Sexism Emily Martin Analysis

Vincent Adams

Professor Ellie Hamrick

Cultural Anthropology

20 October 2015 Sexism is a form of oppression that is very commonly used throughout the world. The unfortunate fact is that everything we hear is deemed normally and is widely accepted throughout the world. It can start as early as when we are in school and learn about the sperm and the egg and how the writer of a textbook can subtlety make comments that inaccurately tell you how the sperm and the egg come together to start the process of life. I believe that education in anthropology can help give everybody in the world the chance to fight systems of oppression, such as sexism, and help us come up with alternatives to get rid of these systems entirely. Emily Martin’s article “The

Martin says “An illustration in a widely used medical text shows menstruation as a chaotic disintegration of form, contemplating the many texts that describe it as “ceasing,” “dying,” “losing,” “denuding,” “expelling.” (Martin 486). Martin informs the reader that “one of the texts that sees menstruation as failed production employs a sort of breathless prose when it describes the maturation of sperm” (Martin 486). It is very unprofessional that an author can publish personal feelings like that in a science textbook and it can easily be seen as a way to degrade women. If this is to end then it must take educated individuals who can read this and see the problems as it happens. If everyone was aware of this completely biased and wrong opinion being in textbooks then it would have to be removed. But it unfortunately slips by because people never even notice it is

Women not getting equal pay for doing the same work as men, and even being forced into the role of being stay at home under the “nuclear family”, are accepted because it’s been that way for a long time. This trend can come to end with people simply being enlightened about certain things though. For us to all have the idea of a sperm doing all the work instilled in our brain for such a long time can easily be a factor in the role women play now. Just knowing that it is a lie has changed my perception and I am sure it can change many people perceptions too. Just simply learning new things, learning facts most importantly, can greatly make a system of oppression go away. Even on a scale greater than sexism, such as racism. People generally hate each other over their race, something they have no control over. But is there truly a difference in all of us? The color of our skin and the gender that each one of us should not make us be put into unfair