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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I am pretty sure very few women are calling themselves ‘wonderful mothers’, and no more are being called wonderful mothers. It took my own mother 12 years to say that I was doing a good job – very far from wonderful too!
A lot of women suffer depression and terrible anxiety because they believe that they are doing a terrible job. I expect they outnumber the ‘loud and proud’ wonderful mothers by a great many. I have never heard another woman say she is a wonderful mother or anywhere near it.
I am very glad I had children, but there is no getting past it being a thankless task for many. I did it on my own, so had people looking down on me, my sons best friend calling him a bastard, being told (indirectly in vicious hatemail) that I had no right having children without a father.
I can look at them as the lovely young men that they are and know that I had a lot to do with it, and some people have told me what great people they are, but when they were young it was ALL hard, physically, emotionally, financially etc.
I am not saying this for sympathy – I just believe that this is the reality for MANY mothers, even those married to men, financially secure etc.
Wow, you’ve learned how to do parthogenesis? When will you tell the rest of us how it was done?
They had a biological father obviously, the person who abused me objected to me RAISING them without a father.
Thought that was pretty obvious from the context. Next time I will spell out every single little detail for the deliberately obtuse.
Bina
On Trump’s first visit to Canada, Trudeau gave him a famed picture of grandpa Trump’s brothel.
Canadian’s excel at “being ever so polite while being ever so snarky”.
@ellesar
Or perhaps for those attempting humor, assuming that they didn’t need to suffix it with smileys and lols for your benefit? Who can tell.
Ellesar: I think that Zemyla was more pointing to the fact that the email-sender is an idiot for using that sort of phrasing. Many detractors of single mothers love to pretend that there was no man involved in the generation of the children (since the most common reasons for single motherhood are that the guy was either a deadbeat or an abuser). This lets them berate the woman for her ‘choice’, even though the percentage of women who outright ‘choose’ that route (ie, deliberately getting pregnant via either artificial insemination or no-strings-attached sex) is vanishingly small compared to those who wound up single because life is complicated and messy.
*********
On the subject of anthropomorphic depictions of sperm/egg interactions, I think the worst one I’ve ever seen was in Look Whose Talking, Too. The filmmakers deliberately made the dialogue between the sperm and egg as date-rape-esque as possible, during a sex scene that was already uncomfortably far in that direction. This was, of course, played up for laughs.
@Freemage – That one was pretty awful. I also hated Woody Allen’s neurotic sperm, fretting that he might be released during a “homosexual encounter”. Ugh.
@ellesar – So much admiration and sympathy for you. I know how hard it can be to do it all on your own. I’m a choice mom, living in a fairly tolerant urban area, and I still get occasional flack. It’s subtle, but there. Just as people can be ostracized for not conforming to expected gender roles, people can also be ostracized for not conforming to expected parent roles. Single dads get more slack, I think – they’re brave, they’re heroes, etc.
This:
is such a firkin of shit. He dismisses one of life’s hardest tasks as nothing when women do it, then tries to fence stolen valor in practically the next breath. Zero self awareness.
That really was the idea! With a belief that the world was only a few thousand years old, and no concept of cells or molecules to set a lower limit to the size of a homunculus, it wasn’t as self-evidently daft as it is now. Still pretty daft, though, considering the ease with which it can be observed that children usually resemble both parents.
Yeah, I was attempting humor. Sorry about not tagging it.
If sperm waited for an egg to fertilize it . . .
. . . the manosphere would be all about the strong, silent sperm that waits patiently for the ditzy, distracted egg to finally find the sperm and realize its own true role.
“They swim”, it growled, “they swim, Posty, and when you’re down here with them, you’ll swim, too–”
Cue evil laugh if you like them.
Anyway, “secondary” ? “Secondary” to what ? Spermatozoïds ? Try to make a child with two spermatozoïds and call me if it works (maybe it may be possible by genetic manipulation ? I do not honestly know). There is no primary or secondary down there, just “complementary” i think.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
As in so many things, society’s default assumptions are that women will be great and that men will be deadbeats. It doesn’t take much for women to fall below expectations and be censured, or men to exceed them and be praised.
Give it another generation or two, and maybe things will improve. At least the likes of Piers Morgan will be dead by then.
