By David Futrelle
Turns out that women aren’t just improperly appreciative of men because back in the cavemen days it was (allegedly) the cavemen that hunted the mammoth to feed their lazy women sitting eating bon-bons in their caves.
Women also don’t appreciate all the hard work that sperm do, swimming all the way to the eggs while the lazy eggs just sit there eating bon-bons in their caves.
At least that’s the claim being made by this big-brained Redditor:
Don’t laugh! This guy has SCIENCE on his side. 17th-century science, at least.
At the tail end of the 17th century, after the invention of microscopes allowed scientists to see those little swimming spermies for the first time, the smart set of the day decided that these vigorous little fellows just had to be the real source of life on earth. As biologist Robert D Martin notes in an article in Aeon,
philosophers and some students of reproduction [held that] the egg was merely a passive receptacle waiting for vigorous sperm to arrive to trigger development. And sperm? The head of each contained a tiny preformed human being – a homunculus, to be exact. The Dutch mathematician and physicist Nicolaas Hartsoeker, inventor of the screw-barrel microscope, drew his image of the homunculus when sperm became visible for the first time in 1695. He did not actually see a homunculus in the sperm head, Hartsoeker conceded at the time, but he convinced himself that it was there.
He thought it looked like this:
It’s pretty cute, I have to admit — look at those teensy little fingers and toes! But I still like the Homer Simpson sperms better.
H/T — Found this one via the Blue Pill subreddit
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Tell ya what, guys. Men can take credit for bringing life into the world once they risk separation of the pubic symphysis for a couple of months. Deal?
Hartsoeker’s drawing reminds me of the Steelers logo.
Does he not realize the egg journeys down the fallopian tube to get to the uterus and eventually possibly meet up with sperms?
Guess not.
Not to mention all the work a pregnant person’s body does nourishing and carrying the zygote/embryo/fetus. But sure, did dudes deserve a medal for ejaculating.
Wrong even by the standards of 1800. Exponentionally wrong by current science. Even setting aside the work the egg does, as I understand it the vagina and uterus do a large part of the work of screening, moving(!), and removing sperm.
Is there a word that applies to “taking even more credit for a woman’s work than previously-understood?” I don’t think it’s “ironic,” since it’s more of an “expected-but-worse” concept…
Well, some years ago there was a commercial, here in Sweden, to attract students to a certain university. (I tried to find the video, but didn’t succeed, sorry).
A group of sperms were swimming towards an egg. The one going to be the “winner” was talking to himself (with a masculine voice), figuring out what he wanted to be once grown up.
That was to “represent the possibilities offered by studying at that university”.
This commercial was approved by a university, an education place which should counteract those anti-scientific, sexist, outdated concepts.
And I was also disappointed that it was coming from a Swedish university, in a country where I expected to find an higher level of knowledge and consciousness about these issues.
Customary is the word you are looking for.
I think it’s interesting that this guy is praising the valiant conquest of the egg by the successful alpha sperm. What about the beta male incel sperm that the evil slutty eggs reject? Someone should think of poor, nice sperms. If we’re not careful, some of those incel sperms are going to be taking guns and vans into the uteri with them and wreaking havoc. And those mean, degenerate, cuckolding eggs will have it coming too. Has someone alerted Jordan Peterson to this great injustice yet?
This guy flunked out of home-school biology, did he?
Every day, the internet just gives another reason why sex ed curricula are important. This means you, Douglas Ford.
These guys who think that they do all the life-giving to create a baby should see what an embryo looks like without the aid of a body to grow in. That’s the extent of their contribution. All life past that point came from the person carrying the fetus.
Does that guy knows that “being a wonderful mother” is a LOT of work. It takes hours of your day. It can leave you exhausted. It can be very rewarding emotionaly speaking and extremely draining at the same time. It requires a lot more skills then one might thing, especially in the interpersonal category. I hate it when people say that parents who stay home full time “don’t work”, they do work, they just don’t get paid for it. As for the science part… well… maybe they should open books once in a while instead of internet programs. Also the reason many women “pat themselves on the back” for having children is because of pregnancy. Pregnancy can be awesome, but it can be very hard. Nobody likes morning sickness, back pain, some of the hormonal flux can be terrible and you can actually die from it. If pregnancy was a job, it would be in the top ten of the most deadly jobs in the US. It’s 50% deadlier then working as a cop. In my opinion, living though that is reason to give oneself a tap on the back once in a while.
@Kiwiwriter – I don’t want to contemplate what “home-school biology” might entail for some of these people.
Also, why do they assume sperm are male? About half of them contain an X chromosome.
@ Victorious Parasol
Or preeclampsia, or gestational diabetes, or placenta previa, or vasa previa, or placental aburption, or ectopic pregnancy. The list is unending, but these idiots don’t care.
@Gijoel
Or fistulas.
*shudder*
The seed isn’t the most important part of a plant’s sprouting, it’s the bullshit that is mixed in with the soil. The seed just sits there waiting. The shit actually has to make some effort.
I just love the term “Galaxy Brained” for some reason. It gives me a good chuckle.
Don’t forget the stuff with the labor pain, contractions, delivery, etc. Women deserve a giant solid gold trophy for that!
“Being home the bacon” should become a catchphrase symbolizing how far out to sea these guys are when it comes to reproduction. I mean, the other day I saw one of them on Facebook, seriously and earnestly comparing an ejaculation to being in labor. Never mind that the one is accompanied by an orgasm and the other by mind-warping pain. He seriously thought the two were the same damn thing, and that it was proof that men “work just as hard, if not harder” to create life.
Yes, REALLY.
Bacon and eggs, folks…bacon and eggs.
Here’s an interesting article about how much work a uterus does.
Thing is, when you say “morning sickness”, the vast majority of men think “she’s got tummy twubles, the poor princess”.
My mom was hospitalised for “tummy twubles”, and nearly died. For three pregnancies. In. A. Row.
But women are too weak to experience real suffering, so clearly this is all a lie and neither my mom nor my sibling or I exist. #deepstate
Is it just me, or does Nicolaas Hartsoeker’s concept of a spermatic homunculus look remarkably like a mirrored set of buttocks?
The funny thing about the homunculus is that, if a homunculus is male, it must have a bunch of homunculi-filled sperm in its testes. And some of the homunculi in the homunculus’ sperm are also male, meaning they ALSO have homunculi-filled sperm, some of which are also male, meaning…
It’s homunculi all the way down
Infinitas humunculorum.
WWTH:
They totally would if they could.
Jane Done:
Hyperemesis gravidarum? I didn’t know that could happen until I read about Kate Middleton going through it with each of her pregnancies.
Eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap. Hence, sexual selection where the woman assesses the value of potential mates, as they are sacrificing more resources forv the sake of reproduction. And incidentally, sperm are not necessary. They are just vehicles, modern technology can get the genes implanted without even the need for a man to donate cells. But eggs and wombs are not replicatable or replaceable.
@AsAboveSoBelow: never really found out the exact cause, parents avoided going to the doctor cause of poverty/religion. Probably also just assumed suffering is a natural part of a woman’s role, cause hardcore mennonites.