The Egg and the Sperm

769 Words2 Pages

Gender stereotypes have existed since the beginning of modern man. We've all heard them before; male dominance and female weakness, a controlled male and a flustered female, aggression and passion, and many others that all basically boil down to the same thing. Emily Martin, in her essay entitled The Egg and the Sperm, takes this problem of gender stereotype to a new and much more serious level. As an anthropologist, Martin is concerned with the socio-cultural impacts on many different aspects of everyday life, including biology. In doing her research for this article, Martin was trying to uncover suspicions she had about socio-cultural gender stereotypes, and the affects they had on the diction used to describe egg and sperm interactions in numerous biology books and research reports.

Martin believes that if in fact if her suspicions are true, then what we learn in biology class would be more then just biology. We would also be learning about the cultural beliefs the authors where influenced by when they were writing. If Martin's assertions proved to be true, this meant a very scary thing. It would show that silly, but

serious gender stereotypes were making their way in scientific materials and further into our culture.

When doing her research, Martin made sure that nobody would have any room to criticize her credibility or the credibility of the article. The shear volume of research that she did is shown in the fact that there are over seventy end-notes in The Egg and the Sperm. Martin spent her time reading through endless biology books; from not as well known, to national best sellers like Molecular Biology of the Cell, written by Bruce Alberts. She also found (at the time of research) current material from...

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...st makes the reader think, what is she trying to get at then? Leaving that paragraph out of her article would boost the viability of the purpose, and would also get rid of any contradictions that may lie within.

Despite the contradicting citation she offered, Martin makes a valid and noteworthy conclusion in her research. The fact that such an age-old stereotype of the knight in shining armor and the damsel in distress could possibly effect how biology is presented, is scary and disturbing at the same time. It needs to be addressed and erased in the very near future as Martin argued, especially when it gets to the point where it could actually alter known scientific data. Through careful research and close attention to specific diction used, hopefully Martin has brought up a more then valid point that can be dealt with properly before it goes on any longer

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