Is The Sperm Race A Fairy Tale?

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NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

A lot of us were taught that conception happens with a survivor-style sperm race — the fastest and strongest sperm fight to make it to the egg first. In this Back To School episode, we revisit this misleading narrative and learn just how active the egg and reproductive tract are in this process.

You can find Ariela @arielazebede, Lisa @CampoEngelstein, and Kristin @kristin_hook on Twitter. Email us at [email protected].

Editorial Note - The introduction of this episode has been updated to reflect anthropologist Emily Martin's crucial role in first making this issue widely known.

REFERENCES:
The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles, Emily Martin (1991)
Revisiting "The fertilization fairytale:" an analysis of gendered language used to describe fertilization in science textbooks from middle school to medical school, Lisa Campo-Engelstein & Nadia Johnson (2014)
Misconceptions about Conception and Other Fallacies: Historical Bias in Reproductive Biology, Virginia Hayssen (2020)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, Emily Kwong here.
0:03.1	So this is a back to school episode, where we revisit something you may have learned in
0:07.2	school.
0:08.4	And this time, we are focusing on conception, using all of the medical terminology you might
0:14.7	expect in an episode about how babies get made.
0:17.8	So just a heads up for you and any young listeners out there.
0:22.0	Alright, enjoy.
0:31.6	Well hello, Aurela Zabidi.
0:33.7	Hello, hello.
0:34.9	What do you got for us today?
0:36.5	Well Emily Kwong, today I think we need to have the talk.
0:40.4	Ugh, Aurela, I got the talk in elementary school.
0:43.7	I think I'm all set.
0:45.0	Well, this is a different kind of talk.
0:47.2	It's a talk to correct for the one you got the first time.
0:50.0	Oh, okay.
0:51.4	Tell me a little bit about what you learned way back when about how conception works.
0:55.7	Well, they showed us this video that described conception as a kind of obstacle course.
1:01.3	Where the sperm are these little tadpole looking things and when they enter the vagina, they're
1:04.7	in this hostile environment and they have to fight their way through all these obstacles
1:09.0	and make it to the egg and the sperm that reaches the egg wins.
1:13.1	It's kind of how I was told.
	...

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