Lopamudra Mahapatra- Week 1

Egg and the Sperm by Emily Martin

1. Emily Martin in her reading “Egg and the Sperm” argues about how a logical subject like Science is also corrupted by the gender biasness within the scientists. The Science experts and doctors somewhere portray the male reproductive system as superior to the female reproductive system. The process of menstruation, that is the breakdown of the endometrial lining due to the lack of fertilization is seen as failure. The egg is being explained to the students as a lazy, weak sleeping beauty that rests within the ovaries of the female. Whereas the male gametes, that is the sperms are seen as something which is generated in abundance, is highly mobile and energetic. Therefore, Martin argues that the female's reproduction system is portrayed as a failure because during their menstrual cycle, they are expelling one gamete per month while the male's reproduction system is producing millions of sperm each day. This clearly implies that the female biological processes are less worthy than that of the male. Martin further argues that we think we know a lot because of science in this age, but the truth is, the way we interpret science is sexist and it actually makes us ignorant . Such gender bias reinforces gender inequality and continues to keep our traditional misogyny alive.

Night to his Day by Judith Lober

2. Judith Lorber in his reading “Night to his Day”: The Social Construction of Gender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate disruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay attention to how it is produced. Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated. Lorber argues that “bodies differ in many ways physiologically; but they are completely transformed by social practices to fit into the salient categories of a society, the most pervasive of which are ‘female’ and ‘male and ‘women’ and ‘men’". However, Lorber connects these social barriers that continually separate the sexes in sports, with the economic barriers oppressing the female sex. Lorber continues to describe social boundaries set up by gender using technology; she brings up two examples—computers and cars. When computers first came into use, office jobs involving them were given to women, as it appeared to be a clerical duty. It was not until computers were revealed to be complex and intellectually demanding that they became the domain of men.  Lorber points out that the diversity of humans could be categorized, regrouped and broken up into different ways of comparison than the traditional sex differentiation that disregards the real issues of who is truly like whom.