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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OT, but have to share: I don’t know which amuses me more, the fact that Steve Fucking Bannon is going down swinging like a mofo, or the possibility that as many as a hundred women have had to be paid to keep quiet about seeing Donnie’s unprepossessing junk.
And just to draaaaaaaaag it back to topic again: The sperm that made him is the one that “won”. Not that it was ever much of a contest, seeing what stock the paternal side of his family tree was made of. (Germany didn’t want Opa Drumpf back when he was deported for absconding to the US as a draft dodger. He later made his real-estate fortune as a pimp in the Far North. Kind of touching to see Donnie carrying on that tradition, after his weaselly fashion…)
Homunculi are real. Goethe put one in the second part of Faust; it even talked, if I remember correctly.
“Men do all the science and shit. It just so happens that I, personally, haven’t bothered to learn about anything that’s been figured out since Aristotle.”
Speaking of Aristotle, Mary Renault gets a cute little bit into “Fire From Heaven” where she suggests that some of Aristotle’s less realistic ideas come from the fact that he’s got the young Alexander and his friends out doing the observing in nature bit for him. The boys are bored, and just go hunting. Then they make shit up when asked about their observations.
Okay so let me see if I understand. People with female sexual anatomy (which I don’t like to use because nb and trans men also have so called “female anatomy”) must suffer menstrual pains every month(sometime so bad to go to hospital), and the pain in the ass of periods generally, if everyhting is working “normally”. they must suffer the most painful and upsetting kinds of birth control with terrible side effects. and also can suffer PCOS and endometriosis. And after this if they chose to become pregnant they must deal with massive body change, society expectations of “how to be pregnant correctly” (not gain “too much” weight, don’t be a “crazy” pregnant person, want to get pregnant in the first place and want children), then all side effects and problems with possibility of miscarriage which is very common in first time pregnancy. And then at the end give birth which is not like a movie and is full with complications and risks and sometimes involves a full surgery. And after society expects them to lose weight, look the same as before pregnancy, be the same person as before pregnancy, not become a “boring mother” who only cares about her kids – but also to do all the care for the kids ?. And then even want to do it all again!
And this asshole thinks he’s special just because sperm can swim?
Not only do women and people with female anatomy do all the work and suffer in silence with pain and discomfort and expectations of society – they are expected to enjoy it! Children are a “gift”. Pregnancy is “beautiful”. So many men (like the ones in the last article) say they “give women” children, as if women do nothing, as if to say “I gave you what you want, why are you not happy?” but they never take the chance to listen to what women want, they ignore their experience becuase “periods are gross” and pregnancy and children are “women’s business”. And yet they still think they know what women want? ?
@ Genjones
I question this. It “makes sense” in an econ, evo-psych kind of way, and it’s easy enough to find “evidence” for it. But if you actually ask women and men and have an ounce of sense about historical and societal context and relationships, there are very obvious ways why women behave the way they do that have literally nothing to do with low-level genetically coded hard-wired behaviours.
Women are choosier when it comes to sex partners even now when there is very low risk of pregnancy if you use birth control, because sex is still magnitudes less appealing and more dangerous to them than it is for men. Women are choosier when it comes to romantic/domestic partners because they bear a disproportionate share of the responsibilities within a hetero relationship, are at considerably higher risk of violence in the context of one, and statistically get less out of it.
So how about we just abstain from making too many judgments about how women must be hard-wired until we can observe what they do absent these constraints? If you ask me the fact that hetero women date at all speaks to self-destructive levels of non-choosiness if anything.
You know, the utter stupidity and fear that drives these guys is becoming cripplingly boring. Seriously. They are so very afraid that they are going to be rendered obsolete that they are rendering themselves obsolete.
The human ovum actually contains far more genetic information than the sperm does. For one thing, the mitochondria, without which we could not exist or generate and utilize energy, is passed solely by the mother, which is one of the reasons the egg is so much larger than the little swimmies that men are so concerned about.
Frankly, it is my opinion that women could reproduce without men far more easily than men could without women.
For me, though, the burning question/issue is this – Why the hell are men so full of rage, fear and hatred towards women? I find it very hard to believe that all of their angst stems from being sometimes rejected by the women they desire, or from mothers of their children wanting enough money to support the kids. There has to be something else that is behind millenia of murderous rage.
I would love to read some opinions on this.
I want to say congratulation to the guy first. He at last realised that you need men and women contributions for a person to be born.
