never be fully realized.
