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Critical Summary: The Egg And The Sperm By Emily Martin

464 Words2 Pages

Name: Bhavina Pomal.
Course Name: English 1100.
Instructors Name: Dr. Yaying Zhang.

Critical Summary: The Egg And The Sperm: How Science Has Constructed A Romance Based On Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.
In Emily Martin’s article, “The Egg and the sperm how science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles”, she textually analyzed how scientific accounts of reproductive biology are framed and constructed by cultural stereotypes. She explains with examples how sperm has always been seen as the powerful and aggressive, whereas the egg as weak. Sperm are seen as “active”; therefore it is considered masculine and the egg as “passive “so they are feminine. The main idea of the research throws light on the social relationship of individuals with one another and the gender role, which is the extension of our biological process within ourselves. As both the genders are equally important for the functioning and needed for the …show more content…

The reader may need to re- read and probably may miss the important information. For example, “the innermost vestment, the zona pelliuce, is a glycol-protein shell” (494). After reading this it is clear that the article seems to refer to a particular discourse community. The scientific language uses metaphors such as “sleeping beauty: ‘a dormant bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss, which instills her spirit that brings her to life” (490). Another metaphor used is the “egg as damsel in distress, shielded only by her sacred garments; sperm as heroic warrior to the rescue” (491). This apparently makes me feel astounded, as this kind of terminology is used to describe the fertilization process. Instead of using such fairy tale metaphors, real life, true and non-biased examples would have provided better

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