@ occasional reader:
Not a geneticist, lemme state that up front. From what I’ve read on the subject, the egg has almost all the information needed to make an embryo. The sperm has been stripped of any information not directly used for fertilization. So, if you genetically engineer two sperm, you can’t get much more than another sperm… which will spend its short life-cycle looking for an egg to fertilize. By adding a whole shitload (note, it MUST be a complete shitload) of DNA, you might be able to make Dolly the sheep. If you genetically engineer two eggs, you’ll get another egg, but if you add just a teensy (and it need not even be a whole teensy) bit of DNA, you can get an embryo.
What’s vital here is the information required to make a critter… cell division info, when-to-do-what info, etc. Y’know, the kinda stuff contained in the EGG… (egg be smart, sperm be mule with bent back…?? I see where the mras get their anger lol!)
@ Pie:
women will be great, but will be treated as deadbeats, and that men will be deadbeats but be treated as great.
FTFY
@ Weird Eddie
Sperm contain half of the DNA required to create an embryo, a flagellum for movement, and enough stored energy to move around for a few hours and survive for maybe a week or two, at the absolute maximum. Sperm are created by the millions every day because they don’t last long, so their numbers must constantly be replenished whether they get sent on their way or not.
Eggs contain half the DNA required to create an embryo, and literally everything else that’s needed to drive the endless division that is the foundation of existence for every multicellular creature. Eggs have cell walls, cytoplasm, mitochondria, organelles, nuclear membranes, everything. Eggs are created during a woman’s development as an embryo and are never replaced because they will survive for the duration of her life.
These sperm-worshippers have some pretty low standards for what they consider worthy of celebration….
(Fun fact: every mother who has a daughter carried half of any potential grandkids in her womb. I find that to be the closest thing to holy that I’ve ever heard.)
@ Gaebolga:
AHA!!! Just as I thought… even BEFORE CONCEPTION, the menz are stripped of all that is valuable, are slaving for the good of society, and are sacrificed by the millions, while the wimmins are laying around eating haploid bon-bons…. (/s)
fotos of haploid bon-bons
Lol
…and I should have seen that coming, to be honest.
That home-school biology class is pretty much limited to
1. How to….uh, grease your wick before doing it.
2. How to romance a sheep.
3. Why you don’t do it during “that time of the month”
4. The best sources of pornography
5. How to use them while um….spanking the monkey
There may be a voluntary class for men on “How to cope with raging hormones/rapists when imprisoned.”
The hell are you on about?
Kiwiwriter – I’m not sure what you’re trying to do, besides be offensive.
Prison rape jokes are not funny, don’t make them here again.
You’re right…that was inappropriate.
Prison rape is a serious horror.
I won’t do it again.
I have a friend who became pregnant with twins. This was her first pregnancy, and she was around 36 years old. Sadly, she went into premature labor, and both fetuses died.
Judging by her remarks afterwards, I believe she felt this meant she’d failed as a woman.
To me, this is the flip side – and an unintended* consequence of all of the “glory of motherhood” talk.
*Or maybe it IS intended.
@Samantha Ravensdaughter: I’ve wondered the same thing, for a long time. What’s sad to me, is how many women have internalized the misogyny.
@dust bunny: I think your very articulate explanation makes a lot of sense.
RE: Hyperemesis gravidarium. I’ve read that some women actually lose weight from this. I don’t know much about it, but I wonder if they’re allowed to take antiemetics. There are so many medications that are contraindicated during pregnancy. My friend, who I mentioned in my above comment, wouldn’t let a lousy cough drop pass her lips, the next time she became pregnant.
OT, but I thought people here would appreciate the latest Amanda Marcotte piece in Salon, where she uses the Maria Butina case to prove that men are too emotional to be granted power.
The details of the accusation? Young, attractive woman flatters old, wealthy men and the men simply dive at the chance to participate in corruption and treason, because holy fuck, a young woman might be really, really attracted to them!
It’s fucking awesome. One of the better quotes:
The only downside is that the article is a little too much reporting and little less snark than would really do it justice. Thus I’m hoping David will take a look – and maybe even find some ManBoobz talking about the article (or the general topic of Butina’s scams against poor, wealthy, white brothers in the MGTOW/PUA war against deceptive women /s).
@Crip Dyke:
I have to admit that any time I come across a news story about a woman conning a string of men out of their fortunes, or being the nucleus of a duel, or something – the accompanying photo always shows someone pretty average-looking (and not even necessarily under 30). It actually gives me a certain pleasure to think that the only thing standing between myself and the precipitous launch of a thousand ships is my own social anxiety.
Ah, so Warren Farrell was right. Women really do oppress men with our sexy, sexy butts. It’s becoming a real national security issue.
*shakes head in dismay and resignation*
Time to cancel feminism, I guess.