Aarnav Tapan Deshpande - Week 1

Gender and Society

Reading Summary

Week 1

Judith Lorber’s piece ‘Night to his day’, based on my reading of it, primarily focuses on highlighting the deep entrenched social perceptions and the fallacies thereof with respect to  gender and presupposed roles of the said genders in the society. Lorber challenges the prevalent practices of ‘assigning’ a gender identity to a newborn which is often followed by a lifetime of enforcing that identity on an individual, by way of differential treatment in the case of boy and girls or men and women. She goes on to strengthen this stance even pointing out the gender challenged that are put forth by either the non-recognition, or if recognized, the differential treatment of Transvestites or Transsexuals.

On the other hand, Emily Martin’s piece, ‘The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male- Female Roles’ aims to bring to the forefront the flawed portrayal and the perception that is formed basis the said portrayal, of the roles of the male and female gametes during the process of reproduction. Martin talks about the repeated portrayal of the egg as a either a damsel in distress that is ‘saved’ by the active sperm when it ‘braves’ its way into the uterus to fertilize the egg, or as depicted in the revisionist accounts that martin discuss in the initial part of her essay the egg is portrayed to be active “but at the cost of appearing disturbingly aggressive.”