On the other hand: Sperm is more important because reasons is were the intelligence ended.
DNA-wise every persons DNA comes 50% percent from the mother, 50% from the father.
Any discusion about what is more important for the creation of life is silly.
(Now the argument that we wouldn’t exist whitout women and this is a reason why men should respect women more is not silly)
Now pregnancy yeah that is a harsh deal for women (thank God less deadly at last in the first world than in former times) Dangerous still and very unpleasant. So nothink to ignore like I-hate-Trump does.
But most important for me in the question of parent is are you there for your child, when he or she is growing up.
Here a lot of men absolutly suck.
(And I stopp the rambling now)
And then there is this interesting experiment…
@Genjones, dust bunny:
Yeah, about that “choosiness” (hint: it’s a social construct)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19754525
Also the “expensive eggs, cheap sperm” argument is so cliche and ill-defined, we need a more specific, concrete, objective measurement, preferably with peer-reviewed data, before any serious conclusion can be made.
@ Samatha
It’s what oppression does to oppressors. When your identity, self worth and whole way of life depends on screwing someone else over you come to hate them. It’s a psychological mechanism. You also become suspicious of them and deeply fearful that they will get justice for themselves, because you’re dependent on them, while they can only be freed of you. When your group has higher status than another group, you learn to subtly dehumanize the others and lose a lot of your normal human capacity for trust and empathy for them and become incapable of ever learning from them.
Exact same thing that is going on with rich people and white people.
@Jane Done:
Since the argument is that female animals invest much more (energy, risk, etc.) in a pregnancy than male animals do, the obvious test would seem to be to measure a) gestational period, b) female choosiness, and c) male choosiness in a sizable sample of mammal species (avoiding domesticated ones, whose behavior has been modified by generations of artificial selection, probably toward low choosiness so any two animals the humans on the farm decide to mate and put in a pen together will do so).
If the ratio between b and c correlates significantly with a, then the case might be made. Though even then, it may be that for humans all bets are off as we’ve selectively bred ourselves for generations to at least some degree.
OK, why doesn’t my comment show up on “recent comments” even though it does show up on the actual page?
@surplus
It shows for me.
I’m using Google chrome app on my phone.
So much of fertilization imagery revolves around bold, macho, warhead-tipped sperm vigorously competing to penetrate a passive, aging egg. More recent research suggests that this metaphor isn’t very accurate. It turns out sperm are actually fairly terrible swimmers. They’re better at getting away from things. If you put a small suction pipette against them, their heads thrash from side to side ten times as strongly as the forward movement of their bodies. It makes sense – you don’t want sperm that are good at burrowing, or else they’d burrow into the first obstacle they encountered. You want sperm that are good at escaping.
Sperm have a difficult time swimming through the cervical mucus (this is where the contractions of the female orgasm are helpful). Other recent research has discovered that, far from competing with each other, sperm take turns up front parting the strands of mucus, like drafting bicyclists. They’re more cooperative than previously thought. (It’s actually eggs that are the competitive loners – only one matures each month, and suppresses the others).
Meanwhile, the egg puts out chemical signals that attract the sperm, and undergoes further changes that trigger the sperm to release proteins that keep it tethered to the surface. In essence, the sperm gets sucked in and pinned down. Eggs might be better described as eager rather than passive. In many species, such as lizards, insects, some crustaceans, and even turkeys, the egg can even begin dividing without fertilization.
It’s no mystery why fertilization imagery is so male-skewed. Men link potency to strong sperm. There’s a tendency to think that gametes are miniature versions of ourselves (understandable since they carry our DNA), and that fertilization re-enacts PIV sex on a smaller scale. Macho men like to think of their sperm as little torpedoes, and eggs as helpless damsels awaiting the bold victor’s final plunge. That bias has crept into our scientific understanding, where the majority of researchers are men. How you frame the process of fertilization affects what you look for. We need new metaphors to describe the beginning stages of life.
Oh, and another fun fact for Mr. Bringer of Life: a significant proportion (10-25%) of sperm-egg combinations are incompatible with life due to chromosomal abnormalities, even when both contributors have no known genetic risks. Sperm aren’t some kind of Promethean torch that arrive from on high to kindle an inert egg into life. They’re both living organisms. It’s essentially a dice roll whether any two of them will go on to become a live birth.
Nice post buttercup!
