SOC359H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Y Chromosome, Egg Cell, Herma
Document Summary
The egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on. By extolling the female cycle as a productive enterprise, menstruation must necessarily be viewed as a failure. A lot of medical texts do not express an intense enthusiasm for any female processes as they do for male sperm processes. In their eyes, menstruation does not produce something deemed valuable as what sperm does in a male. The texts celebrate sperm production because it is continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth. This makes the female seem unproductive and in some books, it also insist that she is wasteful. Degeneration of eggs start at 2 million at birth. By 40 only 400 to 500 eggs remain. For males, they produce about 100 million sperm a day and over two trillion in his life time. Language in these books also play a key role.
