From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/04/we-can-keep-it-real-unless-we-start.html
Annalee Newitz's has written an amazing essay, "Your Penis Is Getting in the Way of My Science", to defend Science from the asshatery of pop media prattling about a "female penis" just because we've found a female insect with a body part that ends up in her male mate. The essay is awesome. READ IT. IT'S IMPORTANT.
But the issue seems so trivial, you may be thinking-- and you are thinking that because of one of Newitz's two mistakes.
Newitz is concerned about protecting science, but the bigger issue here is REALITY. Allow me to demonstrate why how we think about and how we talk about things like this is so important.
Quiz time! Where do babies come from? Why, every comedian knows the answer to that-- there's the wild whoopee splort and then a cutthroat race to the death for a gazillon sperm swarming up the female system until the one and only winner slam dunks its way into the waiting egg.
Sounds familiar?
How about the special two day stay at Club Cervix? You know, the point right after the wild whoopee splort, where those teeming thousands get welcomed into a critical period of rest, relaxation, perfect temperature, and all you can eat food? When was the last time you heard about that part?
Or the sperm teams? You know, when Club Cervix opens the doors to release all those plumped-up powered-up little champs for the race to ovulation, and they spontaneously form teams just like Tour De France, each team providing support and buffering protection for the one in the best shape. When did you last hear about the teams in the race? They even have an equivalent to bike lanes-- the special tracks laid out inside the Fallopian tubes, with more food all along the route. Those special tracks that make it *possible* for the sperm to go anywhere, because without those tracks, sperms travel about as well as ice skates on a gravel road. Have you heard about them?
And when did you last here a comedian talk about the fact that a sperm has no way to get inside an egg? What was the last good routine you heard about the way the majestic egg sits there with that first sperm knocking at the door, and then waits for more, and then finally somehow-- and we don't know how-- SELECTS one, forms two plastic arms, and embraces that chosen one into itself?
Does that whole process sound anything like what you learned in school?
Does it sound anything like what "everybody knows"?
What kind of impact does it have on our society that from greeting cards to cocktail parties, we're all told a hundred times over that life itself begins with a ruthless, random, savage competition of male units in conquest of a passive female landscape... when that is just not the reality?
What would it mean for men in our society if every boy was taught that his father's contribution to his existence was cherished, nurtured, supported, guarded, chosen, and embraced on the journey to his conception, rather than being the random conqueror?
This is serious stuff. This is about Reality, and our ability, and willingness, to recognize reality.
Which brings me to the other error in Newitz's lovely essay-- her perpetuation of a term that has no place in science.
Consider, if you please, the reality of the human penis.
Penises are blunt. Penises bobble. Penises blunder.
A stiletto penetrates. A spy penetrates. A penis is like an enthusiastic blind puppy that has to be guided home. If penises wore T-shirts, they'd say things like "Hold Me" and "Which Way Shall We Go?" and "Help! I Fell Out and I Can't Get Back In!"
The reality is, a penis doesn't penetrate; a penis gets inserted.
That's a pretty big difference.
The basic definition and connotations here are just not right.
Every single time *any* of us speaks of a penis "penetrating", we're perpetuating a myth of male as active, female as passive, and sex as violation. It is no more accurate, clinical, or objective to speak in terms of "the penis penetrating the vagina" than it would be to talk in terms of "the vagina consuming the penis".
Frankly, we all deserve better.
Even those hinky insects.