I didn’t know it is so high percentage of egg/sperm combinations that will have defects. It seems very fortunate that so many babies are born alive at all!
Not only does the egg travel to meet the sperm, the sperm can only make any progress when the cervical environment is right – the mucus changes around ovulation time to carry the sperm forward. Otherwise, apparently, it’s like swimming the Atlantic only to find it’s full of glue.
Cue rant about ruddy free-loading homunculi getting a free ride through the cervix.
And can we take it that the OP doesn’t know the sperm carries the X or the Y chromosome?
Well, of course – dude knows nothing bout nothing.
@Samantha Ravensdaughter
You’re right. It goes back millenia. See, we men have never got over the fact that for ages, women hid the fact that we were involved in reproduction. We thought you were these magical parthenogenic creatures we got to have sex with for fun some times. Then one day we realized that there was a link between sex and pregnancy, and we’ve never recovered from the deception. At this point, we split into the “Wimminz be stealing my sperm!” camp and the “Gahdammit, wimminz are gonna make me pay for the diapers!” camp. So women had been deceiving us, women had been using us, and now women were trying to make us responsible for things and making us bring home the mammoth for the kids as well.
Note: This post contains sarcasm. But I’m pretty sure some chucklehead somewhere has made this argument.
You know what, buddy? Me too. There is just way too much of that, and it just has to stop. Why, just the other day I was in line for the bank. In front of me, a woman would not stop shouting “Babies would not exist if it were not for vaginas!” It just seemed so unnecessary.
And then, of course, there’s that all-too-familiar scene at the grocery store. We’ve all witnessed it. A toddler has a meltdown in the cereal aisle. A man, embarrassed, furtively tries to calm or distract the child. Above him, a woman declares, “You see that kid? I had that kid! Yeah, me! Go me!”
I paid my cousin a visit not too long ago. “Wow, your kids are sure getting big,” I said. She stared straight into my eyes and replied, “CONGRATULATIONS TO ME.”
And is it too much to ask that just once I go over to my mom’s place for dinner and not hear “Your dad couldn’t have made you alone, you know; I was a critical piece of the child-making process”? I mean, it’s true, but do we need to talk about it over the risotto, Mom?
Viscaria, you are a treasure
Eh. The guy makes a lot of sense. The odd times he’s had sex with someone else the woman has just laid there, unmoving.
Therefore, the man MUST be doing all of the work in conception.
Q.E,D.
Right?
Two things:
First, “we fight the wars”. Really? You think that’s a point in your favor?
News flash: NOBODY LIKES WARS.
…and Second, is there a subreddit for bad male anatomy?
Viscaria:
If I had read your mesage a little bit before, it could have very well be that you would have owned me a new keyboard.
Well done.
That’s one way of describing it, I guess. I suspect these geniuses have watched way too many “miracle of life” documentaries, anthropomorphising furiously as they did so… they probably imagine their guys swimming upstream in perfect Michael Phelps-like synchrony, rather than that frantic bathtub-toy flail that spermatozoa actually do… hell, they probably imagine that fusion with the egg to form the zygote is accompanied by a swelling choral soundtrack of some kind while a portentous voice (Morgan Freeman?) intones, “… and the circle of life is complete” ? Or maybe nowadays, a burst of video game jingle and an “achievement unlocked” sign ?
starting the wars. Sorry, I know it is different men, but women are not starting these wars and expecting men to fight them.
Years ago older women were primarily blamed for Down’s Syndrome, it took a very long time for me to find reports not only refuting that, but also examining the higher levels of birth defects that older men sperm creates.
”Some studies have linked increasing paternal age (over 40 or so years) with higher rates of conditions like autism and schizophrenia. Others have observed increased rates of birth abnormalities, such as heart defects, musculoskeletal abnormalities, and Down’s syndrome.
Mouse studies also support this. Studies have shown that mice born to “old” fathers (over two years old) performed poorly on tests of learning and memory, and also had a reduced lifespan and less reproductive success themselves. Mice with slightly younger fathers (10 months old) were less social.
The researchers say that although the mechanism behind this is not established, most evidence points in the direction of DNA methylation. Animal studies have shown higher rates of DNA methylation in the sperm cells of older rats compared with younger rats.”
Found on NHS site
As someone who has carried and birthed children I cannot say that in this regard women have it easy. If it wasn’t for the excellent healthcare I was able to access I would quite possibly have lost my first child and suffered some serious damage to my own health.