Coming off of a few months of summer fun, it’s time for a new year of Reading Writing and Listening (RWL) on topics that intrigue me at the given moment.

Last week, my graduate work at NAU led me back into a live classroom to explore Anthropology of Gender (ANT 556) with Dr. Lisa Hardy and my cohort of diverse and curious classmates.

The first readings were rich with topics for exploration. The one that stands out most for me was The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereo-Typical Male-Female Roles. In this 1991 article, anthropologist Emily Martin looks at the ways writing scientifically about human reproduction assigns gender stereotypes. She argues that Western science portrays male reproduction as “remarkable feats” while the role of the female biology is “passive and decay”. The academic reports write a scientific fairy tale with the metaphor of a damsel in distress (the egg) being saved by the white knight (sperm). Other text presents the egg with spidery imagery and cast the egg as the femme fatale who victimizes the male another wide spread Western theme.

Fast forward thirty years, and our society still struggles with gender stereo-types.

I just finished listening to episode 20 of the podcast We Can Do The Hard Things:

PLAYING OUR ROLES: How does culture’s invention of gender typecast every last one of us? On the podcast, Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle, and Abby Wambach discuss:

1. Women in the business world, like Amanda, are labeled dominant and aggressive and why that is a gender trap.
2. Abby’s experiences of being misgendered in public and how that makes her feel.
3. Why do we tell people who they are before they are born and so many days after?
4. Why Glennon says two women in a marriage, taking care of their business, so rocks the patriarchal boat.

TRANSCRIPT

More to come on this topic.